Jet: Seven More Years

Cape Escape 2 Jet WIP Sprite by Aeria Quies.
Written by Keith

-

Jet had gotten fat.

There was just no avoiding that fact anymore. There were a lot of things that he could blame for making him resemble a giant Sno Ball, not that it would change anything. He was getting old, sure. A coyote can’t eat and, well, drink like he’s in his 20’s forever. Everything starts to bloat and sag, fur somehow both thins and thickens at different places, and things start to pop. Hell, last month he managed to take his back out for a week just by bending over to grab something out of the freezer. Ain’t that not supposed to happen until he’s, what, 60 or something?

He’d worked his ass off for so long as a Mann man: hauling gear, rigging lights, driving everywhere, painting sets, anything that Melvin had asked of him so long as Jet remained firmly on the right side of the camera. But the moment Melvin went to prison, Jet quit without a second thought. He wasn’t there for the fucking lifestyle. Melvin had let him stay at his place, which was still supported by the Mr. Mann fortune, and the channel had been handed off to new management in his absence. Someone else could crush a house with the world’s largest ball of cheese, or whatever.

But it turns out that if you’re that active for that long, and then you just stop, your body goes through some changes real fast. Ugh.

Jet was playing his belly like a drum, slouched all the way down on the couch until he was nearly horizontal, wearing nothing besides some old boxers. He’d been telling himself that he’d work the fat back off one of these days, but in truth he was just too miserable to do much of anything lately. Instead, he sat there in his own farts on Melvin’s couch while some cartoon ran half-ignored through its entire season on the TV in front of him.

Some idiot wolf that hates himself for being horny, or whatever. He was a part of some high school theater troupe, always keeping quiet, working the lights and hauling gear, but… but now he was being forced to take part in the performance. He… he was confronting a tiger backstage. The tiger was the star of the show. He was fucking jacked, and pretty dumb but he had a… a dark secret.

Jet sat up.

During the live performance, the tall, slender stagehand wolf tried to put a stop to it. He confronted the tiger, only to end up grappled tightly to his wide chest. The tiger tore at the wolf’s back, but all that Jet saw was how close he was holding him, claiming him…

Jet was changing the channel before he fully realized that he’d grabbed the remote.

“-record temperatures in the southwest-“ CLICK “-the historic ghost town of Southpaw, where hundreds-“ CLICK “-knot not sticking like it used to? Try-“ CLICK “-has to protect these kids from the woke-“ CLICK “-the magician that made his audience disapp-” CLICK “-and once the brownie is holding firm you can apply the coconut mixture to…”

Baking. Fine. White noise. What the fuck ever.

Jet’s vision had blurred while he fled the tiger, and only now did he reach up to wipe away the tears with a groan. “C’mon, get it together you old-“ And then it struck him that his boxers had grown uncomfortably tight. Looking down, he was baffled to see it protruding out past his gut. “REALLY? Holy shit I am such a fucking disaster…”

The coyote grabbed a pillow, squeezing it as he collapsed against the couch cushion, twisting and turning both out of discomfort and a deep need to not be himself anymore. He whimpered and growled, writhing away from his shame.

This wasn’t working. Seven years. SEVEN FUCKING YEARS.

Jet had been alone for so long, but ever since Melvin kissed him it’s almost as if things had only gotten harder. Suddenly his lame little life revolved around an idiot tiger that had gotten himself locked away. Jet had found himself measuring time entirely in when they’d next get to see each other. When he’d be held again after months apart. When they’d next convince the staff to leave them alone with a bed, long enough to leave them drained and sticky and bruised but never long enough for any real love.

If he’d had any sense, if he were a different person, the coyote would have fucked off to have a better life somewhere else long ago. Instead, Jet had served his own sentence.

To his credit, Melvin had been the model celebrity prisoner. He got along with everyone, gave the guards autographs, took selfies with the fucking warden. He’d worked his advantages where they could be found, even filming training videos for the prison staff, and was well on his way to an astonishingly early release.

But after six years of their sad, staccato soirées, Jet’s famous boyfriend had been transferred to another facility upstate. “With better conditions,” they said, “for good behavior,” they said. But this piece of shit cinderblock black-site had denied the coyote’s visitation requests for nearly a year now, and he was backed up and going feral like a bear waking up from hibernation.

They had his photo on the wall at this point because he kept walking in to cuss out anyone that he could reach. What were they gonna do? Arrest him? Good, let him the fuck in there already. But no, at this point the guards had taken to locking the door the moment they spotted him. He’d thrown a milkshake at the entrance last week.

It had been a long, long year. But Melvin was due for release any day now, and Jet was gonna make himself that sabretooth’s problem every single day until it felt like they’d made up for this near-fucking-decade they’d lost. The coyote didn’t know if he could ever be happy but he sure was gonna try and find out. He had long since grown sick of choking on the pause button…

-

A deafening alarm blared in the pitch dark.

Jet reached out into the abyss, trying to get a sense of his surroundings, but all he could feel was cold concrete beneath bare paws.

Suddenly, he was bathed in a pool of red light, barely making out the shape of the room before it went dark again. Unable to adjust, it was somehow even harder to see this time.

RED. There were vertical bars along the walls. They looked wet.

BLACK. Jet cupped his paws around his maw, screaming out Melvin’s name. He expected to hear himself echoing up and down the prison hall, but the siren overrode him completely. He yelled himself hoarse, never hearing himself once.

RED. The coyote blinked against the visual assault in monochrome, straining to make out his surroundings. He glimpsed something on the wall.

BLACK. Growling his frustration, he took a step forward, and then another, arms outstretched like a dumb zombie, helpless in the dark. With every step he thought he’d hit something, but the sensation never came.

RED. Jet startled when confronted with a vast wall that was suddenly mere feet from his face. It was covered in savage, dripping markings. He stared, uncomprehending, until it all hit at once.

A huge ragged eye stared back at him.

BLACK.

…

“HEY HEY”

-

Jet snorted awake in a jumbled pile of drool and flattened fur. Groaning, he wiped his jaw and rolled over to see what those nice ladies on TV were baking next, only to be met with the terrifying visage of a lizard made entirely of fondant. Timothée Kalameet, it said.

Jet stared unblinking at its uncanny eyes, and they stared back at him.

He basically punched the remote, and a huge red play button came up on the screen.

“Aw, dammit…”

One of those annoying smart TV things. He fumbled with the buttons but nothing seemed to stop whatever was loading up. Not until he was greeted with a grid of red arrows and pogging faces.

“Relaxing beats to Cuddle/Chill to,” “Old Disc lore finally EXPLAINED,” “56 ways to fry an egg,”

wait…

”THE BLACK SCARF INSTITUTE IS GARBAGE AND HERE’S WHY”

Jet’s mouth opened, but no words came out. Oh he should not click on this. Don’t watch it, don’t watch it, he told himself again and again all the while, sure enough, the video began to play.

Soon there was some dweeby 20-something serval looking back at him. He wore an ill-fitted suit and a sour expression, crossing his arms over his chest to look dissonantly serious in front of a wall of what had to be dozens of children’s toys and fake movie swords. When he spoke he sounded like he was working to deepen his voice.

”The Black Scarf Institute is some wannabe superhero academy comic, but you knew that already. Written by Jet Adler and published by Mann Fiction, the story is rife with well-documented plot holes and shallow characters. But worst of all has to be its completely insufferable protagonist. We’re supposed to be sad that this poor underdog doesn’t have any friends, but I couldn’t put up with his bullshit myself either, so it really feels like a ‘him’ problem. Nothing undercuts a story quite like a main character that you can’t stand reading about, am I right?”

Jet’s eyes narrowed, and if anyone were around they’d hear him breathing audibly through his nose, gradually quickening the pace.

“The only reason that anyone bothered picking up this book was because YouTube juggernaut Mr. Mann went to prison after all of those deaths, and his sycophant fans thought they’d find coded answers to all of their questions in the works of their so-called ‘Green Man.’ And oh, they got subtext alright, just not the kind that anyone was looking for.

”Seriously? A protagonist that can’t touch anyone or they’ll die? Who the hell would write a dumbass superpower like that? I’ll tell you who, a lonely gay orbiter who can’t write something as simple and tropey as a magical school for wayward teens without getting embarrassingly autobiographical in the process. Yeah, I’m sure you’re having a real hard life as a talentless millionaire, dude.

“How did we even get here? One word: nepotism. It turns out that if you put out for the biggest YouTuber on the planet you don’t need to bother with silly things like creativity or experience to become a published best-selling author.”

Jet’s jaw began to ache from how fiercely he was clenching it.

“Well congratulations everyone, now that the movie rights have sold you’ve only made The Green Man greener. We can only hope that a competent director like Lian Johnston can salvage this basic-ass premise from its own incompetent writing by injecting it with some honest-to-god character arcs and themes-“

The coyote shot to his feet, knocking over a tray table along with the old TV dinner carton it held.

“OH YEAH BUDDY? WELL I’M ABOUT TO GET PAID MORE MONEY WHILE I CRANK IT IN THE SHOWER THAN YOU’LL MAKE ALL MONTH! LET ME KNOW HOW THAT TASTES!”

Jet did not, in fact, crank it in the shower. 

Instead he just stood there, for about an hour, feeling sorry for himself. Maybe he was waiting for the water to get cold, like it had back home, for his signal that he had wallowed long enough. But they don’t run out of hot water here. Apparently you can, in fact, be too rich for that.

Hands planted against the wall, Jet stood statue-still as rivulets found ideal paths through his fur, parting it in trenches and soaking him through. Being wet meant being smaller, yet heavier, but his mind was elsewhere.

He thought back to that moment seven years ago, when he had considered leaving. He had made the wrong choice. Jet should have gotten in his car right then and there, and started his new life. He would’ve never gone through the Escape Con debacle, avoiding that spark of hope that had caused him to wait here ever since.

And what hurt was that he knew that at the time. He’d known the right answer, but he went anyway. And then, well, waiting just felt right once he and Melvin had become a thing. It was the easy call to make, back before he’d actually had to live through it.

He’d chosen wrong.

Jet tore open the shower curtain and stepped out into the open air, nude and dripping. He didn’t bother reaching for a towel, instead his squelching footsteps sounded across the floor as he made his way to the sink counter, where he braced himself, staring blankly at the steam-covered mirror.

There was no sense giving up now, this close to the finish line. Regret doesn’t do anyone any good, does it? Whatever this era was, it’d be over in a week when he finally picked up Melvin and took him home. This Jet? Good riddance. He was a coward, and now he’s dead.

With a huff, he dragged his sopping forearm across the glass, cutting a streak in the clouds. But the face that stared back at him stopped his breath in his throat.

Those weren’t his eyes.

…

They’re back.

-

Comic by Aeria Quies