BRIANNA’S CAMPFIRE TALE

AS FEATURED ON EPISODE #19

“KITTEN MITTENS” by Jordan Miller

They felt warm and immediately pleasant on her skin as she slipped them on for the first time.  Soft to the touch and snug in only the right places. The temperature had been steadily dropping for two weeks, and Brianna had been prone since childhood to cold extremities. “Fingers, nose and toes” she would say playfully, “they’re always cold”.   This is partially what prompted her boyfriend to buy her the mittens. It had started as an inside joke between them, but when he found an actual pair for sale at a hole-in-wall Magic and Joke Shop he couldn’t pass them up. She held her hands up, laughed and kissed her boyfriend. Actual Kitten Mittens. Regular gloves made to look like furry cat hands with small plastic claws on the end of each finger. Part humor, part practicality, and all Brianna. The perfect gift.

It was her day off the following day and her boyfriend was already at work when Brianna awoke.  She yawned and scratched a morning itch across her stomach. In doing so she cried out and looked down to see a small red line growing across her stomach. She was bleeding. She looked at her hand to see she had actually slept with those stupid kitten mittens on.  “How could those little plastic claws actually cut me?” She thought. After only a moment of trying to remove the gloves, her stomach sunk to the floor with the realization that they were no longer gloves, but her hands. Cat hair growing up from her own skin, now reaching halfway to her elbow. Her fingertips ending in razor sharp claws and the inside of her hands callacing over into pads of tough animal flesh. She ran to the bathroom and in the mirror she saw the face of something unnatural looking back. A circus mirror reflection of her face, her  bone structure elongating and her eyes the endless reflecting eyes of a cat. 

Her boyfriend didn’t arrive home until after 6, and was immediately struck with the overpowering smell of fish.  The kitchen floor was littered with empty cans of tuna. The fridge and freezer had been torn open, food strewn everywhere. An empty gallon of milk lay in a small white puddle, like a corpse in a pool of its own blood. “What the fuck?” He says under his breath as he surveys the damage. He steps forward and crunches onto broken glass. He lifts up his boot to see  pieces of a broken lightbulb. He looks at the other lamps in the room. Every lightbulb smashed. From behind him a sharp, thin voice “It was just so bright…”

He turns to see Brianna curled into the corner, but it was not Brianna, it was something horrible and inhuman, covered in coarse black hair and staring at him from the darkness with fiery reflecting eyes. “I didn’t know what to do…” it cried. He wanted to talk to her, to comfort her from whatever plague she was suffering, but he couldn’t move. Couldn’t bring himself to say anything to the trembling Brianna creature in the corner. “None of the food was enough. Need more” she coughed. It was the fear in her eyes that convinced him. This wasn’t a monster. This was Brianna. His Brianna, and and he had to help her anyway he could.

The following week and article in the local paper expressed community concern over a growing number of missing pets. Mostly dogs and cats, but one citizen even reported that their Koi Pond had been relieved of all of its Koi fish overnight.  The concern resulted in more missing pet flyers but little else. The following week there was another article. This one covered the story of 8 year old girl, Missie Blake, who had gone missing over the weekend while she had been playing in the park. The police had no leads, but expressed their optimism for her safe recovery.