The Clockwork Maze 1: The oddity cog

(From the viewpoint of Robert Telmar)

My name is Robert Telmar. I was fifteen years old. My birthday was only a day away and I was hysterical with anticipation. In only twelve hours I would be celebrating my first, hesitant steps into adulthood, not to mention the fantastic gifts I expected to receive. I lay in my bed and fantasised about the following day, the balloons, the cake, the materialistic goods and the party which would last till the early hours of the morning. I was grateful to my mother, I suspected that it was because of her that the party was going to happen. My stepfather had never liked me and had made rather unsettling threats whilst drunk and alone with him. If it wasn't for Jonas, my stepbrother, I would have been completely against my mothers second marriage but the two of them were the best of friends and I refused to allow the worrying issue ruin our friendship.

    A sudden knock on the door jolted me from my thoughts. My stepfather edged through the partially open doorway in the same way that just about all "fathers" do. His hands were behind his back and I could tell that he was holding something. Had it been anyone else, this close to my birthday, I would be itching to find out what it was, but I hadn't expected my stepfather to donate anything more than a fiver and my stepfather looked drunk and so a distant, freethinking part of my mind started to whisper to me that my stepfather may have finally decided to carry out one of his many threats, after all he could be holding anything behind his back, a hammer, a knife, a pan or maybe even a...

    My thoughts were cut short when the man in front of me produced a small box of similar size to a DVD case. My stepfather looked at the box and appeared to be lost in thought. As I watched, small beads of sweat formed on his brow. He had a troubled look on his face that looked similar to what I thought a persons eyes would look like just before they kill themselves.

''Yes?'' I asked after around a minute and my stepfather jumped. When he looked up, the distraught look had vanished from the mans face and had been replaced by a warm, loving smile.

''I know that we've had our disagreements and I've acted like a real idiot sometimes but I thought we could start over. You know, I got you something for your sixteenth.'' my stepfather extended a trembling hand that held the box. I looked at it for a moment before gently accepting the gift. I could have sworn that the man gave a sigh of relief when I accepted the box. It felt tremendously heavy for its size, I almost dropped it. After putting the package on my bedside cabinet I looked back at my stepfather ''I spent a lot of money on that but I believe it's gonna change everything.'' my step dad said in a gentle tone.

I thought for a few seconds and then spoke ''I don't know if I can just forget about everything you've done or threatened to do...but I'll try.'' I said with a smile. With that, my stepfather left the room.

    I couldn't get to sleep, I was just too excited. Not only was I looking forward to the party but now I was curious as to the nature of my stepfathers gift. As soon as the clock struck midnight, I reached for the package on my bedside cabinet. It was rather badly wrapped, probably due to my stepfathers inebriated condition at the time. When I finally broke through the several layers of tattered wrapping paper and cello tape, I got to a black leather box. Upon opening the box, my happy anticipation quickly became confusion. What lay inside the box was a pendant of sorts, it was a circular, metal contraption with various cogs and switches protruding from it. It looked like some sort of clockwork mechanism. A leather strap came out of the top that I supposed was to go around ones neck, on the inside of the strap were metal discs that looked almost like electrodes.

    I felt disappointed in him, I had actually thought that the gift was genuinely useful, not some useless trinket. Removing the pendant from its box, I placed it around my neck none the less. The pendant made a clicking noise and one of the cogs began to turn. As the cog turned, the leather strap tightened until it was impossible to remove. The air felt suddenly alive with energy. Suddenly, the device made a whirring noise and an electric charge went into me and I crumbled to the ground momentarily. It wasn't actually painful as such but it certainly felt strange.

    The first thing that I noticed when I stood back up was the unbelievable itching sensation all over. I looked at my arm and almost fell backwards at what I saw, the hairs on my arm had become much more frequent and they were much darker than before. I frantically tried to remove the device but the leather was much to strong and after a few seconds, I was covered in a glossy coat of what I could only describe as black fur, except for a strip of white fur that ran from my chin to my groin. Terrified, I began to run to get help but before I could even reach the door, my right shin was struck with such a searing pain that I fell, the ground rushing up to my face. I tried to scream out in agony but the device kept me mute.

    The bones in my legs reconfigured themselves to become digitigrade and my toes grew claws. The pain then subsided swiftly. I felt a strange pressure at the base of my spine. Upon investigating, I discovered a tail sprouting from my backside, worming its way out from under my pyjamas and then rapidly growing to become a long and flexible appendage. I reached up and massaged my ears as I felt them grow pointed and begin their journey to the top of my head. Meanwhile, my face reassembled itself, the base of my nose (which had remained hairless) now became the  physical point of my face, becoming triangular and pink. It tickled especially when whiskers sprouted out from my face and I almost even giggled at the feeling. I awkwardly stumbled over to the dresser, to the mirror it held, and I arrived in time to witness my eyes convert, dilating, twisting, becoming slitted and cat-like. Suddenly, my clothes felt loose and I clutched at a pencil from the dresser before rapidly shrinking to the size of a football. I felt a burning sensation in my throat, and my thoughts became fuzzy. My fingers were quickly shortening, and growing claws.

    I frantically searched the surface of the device (which was now only half the size of me) for the feature I knew I had seen before. I found it, a small exposed area through which I could see many small cogs, belts and pistons moving in unison. I quickly raised the pencil and jammed it hard into the exposed region. The machine made a choked noise and began to judder. The burning in my throat ceased and my memory cleared. The device gave a few dying coughs before falling silent.

    Having discovered that my thumbs were not completely gone and my elbows were yet to be reconfigured, I gave the pendant a tentative tug. The leather strap loosened easily and I ripped the cursed thing from my neck. I then crawled out of the pile of my clothes and struggled to comprehend what had just happened to me. I looked down at my new body, the body of a youthful feline, not quite a kitten and yet not quite a cat. I then noticed something, there was a collar around my neck where the leather strap had been. I took advantage of my disfigured opposable thumbs to carefully remove the collar and saw the name on the metal disc. "TINY", it read. The name seemed very familiar and I realized that the pendant had been trying to reprogram my mind to be this 'Tiny' character but I had stopped the process just in time.

    I went to the door but it seemed daunting due to my new size so I thought it over in my mind. As I pondered, another thought suddenly occurred to me. I hesitantly opened my mouth "H...hello?" the voice that I heard was strange and not entirely my own, higher in pitch and felt like it was coming from a different part of my throat altogether but at least I could still speak. Standing precariously on my hind legs I pulled a box from a low shelf and pushed it to the chair. When this trial was over, I climbed onto the box, jumped onto the chair and then onto the desk that sat beside the door. I hesitated only a moment before jumping at the door knob, twisting nimbly through the air before I grasped the handle. It twisted upon impact and with a quiet click the door opened slightly. As I fell back to the floor, I thought of something, what was I going to do?