Callister’s Curios.
It’d been a store as long as Ringo could remember – some wooden, shadowed, tightly-shuttered maze of cluttered shelves and dusty windows, a domain of retirees and bored teenagers to pick through forgotten TV sets and VHS tapes from the late 80s even Blockbuster hadn’t stocked.
Still, as Ringo stopped on the sidewalk, peering inside, they couldn’t help but be enticed. Secondhand stores always had something interesting to look at, and… well. Why not, right?
Not like there was much else going on, today.
His first instinct, upon ducking through the small, dusty door, was to sneeze. This place was buried in antiquity, a few sporadic cobwebs strung between old hanging lights – but had a homey charm all to itself, reminding the coyote of a wood cabin, almost. The shelves were stacked, various knickknacks and household decorations spilled this way and that, and as he began to wind his way deeper, the collections seemed to grow more… eclectic.
Mirrors shaped like novelty cartoon characters. An entire section that was, as far as he could tell, just made up of beach towels. A carved table made to look like a mermaid holding up a big clam shell.
That was when he saw it.
Perched atop one of the shelves, oddly pristine despite laying in a pile of old doilies and mothballs, was… a remote. A very early 90s looking “universal” style remote, with more buttons than he’d ever seen on one like it – and, as far as he could tell, it was only a dollar?
The remote at the apartment did need replacing… what the hell. Sure.
Up to the front he trudged, dodging a few stray cobwebs as he did so – only to find this place didn’t seem to have a cashier? Or… a register, merely a cash box with “pay inside” written on the side in marker.
O…kay.
Fishing a dollar out, he stuffed it inside – and was off, heading home to show his roommate the weird new remote he’d found.
“…So it’s… a remote?” Charlie repeated, scratching his temple with a finger. “Didn’t we have a remote already?”
“Not one like this! And for a dollar? C’mon, dude. A steal.”
The skunk shrugged, picking it up – but, suddenly, squinted at something.
One of the buttons, in very faded text, read “Change.”
Change… what? The station? Resolution? Some function of the remote?
Charlie pointed the remote vaguely in the direction of the TV, and pressed the button – and instantly, Ringo was struck by the strangest sensation he’d ever felt.
…It was almost as if he’d come… apart…?
The skunk dropped the remote in surprise, just as Ringo clattered to the floor – the bodysuit his midsection had become laying flat, paws and head rolling away. Ringo was still trying to say something, but the words had been completely cut off, their vision staring roughly at the ceiling. Um. What happened?
“F-Fuck! What the hell did this thing do?!”
Grabbing the remote from the floor, Charlie scanned the buttons in a panic trying to find an undo, or a rewind, or a– a-ha!
The two arrows together had to be go back, right? What else could it do?
Pointing at the fursuit that was his roommate just a few moments earlier, the skunk clicked the rewind button in – and watched in bewilderment as the suit began to, before his very eyes, rewind – stitching un-stitching, stuffing vanishing, detailing disappearing! Ringo was quickly turning into just piles of Ringo-colored felt, thread, and sewing needles, and before long, that’s… that’s all there was!
“U-Uh!” Charlie stammered, trying to hit fast forward to fix the suit and accidentally hitting the button a few times in rapid succession – which, to his immense relief, it seemed to work, more or less. Soon enough, the suit had stitched itself back together, re-stuffing and cutely staring back at him in a way that only barely implied the coyote inside was paying attention… but the fast-forward continued. It almost seemed to be speeding up, the cumulative effect from so many accidental presses ending up almost quadrupling the time spent fast forwarding!
The suit began to age – fur growing clumped, design seeming a little less modern, more retro. It was almost as if the fast forward was adding years to the suit sitting here, aging it backwards in time instead of forward! Before his very eyes, Ringo was going back through the different design eras of fursuits, one at a time!
“S-Stop!” The skunk half shouted, reaching out to try and grab the aging fursuit – but, finally, it seemed to slow.
Ringo sat there, a pile of late 90s-style cartoon coyote felt and fabric, as Charlie stared on in mute disbelief.
The purple skunk didn’t quite know what to make of the entire thing – but, as they looked down at the remote, the dozens of buttons seemed to almost… entice them, even further.
…Well. It couldn’t get worse than it already was, could it…?
Picking one at random and closing their eyes, Charlie held the remote up and clicked it…
…forgetting about the mirror on the other side of the room. The signal reflected almost directly back at Charlie, who, for the briefest of moments, felt the summer sun, and the cool caress of pool water. With a loud SQRK, he vanished, and the remote clattered to the ground, well within sight of Ringo but definitely not reachable.
S-Surely it wears off?
The fursuit sat there, staring.
Right?