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The Los Angeles sun beat through floor-to-ceiling windows, turning the forty-second-floor conference room into a pressure cooker. Suzy Clairen sat across from Editorial Director Patricia Marsh, her portfolio spread between them like evidence at a trial. Twenty-two years old and dressed in her best interview blazer, Suzy felt each second stretch and compress simultaneously. The silence in the room was a weight, pressing down on her.
"This is your third submission." Patricia's voice carried the clipped finality of a judge delivering a verdict. She pushed the graphic novel pages back across the polished table with a dismissive slide. "Miss Clairen, your technical skill is adequate. The problem, as it has been before, is vision."
Suzy's hands twisted in her lap, her knuckles white. "I can revise. I can make it more..."
"Commercial?" Patricia supplied the word with a thin, unsympathetic smile. "Marketable? These are not buzzwords. They are the metrics of survival in this industry." She leaned forward, her expression not entirely unkind but absolutely merciless, a surgeon diagnosing a terminal illness. "You are creating art for an audience of one. Yourself. That is not how this business works. It is a lovely hobby, but it is not a career."
The words landed like a series of precise, physical blows. Suzy had spent eighteen months on this project, pouring her soul into the late nights and careful linework, building a world she had believed in with every fiber of her being. A familiar pressure began to build in her chest, a tightening that spread outward like cracks forming in ice.
"Your protagonist lacks a relatable core. Your plot meanders through esoteric themes that will not connect with a broad readership. Frankly, the entire concept reads as a deeply personal, self-indulgent exercise." Patricia gathered the pages into a neat stack, a final, tidy dismissal of nearly two years of Suzy’s life. "I am declining publication. Again."
The room seemed to tilt on its axis. Suzy’s vision blurred at the edges as her heartbeat thundered in her ears, a frantic drum against her ribs. Not here. Not now. She gripped the edge of the table, the polished wood cool against herร้อน, damp skin.
"Miss Clairen? Are you even listening to me?"
A blistering heat erupted beneath her skin. It started in her chest, a burning core that spread with terrifying speed down her arms and legs. Suzy's breath came in short, shallow gasps. The pressure became unbearable, a horrifying sensation like her very skeleton was trying to compress and expand at the same time. She had to get out.
"I need to use the restroom," she managed to say, her voice tight. She stood too quickly, her chair scraping backward with a jarring noise. Patricia frowned, a flicker of annoyance in her eyes, but gestured toward the door.
Suzy walked as steadily as she could manage, her vision narrowing to a desperate tunnel. She passed the executive assistant's desk, turned left toward the restrooms as expected, and then veered sharply right, toward the unmarked door of a utility closet. The handle turned. It was mercifully unlocked.
Inside, surrounded by the scent of cleaning solution and stacks of office supplies, she collapsed. The transformation hit like a bolt of lightning. Her bones cracked and reformed with sickening speed. Silver-white fur erupted across her skin in dense waves. Her hands compressed into paws, fingers fusing and becoming sharp claws. Her face elongated into a muzzle, her teeth sharpening into predatory points. The pain was exquisite and blessedly brief.
When it ended, Suzy found herself much closer to the floor, her borrowed suit crumpled in a useless pile around her. Her new fox body was small, smaller than a housecat, and thrummed with a terror that overwhelmed every other thought. What had she done? What was happening?
Her gaze fell upon the overhead vent. Acting on pure instinct, she leaped, her claws scrabbling for purchase against the metal. Her jaw found the edge of the grating. She bit down, tearing through the thin aluminum until the hole was wide enough to squeeze through.
The ventilation system became her escape route. She ran on instinct alone, a silver blur in the darkness, following the flow of cooler air. Behind her, distant human voices rose in confusion. Someone had found the empty closet and the abandoned clothes.
The vent opened to the outside world two blocks away, a street-level exhaust port near a parking garage. Suzy tumbled onto the hot concrete, her body already moving before her mind could catch up. The sensory assault nearly shut her down completely. The acrid smell of car exhaust, the cloying scent of human sweat, the aromas of cooking food from a dozen restaurants, and the sharp tang of hot asphalt all hit her at once. Her sensitive ears caught every conversation, every passing engine, every single footstep.
She ran.
Hours blurred together in a panic-fueled haze. She navigated by desperation and an instinct she did not know she possessed, always moving upward, away from the dense city center. The crowds thinned. The towering buildings gave way to residential areas, then to the winding, exclusive roads of the Hollywood Hills.
By the time darkness fell, Suzy had traveled for miles. Her paws were torn and bleeding from the unforgiving pavement. Exhaustion made her stumble. She found a dense cluster of brush near a quiet stream and collapsed into it, her small body trembling.
Her last coherent thought before unconsciousness claimed her was simple and devastating. Her family's curse, the one her grandmother had warned about in hushed, serious tones, the one Suzy had dismissed as folklore and superstition, was real. And it had just destroyed her life.