Robert Stinner
The Fox’s Visit
The fox appeared at Christopher White’s front door in the swirl of a February storm. Its tail black-tipped. Its coat slick, matted with water. A notch in its left ear. Incandescent eyes.
Chris lingered in his driveway and watched the beast flicker under the faulty porchlight. It wasn’t unusual to find foxes skulking—they snared rodents in the withering cornfields and made dens under the derelict barn in the backyard—and now was mating season, when they were especially active. For the past three winters Chris had lived here, he’d hear their cries of desire each night, which sounded more like screeches of human agony.
Yet this fox, unlike the others Chris had crossed paths with, did not scurry when it saw him. It gazed with stoic intelligence. The sleet stung his forehead and soaked the paper grocery bag he clutched. To get the fox off his porch, he darted toward the door.
The fox didn’t budge, and suddenly Chris was on the slim concrete porch, standing in front of the animal taking refuge on his doormat.
“Hello,” the fox said.
“Hello,” Chris said in return. “What are you doing at my door?”
“What do you think? I’m sheltering from the storm.”
“Okay.” Chris couldn’t argue with this. The fox had the right. “Please step aside for a moment, though, so I can go inside.”
“Actually,” said the fox, “I admit I’ve been waiting for the chance to speak with you. Please let me in, so we can talk and warm ourselves.”
Bold fox. “Why would you think I’d let you in?”
“Wouldn’t you think it cruel to cast out a wandering fox, cold and trembling from the storm? Besides, you’ll want to hear what I have to say.”
Chris, after years of hard experience, had learned not to be guilted, and resented the fox for trying it on him. Yet the fox’s second remark piqued his curiosity. “Fine. But wipe your paws on the mat first.”
The fox stood, shook himself off, and compliantly wiped his muddy paws. Chris, keys in hand, hesitated, and the fox cast his stare on him again. Unnerved, he unlocked the door, and the fox crossed the threshold.
“Wait here,” Chris said, pointing at the square of linoleum at the entrance, on which the fox’s fur dripped. Chris kicked off his shoes, put away the groceries, and changed from his wet clothes into a dry T-shirt and sweatpants. Then he retrieved a hair dryer from the bathroom.
“Bear with me, I don’t want the carpet wet,” he told the fox. He set the dryer on high and blew hot air all over the fox’s waterlogged fur. The fox, to his credit, patiently endured. His rank, sodden scent made Chris hold his breath, but the odor weakened as the fox dried. When the task was finally finished, the fox wasn’t as mangy as Chris had thought. He wore a thick, buoyant coat and a wise smirk. The notch on his ear added a little rugged character. “You can walk on the carpet now. I guess you can sit on the floor in front of the couch.”
The fox trotted across the room and sat in front of the couch as asked. Chris took his seat on his usual cushion, sunken from years of use, and the fox lifted a paw to the seat beside him. “May I? It’d be more civilized to speak face to face.”
Chris didn’t want a wild animal on his couch, but his politesse disarmed him. He nodded and the fox jumped up.
The fox sat statuesque with his ink-dipped tail wrapped around his front legs, and Chris straightened his posture in response. Suddenly he felt self-conscious about his house, a single-story relic of the 70s. The paint was beige, the living room carpet dishwater brown. The secondhand coffee table in front of them was dappled with cigarette burns. The long room had no furniture, in fact, other than this table and the couch. No art hung on the walls. He never had guests—no one had seen this interior other than plumbers and electricians—and he saw now how bare and depressing it must look.
“It was generous of you to allow me into your home,” said the fox. “Not everyone would welcome a dirty animal. And now I’ll tell you who I really am.”
“You’re a fox. What else is there to it?”
“You see a fox. But inside, I am a man.”
The fox didn’t elaborate. Chris worried the fox was delusional. “So. What do you mean by that?”
“I mean that I was turned into a fox against my will. Cursed.”
He let this hang in the air, but Chris waited for the fox to finish his own thought.
“You see, I was a man. Strong and attractive—if I say so myself—but lonely. I always hoped my loneliness would be spared soon, and that my life’s sole want would be fulfilled. But as the years went by, it expanded and tightened its grip. It wrapped its tendrils around me. I grew bitter, though I was far from old. Nobody could speak to me, or I’d snap.
One day I was driving, fast, with nowhere to go. This was a vice I’d picked up, the only one I enjoyed. On a winding road, not far from here, a fox ran out in front of my car, and I ran him over. I stopped the car, and despite my best instincts, I got out to look. Despite the tire marks pressed into its body, it stood straight up and growled.
I apologized to the fox. He said, ‘What good does that do? You’ve already flattened me. Now you must pay.’
A flash of blinding blue light surrounded me, and when I regained my bearings, I was on all fours. The world’s color had been drained from my vision, and its scents assaulted me.
‘What did you do to me? How can I go back to the person I was?,’ I asked the crushed fox.
And he told me what I must do to break the curse. And since that day, I’ve wandered alone, spurned by foxes and harassed by humans, looking for the one to bring me back to the man I was.”
Again, the fox fell silent.
“Fox, I’m sorry to hear that, but I can’t be that person for you.”
“But you will be. I’ve watched you, and you’re the only one. It would be simple for you, and miraculous for me. Just a few easy tasks, and I’ll be a man again. A man, in the prime of my life, sworn to be devoted and loyal to you until the end.”
“Oh come on, I’ve heard all that before. Don’t make promises. You said it’d be simple? Just tell me what to do and we can both move on with our lives.”
The fox cocked his head and rustled his tail, seemingly perturbed by Chris’s nonchalance.
“Alright, well. In three days I’ll return. In those three days, you will need to find the ashes of a lost love, a piece of the body which gave you life, and the sweetest morsel you’ve tasted. When I arrive, grind these with a mortar and pestle, then we’ll share in the meal. This is the only way to make me a man again.”
Ashes? Body parts? He’d have to eat them? “That’s not as a simple as you implied, Fox. How literally do I need to take these ingredients?”
The fox sighed. “Try your best, but use your imagination. You don’t need to kill anyone.”
“Good enough. So three days?”
“Three days. Now I’ve said what I came to say. May I sleep here?”
The fox yawned—dramatically, Chris thought—and laid down on the couch. Sleet bombarded the window. Chris was about to give his reluctant assent, but the fox had already drifted off. His head rested on his paws, and his belly expanded with a glacial rhythm.
Chris turned off the light, then stumbled down the dark hallway to his bedroom. He hoped, for once, he’d fall asleep that quickly himself.
As he lay awake in bed, he heard scratching at the front door, and rose to let the fox out. He opened the door and the fox, without a word or a glance, leapt and ran through the barren, iced-over cornfield. “You’re welcome,” he muttered, his strange acquaintance already out of earshot.
#
The next night, Chris sat at his kitchen table and played with a candle lighter. Arrayed in front of him was a picture of himself and his ex-boyfriend Chris Green, an empty plastic takeout container, a glass of red wine filled to the brim, and a pint of Rocky Road ice cream with a spoon stuck in it.
The picture had been taken ten years ago, when both were eighteen. They sat on a stained mattress on the floor of a bare room. Chris White wore a purple zip-up hoodie over a white T-shirt and baggy jeans, his mousy brown hair darkened by sweat. Chris Green, whose chestnut hair was always coiffed, wore tight jean shorts and an oversized concert shirt. Chris White’s hand rested on Chris Green’s bare thigh. They both smiled with teeth. They were overexposed, bathed in the flash of a disposable camera set off at midday.
“God, I was so skinny,” said Chris to no one as he stared at this relic. It was their first day in their new apartment, a studio he could barely afford even though Chris Green’s parents were paying half the rent. He remembered the stifling heat as they dragged the mattress up three flights of stairs that morning—Chris Green’s friend Kendra was supposed to help, but only arrived in time to take the picture. He kept the hoodie on anyway because it was trendy at the time and it was a “feminine” color, two things his mother hated.
This was the jubilant start of his gay life: Moving in with his first boyfriend, three months after meeting in English Composition 101 at the community college. He had fantasized about marrying Chris Green before they even moved in, yet only two years before he’d been stuck in youth group, going on dates with “nice Christian girls.”
Six months later they were done. All those nights waiting up on that springy mattress. Texting every hour to no response. Eating chips and watching porn until 3:00 in the morning. Then waking up at noon to Chris Green snoring beside him, sometimes smelling of vomit, sometimes wearing someone else’s shirt.
One day Chris woke up to find Chris Green standing at the door, telling him it “wasn’t working.” Then he started shoving his belongings in a duffle bag. Chris sat on the bed and hoped he would change his mind, jump on the bed and fuck him—the way this scene had played out before, which always made Chris feel wanted and powerful. Instead he left, and when the lease expired two weeks later, Chris dragged the mattress down the three flights of stairs himself.
He took a swig of wine and a spoonful of melting ice cream. He hadn’t looked at pictures from that time in years, and had found this one in a box stowed in the unfinished basement and labeled “2009-2014 (yikes).” He remembered how Chris Green made him feel—first horny, then ecstatic, then anxious, then duped. It was the relationship that made him resolve to never have sex with the same person more than three times.
Yet they’d both been kids. The picture proved it. Neither of them had been ready for an adult relationship. Why had he taken its failure as proof he should avoid intimacy entirely? What did it say about him that, at twenty-eight, he sat, alone, in a dusty kitchen, brooding over a teenage boyfriend and doing favors for a wild animal?
Chris lifted the picture and set it alight. His own image, lanky and happy, incinerated first. Ashes flurried onto the translucent plastic. Tears, to his frustration, collected in his eyes, and he wiped them away before they spilled over.
All this angst for a fox.
#
The next day he had lunch at his mother’s apartment. It was only a twenty-five-minute drive, but he rarely visited. He arrived to a cold cut platter on the kitchen table and a low-budget Christmas movie blaring on the TV. He wondered whether she watched these every day, all year.
A stiff hug, then his mother sat down and said grace, and he lowered his head and said “amen” to avoid any trouble.
They exchanged pleasantries about work. His remote job was the same, he still appreciated the flexibility and the pay. She’d never be able to focus on a computer all day, she said. Her job at Macy’s was the same, her boss Susan was still a real pain. Both confirmed they hadn’t heard from Chris’s dad lately.
She wore the same cross necklace she’d worn for years. He complimented her on the cream turtleneck she wore. “Oh, this old thing?” She pointed out that she was wearing earrings he’d given her for Christmas when he was eleven. “I’ve kept them all these years.”
In the absence of conversation that followed, the sounds of chewing reigned. He had been bracing himself for Margaret to say something to provoke him, and he got the sense she was doing the same. Would she ask if he’s been going to church, or would he start talking about “queer liberation?”
Margaret, instead, asked “Have you been sleeping? You look so tired.”
The offense he felt was counteracted by the fact that, at least the past two nights, he had not been sleeping. “Yes, I’ve been sleeping. Just a busy week.”
“Busy week? Alone at your computer?” Her voice took on a cold edge, the familiar sign she was looking for an argument.
“Yes, mom, it was busy. Excuse me for a minute.”
He went to the bathroom and looked in the mirror to confirm that, yes, he had heavy bags under his eyes. Then he pulled balled-up rubber gloves and a plastic sandwich bag out of his jeans pocket. He opened the bag and put on the gloves, then tugged back the shower curtain and inspected the grated drain. He eased out a damp strand of hair, which he deposited in the bag. He stowed the bag and gloves back in his pocket, then returned to the kitchen.
“I got a text from my boss, work emergency that I need to take care of. Sorry to leave so early,” Chris said.
“Are you kidding? It’s Saturday. You’ve been here twenty minutes and I haven’t seen you in months. Can’t they wait an hour?” There was a quivering catch in Margaret’s voice that Chris tried to ignore.
“No, sorry, she said it needs to be done ASAP, and I’ll be in trouble if it’s not. Thanks for lunch, I’ll call soon.”
“You say that every time, Christopher, and you never do.” She was starting to raise her voice, but he was already out the door.
#
Around 8:30 the next night, as wind swept a shuddering rain onto the window, Chris heard scratching at the front door. The fox kept his word—it’d been exactly 72 hours. He set down the gay romance novel he’d been reading all evening and rose to allow the fox’s entrance.
He turned on the porchlight, and saw the fox was wet as his first visit. When he opened the door, the fox wiped his paws and took an obedient seat on the linoleum without Chris’s prompting.
“Good,” Chris said. “Thank you.” He retrieved the hair dryer and went to work. “Come sit on the couch.”
“I will. But do me a good turn first and leave the door open.”
“Why? It’s still raining.”
“The rain is slowing. Do this one more thing for me. I can see in your face you’ve done much already. If your floor gets wet, I’ll help you clean it once I’m human.”
Chris, confused but unwilling to get sidetracked by a petty argument, left the door open a crack. The fox then pranced into the room.
Despite himself, Chris felt a flicker of affection for the fox as he watched him leap onto the couch. That this animal placed his trust so completely in Chris stirred something deep in him. Chris hadn’t believed the fox’s pledge of loyalty, and the fox knew it. But he helped the fox anyway because the fox told him he was the only one who could.
“Thank you for trusting me and for giving me three days. It was hard to do what you asked, at least emotionally. But it’s done.”
“Thank you,” the fox said. “You’ve done me a good turn, one that no one I beseeched before you had. You’ve shown me the fullness of your generosity.”
Chris glowed at the compliment—it’d been a long time since someone said anything so nice about him—then realized the fox had implied he’d asked many people before him for help. Before, the fox said he was the only one. Why did he lie? And how far down was Chris on the list? He set aside these questions; jealousy was useless and, after all, no one else had been as generous as him. He took an aluminum foil-covered bowl and the pestle beside it off the coffee table.
“Here’s what you asked for. I hope it’s enough.” He removed the foil, balled it, and threw it over his shoulder. In the bowl was a slice of strawberry-frosted vanilla cake he’d bought at the grocery store that morning, his go-to cheap comfort dessert. On top of the cake were a sprinkling of the photo’s ashes and a lock of his mother’s hair.
The fox leaned over and peered into the bowl. He looked up at Chris with moonlit eyes. “Yes, I trust this is what I need. I’m sure you’ve gone to great lengths.”
Chris, as instructed, ground the concoction with the pestle. He watched the cake break into clumps and reform into a doughy pink paste, speckled with ash and strewn with hairs. “How much do I have to eat?”
“Just a bite is enough. You’ve done well, let’s not waste time.”
Chris picked up a spoon off a paper napkin he’d placed on the coffee table. He scooped the dense substance and brought the bowl to the fox’s muzzle.
The fox sniffed and Chris drew the spoon to his mouth. A moment of tingling hesitation. Then they both ate.
The flavor was a single note of intense, familiar sweetness. The texture, though, was unwelcome, a dry porridge with bits of fiber and grit. He struggled to swallow. The fox lapped up a single mouthful and sat back up, straight as before.
Instant nausea swept over Chris, and he dropped the bowl on the floor. He shut his eyes and covered his face, waiting for it to pass. When he opened them, the fox was still sitting there. He stared, pinioning Chris with a hypnotic gaze. The dark tip of his tail flicked, up and down, up and down.
Chris was about to ask when he would transform. Then a blinding blue light flashed before him.
#
Scent of sugar and animal. Sound of pin-sharp rain on linoleum, keening insects, interior creaks. Blood quickening under skin. Flesh sunk into fabric.
Fox purred, prowled toward him—smell of salt and thawing earth—brushed his neck with his muzzle, pressed against him, sniffed his tail. He shrank from Fox’s attentions, then lifted himself onto his four paws and jumped down to the floor.
The light was low and colors dim but the room’s edges were sharp. He paced the length of the room. He waited for his sensations to coalesce into logic. A word arrived in his mind: “Fox.” Then “Man.” Then: “Christopher White.” Language returned in a flood.
Fox cooed and peered at him over the edge of the couch. Chris, unsure of what sound would emit from his canine throat, spoke.
“Fox. You did this to me.” There was a dry rasp at the bottom of his voice. “I let you in when I didn’t have to, twice. You asked me to make you human again, and I tried. I lost sleep and brought back bad memories to do so. I made more of an effort to make you happy than I have for any human in years. And you tricked me. I can see you were never a man and never wanted to be one. You only wanted to make me an animal. Why did I trust you?”
“You tell me,” Fox purred.
Chris ceased his pacing and sat. He looked up at Fox. “I wanted to see the beautiful man you said you were. I told you I didn’t believe you’d be loyal to me as you said. But I still hoped.” He felt like crying. But it seemed foxes couldn’t do that. So he whimpered.
Fox leapt down and nuzzled up beside him. “I admit I tricked you. You caught me, I never was a beautiful man. But I will be loyal. And I know you’ll be happier this way. I used to watch you ducking into the house with sagging paper bags of provisions, never showing your face, always alone. You locked yourself away. Now free yourself with me.” He pointed his muzzle toward the cracked-open door.
He saw a sliver of the dark, vibrating expanse outside, and was jolted by an immediate impulse to run. He tried to summon back his human instincts, told himself why he should give Fox a firm “no,” convince him to make him human again, then cast out the animal forever.
Fox, who had been sifting his muzzle through his new, soft fur, sniffed his tail again and murmured. The brush of Fox’s nose shot sparks down his spine. He felt the padding of his paws on carpet. He smelled the ripening world.
He dashed out and ran through the wet fields, rabbits and mice scattering to make way for his airborne body. Ecstasy shimmered all around him. The quick thud of paws came chasing after him, then the screech of full-throated desire. He kept running, knowing soon Fox would catch up and act on his call. The fox who was once a man, who no longer needed a name, would be ready to surrender.
Robert Stinner is a queer, Washington, D.C.-based writer of fiction, essays, and criticism. He has previously published critical essays on film, books, and television in publications including Electric Literature, The Rumpus, Literary Hub, and Bright Wall/Dark Room. Read more at robertstinner.com.