The Invisible Contorter by fdrake

Coney grumped at the standard issue Recapture and Friendship Van (RFV) as he drove toward the zoo. His rabbit legs could not reach the pedals without a stretch. His ears were overlong according to the standards of the RFV roof. He had to keep them bent, and they chafed the roof when he checked his rear views. This made him look grumpier than he already did with his lot in life. The front seats too were awkward. The seat belt was too big for the thus unprotected body of a child sized bunny. To make matters worse, they were covered in fur which felt like his own, with stained cartoon rabbit faces smiling up at any person who sat on them. The fans on the RFV were broken, which made him sweat onto the seats in the engine heat. As he indicated onto the highway, a sweat bead dripped from his pink furred head back onto the headrest’s face. He smothered the other face with his reluctant bum, fidgeting in the seat when he turned the wheel.

The gear stick was truly unfortunate. Its top was carved into a happy pink rabbit head. Its red lipstick paint chapped and fingermarked. When he clunked into fifth on the highway he was careful not to fishhook its cheap plastic face. It dead eyed him as he drove. To his knowledge, Coney was the only anthropomorphic rabbit who worked at the Cryptid Health Institute (CHI), and the CHI’s branding was all rabbit.

Coney rummaged into the glove compartment. Half a roll of gaffa tape, tranquilizers and a few CD cases. The CD cases were what he needed, they were mission briefings. Only one of the damn things was supposed to be in there but there was no time for cleanliness on shift. He fumbled around with the front of the case, hand passing over layers of labels, he thumbed the location of the most pronounced and prepared to read it. He took the first case out, one paw on the wheel, turned one eye down to read it.

“Invisible Contorter Reconnection, March 12”. Sighing at the lack of year, he hoped that this was today’s briefing since it was indeed March 12th, and took the CD out of its case with one paw. A Reconnection? He simply had to hope the van was stocked with a cage for a contorter. He pressed the button on the dashboard to open the disk player. It stuck. “Damnit Betsy, you know you’re not supposed to slack on shift”. He comforted the front of the disk slot, then firmly pulled it open, “I’m sorry, I know it’s hard”. He pushed the CD in and the slot clicked back. Brow furrowed against the late morning light, he pressed play.

March 12, Inv - March 12 Inv - March 12 Inv - March 12 Inv… The CD skipped. Rough morning, he’d forgotten to clean the underside. He pressed the dashboard again, it stuck. “Betsy!”. HONK. He’d cut off a car. More attention needed. He focussed on the road, smiling apologetically at the driver he’d inconvenienced, then picked up the CD. Out of the corner of his vision he could see several deep scratches in it, fingerprints and grime. He rubbed it on his leg fur, but the heat of the car had made him a bit sweaty, moistening the CD underside. The company mobile he was using for GPS vibrated off its knackered stand as a call came in. He flicked his eyes to the phone, then back to the CD, drying it on the torn rabbit’s body dyed on the side of the driver’s seat. He picked up the phone, it immediately went to voicemail. “Hey Coney, hope you’re having a great day. Coney we’re going to need you to wrap up your morning assignment ASAP, a priority report came in for an Invisible Contorter Reconnection at the zoo, and we know those things are r-” realising the mix up, then eyeballed the job clock on the phone’s work app; the time allocated for his current job halved to 5 hours, with just 5 minutes allocated for his drive now. The app however ETAd 10 minutes. He spat, hung up the phone, placed it back onto its holster and HONK. He broke harder than he wanted for a red light. The RFV squealed to a stop. He nodded sheepishly at a red faced driver flipping him the bird from the car in front.

He rammed the disk back into the slot, a complaint cracked from the dashboard. “I’m so sorry Betsy, I didn’t mean it”. He hung his head and took a deep breath. He pressed play.

March 12, Invisible Contorter, Zoo, CHI recommends that the RFV is re - March 12, Invisible Contorter, Zoo, CHI recommends that the RFV is re -. The CD was too damaged. Defeated, he pressed the dashboard to reopen the - it stuck. “BETSY”. March 12, Invisible Contorter, Zoo, CHI recommends that the RFV is re- “BETSY PLEASE”. He had 8 minutes remaining of driving to get the briefing. He grabbed the phone again, hammered the in-app button to phone HQ, it took him to the phone’s dialler screen, he hurried in the number, beep beep “Not Recognised” HONK he almost drifted into traffic, pressed the numbers in again “You are through to the Cryptid Health Institute, press 1 for employees, 2 for outreach, 3 for all other enquiries”, 1, now “please enter your CHI employee number”, he did, 2 minutes left until he was late, ETA 4, he entered it, then rushed in 1 again to hear his most recent task briefing… “We are experiencing an unusually high number of calls right now, waiting time is approximately - “, the line crackled, he would be late in less than 1 minute, “45 minutes”. He put the phone back in its holster and floored it. A warning vibrated through the phone, unholstering it again, it fell into his lap. He looked down to see a “Warning - journey time not optimal, ensure you” - HONK, he swerved into the zoo carpark’s feeder lane, gummed with traffic. “follow the prescribed path for quickest-.”. He held down the phone’s off button as he joined the traffic jam. His hands trembled at the wheel. The phone off screen displayed the swirling CHI logo, “Real Values, Real Safety”. It flashed up letter by letter in babydoll pink ASCII on the screen, followed by a grinning pink rabbit. It winked. He pulled into the zoo parking lot.

He got out of the driver’s seat, his paws still shook as he clicked shut the door. He put his paw on the yellow paint van side, grimaced, “Betsy, none of this has ever been your fault”. He patted the van twice and walked to its rear. He stood on the rear foothold, tenderly unlocked the back, then pushed the door up. The insides were flanked by aged filing cabinets, their grey clashing with the worn yellow mats, stained with years of exotic excreta and lunch spills. He walked around the floor marks toward the old IBM sat atop a crippled IKEA desk in the back. He booted up the computer. It would take 5 minutes to load, he waited to query the interface about details of the contorter. Pouring himself lukewarm water from the cooler’s cold tap, he rested briefly, rain pattering on the van top, as visitors parked in tarmac puddles, or walked toward the gate guards. Families holding hands and babies, morning clothes already food soaked. He smiled at their happiness, sighed, closed his eyes and remembered all he could about invisible contorters.

His brain reminded him they were invisible. Helpful. He blanked momentarily, excusing his thoughts’ tardiness with a sip. Their senses were all very acute. They were smart. Their fur had little eye-like stalks at every hair’s end, and they could change the colour of each hair with fine detail. This allowed them to project an image of what would appear if they were not there. Anything which distorted the incoming light could make it much more difficult for the contorter to stay unnoticed - rain, mud. In captivity they had GPS tracking collars on them which revealed their position, the collar was also heavily scented.
The familiar beep boop of the desktop’s Windows 98 startup completion broke him out of recall, and he opened up the client to the central database. He typed “invisible contorter” into the hazy display of a grey interface box, it took 5 seconds, then told him mostly what he already knew… He down arrowed the output to feeding habits - back at the CHI it would be fed human junk food, enveloping it and then slowly dissolving it. This was a good excuse to expense lots of junk food to HQ.
He asked the computer for the last location of the collar, it output a map reference, which would need to be checked on his own mobile. He swore as he copied in all 24 map reference characters into his map app. The collar was still inside the zoo. The contorter had been at that exact last location for 8 hours now, it must’ve escaped the collar.

He remembered that their contortion made them move like a fluid, they could form whatever limbs required, stretch and shrink to many sizes and shapes. Honestly it was surprising that they kept the collars on to begin with. Maybe they liked the collar smell? They were very skilled at figuring out how they could be perceived, that too made them very difficult to find. Coney surmised that confining its position and inhibiting its senses would be a good strategy to Reconnect with it. Bait, distraction. It would need to be convinced to pay less attention in a known place. He had a plan. Find the strongest smelling fried food stall he could, clear visitors away from it, watch for anything unusual, eat lunch.
Coney opened up a dilapidated filing cabinet and pulled a CHI high-vis out of its pile of dossiers. He grabbed his penless clipboard from its near exit rack. The CHI was soup stained and tiny, cutting into his armpit fur as he approached the zoo entrance. There was a queue of people lining up to pay, Coney walked right by them, “excuse me please”, “sorry I need to get through”. The guards stared at him in passing, then decided they weren’t paid enough to challenge anyone wearing a high vis. He picked up a map of the zoo, found the only food stall on it, and strolled in that direction.

The crowds disagreed with Coney. Whatever sense of belonging the high-vis brought was stymied by being a pink chubby bunny walking upright. Adults looked and tried not to, children tried to and did. Half hearted “Don’t stare” whispers. Some people recognised him as wearing the standard rabbit suit of the CHI uniform. This was, however, just his gaudy skin. Politeness maintained at least 2 meters around him, even when he hollered at the hot dog vendor.

“Hey uh… I’m with the CHI, the Crypt--”, Coney scratted his ear.
“I know! It’s hard not to notice lol. You lot and your uniforms.” Coney’s eye twitched, she continued “I love cryptids”, the vendor seared a hotdog and stirred almost burnt onions, she was dancing along to a hidden speaker’s music, “What can I get for you?”
“Oh, I’m here on business. But a hotdog please. Lots of extra onions. No hot dog.”, the vendor’s eye also twitched and she brushed a greasy cowlick behind her ear, “I’m gonna need to stop you from serving for a while. too”, the vendor quashed a relieved breath with practiced grace.
“Right? Why? Is there anything I can do to help?”
“You can give me ten servings of onion on the bun”, the vendor balked, then laughed.
“Why?”
“They smell good. And I’m Reconnecting”
The vendor beamed “Oh my god do you think I’ll get to see it?”
“Unlikely. It’s invisible”, Coney winked.
“Ah well. I’ll get to it then.”, Coney could not tell if the joke or the news was more disappointing.
He then beheld a miracle of hotdog preparation. The “thick ass 1kg serving of crispy onions”, as she put it, was completed in short order. The dervish-chef of the hot-dog stand then closed up shop, pulling out an oily footstool from under the fryer, sat on it beneath the stand’s rusted canopy, and vaped out candyapple clouds, “Honestly I need to quit”. She blinked up at the rain. “The vape?”,Coney cross-legged on the floor, cradling the damp onion bun. He offered her first bite, his paws oil damp from the rain spotted wrapping. She shook her headand gouted more clouds, shifting on the fry slick edges of the stool. Coney looked into the middle distance, staring at the spaces between people, mouthfulling the moist onion glut. She looked at the hot dog, then at him, then at the same absence in the middle distance. She took another draw. “Yeah”.
The rain ended, Coney chewed.




Cool rain trickled down its now wet neck bulge. It shuddered in the damp air. Clinging around a mossed birch branch in the zoo’s chimp preserve. Its eye spindled hair tufts wrestled slick bark as its bulk settled. It nestled down jelly like, staying taut against branches. It rested in the in-between places. Cloistered where sight would look past and only there. It needed the rain to stop.

It nervously surveyed the lumbering apes in their shelter, smelling old feed fruit rot and mammal stink through the rain end’s ozone tang. It squashed unseen into the trunkwood’s gnarled damp. It drooped and galumphed down the tree. It could not fall, its sticky bulbs saw to that. It shimmied its sloughing transparent skin, dewing barked moss-hair in the storm’s final draggle. The water cringed from its wax furred scales. Its coat would work normally now. It would not be noticed. It wanted a snack.

It spasmed down in star shapes spanning branch and trunk. Its eye spines peeked, blinking the final rain residue onto the trunk base as it climbed down along an exposed root. It rose out of its own shed puddles on the tree bottom. The world was a whirl of colour after the dank rain. Its eye ended fibres sucked in all flavours of incident light then composed them onto its scales. It wrapped itself in the exact colours and shapes of the world around it, and thus disappeared from view.

Its gurgling stomach pangs protruded it forward in hidden curiosity toward a filthy chimp. The chimp was dirt washing happily in a mud puddle. The chimp bore its teeth, picking its itches at nothing and nowhere, which was the exact place the Invisible Contorter hid. As if the chimp saw it. Every one of its wincing eyes parsed the chimp’s muck addled grin into the clenched jaw of precombat rage. The contorter flinched into a hiding freeze, it must be soundless. It shrank and shrank, until it became a silent dot atop a dewdrop. The chimp washed on, mud caking smile wrinkles clean into its wet brown face. The contorter’s peckish wonder returned, expanding again, bulging gladly chimp-ward, its now needle legs sewing caterpillar-like toward the dousing ape. This close, the chimp sweat in the lounging mud, the melon mulch and grain husk caked beneath the ape’s flexing fingernails, vile. The rot sweat of the chimp saturated three of the contorter’s forming nose buds, causing the follicle beneath each to mucus froth.

If the contorter were a person, those seeping lumps sporing out of the sniffing pores, its slick shirking, together would be disgust. It fled before the thick mucus clouded the projection on its skin. It urgently shed these thick drops as further grass tip raindrop crowns, which would become soil when the ground dried.

A decision had been reached in the snackish and slimy hindbrain of the contorter. Chimps were too smelly to smell, nevermind to eat-envelop. So it bounded away, a skipping stone on mud and fern, arcing a triple rainbow out of the enclosure. Its first jump, just a little clumsy, a spring leg like protrusion dipped in a mud footprint, splatting tiny ripples on that puddle. The water waving greeted the chimp’s peripherals, which was dismissed beneath the dignity of its awareness. The second darted higher, the whole body sprang the length of four tiptoed humans between the grass blades, dodging ants. Its third, a jump the size of a story, high over the enclosure. Beyond the braying apes and above the sodden crowds. It fanned out canvas like, flapping unmoved in the air. Hidden as the wind. Up high, the zoo sprawled under it, the eyes at the end of its pelt hairs unsheathing fully to taste scents and sights in the dwindling breeze.

The crowd undulated beneath it, children pointed and giggled in chimp-struck awe, nearby adults smiled conspiratorially at their childrens’ fun. The crowd was alternately enraptured and bored by the dirty apes, some children rattling safety bars in their unwise proximity. The apes were long tuned out from human sound. The contorter was saturated, twitchily daubed in the cloud drifts and bird flights. Overwhelmed with the scale of mimicry required, it eddied down and began its account of the crowd’s attention, better to hide.

Were the contorter human, the cloying bubbles clanging up its gullet, next to its held tight rib spines would be called anxiety or excitement, their contraction a worried pivot, throat salivating with the sweet sting of risk-reward. The senses of the crowd plastered the contorter’s chugging forebrain, small ones grasping parent hands and gesture guiding toward brief points of note - close ooks, far whinnies. The adults flowed toward enclosures and stalls, their children in close orbit, some looked with their phones. A grand platter of scents splattered through the contorter’s pores, forgetting the ape smells as it assayed the air for food. The old fruit, pellets of filth mixed meat, grainslop, big cats’ tiny nibbles - there was nothing of note in the animal spectrum. Burnt sugars sticking to children’s head hairs, hot dog grease pooling in the corner of mustached mouths, plops on well worn bibs, acrid fogging coffee mugs. This was better.

The centerpiece of its attention was a family scuffle, a hot dog mouthed man, grease dripping hands onto his crying child’s hair knots. Cotton candy glued the child’s hair, wailing in sticky discomfort. The father’s reassuring coo “It’s okay, we’ll wipe it, hold still” becoming sigh tinged. This was an excellent distraction, the contorter intuited a path skirting the scuffle, so that any eyes drawn would not picture it. It needed to get close enough to follow the hot dog smell to its source. It glided over the puddles, its dagger steps gravel pinpricks, and bent up right into the father’s mouth corners. Three of its nostril tongues lolled out, licking the air millimeters away from the face. It flooded its mind with smell. Residue of cotton blue lip balm, plasm globbing up a morning shave nick, honing in on sausage grease gracing stubble. A sudden fleck of caramelised onion. Intoxicating.

At this distance it would know how the father would move before he did. It tendriled its tongues into their eating knot, mucussed the knot, and stole the orange crumbch from his lips. It withdrew the proboscis as the man cleaned his face of its errant raindrop. It knew the scent now, and bounded onward through the fry clouds, tailing visitors, sniffing their departed places, closer and closer toward the hot dog stand.

It circled. The last sweet oil plume drenching the breeze from the stand’s roof pipe. It thinned itself and jounced, becoming a sheet on the fry creamed pipe rim. It stalked a nose down the crusted hole - not hot. It slipped in. Bulbs grasping fatted walls. A little slip. It spasmed above a dwindling fryer. The stand inside was dark, the window corrugated over. It sniffed, smelling surfaces and drain chunks. It flopped onto the steel countertop and laxly puddled out, its spindles probing wound slits and abrasions in the steel. It recoiled from bleach residue. The surface had been scoured. Its mouthwet proboscis dragged on pipefat, slitting a trail up onto the roof. It bulged over its eating tendril, compressing the organ inward. It deep sniffed the famished air for food scraps, then onion thunderclapped its scent pores. A sitting rabbit suckling slimy chunks into its face, parcellizing them from a hotdog with its messy foreteeth. The contorter crooned.

It desperately coiled from the rooftop down onto the hotdog wrapper, it protruded a skin flap of eyes to better watch the rabbit, and shrank down into the onion pile. It slid around a sweet strand in the hot dog’s steaming mass, three tongues palping the plant matter through salivated sinews, its stomach hands kneading acid through fat. Backpores opened in it to let the food steam drip, miniscusing its skin holes with palm oil canopies, its brainmeat suspended in burnt bits and rapture.

It did not notice any wrongness until the sudden dark. It tasted the air, hot tides toward an acid smell, it slid against the breath astride a lapping tongue, pressed through dissolving breadcrumbs sweet edged on tastebuds. It pooled over the tongue-tip and was dragged through the slick mouth top, flanked by bread flecked molars, suckbreaths whistling clacks through cheeks. Brief apertures of light opened far ahead between those messy foreteeth, it clung along the spit stalactites as they dripped, edging forward, hoping to dive out lip smacks. It had the rhythm, so it darted forward, voiding the food remnants within it. The force from its jump summoned a tongue swat that pressed it further back, down into the metal landscape of a molar crown filling. It settled, flowing into the base, a foul smell seeping through a small soft hole, it hid into it, pulsing through onion pus. An earthquake rumbled out the stinking air chute “Ow” and quickly a grand wet suck around the tooth, it sank hard into the recess, calling a severe lick press. The air was struggling to drift through its pores - froths of saliva-oil covered it, as it was pulped in the chew throes. Its body retched, its innards taking in as much around it as possible. And failing. It panic swelled, the protrusions pushing all around, down into the smelling gullet and forward toward the winking aperture. A spasm, it felt the throatwalls tense against it, trying to press it out. It froze mindlessly, gluing up the rabbit gullet and breath, filling the mouth hole, bloating the cheeks, hugging every tooth surface. It felt teeth grind and bite with the throat convulsions, the rabbit body shaking. He was running, it felt the gut walls tremble with footfalls between every convulsion. More and more acid smells. It was fainting. The mouth was clenched tight. It tried to pry the mouth open with a bulge, its tendril smacking through the lip maw’s brief hole, soft fur hairs hanging over the rabbit’s lips. A palm quickly covered the escape route, cutting off breath again. It went limp in the clutch of acid stinking organ meat, senses dying. It sank into the mindless nowhere.




Coney was staring at a regrettably undigested pile of onions, in the middle of them a deflated balloon looking thing. It wasn’t moving. He retched again. He felt the hand of the street vendor on his shoulder and looked at her. “You… could get me some tissues, please”. She looked at the saliva and vomit covering his face and paws, quashed a gag as she would any unprofessional feeling, then ran back to the stall. He wheezed, “And some washing up liquid. And a few water bottles”. He had taken off his high-vis and started cleaning the contorter. It was projecting the red tones of his insides, its shadowy mass a small cast of his gullet and airway. Some of its skin still imaging his teeth.

The vendor returned, knelt down with him, and together they soap washed the contorter clean. Coney’s post puke eye watering brimmed up into a grieving moment “I think I nearly killed it”, Coney stuck his hand into the mass and palpated a hidden bulb, “It’s breathing now, I need to cage it… got any large fry oil bottles I could use?” The vendor cocked her head then brought one over. “You can put it in if you want, I’ll make sure it can’t move”. She paused, “Why was it here?”, Coney maintained a concentrated silence, holding the contorter’s waxy fur, as the vendor folded it into the bottle and sealed the top. “I’ll need to get this back to the RFV”, the vendor took a big draw from the vape and blew a huge cloud into the sky. “No really, why was it here?”. Coney hoisted the palm oil bottle onto his shoulder, the contorter flopped about inside. “I’ll ask it when it’s back in its cage”. She blinked. Coney looked her right in the eyes and nodded slightly. “Yeah”. She reopened the stall.

Coney climbed up into the back of the van and poured the contorter into a fine mesh ball. He sat on the dinky chair waiting for it to rouse. It did so, thrashing against the steel a little while, trying to squeeze through it - too small. It calmed down, or gave up, reluctantly filling the bottom half of the ball, before receding from view. “I’m really sorry about earlier. My computer said your name is Barry, can I call you that?”, the contorter wiggled the ball, “Alright, just whack me if I shouldn’t. Can you stop hiding a moment if you understand this?”, the contorter blinked into view momentarily. Coney smiled and took a laminated alphabet chart from the wall, it was covered in years of handprints. “Can you spell?”, it flashed. Coney sighed, “I wish I could let you go again”, no response, Coney pointed at his face, forcing a smile “Do you recognise this facial expression?”, a flash. Coney pointed at the chart, letter by letter. “Okay spell it”, Coney went on “...H…” it flashed, “A”, flash. “Happy?”, flash. Coney put his head in his paws then looked back through the contorter’s space with new eyes. “I really am sorry. Why were you here?”, Coney ran his finger along the chart “B.O.R.E.D”, “Understood. Anything more?”, “L.O.N.E.L.Y”, Coney nodded slowly, “H.O.T.D.O.G”. “You and me both”. Coney opened the cage. “Hotdogs?”. He felt crawling along his arm, a weight nestled on his shoulder and nuzzled his ear.
He waved at the vendor. He grinned and pointed at his shoulder “6 hotdogs, only 1 with just onions…”. The vendor winked back. “I can’t see why you’d make another order…”. She casually assembled the mountain of hotdogs and served them out together on a plastic tray. “Can you put on something we can dance to?”. The vendor cackled and did so, fiddling her phone, then jigging along as she served the forming queue.

Coney offered his paw to the air in front of him. A hotdog was stolen from a bun and hovered roselike in front of Coney’s mouth. He felt a pull on his paw. “You lead, Barry!!”. The queue stared bug eyed, why would a rabbit dance in public? With no partner? They dared not question the floating sausage.