Timmy was a squirrel. A typical, ordinary, completely boring, nut-hoarding, tree-climbing squirrel. Nothing funny or unusual going on with him at all.
At least, not until he was kidnapped.
Timmy was out one fine day, gathering berries and crumbs for his family, when suddenly everything went dark. Was it night? No, it couldn’t be. It just stopped being night. Did the sky fire go out? Maybe. The sky fire had been exceedingly erratic lately. But, wait, hold up. Timmy’s feet weren’t on the ground anymore. What the fuck was this nonsense?
It took him a moment, but Timmy eventually figured out he was inside of something. A bag, probably. He had never been inside of a bag before, but he had a vague idea of how they worked. He had only an even vaguer idea of how to make them not work, but it was better than nothing.
Timmy clawed and gnawed at the bag, twisting and rolling and making little squirrelly noises, but to no avail. The bag was reinforced. With another bag. Escape was hopeless.
So Timmy gave up hope.
This wasn’t actually all that difficult. Timmy barely understood the concept of hope. To him, it was just the imprecise notion that clawing enough at anything equaled food. Plywood, concrete, people—scratch, scratch, scratch—hey, there could be a hunk of bread under there—scratch, scratch, scratch.
Then, without warning or reason, or even a decent transition, everything changed.
The bag was removed and there were all these people and pointy things and lights and pain and oh my Jesus what the hell please let me die and, and… and suddenly Timmy knew exactly what was going on. He was in a laboratory, surrounded by scientists and attached to electrodes and stuck with needles. He caught a glimpse of a formula on a chalkboard and quickly deduced that his brain had been boiled in radiation, sparking a higher cognizance. Holy shit.
This was alarming to Timmy in a lot of ways, actually. The existence of pants, for one. And the sudden and overwhelming sense of shame due to not wearing pants, for another. Mind-blowingly simple, really, he thought, covering one’s junk with cloth. One’s junk should never be exposed! Unless, of course, one loves and/or lusts after the person to whom one is exposing one’s junk. Wait, what? Contradiction was also new to Timmy.
But, Timmy quickly reasoned, all that could wait. There would be time enough to ponder all the imponderables, to cover his junk and flash his wife, once he got out of this lab. Timmy stared at his restraints, trying to discern a way out of them, when, all of sudden, they started moving. What the crap? They stopped. That was weird. Timmy started thinking about removing the restraints again. The restraints started moving again. Wait. No way. Could it be? Telekinesis! Artificially induced cognizance was fucking awesome.
Timmy freed himself from his restraints and then his cage, and finally scampered across the desktop.
“Stop him!” said someone.
Timmy threw a scalpel at that someone’s face. With his fucking mind.
Timmy proceeded to butcher and maim the remainder of the scientists, taking out a lifetime of frustration in a matter of moments. Which was fitting, seeing as how Timmy had only actually been frustrated, or even aware of the possibility of frustration, for a matter of moments.
Timmy the squirrel bolted out of the lab, across the lawn and into the street. The street. Streets are things that go places. Oh, man, this makes life so much easier! Timmy decided to follow the street to wherever it was going.
But, wait. The street was vibrating slightly. What the hell? Timmy turned and looked around. There was something big and purple and pink barreling towards him.
It was, it was… it was a car. Timmy remembered cars. Cars sucked.