I Feel Like Hank Williams Tonight

Posted on Tue Jun 2nd, 2026 @ 7:28pm by Josiah Martin

502 words; about a 3 minute read

Mission: Episode 7: Pathogens and Contagions
Location: X-Mansion
Timeline: March 11, 1992

Joey watched as Maeve and Jennifer entered Xavier’s mansion before shaking his fur, flaking a few bits of dried, whatever vampires had for blood off of himself. Everyone had made it back, more or less intact, and they had succeeded in ending the menace, at least for now. That was a win. Or at least the teenage rat man felt like it was supposed to be, even though he wasn’t really feeling that way. He shook himself again and decided, much like after the last vampire fight, clean-up was in order before he shifted back. Shifting back would limit his time vertical, and verticality usually helped with showers.

He made it to the bathroom, and through the shower without too much effort. He’d, somehow, managed to become rather proficient at showering off in his rat form. Unfortunately for him, that also gave him time to focus on something even less pleasant. His mouth, and the fact it was still filled with bits of, well, he wasn’t exactly sure what it qualified as or that he really wanted to know. The point was it was actually pretty gross.

Turns out, vampire did not, in fact, taste like chicken. He supposed he hadn’t really expected it to, to the extent he’d ever considered the taste of vampire. He wasn’t stupid, or that macabre. Nothing that turned to black sludge and ash had any business tasting like poultry, or anything else wholesome. Still. Some things a man ought not to know with confidence.

He grabbed a toothbrush, toothpaste, and the mouth wash. Time to get rid of that particular flavor! But it didn’t take long for him to realize it wasn’t going to work either. Rat paws and muzzles were, ergonomically, incompatible with human oral hygiene equipment. Well, fuck him with cactus, he thought as he gripped the sink, almost hard enough to crack the porcelain. He’d have to change back.

With no choice, he did so, but it wasn’t clean. It never was. It was a deep, ugly pull through muscle and bone with a half second of pressure, heat, and the sickening sensation of being poured into skin with the wrong shape. Still, at the end, he was human again. Mostly. Enough to brace himself with the sink before his knees decided to go on strike over standing upright.

He slid down onto the floor, toothbrush in hand as he slowly started brushing, half-hanging on the sink to be able to get to water to rinse, and spit the mouthwash afterwards. To top it off, brushing his teeth did not quite get rid of the taste. Now it was just minty fresh corpse instead. He didn’t have the strength left to care just yet. And, damn it all, he wasn’t sorry he knew this information now. Not exactly, anyway. That’d be a problem for when he could manage to sit upright without needing deities of porcelain to support himself.

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