HOME | DD

Description
An otherwise uneventful week passed, with Donald playing the piano as usual, taking copious notes from his biology, psychology, chemistry, and physics textbooks and the outside readings associated with it.  But the botched slide preparation still bothered him—every day the fumes seemed to come back, and although he was relieved that he hadn’t got into a coma or otherwise suffered significant bodily harm, he felt at times dizzy, confused, irritable, and queasy, as if he had experienced a 100 meter drop on a roller coaster and much more after that.  He went to the Hobart Wellness Center (he couldn’t understand why they couldn’t just call it an infirmary) where the nurses couldn’t find anything strange about him; he went to Dr. Youngs in the center of town, outside of Aeolian University, and couldn’t find any diagnosis that would fit his symptoms.  Oh well, I’m a hypochondriac, thought Donald.  His father would call in sick at the pharmacy once in a while, faking symptoms that he could easily treat.  But this seemed real.  It didn’t affect him much, it was a mere nuisance.  But how real could it be? He never threw up, never lost track of a lecture, never walked strangely, and never showed the ailments he wasn’t sure he was imagining.

It was a week after the incident when it started to hit him.  He woke up with a hammer driving him back to sleep, but he ignored it and went to the medicine cabinet.  He felt much heavier than usual as he took out an aspirin from the bottle that he slightly struggled to open.  He eventually swallowed the pill…

…

Entering Doyle Hall for the evening, Donald tried to act like he wasn’t sick, walking over to the old piano and let his left hand hit the low E-flat octave and played Maple Leaf (1), legato and andante (2) at first, then progressively faster and staccato (3).

He hit a strange chord after the second repeat of the A-strain (4).  When the song was to modulate to D-flat major, he played a divergently different theme, the B-strain to Kitten on the Keys (5)!  He barely realized it until the first break (6), but kept on playing.  He almost forgot about Maple Leaf when his left hand varied the old walking bass vamp of the A-strain.  He slowed down a bit, letting the tritones (7) of the left hand screech and meow.

The other temporary residents walked in as usual to the elevator but turned to see the seemingly crazed pianist with his fingers touching every ivory and ebony on the keyboard with every elaborate and showy rhythm.  Donald finished Kitten and to everyone’s surprise went to the trio (8) of Maple Leaf, playing it straight without the slightest improvisation.  The same went for the D-theme, and tears of sweat began to well from his forehead.  He played the final authentic cadence (9) and the secretary and the onlookers clapped steadfast in both awe and irritation.
Donald was not one to bow but couldn’t help it; as he stood back up and turned to the elevator he felt a pain in his chest, feeling even sicker after playing those tunes.  It was 8:30 PM and the headache he felt at 8:30 AM came back.  That pill was supposed to last 24 hours, Donald thought.

The smiles on the onlookers’ cheeks seemed to bug Donald.  He dashed past the desk and into the elevator just as three of the spectators filed in.  The doors closed before them, and he found himself with his back to the residents again who knew him only through his playing.

“Dude you did great out there!” said one of the three.

Donald shivered, not turning back to the brown-haired boy behind him.  “Gee, thanks,” he said as the elevator stopped for the fourth floor.  He nearly collapsed as he felt his weight increase; his body felt more fluid, his bones seemed to lose their rigidity and the nerves seemed to flow with it.  Donald tried desperately to ignore the pain.  He gave out a slight shriek as the elevator stopped at the fourth floor, the force of the stop jolting his legs.  One of the three walked out, looking back at Donald with a puzzled look, almost frowning with contempt.

The elevator started again and the lift brought Donald to his knees.  The headache was blinding now, his forehead seemed to hammer against the door.  A hand reached out to him: “Hey, are you going to be okay?” said the same brown-haired boy, in a tone that was automatic, yet still concerned.

“No, I’ll be fine,” said Donald, almost choking at his response.

“It doesn’t look like you’re going to be all right,” replied the boy, still lending his hand.  He had not noticed that he had missed his seventh floor stop, barely even noticing the elevator wasn’t moving.

“No, it’ll pass; I’ll let nature take its course.  I’ll be fine, don’t worry.” Donald assured as the elevator started up again.  He brought himself back up with the help of the boy’s hands.  “Thanks anyhow, uh…”

“Aldrich,” said the brown haired boy.  “I’m in your Practical Logic class.”

“Oh, nice to meet you.  Unusual name.  I’m Donald.”

“I know,” said Aldrich.  The elevator stopped, and Donald’s new friend looked again at his face.  “Hey, is it just me, or did your hair just get redder?”

The elevator doors opened.  “What?” Donald looked up.  He quickly rushed out, still feeling the throbbing in his head.

He could hear a faint “See ya” as he turned the right corner to his room door, and stood for a moment in a frantic flail to find the key hole. He seemed to poke randomly into the doorknob, even though he could see the hole clearly.  This vision blurred, almost blackened, as Donald poked into the right hole, and turned the key.  By this time it was obvious that something was terribly wrong with him physically, perhaps even mentally.

“Frederick, could you—“ Donald wheezed, short on breath, and short on sight.  Though his vision blurred his perception, it was clear that Frederick was not in the room yet.  He’ll be here soon, Donald assured himself.  But to be sure, Donald made his way to the telephone near Frederick’s desk. He extended his index finger to the “9” in anticipation of helping himself, but he again fell to the floor, feeling his strangely viscous bones, skin, and nerves condense into something smaller.  “Am I made of clay?”(10) Donald asked desperately trying to keep his head above the desk.  Skin seemed to slide down his back, his arms flailed in instability, and the nerves tried to hold on. He let out a muffled scream.  By that time even the nerves had collapsed, and felt a great numbness all over his body, even the head.

And he blacked out.  But not for long.

Sight came back to him in a few seconds.  He looked down.  Although Donald found it scary, trembling at the sight of thickening hairs on his arm and legs, he marveled at what was happening to him.  He could feel his hypothalamus increase his body temperature and started to sweat even more.  He couldn’t tell whether he was in a swimming pool or a college dorm room.

It was too hot to wear his khakis and collared shirt on a hot Friday night like this.  He decided to strip, leaving only his boxers on out of that strange modesty.  He looked at his arms again.  They were smaller now, and their hairs were thickening red-orange.  And then there was a sensation in his back, feeling the calcium and marrow move from his legs to the bottom of his spine.  He felt the skin following the extending spine, but didn’t turn to see it.

His whole body seemed to shrink again.  Two seconds later, he realized that he was.  The beds were towering over him and his posters of Pauling (11) and Tchaikovsky required him to lift his eyes to view.  He felt the aftershock of his extended nose and mouth, merged into something he couldn’t quite describe at the moment.  He looked down and saw that his hands were now two round, orange paws no bigger than what were two of his old fingers.  Donald turned his head to see the electric piano in back of him, fearing that he could no longer study or play the ragtime he proved so competent at many times before.  He let his new arms fall to the ground, and prayed this wasn’t permanent.

He heard the doorknob jingle.  Donald, still feeling exhausted though strangely out of his pain, searched for his clothes.  He found the boxers which until now never realized fell from his body.  His paws could only clutch the cloth but could not put them on.

The door finally opened.  Frederick was the tallest thing in the room now, his neck high in the air in friendly wonderment as to where his roommate was.  “Hey Donald, could you plug in the Ethernet for me, I—“  He stared down with his books in his left hand looking for the cable, puzzled as to the stillness.  He found instead a staring yet neutral face, covered in red-orange tones and a sharpened nose, with a thick body and short legs, and a long, bushy tail that begged attention for the creature before him.  He dropped his books in confusion and quiet horror.
“Oh my God there’s a fox in my room.”

He took out his cell phone and slinked out, closing the door silently behind him.  Donald simply stared toward the door, struggling to grasp the name that he knew all along but his roommate had to give him.  He could hear his cell phone ringing in his cast-off khakis and wanted to answer.  He could explain to Frederick that he was okay…

He went over to the beeping pocket, pawed out his wallet, his keys, and finally his cell phone.  By that time the buzzing had stopped, and his messaging system took over his will to respond personally.  Still determined to intercept the standard course, Donald struggled to open the phone, but his paws were of no avail, fiddling with that complex piece of computer chip and plastic, dropping it as his fingers flailed.

He stopped for a moment, hearing Frederick dial another number from beyond the walls.  He wanted to call out to his flustered roommate “No Freddie!  Don’t call animal control!  It’s me!” but all he could make out were two small barks.  He could hear Frederick out there, his voice panting, “Hello, I need help here quick—I’ve got a fox in my room, I don’t know how it got there, just get it out!”

Donald feared shots even at 18, and he definitely didn’t want to be tranquilized and taken under forced custody of the state.  He needed to get out himself.

He turned his new head around the room.  He couldn’t get into the vent, the door was no option.  But the window was a good answer.  He jumped on to the ledge, looked down and around for anything that could cushion his fall, provided he could get out.  There was a ledge outside too, large enough to keep his vulpine body comfortably seated.  He turned the latch to the right bottom side of the three paneled window and pushed his now cold nose on the pane.  Walking out on a rapidly darkening night, he looked for the second part of his escape.  Aha!  He noticed the rain gutter on the right side of the ledge and cautiously slinked over to it, but not before looking back.  Frederick had not come back in yet; he was probably informed to leave the creature alone as the professionals handled it.
He could hear his cell phone ringing again.  He stood for a moment in fright, then boldly embraced the rain drainer in a tight squeeze, and slowly began to crawl down the pole.  His back legs slipped at times, causing him to drop a couple of feet as he held on.  Eventually Donald decided to just let gravity bring him to Earth.  It felt exhilarating sliding down the remaining six stories though his paws burned with more pain than the transformation itself.

Donald soon landed on the grass and rested his paws to help them recuperate from the friction.  He looked up and saw a truck go past him, just 12 feet ahead, with words which he read as “Halfback Municipal Department of Wildlife”.
Wait a minute, Donald thought.  If I’m a fox, why am I still sentient?

Footnotes:
1:  Probably the most famous ragtime composition of all time, written by Scott Joplin in 1899.

2:  Smoothly and at a walking-pace speed (or tempo).

3:  Abridged, that is, the duration of the note is shorter than would otherwise be indicated.

4:  Ragtime compositions follow this pattern, where each letter indicates a different theme:  Intro  AABBACCDD.  There are many variations on this, most commonly that the B-strain is repeated at the end instead of a D-strain.

5:  An extremely difficult “novelty” rag written by Edward Elzear “Zez” Confrey in 1921. One of ragtime’s last hits, people would buy the sheet music just for show and only listen to Confrey’s recording rather than try to play it themselves.

6:  Novelty ragtime compositions, at least as written by Confrey, have clear distinctions between the phrases known as “breaks” in which a whole or half note is used to end the phrase.

7:  Known as “the devil’s interval” in the medieval period, a tritone consists of exactly three whole steps.  (Find a piano and count six consecutive keys after another, including the black keys.)  “Kitten on the Keys” uses many of these as part of the harmonic structure of the treble line (the melody), especially in the first theme.

8:  Another name for the C-theme of a ragtime composition.  Here the key signature often changes.

9:  A common ending to many songs throughout the genres of music, it consists of a dominant chord followed by the tonic chord.  It is difficult to explain exactly what this means without going into a full lesson on the types of chords, but just remember it as a satisfying ending to a piece, something that doesn’t leave the listener hanging.

10:  In the biblical book of Genesis, Adam was made of clay (hence the name “Adam”, which roughly translates from Hebrew into “Red Earth”.

11:  American chemist famous for his work on the structure of proteins and the hybridization of atomic orbitals among many other accomplishments.  Donald Windleah is a biochemistry major; Linus Pauling thus would be more appropriate as a bedroom inspiration rather than Einstein as so commonly portrayed in our popular culture.  (And I’m sure you can guess why Tchaikovsky is also in Donald’s dorm room.)

Description
An otherwise uneventful week passed, with Donald playing the piano as usual, taking copious notes from his biology, psychology, chemistry, and physics textbooks and the outside readings associated with it.  But the botched slide preparation still bothered him—every day the fumes seemed to come back, and although he was relieved that he hadn’t got into a coma or otherwise suffered significant bodily harm, he felt at times dizzy, confused, irritable, and queasy, as if he had experienced a 100 meter drop on a roller coaster and much more after that.  He went to the Hobart Wellness Center (he couldn’t understand why they couldn’t just call it an infirmary) where the nurses couldn’t find anything strange about him; he went to Dr. Youngs in the center of town, outside of Aeolian University, and couldn’t find any diagnosis that would fit his symptoms.  Oh well, I’m a hypochondriac, thought Donald.  His father would call in sick at the pharmacy once in a while, faking symptoms that he could easily treat.  But this seemed real.  It didn’t affect him much, it was a mere nuisance.  But how real could it be? He never threw up, never lost track of a lecture, never walked strangely, and never showed the ailments he wasn’t sure he was imagining.

It was a week after the incident when it started to hit him.  He woke up with a hammer driving him back to sleep, but he ignored it and went to the medicine cabinet.  He felt much heavier than usual as he took out an aspirin from the bottle that he slightly struggled to open.  He eventually swallowed the pill…

…

Entering Doyle Hall for the evening, Donald tried to act like he wasn’t sick, walking over to the old piano and let his left hand hit the low E-flat octave and played Maple Leaf (1), legato and andante (2) at first, then progressively faster and staccato (3).

He hit a strange chord after the second repeat of the A-strain (4).  When the song was to modulate to D-flat major, he played a divergently different theme, the B-strain to Kitten on the Keys (5)!  He barely realized it until the first break (6), but kept on playing.  He almost forgot about Maple Leaf when his left hand varied the old walking bass vamp of the A-strain.  He slowed down a bit, letting the tritones (7) of the left hand screech and meow.

The other temporary residents walked in as usual to the elevator but turned to see the seemingly crazed pianist with his fingers touching every ivory and ebony on the keyboard with every elaborate and showy rhythm.  Donald finished Kitten and to everyone’s surprise went to the trio (8) of Maple Leaf, playing it straight without the slightest improvisation.  The same went for the D-theme, and tears of sweat began to well from his forehead.  He played the final authentic cadence (9) and the secretary and the onlookers clapped steadfast in both awe and irritation.
Donald was not one to bow but couldn’t help it; as he stood back up and turned to the elevator he felt a pain in his chest, feeling even sicker after playing those tunes.  It was 8:30 PM and the headache he felt at 8:30 AM came back.  That pill was supposed to last 24 hours, Donald thought.

The smiles on the onlookers’ cheeks seemed to bug Donald.  He dashed past the desk and into the elevator just as three of the spectators filed in.  The doors closed before them, and he found himself with his back to the residents again who knew him only through his playing.

“Dude you did great out there!” said one of the three.

Donald shivered, not turning back to the brown-haired boy behind him.  “Gee, thanks,” he said as the elevator stopped for the fourth floor.  He nearly collapsed as he felt his weight increase; his body felt more fluid, his bones seemed to lose their rigidity and the nerves seemed to flow with it.  Donald tried desperately to ignore the pain.  He gave out a slight shriek as the elevator stopped at the fourth floor, the force of the stop jolting his legs.  One of the three walked out, looking back at Donald with a puzzled look, almost frowning with contempt.

The elevator started again and the lift brought Donald to his knees.  The headache was blinding now, his forehead seemed to hammer against the door.  A hand reached out to him: “Hey, are you going to be okay?” said the same brown-haired boy, in a tone that was automatic, yet still concerned.

“No, I’ll be fine,” said Donald, almost choking at his response.

“It doesn’t look like you’re going to be all right,” replied the boy, still lending his hand.  He had not noticed that he had missed his seventh floor stop, barely even noticing the elevator wasn’t moving.

“No, it’ll pass; I’ll let nature take its course.  I’ll be fine, don’t worry.” Donald assured as the elevator started up again.  He brought himself back up with the help of the boy’s hands.  “Thanks anyhow, uh…”

“Aldrich,” said the brown haired boy.  “I’m in your Practical Logic class.”

“Oh, nice to meet you.  Unusual name.  I’m Donald.”

“I know,” said Aldrich.  The elevator stopped, and Donald’s new friend looked again at his face.  “Hey, is it just me, or did your hair just get redder?”

The elevator doors opened.  “What?” Donald looked up.  He quickly rushed out, still feeling the throbbing in his head.

He could hear a faint “See ya” as he turned the right corner to his room door, and stood for a moment in a frantic flail to find the key hole. He seemed to poke randomly into the doorknob, even though he could see the hole clearly.  This vision blurred, almost blackened, as Donald poked into the right hole, and turned the key.  By this time it was obvious that something was terribly wrong with him physically, perhaps even mentally.

“Frederick, could you—“ Donald wheezed, short on breath, and short on sight.  Though his vision blurred his perception, it was clear that Frederick was not in the room yet.  He’ll be here soon, Donald assured himself.  But to be sure, Donald made his way to the telephone near Frederick’s desk. He extended his index finger to the “9” in anticipation of helping himself, but he again fell to the floor, feeling his strangely viscous bones, skin, and nerves condense into something smaller.  “Am I made of clay?”(10) Donald asked desperately trying to keep his head above the desk.  Skin seemed to slide down his back, his arms flailed in instability, and the nerves tried to hold on. He let out a muffled scream.  By that time even the nerves had collapsed, and felt a great numbness all over his body, even the head.

And he blacked out.  But not for long.

Sight came back to him in a few seconds.  He looked down.  Although Donald found it scary, trembling at the sight of thickening hairs on his arm and legs, he marveled at what was happening to him.  He could feel his hypothalamus increase his body temperature and started to sweat even more.  He couldn’t tell whether he was in a swimming pool or a college dorm room.

It was too hot to wear his khakis and collared shirt on a hot Friday night like this.  He decided to strip, leaving only his boxers on out of that strange modesty.  He looked at his arms again.  They were smaller now, and their hairs were thickening red-orange.  And then there was a sensation in his back, feeling the calcium and marrow move from his legs to the bottom of his spine.  He felt the skin following the extending spine, but didn’t turn to see it.

His whole body seemed to shrink again.  Two seconds later, he realized that he was.  The beds were towering over him and his posters of Pauling (11) and Tchaikovsky required him to lift his eyes to view.  He felt the aftershock of his extended nose and mouth, merged into something he couldn’t quite describe at the moment.  He looked down and saw that his hands were now two round, orange paws no bigger than what were two of his old fingers.  Donald turned his head to see the electric piano in back of him, fearing that he could no longer study or play the ragtime he proved so competent at many times before.  He let his new arms fall to the ground, and prayed this wasn’t permanent.

He heard the doorknob jingle.  Donald, still feeling exhausted though strangely out of his pain, searched for his clothes.  He found the boxers which until now never realized fell from his body.  His paws could only clutch the cloth but could not put them on.

The door finally opened.  Frederick was the tallest thing in the room now, his neck high in the air in friendly wonderment as to where his roommate was.  “Hey Donald, could you plug in the Ethernet for me, I—“  He stared down with his books in his left hand looking for the cable, puzzled as to the stillness.  He found instead a staring yet neutral face, covered in red-orange tones and a sharpened nose, with a thick body and short legs, and a long, bushy tail that begged attention for the creature before him.  He dropped his books in confusion and quiet horror.
“Oh my God there’s a fox in my room.”

He took out his cell phone and slinked out, closing the door silently behind him.  Donald simply stared toward the door, struggling to grasp the name that he knew all along but his roommate had to give him.  He could hear his cell phone ringing in his cast-off khakis and wanted to answer.  He could explain to Frederick that he was okay…

He went over to the beeping pocket, pawed out his wallet, his keys, and finally his cell phone.  By that time the buzzing had stopped, and his messaging system took over his will to respond personally.  Still determined to intercept the standard course, Donald struggled to open the phone, but his paws were of no avail, fiddling with that complex piece of computer chip and plastic, dropping it as his fingers flailed.

He stopped for a moment, hearing Frederick dial another number from beyond the walls.  He wanted to call out to his flustered roommate “No Freddie!  Don’t call animal control!  It’s me!” but all he could make out were two small barks.  He could hear Frederick out there, his voice panting, “Hello, I need help here quick—I’ve got a fox in my room, I don’t know how it got there, just get it out!”

Donald feared shots even at 18, and he definitely didn’t want to be tranquilized and taken under forced custody of the state.  He needed to get out himself.

He turned his new head around the room.  He couldn’t get into the vent, the door was no option.  But the window was a good answer.  He jumped on to the ledge, looked down and around for anything that could cushion his fall, provided he could get out.  There was a ledge outside too, large enough to keep his vulpine body comfortably seated.  He turned the latch to the right bottom side of the three paneled window and pushed his now cold nose on the pane.  Walking out on a rapidly darkening night, he looked for the second part of his escape.  Aha!  He noticed the rain gutter on the right side of the ledge and cautiously slinked over to it, but not before looking back.  Frederick had not come back in yet; he was probably informed to leave the creature alone as the professionals handled it.
He could hear his cell phone ringing again.  He stood for a moment in fright, then boldly embraced the rain drainer in a tight squeeze, and slowly began to crawl down the pole.  His back legs slipped at times, causing him to drop a couple of feet as he held on.  Eventually Donald decided to just let gravity bring him to Earth.  It felt exhilarating sliding down the remaining six stories though his paws burned with more pain than the transformation itself.

Donald soon landed on the grass and rested his paws to help them recuperate from the friction.  He looked up and saw a truck go past him, just 12 feet ahead, with words which he read as “Halfback Municipal Department of Wildlife”.
Wait a minute, Donald thought.  If I’m a fox, why am I still sentient?

Footnotes:
1:  Probably the most famous ragtime composition of all time, written by Scott Joplin in 1899.

2:  Smoothly and at a walking-pace speed (or tempo).

3:  Abridged, that is, the duration of the note is shorter than would otherwise be indicated.

4:  Ragtime compositions follow this pattern, where each letter indicates a different theme:  Intro  AABBACCDD.  There are many variations on this, most commonly that the B-strain is repeated at the end instead of a D-strain.

5:  An extremely difficult “novelty” rag written by Edward Elzear “Zez” Confrey in 1921. One of ragtime’s last hits, people would buy the sheet music just for show and only listen to Confrey’s recording rather than try to play it themselves.

6:  Novelty ragtime compositions, at least as written by Confrey, have clear distinctions between the phrases known as “breaks” in which a whole or half note is used to end the phrase.

7:  Known as “the devil’s interval” in the medieval period, a tritone consists of exactly three whole steps.  (Find a piano and count six consecutive keys after another, including the black keys.)  “Kitten on the Keys” uses many of these as part of the harmonic structure of the treble line (the melody), especially in the first theme.

8:  Another name for the C-theme of a ragtime composition.  Here the key signature often changes.

9:  A common ending to many songs throughout the genres of music, it consists of a dominant chord followed by the tonic chord.  It is difficult to explain exactly what this means without going into a full lesson on the types of chords, but just remember it as a satisfying ending to a piece, something that doesn’t leave the listener hanging.

10:  In the biblical book of Genesis, Adam was made of clay (hence the name “Adam”, which roughly translates from Hebrew into “Red Earth”.

11:  American chemist famous for his work on the structure of proteins and the hybridization of atomic orbitals among many other accomplishments.  Donald Windleah is a biochemistry major; Linus Pauling thus would be more appropriate as a bedroom inspiration rather than Einstein as so commonly portrayed in our popular culture.  (And I’m sure you can guess why Tchaikovsky is also in Donald’s dorm room.)