Changing Spots
by Ivanka Fear
“Leo, your dog guy is here,” Leona mumbled as she staggered through the hall towards the kitchen in her bathrobe, still half-asleep. She had seen the outline of a man with his dog through the frosted side panels as she passed by the front door.
“Um, Mom, that’s not my dog guy,” Leo whispered, not moving from his spot on the living-room couch. “I think we’ve been spotted.”
Coming fully awake now, Leona took another look outside, peering through the slit in the living room curtains. “Oh no, not again. I thought we’d be safe here,” she said, more to herself than to her son. She should have sensed the danger, she thought. When she awakened from her deep sleep minutes ago, she had felt her heart beating rapidly, pulsing through every inch of her body. “They’ve found us out,” Leona said to her 16-year old son. “What do you want to do?”
“Maybe he just wants to talk,” Leo answered hopefully. “Maybe we should hear him out, listen to what he has to say.”
Leo was always looking for the best in people, ever searching for an amicable resolution to conflicts. He had faith in the goodness of humanity. Leona was more doubtful, having experienced the hatred of mankind firsthand more times than she could remember.
“It’s your call,” Leona deferred to her son. “I just wish your dad hadn’t already left for work. He’s so much better than I am at defusing these kinds of situations.”
The situation at this particular time was that there was a bearded heavyset man with two large dogs standing on the front lawn between the road and the house. He had parked his white pickup truck on an angle in the driveway, blocking Leona’s car. He kept looking up and down the road, nervously, as though he seemed to be waiting for something to happen. It was starting to get light outside, although it was shaping up to be a cloudy October morning.
“Let’s just wait and see,” Leo suggested.
While they huddled together, waiting on the couch, Leona thought about how hard it was to get people to accept anything different. Everywhere they had lived — and they had relocated many times — they encountered people who were wary of things they didn’t understand. It shouldn’t have come as a surprise, then, that Leona and her family had had to flee every home they had ever found.
They had sought the anonymity of big cities, hoping to go unnoticed in places where there were others like themselves. They had looked for compassion and understanding in smaller towns, expecting acceptance in the tight-knit communities. All they wanted was what everyone else wanted: a safe place for their family to live in peace. Yet no matter where they tried to settle, no matter how hard they tried to blend in, ultimately, they were judged for being themselves.
“Where’s Tony?” Leona asked, suddenly remembering she hadn’t seen their cat yet this morning.
“It’s okay. I locked him in the basement. I didn’t want him to get all riled up about the dogs,” explained Leo.
“That’s good. Maybe we should head for the basement, too.”
“I’m sure it will be fine. Most people are good, Mom. He’s not really doing anything to hurt us, just hanging around our front yard. Maybe we should open the door and see what he wants,” Leo ventured.
Leave it to Leo to take the straightforward approach, Leona thought. He was the one who went out of his way to see things from a different perspective, going so far as to suggest that maybe it was simply fear of the unknown that drove humans to commit such horrific acts against others, rather than outright hatred or evil.
In the few months since they had moved into the small village of Hartsford, Leo had made friends and seemed to fit in like any normal teenager. He had even found a best friend by the name of Jimmy, whose family ran a dog kennel. Even though Leo explained that they were more cat people, he and Jimmy seemed to hit it off.
Leona and her husband, Leopold, thought they had finally found their permanent home in the friendly village with a population of about 500. Surely there would be acceptance in a place where everyone knew everyone.
They had been on the receiving end of scornful looks and derisive comments so many times in the past. That was something they endured, but it tended to escalate. They had seen it happen to others who were different, as well. Anyone who didn’t fit the standard model of the perfect human was at risk. This perfect model seemed to vary from person to person. That’s what made it really scary.
Leona and Leopold had been subject to the spray-painting of profanity on their home, the destruction of their vehicles, Molotov cocktails through their windows, drive-by shootings, and worse. Luckily, they had survived. Others, they knew, were not so fortunate.
“I see what he’s waiting for,” exclaimed Leona when she glanced out the window again. “Another truck just pulled up, and the guy getting out has a shotgun.” The two men greeted each other and gestured towards the house. Most people may be good, thought Leona, but it only takes one or two, and others will follow. Yes, it’s true that most people are good, but some are very bad. Humankind has always struggled with acceptance.
“How do they know about us?” Leo asked his mother.
“We haven’t been careful enough,” sighed Leona. “And people talk.”
Once rumours began to circulate, they became accepted as fact. It seemed to be human nature to believe what you hear. No one could substantiate the rumours, of course, but that didn’t stop the speculation from turning into hatred.
“Call 911 and hide,” she instructed her son, taking charge of the situation. “I’m going to change and get rid of them.”
“What about me?” Leo asked.
“Stay out of sight. If things go wrong, run out the back door to the neighbours.” Leona did not want Leo to have blood on his hands. She would handle this on her own.
“What will I tell them?”
“The truth, but not the whole truth.”
You can’t change who you were born to be, nor should you have to, she thought. Leona and her family found it difficult, yet necessary, to suppress their true nature. Only when they were alone together did they feel comfortable enough to change into their other form, much like changing into cozy pyjamas and slippers while watching TV in the evening. They were very adept at camouflage and they tried hard to hide their dual nature from outsiders, but their natural mannerisms often gave them away.
Wherever they lived, someone would always become suspicious of their catlike behaviour. Their compulsive need to groom raised eyebrows. Their love of tree-climbing caused people to stare. The shopping carts full of fresh meat and milk made people wonder about their dietary habits. People quickly came to the conclusion that they were a strange and different kind of family. The rumours of shapeshifting would begin to surface.
Leo called 911 on his cell phone. He gave the operator his address and said, “There are intruders on our property with guns, trying to get into our house.” Then he waited.
Leona changed as quickly as she could, then crept to the front door, ready to face the hunters. “I told you to hide!” she hissed upon seeing Leo still in the living room.
The sound of another vehicle pulling up in front of the house caught their attention. A third man joined the other two on the lawn. Leo could now see they were all armed. The men started towards the front door.
“I’m scared, Mom!” Leo cried out.
The men pounded on the door and shouted, “We know you’re in there! We know what you are! My cousin saw you in Norfolk. Show yourselves!”
Leona pushed aside the jackets in the walk-in entry closet and motioned for Leo to follow her in. She crouched down and waited. Leo put his arms around his mother’s shoulders and said, “You’re right, Mom, some people will never change. But they’re just scared, the same as we are.”
The pounding on the door stopped suddenly and the ensuing quiet was almost more alarming. After a couple of minutes, the doorbell rang. “Police!” came a shout from the other side of the door.
Leo slowly slipped out of the closet and peeked through the window. There was a police cruiser parked out front. Two police officers were at the door. Leo spoke gently: “It’s okay, Mom. It’s the police. I’m going to let them in.”
“Careful,” said Leona, remaining hidden, but ready to pounce just in case. Like any good mother, she was prepared to protect her young from danger.
When Leo cautiously opened the door, Leona bared her fangs, hoping she wouldn’t be forced to lunge and sink her teeth into human flesh. She hated stooping to the level of her attackers. A leopard can change its spots, she thought to herself, but some humans don’t find it so easy to change.
“It’s okay now,” she heard one of the police officers say to Leo. “We have the suspects handcuffed. Is everything all right in there?”
“Yeah, I’m okay. I was just really scared being home by myself, and these guys showed up. I don’t know what they wanted,” Leo told the officer.
After the intruders were taken away, Leona changed back to her human form. She hugged her son and said, “I’m sorry you have to grow up in a world where people can’t accept others as they are. You’d have thought that humans would have evolved beyond that after all these millennia. We can’t stay here. It’s too dangerous.”
Their last move, from the town of Norfolk, had been necessitated by an altruistic action by Leopold, Leona’s husband. One day as he was out for a walk on the outskirts of town, he witnessed a young woman stepping into the path of a pickup truck. Neither she nor the driver of the vehicle making a swift left turn into her path were paying attention. Leopold sprang into action, transforming and leaping in a flash, grabbing the girl as gently as he could, and leaving her safe on the side of the road.
Both the driver and the woman were considered to be suffering from shock when they told police about the huge cat that appeared from nowhere. The hospital staff examining the woman took note of the large scratches on the woman’s body. Once again, Leopold found it necessary to relocate his family and change their name.
“They’re just afraid of us, that’s all,” Leo spoke again in their defence, as he always did.
“”Still, it’s no excuse,” Leona insisted. Then she picked up her phone and called her husband. “We’re going to have to move again. We’ve been spotted,” she told him.
Copyright © 2019 by Ivanka Fear
