Dear Moonhorse and the Celestial Herd,

I'm back again but this time I bring you not Family drama but something that I am surprised slipped my memory for this long. A person that I find so hard to categorize as the compounded about of Legbeard, Otherkin, histrionics, and blood-boiling rage this person has sparked over the years, she did truly become the preverbal train wreck that I pulled up a lawn chair to watch. Perhaps the sheer amount of cringe is what made me suppress these memories but an abomination like this never truly dies but merely slumbers awaiting to becoming a mighty Reddit post for the fascinated horror of all.

So here it is, The Queen of Foxes: Prologue

In my hometown there was girl I shall called Lily for this story. She is a few years younger than myself and did not have a stable home life; divorced parents, teenage angst, fanatically religious views, and high school are a helluv a drug as our friend Moonhorse would say. Now many people from my tiny, tiny hometown (myself included) did grow up in similar dynamics, and eventually grew into mostly functional adults with varying degrees of baggage that we eventually managed to drop, or, at the very least, sweep up into a small closet that stores broken Christmas lights, long abandoned hobby supplies, and existential dread. But in Lily's case neither she nor her parents posseted enough emotional maturity to make such a future possible.

My first dealings with Lily started in high school. It was the end of my junior/start of my senior year, and, because it will be relevant later, I had just finally gotten out of my first relationship that was very sexually abusive and I was just started to realize the amount of trauma I was dealing with because finally I started to realize what happened to me over those two years was very, very far from okay even if some of my so called friends didn't understand how you could be raped in a relationship if you had already had consensual sex before, which, of course made you a whore in the ultra conservative mindset of many of the residents of the small town so you must have secretly enjoyed all the humiliating and painful things said abuser did. But enough heavy stuff, this is about the self-proclaimed Queen of Foxes who is as entertaining a dumpster fire as anything that maybe found between the pages of TMZ.... wow really showing my age there.

Anyway, so Lily's mom Jan worked at the school and we had a friendly relationship. Unlike other people around me she didn't blame me for what I had been through but sympathized and was trying to help me sort out my thoughts and feelings. She was afraid that Lily was going down a similar path I had and asked if I could take an interest in her and see if I could help. In hindsight while I appreciated the sympathy and ready listener, I now doubt her reasons for it when coupled with her request to take a big sister roll with her seemingly troubled daughter. Lily, like me, was of an artistic, non conforming bent (I did mention my red velvet vampire phase in high school in a previous story) and while bad grades, meltdowns, and doing everything possible to piss off your parents is pretty par for the course for many teenagers the sheer drama levels were sky high for Lily and her mother. One of the reasons being that Jan was a very devout born again Christian, and while I am not trying to be condescending to anyone's religion like I was the Amazing Atheist (Again showing my age there), but the problem it made was that Jan wouldn't look into any kind of secular therapy or counseling for one or both of them but only religious counseling, which, to be frank, composed mainly of being told what horrid people they were and the need to repent before the evils of Hot Topic, Amy Brown, and Dungeons and Dragons sullied the purity of curious teens. Satanic Panic style. Thusly it seemed Jan thought it best to turn to a traumatized 17 year old for help with Lily's teen angst and assurance that she wasn't to be blamed. Jan really was relying me emotionally as much I was her.

I did spark up a friendship with Lily and while at first it seemed we would do and talk about normal stuff. Her teen angst wasn't very unusual; mom didn't understand her as a free spirit with a dark and mysterious soul that had to be expressed in art and writing. I'm betting you can guess what kind of writing. Yup. FanFiction! Along with a few painted animal skulls that served as candle holders and charcoal sketches inspired by The Crow. And I was and am not in any position to judge a moody teenager. Let he who never donned a black trench coat trying to be an interestingly lost soul in 6 pounds of black eyeliner cast the first stone. Lily's true problem lied in the sheer levels of drama she and everyone around her brought the slightest disagreement. For example when Lily and her mom were going to go somewhere, I don't remember where, but Jan didn't like what she had chosen to wear. Not her usual Hot Topic clearance shelf stuff but a more Boho style with a flowy flowered skirt and wide laced up belt not unlike sometime that might be worn to a renaissance faire if you didn't have costume. It had exploded into screeching argument about 'appropriate' clothing and ended with Lily calling me in floods of tears of literality wailing for me to come pick her up and take her to my house. She screeched so loud I had to hold the phone away from my ear less my eardrum be permanently damaged and the level of histrionics would have been more appropriate for reporting an axe murderer breaking in. Seriously I think the only other time I've heard screaming and wailing like that was from the videos people took of 9/11. I did go over and act mediator between Lily and Jan, they didn't make it to where they were supposed to go that day because of the impromptu family therapy session and it all ended on a pretty bland note; nothing resolved between the two of them and the general feel of a band-aide being put on the situation till the next crisis and I have to admit I felt rather shitty about not being able to help, but I was still a teenager myself trying to do something that more than likely should have been handle by a professional with actual counseling expertise.

Now if this is all sounding like Lily didn't have an easy time of it growing up, you would be correct which is why I stuck around for about year. In that time there two or three other screeching telephone instances that also yielded the same results; trying to act as mediator for whatever ultimately petty reason set off their rivalry and as that year went on even my teenage, hormonal ridden adolescent brain began to see that this whole set up was just a toxic situation that both were mutually feeding off of and were dragging me into it. The worst part I think was how manufactured it was; Jan would often change her church and belief systems going from extreme conservative Christianity to more moderate spirituality. Lily became more extreme in her own angsty behaviors that started to take an interest in occultism and began talking about shapeshifting into a fox, being a conduit for demons and other such like but she was trying convince me and demonstrate that it happens the same way it does in the movies. When I would ask for a demonstration there would, of course, be dozens of reasons she couldn't from "its not full moon" to basically "I cant do it when someone's watching me."

The cincher for me came when I was about to move away from my home town for college and Lily began to look up symptoms for PTSD, bipolar and other personality disorders so she could emulate the symptoms. Particularly asking me what I felt with sexual trauma. It wasn't this that resulted in the last screeching phone call but the last one that resulted in my coming over to play therapist ended with Jan saying to me over and over again "I just don't know how were going to manage with away at college." Now age 18 even I could see this for the emotional manipulation it was and I stopped all communication after I moved.

I didn't hear or see from either of them for a few years after that outside of one incident that I'll cover later as I see this is getting rather lengthy. But that is the beginning of this trash fire which continues to burn rather like Centerilla just without the creativity of Keiichiro Toyama and Team Silent. It only gets worse from here.