Outfox Stories: stories to read and AI adventures to play, no account needed
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Chapter by
Coop2273 · 11 Sep 2026 -
The town.
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# Chapter 3: The Town
The park's stock trailer had been sitting behind the maintenance shed since the budget cuts, and it smelled like it. Hay, rust, mouse. Dan and Erica stood inside it while Johnson backed the truck up and Gutierrez checked the hitch twice, then a third time, then a fourth.
"Rule one," Gutierrez said, swinging the rear gate shut. "Don't lean on the wall. Rule two, if you go down, go down on your side. Rule three, it's twelve miles and eleven switchbacks and there's a washout at mile four, so just, you know. Be cool."
"We'll be cool," Erica said.
The gate latched. The truck started. The trailer lurched, and Dan's hooves slid six inches on the aluminum floor before he caught himself on the rail.
"Cool," he said.
The first mile was fine. The second mile was where Dan learned that a horse body is mostly a set of springs with opinions, and that every pothole on Harlow Ridge Road had been personally installed by someone who hated him. He bounced. He slid. He ended up wedged against Erica's shoulder with his hip against her flank, and neither of them moved away, because the alternative was falling down.
"Switchback," Erica said.
"I counted."
"How many's that?"
"Six."
"That was seven."
"Great."
They rode the rest of it in silence, mostly, which was its own kind of work. Dan's heat had gone quiet overnight but it woke up around mile nine, the way a dog wakes up when a car pulls into the driveway. He could smell Erica the whole way down. He kept his eyes on the little window at the front of the trailer and counted switchbacks and thought about literally anything else.
At the bottom, Johnson pulled into the lot of Harlow Ridge K-12 and killed the engine. The radio was still on, low, tuned to the county AM station, and a woman with a calm voice was reading a list of countries.
"...confirmed across all six inhabited continents. Airspace remains closed over most of the northern hemisphere. The International Red Cross has asked member nations to open humanitarian corridors by Friday..."
Johnson turned it off.
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The school was a long brick building with a gym on one end and a flagpole out front, and the parking lot was full. Not full like a school event. Full like the last day before …
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Colm's party splits one silver a month. So when he overhears about a dungeon nobody's logged yet, he doesn't wait for the rest of his crew. He grabs the party healer, Agnes, burns their emergency teleport scroll, and goes in.
They come out with more gold than any of them have ever seen. Agnes comes out a little different.
She cooks better now. She's friendlier, too. Much friendlier. And there's something purple living in her that's been sealed in a box for a thousand years and is very, very bored.
Aldous was an alchemist once. And after relentless experiments he's now a colony of slugs who can wear anyone he likes, and he's decided Colm is the closest thing he has to a friend. He's promised to let his hosts keep control most of the time.
He's lying.
The clerk counted my pay out one coin at a time, slowly, like each one hurt her personally.
“Eleven copper,” she said.
“The posting said fifteen.”
“The farmer docked you four. For the hat.”
“The goat ate my hat.”
“He says it gave her a stomachache.”
The farmer told us she was a very special goat. He made us walk ten steps behind her the whole way so she wouldn't get nervous. She was not nervous. She ate my hat, and then, apparently, she charged me for it.
I scooped the coin…
They come out with more gold than any of them have ever seen. Agnes comes out a little different.
She cooks better now. She's friendlier, too. Much friendlier. And there's something purple living in her that's been sealed in a box for a thousand years and is very, very bored.
Aldous was an alchemist once. And after relentless experiments he's now a colony of slugs who can wear anyone he likes, and he's decided Colm is the closest thing he has to a friend. He's promised to let his hosts keep control most of the time.
He's lying.
The clerk counted my pay out one coin at a time, slowly, like each one hurt her personally.
“Eleven copper,” she said.
“The posting said fifteen.”
“The farmer docked you four. For the hat.”
“The goat ate my hat.”
“He says it gave her a stomachache.”
The farmer told us she was a very special goat. He made us walk ten steps behind her the whole way so she wouldn't get nervous. She was not nervous. She ate my hat, and then, apparently, she charged me for it.
I scooped the coin…