A Certain Young Lady

What do you fear most? Perhaps its external like spiders, snakes, or clowns. Perhaps its internal like some unseen force within the human mind, or the rationality of a mind that lacks sanity. This is a character that  I feel is externally creepy, but what makes her horrifying is the internal part. You cannot tell how she reaches the horrifying conclusions that she reaches,  but you know the disgusting effect.

This character is from a short story that I have been playing around with and brainstorming, and though some aspects of the story tend to change, this character is constant.

Context, the protagonist of the story is a young husband who has been fighting with his young wife due to his fears of fatherhood and the anger over the changes he perceives as negative in his life and relationship with his wife. It is early on in the story when his internal struggles have been hinted at through an argument with his wife and some internal monologue that we meet... her (henceforth known as Jane, though the name is not final).

Jane is a college student on spring break with a rather large group of friends at a campsite in the mountains of Colorado. She is young, not much older than 20, roughly the same age as the protagonist's wife, and she is pregnant, very pregnant. She has wavy blonde hair, red shorts, white shirt, sunglasses- very typical for a college student, except this is a woman that looks like she could give birth any day. She seems to be happily enjoying the company of friends, but there is something off about her. A pregnant woman about to give birth should not be camping with what appears to be a frat and sorority camp-out. Nor should the uncomfortable amount of affection she has been receiving from several of the young men. Nor should she seem to demand the attention of the young women in the group. And they are quite strange, making strange animal noises and laughing. It's as if this group were a pack of dogs, and that Jane is matriarch.

Due to the pregnancy, Jane and the young husband's wife begin to converse upon the role of motherhood, the wife taking a stand against the recklessness that Jane is partaking in. During this conversation, we the audience learn that Jane seems to be quite level headed, and perhaps she is not the matriarch, but rather the prize  of the whole group. But it is when Jane starts to describe her affinity for dogs and cats that the audience begins to feel something is extremely off with Jane. It is like a long lost perverse attraction for beastly things has been awoken within a regular college girl.

Much further into the story, after learning more about the husband's inner turmoil, and after the disappearance of the college kids and the family pooch does Jane's setup become relevant again. The husband discovers the group deep within the woods where he realizes that the college kids were in fact furry deviants who practice taboo lust within the forests. It is here that we see Jane again, and the deviants are around her as she give birth to a child. She lets out a weak gleeful laugh as she instructs the furries to do something that is gut  sickening with both the dog that was stolen and the child that was just born. Unfortunately I will not discuss the details further, as it would spoil the entirety of the ending of my short story, but such is sufficient to describe the importance of Jane.

Though most of the themes of the story deal with the fear of dealing with people who have an alien belief and the dangers of seeking pleasure over responsibility, Jane represents a fear of change and parenthood. Here is a young woman that reminds him of his wife before she was married (not the animal part, just young and happy). It is when she give birth that she fully realizes her evil, and completely corrupts her child. Thematically, the protagonist is scared that his wife will change into a different person that doesn't love him and she will corrupt any children they have into despising him as well. Jane being the prize of the furries also could be thematic of the animalistic tendencies that humans sometimes prize while disguising them as sophisticated developments that should be treasured, such as violence or (in this case) sex.

In the end, I cannot say we will ever learn more about Jane's inner workings, as she is not the focus of the story. I can say that with the direction my story is going, I don't know if I want to know how Jane works. All I can say is that  she is probably one of the more significant figures  within my short story.