"Urban Foxes" by Frances Monro

Urban Foxes

By Ché Monro

Isobel’s soul haunted the pavement and waste ground by the rubbish bins on the street at the front of her apartment block. She liked to sprinkle rose water there and leave little offerings of chopped meat in a dish. Her soul didn’t eat the meat of course – she suspected that the mangy grey tomcat from next door ate it – but Isobel thought her soul appreciated the thought. When local teens knocked over the bins and spread the rubbish around Isobel couldn’t ignore it any more – she stopped and picked it up, so that her soul’s patch of ground would be as nice as possible.

Isobel’s soul was a small, shy, red urban fox. There was no way to be sure but Isobel thought that she was a vixen. There had been great consternation in scientific and religious circles when souls had first been discovered. Rhapsody had been the party drug of choice for an entire generation while Isobel had been growing up. It caused a mild euphoria and a sense of connectedness with the universe, and sometimes hallucinations or visions – although Isobel herself had never experienced anything like that.

Nobody expected Rhapsody users to report seeing animals that weren’t really there – months and years after taking the drug. At first the reports were dismissed as lies or mass hallucinations, but eventually painstaking research was conducted which revealed the startling truth: Rhapsody opened up long dormant telepathic pathways in the brain and enabled people to see their own - and sometimes other people’s - souls. Now the drug was openly served as a sacrament in some churches, while others regarded it as anathema and abomination.

Isobel had never regarded herself as religious – Spiritual, perhaps – but not religious in any organized sense. She’d been startled to discover that her soul was a shy little red fox slinking around the dustbins at the entrance to her home. Maybe she shouldn’t have been surprised: It turned out that the souls of urban drivellers tended to be small and durable – survivor types in a tough environment. Dogs, cats, rats, pigeons, pigs dragons and carp were common. It was mostly country people who had the space and time and solitude to grow large exotic souls like unicorns or condors.

Still, she’d never regarded herself as the least bit clever or sly, but rather more straightforward than that, if sometimes a little mischievous. It had taken her time to realize the similarities: her soul was shy, modest and dependable – the perpetual underdog – a creature of the earth.

Sometimes she could see other people’s souls too. It was obvious with her boss Chen – Occasionally out the window she saw a dragon rolling and playing in the river when he walked into her office. Mostly it was less obvious. She was pretty sure that the soul of the unhappy looking man who walked along her street was the big black dog which padded along silently behind. She was also pretty sure that he couldn’t see it. But was the woman with the ferret poking its head out of her pocket just a crazy ferret lady, or was that her soul? And if your soul was a rat or a cockroach, would you admit it?

As she waited for the bus Isobel unobtrusively kept her eye on the garbage bins near her doorway. Would her soul put in an appearance today?  She didn’t always – she was very shy, but Isobel regarded it as good luck for the day to catch sight of her. It didn’t look like she was going to be lucky today - The pavement by the bins remained stubbornly empty. Then just as the bus pulled up she caught the merest flash of red fur out of the corner of her eye, vanishing as soon as she looked back directly. As she got on the bus she felt the eyes of an urban fox on her back, watching over her.