FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Shortly before we expected to leave and report our findings to the nearest authority figure who would believe such a thing, we figured the smartest option to act upon would be to step towards what could be our imminent demise.

"We need to see what kind of aliens these guys are," I whispered, crouching behind a wall of brush five feet thick. "We need to see if they're dangerous."

"Why don't we just leave now and discuss this later?" Redd warned me.

Granted, in any situation with an unknown danger, the best course of action is to stay as far away from it as possible. You do not want to be close to a rock of uranium ore or the next thing you know, your fur gets really splotchy and thin. But from what I learned is that running away from something you don't know about is more dangerous than finding out what it is. Say, for example, you enter an abandoned shelter on the sheer whim you'll find some treasures hidden beneath the floorboards or within a secluded closet space. Then, an ominous moan rings throughout the house and you're frightened beyond belief. You rush out, leaving behind the pained moans of a man who entered the property on the same premise as you, injured from falling down the stairs or trapped under a dresser. What I mean to say when I say this is that I could not pass up the opportunity to discover and explore this world thoroughly.

The people here seemed to have fun and laugh and bounce around ecstatic on the arrival of a newcomer to their party. Surely, they would understand the prospect of meeting four more individuals even if they don't necessarily look like them. Therein lies a certain flavor of confidence that rushed through my blood vessels at speeds even faster than my brain could begin to process. My eyes scanned the field for any other signs of danger, and when all they found were grass and a rather jovial statuette of a grotesque alien-like creature with a red pointed hat and a white beard, I motioned forward and my friends followed suit, sneaking ever so carefully out of the brush and into the dark patch of dry but still healthy grass.

"Stay close and stay behind me. If we see any sliver of a hazard, do this."

I stuck my hand in front of them and shook it parallel to the ground with a limp wrist hanging on to it for dear life. As if that weren't stupid enough, I managed to trip over the statuette and nearly fell back. Falling at any moment would have been a catalyst for disaster, as it would signal our existence without warning. We had to take each step with special precaution, very constrained under the pressure of our own fear. Analogous to our situation was the somber footsteps of a woman in an old horror flick, just before the unexpected yet totally expected murder. Serving as the unrestricted motivation to push our fears and anxiety to their respective pinnacles, a small animal like the squirrel from before rattled a nearby metal pot that laid next to a miniature version of the house that stood proud on its foundation before us. I believe we were wise when we agreed not to approach the diminutive domicile.

"We are going to knock on the door and greet them with peace and reserve," I said.

"Are you fucking crazy?" Tazu whispered. "We got our information. Let's go before we get hurt."

"We are on the verge of staring at alien life right in the face. If you're really that impatient, then we'll just take a picture or two of them and run like hell all the way back home. Okay?"

Tazu never tried to argue with me mainly because his borderline nihilistic attitudes toward life were mixed with the ribald circumstances that would come about if he did try to argue. I don't usually conjure up swears haphazardly, unless one of two things happened: I was infuriated or highly upset, or I was in the middle of an argument. I can't count the number of times our more trivial disputes resulted in more than just verbal abuse.

"Okay, fine," Tazu agreed. "Two pictures and we get the hell out. Pull out your phone so we can get them quickly."

"You sure about that?" Redd warned him. "I don't think these people would like having their picture taken without their permission."

"I'll say hi, ask for permission, take the pictures, sit down for tea and scones, and discuss Virginia Wolfe with them and just have a grand ole time!"

My sarcasm punctured through her serious demeanor, and she gave a small chuckle before composing herself in the back of the huddle. I crouched low as we approached the stark-white wooden door. From behind me, I heard Usala's labored breathing flowing out in a visible mist in the cold weather.

"Get ready, guys," I prepared them, my tail flicking and puffing out in a bushy mess. It was a once-in-a- lifetime opportunity, and I was ready to take it.

I stuck out my hand, curled it into a tight fist, and knocked against the wood. I had a difficult time restraining myself from bursting back into the forest and shrieking to go home, but I managed to keep my eyes forward, my head cocked a bit upwards, and my mouth in an expressionless and taut grin. I stood there, every beat of my heart ringing slow and daunting. The careful footsteps grew into a crescendo, accented by some hard footwear or a solid floor of indescribable material.

But I still stood there.

My soul tugged on the sleeve of the polyester-cotton blend right behind my shoulder, pulling me away in a sudden fit of xenophobia. Every voluntary muscle in my figure tensed and relieved itself in swift syncopation to the steps, yearning to run and abandon this journey right then and there.

Yet I still stood.

The rattle of brass chilled all of us. We stood for what seemed much longer than the graduation ceremony, or my pummeling via Grayson Rogers, or even watching the sky turn black with the coming darkness of night, only to find a semblance of security in the stars. Now, the stars seemed to stare at us, watching every solitary move, every flinch, every rearrangement of our skeletal and cardiac muscles. I hadn't even noticed the quick, quiet draw of my breath until it escaped mere seconds too late.

The knob turned, the hinges creaked, and the door swung open to reveal a brightly-lit figure in the doorway. Every feature of it became more and more peculiar upon a second, a third, even a thirty-seventh glance. The first thing that struck me dumbfounded was his—and I know it was male—complete lack of body fur! Every inch of his flesh that was not covered with his clothes was a bare, pallid tan. The only trace of his fur was only a few very fine patches of black resting delicately on his exposed forearms and quite a substantial amount growing out of his scalp as hair, reaching down to about the nape of his neck in the back and cut precisely at the brow, sloped downward over his ears in a tight sine curve. His face lacked a defined muzzle, spare a repugnant hooked protrusion with two holes drilled at the bottom, which I could only assume were his nostrils. What became ever more loathsome was the thin, scored flesh tracing his mouth, thoroughly separated from the neighboring skin. Finally, the last thing I noticed about him before he asked his question again was that he had no visible tail although that could just be that he had a small...bare-skinned...tail, probably the size of Usala's.

"Can I help you?" he spoke in a very controlled manner, each syllable enunciated to perfection with the slightest bit of a Midwestern accent. It was almost honeyed by his countenance.

"Y-yes," I started, "I, um, would like to, uh, we would like to...come in?"

"Why should I let you in?" His mouth grew tight in a disconcerting frown.

"We're lost," Redd interjected. "We were camping, and we just lost where we were. We came upon your house, hoping to stay until our friend came to pick us up. It's getting quite chilly out here as you can see."

I was blown away by how even more in control Redd's tone flowed out, robotic like a vocaloid.

"Oh, okay," the weird man said, "Come inside and I'll get you something."

I gawked at his jarring response. Only a few moments ago, he treated us like strangers, which he should have. Now, he's inviting us inside. I guess we'll be drinking tea and discussing Virginia Wolfe in no time, right? It was almost more frightening to hear him relaxed than when he loomed over us, tense and suspicious. My anxiety was soon replaced by hints of paranoia when I walked in.

The back door of his abode led into the kitchen, running adjacent to a room with an invisible border and a small table positioned carefully in the center. Chairs stood to the bottom of my chest where my diaphragm quivered upon presenting myself to this mystery of a man. Lacquered wood comprised the chairs and the table itself though the table looked as if it could hold maybe three or four plates of well-proportioned food.

The kitchen had a row of cabinets lining the top half of the wall above a stainless steel conventional oven and a standard microwave oven juxtaposed diagonally from it on its own wooden counter. The fridge and freezer combination was a rough, white texture with the yellowish handles serving as a good indicator of time since the appliance was bought. On the wooden counter running alongside the far wall, next to the microwave, laid two loaves of bread, a box of what looked like cereal though I couldn't be sure, and a box with what appeared to be black-handled knives stabbed into their respective slots. In the middle of the counter was a glossy, white ceramic sink, the colors clashing like a marshmallow in between two toasted crackers.

(Great, now I'm hungry.)

The man paid no attention to it or any of his belongings, for he leaned back with arms crossed, an awestruck grin creeping in as we stepped into the soft light of its respective ceiling lamp.

"Those...costumes. They are the best I've seen in a while. A little unconventional for my taste, but I'm sure Keira would love to see this."

My friends and I raised a few eyebrows at this remark until Usala spoke up.

"Yeah, our costumes. We just thought we would take it upon ourselves to dress as these different species just for tonight."

"Well, I hope it's just tonight," the man said. "You'd look like a group of weirdos if you went around walking in public looking like that."

"Hey!" I said. "They're not that weird. I happen to take great pride in my f—uh, costume."

"I bet you do. The makeup must have been so time-consuming, and the detail going into the fur, not to mention the animatronics in the ears and tail, the prosthetic muzzles...it must have costed a fortune!"

He didn't believe that the fur and tails and muzzles were all very real. I could imagine so, since he probably hasn't seen something like this...at all! I was completely taken aback as I wiped the sweat off the back of my neck from our good fortune. Now the question is, how long were we going to keep this charade up?

Tazu jumped into the conversation. "It was nothing, man. I know a guy who hooked us up big time. He owed me a favor, trades were made, you know the jist."

"I see," the man said. "I'm glad to see you got what you wanted. Do you mind if I show these to my friends?"

"F-friends?" I shivered out.

There were more of them in the house. I felt a tremble ride its way down the back of my neck, coasting along the center ridge of my back until it caught my tail in a flicking frenzy. Redd tapped the back of my shoulder, and when looking at her eyes briefly shift their way down and back up, I realized how revealing the flicking could be. The man could have thought it was animatronic, but the lack of noise and the fluid motions would have been too uncanny for him to believe. It was hard to see, but I held the tip of my tail and the inside half of the tail firm in between my thighs, adding more tension in the muscles of my core.

"Yeah, friends." The man cast an awkward glance on me. I recomposed myself to avoid any further suspicion. I looked over to my friends standing in invisible terror, arms strapped to their sides with the very tension arising from our back-and-forth.

"Is something wrong?" the man asked.

"No, uh, nothing's wrong!" I said. "We're just a little...cautious of other people, you know?"

I began to realize what we came here to do. Just a few pictures, and we leave. This person is doing nothing wrong or out of the ordinary, aside from his appearance, but we need a little proof that what we stumbled on was a whole new kind of life.

"Now, I want to know something if you don't mind me asking," the man said.

"Sure, what?" I droned.

"Your costumes are so realistic, it's almost uncanny and might I add, terrifying, to say the least. It's as almost if I can just touch your arm, and I'd feel an animal. What I want to ask is, how did you get your eyes that way?"

"What way?"

"The pupils are like black slits on you, like a cat's eyes."

"Um, custom contacts?"

"I gotta get a second opinion. Excuse me, here. Keira, Dan, get down here, we got company!"

"Oh no," Redd stumbled out under her breath.

I brought my finger to my mouth as two more people clambered down a staircase hidden from view and appeared in the doorway. The first to enter, assumingly Dan, had a much sharper tan than Richard and a thick black comb-over though he didn't seem to be balding. His wire-framed glasses weren't much to complement his cargo pants and green polo shirt. He was well-built—broad-shouldered and more toned when compared to the rest of the houseguests—but seemed to be lacking some definition in his face, noticeably his cheeks and weak jawline. The second to enter, Keira, wore a blue-grey turtleneck and form-fitting jeans that accentuated her figure. Her makeup equated her skin tone to Richard's, but I could tell she was a bit fairer by the look of her hands and neck. Her hair was styled to be rather wavy and curved outward, especially her bangs. Enough about appearances now.

They both stared for what seemed like endless moments, at first dumbfounded by the sight of four people in supposedly hyper-realistic animal costumes lined up against the kitchen wall in a "scared straight" program. Their furrowed brows soon melted into raised ones as they glanced to the man laid back against the opposite wall, almost aware of the distance between us. Dan had to blink once, maybe twice, as if his glasses were causing him to hallucinate. Keira just had the corners of her mouth creep upwards as she chuckled at us.

"What's so funny?" Tazu said.

"I'm sorry. It's just that, wow, I never thought I would see something like this. I guess anything can happen on Halloween, huh?" Keira wondered. "Say, Richard, where'd you find these guys? Out in the woods or something?"

Richard. The man's name was Richard. Now all we have left to answer is...pretty much every other question we can think of.

"Well, something like that. These four were camping when they got lost, and I believe they texted their friend they were here. She, that little wolf girl, explained to me that they were getting cold, so they knocked on the door and I let them inside."

"Glad you did," she continued. "This is certainly a sight to see."

I can say the same thing, I thought.

"Whoa, you guys must be loaded or really persuasive," Dan told me.

"Guys," Richard started, "I didn't call you down here to gawk at them; I just needed a second opinion on something."

"Uh, sure, Rich. What?" Dan asked.

"Look at the purple guy's eyes. Don't they seem...a little too real?"

Dan approached me, and I squinted my eyes to dilate my pupils out. He would see that my pupils were the same round black as theirs and as my friends. He would see that Richard was just being a little paranoid, and we can all go—

"Yeah, they're moving like a cat's eyes!"

—home.

"How did you, I mean, how did your eyes get to move like that? I haven't seen that kind of technology recently."

I stuttered, trying to spell out an answer.

"We, we bought them! S-state of the, the, the art. It's just that I-I, or we, haven't...released them?"

Richard materialized a smartphone from his pocket and started typing.

"I don't think this will end well," Usala muttered.

"You don't know that," Redd retorted.

I began tapping my foot rapidly after Richard had stared at his phone for a few minutes, let it vanish back into his pocket, and stood straight, a clear glare shining in his round pupils.

He stretched out each word, desperately escaping his lips. "What are you?"

By then, we had all but given up. I knew he would find out eventually, but we still had one trick up our proverbial sleeves.

"We're just normal people, and I think our ride is outside, so we're just going to leave and never come back," Usala hurriedly said.

"But wouldn't you like a drink? It is rather rude to refuse a drink as a guest, right?"

"Well, we're kinda rude people."

"Tazu, shut up," Redd said through gritted teeth.

"We really must be going," I said.

"It's just a drink of water," Richard said. "It will take only five minutes of your time. It's only nice of me to offer a drink to a group of people most would call aliens, yes?"

Silence.

Keira and Dan dropped their jaws in shock.

The four of us had expressions ranging from stunned to confused to defeated to extremely scared.

Richard just sat there, grinning, mocking us with just how clever he was. How was he able to get this information? Was it the fact that my eyes dilate differently? It must be. Or maybe it was Usala and how quickly she spoke? She speaks like that all the time. What about our bodies? Maybe the suspension of disbelief melted away and revealed ourselves for what we really were. There was no going back from where we were, in that kitchen, with this group of people in front of us. A group of people who if we had met under other, more lenient circumstances, we would not be in this predicament.

And one of them pulled a pistol out.

"Dan, Keira, these people are not from here. I suggest you leave before things get messy."

The two left hesitant, Keira whispering, "What is going on?" and Dan whispering back, "You don't want to know."

His cocky smile just oozed self-absorption as he ordered us to take a drink. We were stuck in the spotlight, unsure of where we were going. This was worse than the stars just a few moments prior. He didn't just stare at our every movement. It was like he was taking notes for the biggest exam of the century, and if he didn't pass, we'd all be in trouble. We had no other choice.

He sauntered over to a cupboard with worn paint, and until we were lined up on death row, he turned to take out four small, smooth glasses, all the while keeping the barrel of the gun trained on us, shifting from Usala to Redd and back, acknowledging my and Tazu's presences as well.

The whine of the faucet nearly jarred me from my gallows. He filled up each glass meticulously, careful enough not to spill a single drop. Maddening was what it was, having the glass completely fill and Richard scanning it and emptying it out again, prolonging what was to come. After "perfectly" filling each glass with the same amount of water, he took out a bottle with some red, viscous liquid and no label. He then poured enough to turn the crystal-clear water into fruit punch. He snapped his head back at us. We glimpsed in his eyes; he stared into each of us.

"Here. Drink this, and I'll let you go. Simple as that." I swear the smile he plastered on was enough reason to kill him right there, yet I complied with his order.

I drank from the glass.

It tasted very odd, like a strong cherry but diluted and replaced with a taste like the nasal spray given every year for flu season. Repulsive but strangely smooth.

He unloaded the gun's magazine and tossed the bullets onto the floor. He concealed his gun under his shirt, walked over to us having already finished our glasses, and opened the door. He even gave a gentle bow as the door opened into the night.

I looked to Usala, trying to figure out why Richard was being so courteous after just having pulled a gun on us, but she was already gone. Tazu followed suit through the exit, and Redd and I made a mad dash outside, across the field, and into the woods. We would be at the portal in no time, and we could all forget what we witnessed.

At least, that's what I'd have liked to have happened.

On our race to freedom, I felt the cold wind blast into my eyes, and they closed in response. For some reason, they wanted to stay closed. It was quite a chore to keep them open and continue as straight as I needed to, all the way home. I tripped over something in my blind stupor, thinking it was that stupid statuette, but it was softer and much bigger. Looking back, highly alert again, I saw Usala's body writhing and crawling as she groaned. I staggered over to her, picking her off the ground before she collapsed once again. My eyes shut tight like a trap, and my arms and legs swung forward as if attached to thirty-pound weights. My heartbeat and my breathing slowed tremendously from its accented allegro almost to an andante. I collapsed soon after, my face driving into the dirt, and the growing fog inside my head muddled every other sense of direction, even gravity. I had to force my eyes open, and even through the blur and the darkness of night, I happened to gaze at the lowering red tip of Redd's tail and, not too far ahead, Tazu's spirited fur reflected against the moonlight. I crawled. I crawled with every fiber of my being. With every single cell I could seem to control, even my stomach if that makes any sense, I pushed onward. The portal was distant but recognizable.

That's when it hit me. It hit me as hard as whatever was in that drink. It hit me harder than the realization that I might not leave soon. It hit me an infinite amount of times more intense than the fact that I was semiconscious on a planet probably in a different universe.

There was a reason they left so quickly, the previous users of that accursed box. Why they were in such a hurry to write a warning. Why the box laid buried in the woods, long-forgotten there for, by the looks of it, almost ten years. Why that man had warned us back at the ranger's station because he knew what happened all those years ago. Why we were now heaps of flesh on this new ground.

Richard.

The portal faded off into the ether, and everything I heard...seen...known...

Whoosh!

...faded to black.