FSE

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formerly SoFurry search engine

Chapter 1

I half-stumbled off the bus as usual, someone kicking my ankles from behind, either intentionally or just in a rush to get home. Some people would fight back, some people would go cry, and me? I'm used to it. I stopped caring what people thought of me long ago, and all that remains now is this empty, over emotional husk that's more likely to cry over a good song than he is to cry because of stupid high school drama.

Of course, once I was off the bus and within walking distance of home, everyone scattered. See, my family had always been the cool family that's a DJ short of turning the outside of our house into a rave when holidays rolled around. Halloween was the best, of course. We had a big enough front yard with diverse enough terrain that we always had a graveyard, hands reaching up out of the pond, skeletons hanging from the trees, thirty carved pumpkins, and a leg-lamp in the upper window. That last thing was really just because my parents were always chill, leg-lamps are more Christmas-y if you get what I mean.

Anyhow, getting off the bus around Halloween always tripped people up a bit because they remembered trick-or-treating there as little kids, which was always a reminder of, “oh right, the fag's cool, be nice or he's gonna make you and your siblings cry on the thirty-first." Yeah, I did that. It's really easy to scare people when you're short enough to pull off a headless-horseman bit with a flaming pumpkin and everything. Mom told me to tone down the flaming pumpkin, and dad just said use more gasoline next time, but it didn't matter. Once was enough, and when I tried something different the next year everyone realized this was gonna be a thing, that every year, I was gonna go all out and become a monster for Halloween. Who needs candy when you can make your school-time bullies shit themselves?

So, this is all sounding really fantastical, and life honestly was great. Of course, until today. Today was the day that I got a brother. Today was the day that I got a dog. Today was the day that I walked across the usual graveyard, up the blackened steps of my house, and through the red door to find my mom sitting on a couch watching TV (which was normal) with a dog head next to hers (which actually wasn't that abnormal).

We had dogs, but they'd both died, and with times being what they were, with my parents getting signed up with foster care systems so that I wouldn't be so alone (which is their cover-up for wanting to build up an immunity to watching kids leave them for good), seeing a dog on the couch was weird. It was weirder when it turned and looked at me, and sat up a bit.

Something was off about its back, and I don't mean “off" like how it was wearing a shirt, mom always put sweaters on dogs. Its shoulders stuck out too far, and its back was too flat. I walked in and stood between the TV and mom, who was clearing trying to act normal despite a humanoid dog-thing sitting next to her wearing my jeans and polo shirt. Now seeing masculinity in the dog's form, I could tell he was bored by how his hands were positioned in thumb-twiddling mode on his lap.

I glared at mom, “You couldn't just pick out a normal kid, could you?"

She burst out laughing, obviously incapable of containing it anymore. I was waiting for the stage-lights to kick on and for a guy to tell me I've just been pranked when the dog held out his hand and looked at me. I noticed three, weird, ring-like marks on his forearm, which just added to the immense weird behind all of this. It occurred to me that this was like those pictures my boyfriend drew come to life, only I actually had to live with it, instead of get to see it as this cute thing in my boyfriend's notebooks.

When I finally took his hand and shook it he incoherently said: “Dawblee goad geh."

I glared at mom who just scoffed, “Mom, he doesn't speak English."

She nodded, “Yeah, he doesn't speak any language."

“Then why did you take him?"

“He needed a home, no one else was going to take him, and honestly the people in charge were kinda trying to rush him out the door before someone called animal control on him."

“Mom, if you expect me to share a bedroom with him-"

“Tom, just accept it. We can't take him back, we can't give him up. He was found in the woods-"

“'Cause he's an animal-"

“And no further information was given. They ran a cognitive test on him, he's fully capable of understanding human interaction, and obviously he's capable of speech. The guys from the FBI-"

“The FBI was involved? Mom!"

“Tom, just listen," she gave me a look that very much said shut up or else, and the dog had sat down, idly listening to our talk. “The guys from the FBI said they'd talked to the people who found him, and they said they'd found him on a hiking trail. They'll be calling me in every afternoon to have a talk with me, to see if they can figure anything out about him, and honestly… just to keep an eye on all this. Nothing bad is going to happen, they said they'd held him overnight to see if he was stable, and they ran enough basic tests that… he's basically human. His insides are human, his brain is human."

“Fine. Don't expect me to clean up after him though."

“He already knew how to use facilities, like sinks and toilets. He's smart, he just can't express it."

“Ugh, whatever."

I started off towards the stairs when mom stopped me, “Hey, I'm going to Walmart later, is there anything we need?"

“Dog shampoo."

“Har har, it's already on the list." I scoffed as I headed up the stairs to my room, letting my lack of care for the dog speak for itself.