FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

No one really liked the cold around here.

Everybody in our small town, young or old, wasn't willing to put on a decent jacket to go outside. They relied on the hot sun and the bright sunlight to give them the warmth they moved here for. During the first few months of the year, the clouds turned the sky gray and the water a dark, murky blue. When I went outside, the wind bit my face and turned my ear a new shade of pink. I gave a soft chuckle. I missed this strangely nostalgic feeling; I missed the cold air.

Making my way to the main road, I smiled as I exhaled out sharply and saw my breath. The sound my dirty sneakers made on the pavement echoed freely throughout the empty neighborhood. There were no streetlamps and the sky was already darkening in the late afternoon. I swore that I felt some snow hit the back of my neck. Looking out at the tips of brick chimneys, dark smoke came out of each and every one of them. All except one lone house, and that was the house I was heading towards.

His front entrance was a typical suburban driveway that was on a knoll with some steps towards the front door. I gave the door a few knocks, and I heard rustling from within. From the slim window in the entryway, there was only one light: to his room. The hallway light, nor the kitchen, not even the living room light was on and because of the unusual weather outside, they were almost completely engulfed in darkness. He made his way to the door at a brisk pace and after looking through the peephole, opened the door for me.

He wanted to greet me, but his thoughts went towards the sky. "Charlie, are we seriously still going to do this?"

"I hope so," I responded eagerly. "This might be our only chance while the rest of the town freezes over!"

"Fair enough. Come on into my bedroom for a moment," he requested, moving over for me to enter.

His room was messy with old clothes spewn about and posters covering every wall with the tape coming off so they were all askew. He crouched over 2 hiking backpacks near his bed that he was stuffing with supplies. "I hid these under my bed behind that cardboard box over there" he explained, gesturing under the bed. There was a lot of stuff under the bed, but the cardboard box in the corner towards us was large enough to hide the supplies around it and within. "My mom would kill me if she found out about this, thank god she's out to visit family until dawn!"

"Thank god my mom doesn't care where I go, as long as I'm not dead when I return."

"Fuck you too Charlie."

"Fuck you back Luke. You almost done?"

"This flashlight's batteries are dead, but I made sure this wouldn't happen last night, so give me a moment."

He reached under the box and pulled out a spare pair of batteries. When he dropped the old batteries to the floor and replaced them, the light came to life with a bright yellow light. It flickered a bit, but when he hit it with the palm of his hand, the light stayed on. "This one will be yours," he mumbled as his hands buried into my backpack before I could object.

From what I could see, he managed to place in some crackers and a few plastic water bottles that were both already crinkling under a small first aid kit. I stood in awe. I had never seen Luke or his family have any of these before. Some more tinkering around occurred, including me fishing out the flashlight Luke shoved into my backpack. We placed the backpacks on and adjusted them to our liking. Luke turned off the lights in the bedroom and we made our way to the front door.

The sudden change in temperature outside got to the both of us. Luke's house wasn't heated, yet it felt somewhere in the negatives outside. I got some goosebumps, but they faded away by the time we got to the end of the driveway. We made a right and started making our way to the city. We planned to walk, but we both knew that something was going on in the sky, and we didn't want to know what it was. We took a brisk pace soon after that realization.

Luke scanned my body from a quick glance at me. "That's all you're wearing?"

"A nice t-shirt and sweatpants? I don't understand the issue."

"You have to have blood made of ice." He was wearing a puffy military green vest with snow pants on. I smiled knowing that he's going to overheat in no time. I might have had icy blood, but at least I cooled off easier than him.

The transition into the city was a sudden one. The houses vanished, replaced by shops and office buildings made of glass, concrete, and brick. No one was out and about; the whole town was gone for the day. The trees planted next to the sidewalk were nothing but branches that moved in the wind. We ran and searched around for the building that we went here for. We knew of its general location but never pin-pointed the street name. We took a few minutes to search up and down the streets, sprinting here and there as the wind screeched overhead. Luke was the victor in finding what we were looking for: a worn down building just by the sea. You would be mistaken to say that there were two floors, because this building had one floor underneath as well. It was written on a sign surrounded by old cinema-style lights at the entrance, but we didn't need that sign to know where we were.

The High Hat "Haunted" theater.

I was told the story behind this place a few years back when my family moved here, but this was both Luke and I's first time inside. You weren't supposed to go inside according to the city, but no one cared enough to enforce that rule. The front entrance was locked with the windows being covered in wood sheets. Graffiti was all over them all. The bottom floor had fire escapes for people to exit from. We held our breath as we opened it and thankfully, no alarm sounded. Our flashlights went on, and we headed down the stairs.

The fire exit was made up of metallic stairs that went down to the basement floor from the surface where we were at. These would have been the most used exits in an emergency because the basement floor was the performance floor. Our footsteps echoed in the small stairway. Small flakes of white paint littered the stairs. My heart pounded with the excitement of exploration and the fear of the unknown. We talked on the way down and decided to completely explore the bottom floor last, assuming it was going to be the most thrilling floor of them all.

We opened up another set of doors and ended up at the end of a long hallway, dusty and desecrated from the events that took place here. Large cracks made their way from the floor up to (and beyond) the floor's roof. Old posters for movies that had come and gone hung up in fixtures between the doors to the stages and theaters. There was a poster about two doors down that was small and well preserved. It probably was a war film, showing a man smiling as he flew over trenches. Luke bagged it without a single thought.

"Why are these one-hundred-or-so year old posters in better condition than any of the posters in your room right now?" I asked as he tried to fit the poster's frame inside an unused front pocket.

"Well, maybe it's because you're whining like a little bitch right now. Where's the stairs up?"

"Over there, I think" I pointed my flashlight towards some doors that looked different compared to the doors in the stages and theaters. They were indeed the backup stairs assuming that the elevator would go out of use for some reason. They felt exactly like the fire exits except these stairs were made from dark wood and the walls were covered with red and yellow design patterns that were appealing to the eye, minus the wear and tear. There was also a wooden handrail on both sides, although it was untouched because of the copious amounts of dust that lined it.

On the ground floor, there was not much left to see. Most of this floor had been cleared out from others who had been here before. This place would have been the entrance where they sold tickets and eventually concessions. People used to fill this place up to and over the carrying capacity again and again from what I have heard of this place; it's a surreal feeling to see such a building be left to rot.

The one thing I could guarantee about High Hat theater as a whole is that it's over one hundred years old. The oldest person I knew in town, a 110 year old great-great-grandmother who lived close to Luke's house, remembered her father taking her to the opening of the theater at the age of 7. I knew that because I got to visit her when Luke had to do volunteer hours for school and I came to help. She passed away a few years ago.

Across the floor, there was a lonely door with a faded brass plate labeled "EMPLOYEES ONLY." I tried to turn the handle to open it, but it didn't budge. I would have used force, but that could have probably toppled the whole building. Luke noticed how this door had outwards facing hinges. He sat down for a moment to get into his backpack and pulled out a flathead screwdriver. It wasn't the proper size, but it looked to be doing a good enough job.

"Maybe sitting down isn't the best option here," I heard myself say, pointing my flashlight to Luke's pants. They were covered with fuzzies and dust, turning everything from his hips down gray.

"Whoopie me. Point that flashlight to me, will you?" he spoke as he unscrewed the first screw on the hinge. The door was already starting to come off towards me. When he got the last screw out, the door went into free fall. We caught it and awkwardly moved the door away to an area of the wall that had no use for us. We dropped the door with a thud. The dust that was all over the room flew out at us, causing us to cough . The room grew colder as the air from upstairs made its way down, mixing warm and cold together in an uneven manner.

"It's strange," Luke stated in confusion "I expected mice to be running willy-nilly around this place. I know that they boarded off the doors and windows, but still."

"I find it pleasantly surprising that there are no mice here, but there has to be a broken window somewhere for how cold it is in here," I responded at the top of the stairs. There were a few rooms to go to and we couldn't decide which one to choose first. After some deliberation, we decided to go clockwise from the stairs entrance, that way we can keep track of what rooms we had and hadn't been in.

The door to the left was the first one to be opened. It was stubborn, but Luke pushed me over and kneed the door in. Cobwebs flew around as the door swung open. A horrid screech pierced through the cold air. On the other end of the door, a room once filled with magic was now decrepit and gray. It was a bedroom, and it was clear whose bedroom this was.

During the first few months of operation, the High Hat theater had amassed a massive amount of debt. The general construction was too much and the few shows they performed brought in too little. Motion pictures had already taken off in the mainstream market, but the High Hat failed to catch up. There were talks about turning it into some type of community hall, but the owner refused to give in. They needed someone who could perform for cheap while also bringing in the money to run the place.

This room was their room.

Everyone called him the "Magic Man", but no one knew his real name besides him and his wife. Escaping from war in their home country, they were willing to make a deal with the owner: give them a home and a good place to sleep and live in and the Magic Man would perform magic the world hadn't seen before. The owner accepted, making the best decision of their life.

But now, looking at the Magic Man's cubby of a room, it wasn't fancy in terms of structure. There were hardwood floors with striped blue wallpaper that was faded and torn up. What did make it interesting was the little trinkets he had in the room. He had built a little shrine made up of golden bowls with coins inside of them on top of the dresser. Embroidered onto yellow silk was a language I had never seen before. A stick inside of a glass bowl was stuck in time with a large pile of ash underneath. We didn't touch that stuff; even if we did, we couldn't justify having any of it on us when we got home.

Once the Magic Man had moved in, he was on stage by the next day. He performed very simple tricks, but because they were foreign to his audience, each trick was a home run after home run, and word spread quickly. The High Hat theater was no longer in debt and the Magic Man was paid gracefully for his work. Other performers booked their shows inside to snag the Magic Man's audience and for the first time, all rooms were booked all day. People came from all around to observe the magic and went so far as to stay in the town for days at a time just for a showing of the Magic Man.

The next door clockwise was already wide open. There was a red carpet in the middle with a table and two chairs on either side. The window behind the table was smashed, which explains why it was so cold inside. It was unnaturally dark outside still, as if we were in the middle of a shadow. The table had a small green desk lamp and a typewriter on it. I pushed down a key and it made a clicking sound. The action was rusted and I could feel the mechanisms crunch within. Luke told me to stop and with a sigh, I turned towards the bookshelf and Luke made his way to the filing cabinet. He couldn't resist taking some of the files with him, and placed them snugly under his right arm.

The Magic Man over the years became famous for his tricks, but less people took notice of them. They watched him play the same tricks he'd done for so many years with a tinge of boredom. It was worth his time to find some other tricks to amuse the audience like he did those years ago. The High Hat theater had gained a reputation that allowed for it to stay afloat, but the Magic Man wanted more than that. One night, he made a decision that he thought about for days. He went outside, inserted a nickel into the telephone booth, and made a call.

"So, this is the lawsuit file cabinet?" I asked Luke as thumbed through the bottom cabinet.

He nodded slowly. "Yep, building code violations and animal abuse allegations."

"Animal abuse? They mistreated the animals here?"

"No, dipshit, they obviously abused animal privileges and the server lagged out too much so they banned him."

"Oh."

The Magic Man came into the office the next day with an exciting proposition that would amaze the audience. He told the owner that he needed multiple large cages, a decent supply of meat, and a plane ticket back to his home country for a week to gather the rest of the materials by himself. The owner hesitated for a moment, but the Magic Man assured them that this would bring back the glory days. For the first time, the owner caved in and the Magic Man left for a whole week, returning to an eager audience with a new set of tricks up his sleeve.

"How do you sneak three lions past customs?" I asked Luke as we made our way to the last room.

"I don't really know, but they do call him the Magic Man for a reason, I suppose," he said, shaking his head in disbelief. Before he could kick the next door in, I reached for the handle and pushed. After the cobwebs cleared, we were curious and then disappointed. It was a bathroom that was barely large enough for one of us to sit in completely. We made our way down to the ground floor, preparing mentally to rehang the door again.

With a bow, the Magic Man had ended the first show since returning from his trip. The theater was packed with people, all amazed by his new tricks involving dangerous lions and impossible taming abilities. In such a picturesque moment, this was the Magic Man's dream come true. Unbeknownst to him, the police were getting suspicious about how he was obtaining these lions out of thin air. An investigation was launched shortly after and the theater had to suspend the use of their lions until they could prove that the lions would not be a cause for concern. The police around this area were especially lenient on the Magic Man as so long as the theater was following protocol. Despite everyone's expectations, they failed to oblige. Lions had made their exit off stage just as fast as they got on.

Luke and I began to sweat from the work we had done. The door needed to be adjusted to fit the frame perfectly in order for it to look natural, as if no one had unscrewed the door and dropped it on the ground. My legs were covered in dust and fuzzies, so I couldn't make fun of Luke for having them now. After hoisting the backpacks over our shoulders, we decided now was the time to go back down those stairs to the performance halls. There were four performance halls and two film theater rooms in total. We went to the first film room. The whole room was one hundred decrepit chairs facing a dirty wall with multiple gaping holes. I was amazed by the strange feelings of emptiness and the false nostalgia that were inside of me. We got anxious and left soon after.

The lions were the first and most likely the worst big error the Magic Man had done. The subsequent investigation revealed that corners were cut to save on expenses, mostly near the end of construction. The owner denied those claims as much as they could, but the police didn't budge. They were ordered to start reconstruction by next week or face permanent closure. He asked the Magic Man what he could do. The Magic Man couldn't think of anything to do, so they decided to place on one final show before the repairs started.

I looked into the first three rooms with a pit in my stomach. They were all normal stage rooms with the chairs on the bottom looking towards the stage. The only difference was that there were balcony seats for people who were willing to pay. Dust floated freely in the air, dancing in the beams our flashlights made. Piles of unidentifiable trash littered the isles and seats. On stage, a lone piano stood in the middle. Luke went onstage and hit a key somewhere in the middle. The key went down but it didn't go back up.

"You hear that?" I asked Luke. He seemed to pick up on it as well, especially after I asked him.

"EEECCCHHHOOO!" he yelled back, cupping his hands around his mouth directing it around the room.

"ANYYY GHOOSTS OOUUTT HEERRREEE?"

"You know Charlie, this room wouldn't be the haunted one."

"Isn't this where it happened?"

"No, that would be room four. To be fair, he did perform in this room usually, but he switched rooms that day."

"I'm moving on then. Coming with?"

"Sure, I guess. Give me a second while I-"

"One one thousand, two one thou-"

"Fuck you." Luke jumped off the stage and met up with me. We walked out of the room, and I could feel the cold air around me seep into my skin slowly. I was second guessing if I should even be doing this, but it was too late to go back now. One of these doors I saw contained the room that Luke was referring to. If I wanted to explore the mysteries of this place, that is where I would start. Slowly and methodically, we checked the plates for the room we wanted.

The crowd cheered the moment the Magic Man got on stage. They knew of the building's shortcomings, but they didn't know the extent of the High Hat's hidden dangers. The show went on without a hitch through the third trick. When he finished the fire juggling trick he was known for, everyone cheered as he lobbed the seemingly magic balls of fire into a water bucket on stage. Deep in the earth however, a set of irreversible events had just started to take place that would end any chance of the High Hat's recovery and turn any conversation about its restoration into pointless banter.

We were both a little hesitant to see that the door numbered "FOUR" was a real door and labeled clearly in the brass plating. The door was ajar; the only thing between the crack of the door was the cold, dark nothingness of the room that caused his untimely demise. A shiver instinctively went over me. Luke took deep breaths in and swore that he wasn't scared of anything. His face was shiny with sweat as I pushed the door slowly open with the back of my arm. This room appeared to be somewhat wider than the other rooms. Every step I took in the isles, I heard a crinkle as the junk under my feet was squashed down. The band around my sneakers that was once white turned to a light gray. Luke went on the opposite aisle and I could hear his shoes despite the distance. We slowly made our way to the stage after looking through the seats, all dusty from being unused. Just in front of the stage, I looked directly up. The metal pipes and crosses were missing. I concluded those rumors about the Magic Man's end were true.

The Magic Man took one final bow to the crowd before starting his next trick. The world watched as he began to pull out the supplies needed for his next trick seemingly out of thin air. Every time he pulled out an item, the audience clapped louder as he placed the items down on stage. About halfway through, an audible rumble could be heard. Moments later, the shaking started. People either braced in their seats or ran towards the exits in a panic, crowding them to the point where many people could not breathe. The Magic Man was late to react, and decided to attempt to go off stage and check for an unused exit. One of the batten rods hanging above stage had a different idea, falling on his head and knocking him out due to trauma. His head didn't take the blow well and he succumbed to his injuries a few hours later. Because of the crowd combined with the earthquake, fifteen people died and many more were injured from the event. The owner fled the theater with the money they had left and never returned. The building stayed standing, despite the decent amount of damage that was dealt.

The Magic Man might have died outside the theater, but I was standing on stage within a few feet of where he took his fatal blow. Everyone says he still lurks in the theater, the place he called home for a decent chunk of his life. I called out for the Magic Man's ghost, but I heard nothing besides my echo and Luke calling me a dumbass. People did indeed try to restore this place, but it took about a year of hauntings and stories before everyone decided to call it a lost cause. Ever since then, the police boarded up the front entrance, almost no one wanted to go inside for obvious reasons, and the whole place was left to rot for the rest of time.

I put my hands on my hips and looked around aimlessly. I turned around to face the backdrop. I could see that the wooden beams holding it up were still there, but there were holes in between them, revealing another wall some distance behind it.

"Dude, I think there is another room behind the stage."

"Yeah, just go around the stage," Luke pointed to my left and I could see where the stage ended and where an opening was. It never occurred to me to check backstage for any of these rooms. I thought about it for a moment, if it was worth my time to go back or if I should explore between the seats to see if there were some old trinkets I could snag. Looking out at Luke, I saw him pacing up and down the isles doing just as I would do. "Watch where you point that thing!" I heard him scream as he blocked my flashlight with his hands; I pointed my flashlight back down for his sake. Out of anything else to do, I slowly made my way across stage, turned left, and saw what we'd been missing.

"Dude! Take a look at these!" I yelled over my shoulder. Luke ran to the top of the stage and swung to the other side of me. Backstage, there were two large iron cages in the middle of the room that were probably meant for a creature larger than we could imagine. The bars were almost as thick as my hand and were spaced wide enough for my body to fit through. One side of each cage had a door that was currently facing outwards so that if the animal they intended to use was inside when the door shut, they would be trapped.

There were a few boxes spewn about, some harder to open than others. Most contained the materials you'd expect from a magic show: some leather balls, colored cloth, playing cards, paper, and much more. I thought I was lucky, but Luke found a costume the Magic Man had worn before. The sleeves were dusty, but everything else was in good condition. Like most of the things here, we couldn't come up with an excuse for if we were caught with these items at home. Besides a deck of playing cards I had placed into my side pocket, we kept everything as it was.

The only other objects were a table in the back with some cups and platters on it. No doubt these were used for some type of pre-show food or during breaks. The table might have been made out of wood, but everything on top of it looked to have been taken from a fairy-tale. There were intricate designs and patterns; I had to remove some of the dust just to see it with my own eyes. There was a lot of dust on the table and my fingers. Luke drew an angry face in the middle of the platter using his fingers. I hoped that's not what causes us to be haunted for the rest of time.

One metal jar near the back left corner caught my attention. It was plain without a single design on it. Cobwebs separated and made their way to the table as I picked the jar up and dusted it off. What would such a jar be doing here? There were lots of somethings inside and I prayed for it to be coins. They sounded too muffled with not enough metal clanking to be coins, but I hoped anyway. I grabbed the knob on the top of the lid and with a pop, the lid came open. At first, I was confused at what I was seeing. After I smelt it, I was bewildered. Food can't survive this long, right? I placed the lid back on and went over to Luke for his opinion, even though I had already made a decision in my head.

After looking inside, he frowned. "No, no, no. Those... pumpkin seeds? Nuts? Whatever they are, they're old as fuck. We're going to die if we eat those."

"Did you smell the inside? Here, smell it," I offered as I pointed the jar towards him. He hesitantly took a whiff of the contents. "Why the hell does it smell like vanilla?" he asked as he took another whiff just to be sure.

"I dunno about that, but I want to try some. Probably some type of candy left over by someone else."

"Doubt it. Was it like this when you found it?"

"Yep. It was sitting in a corner cleanly without any cobwebs, which is why I found it strange," I lied.

"Then we shouldn't eat it because it's someone else's."

"Why would they leave it here? We both know for a fact that this place is usually inaccessible all day, every day. Who would even be here to retrieve it?"

"So... you're implying that this... food... is not old enough to be dangerous, yet is somehow not too new for anyone to get mad if we ate some?"

"Seems like it to me."

"I'm not biting."

I sighed. "Let me put it like this: we eat the pumpkin seeds or whatever is in this jar, we get sick, we learn a lesson and get to remember a funny story about this place. Alternatively, we don't eat the whatevers, absolutely nothing happens, we get curious about what we missed out on, we can't go back and have to live with that feeling for the rest of our lives. I'll even eat some if you try some as well. Your choice."

Luke looked at me funny and then looked at the jar. He took another glance at me and then one final stare at the jar. "Fine, but if we're dead by the end of this, it's your fault."

"Don't worry! It's probably one of those foods that don't expire, like rice or honey," I said, thrilled to get him on board. I placed the jar on the table and Luke put his hand in, grabbing multiple. I asked him how many he had, he counted five. I grabbed five more from the top and placed them into the palm of my hand. The sweet smell of vanilla emanated from my hands as I made my way away from the table, facing towards Luke. He did the same on the opposite end of the room. We thought this was an endurance test: the last one to throw up or spit the seeds out would win.

"Dude, I think you lied to me, '' Luke said concerned. "There's dust all over these. Did you lie abou-"

"We can go on the count of three, ready?" I said in a haste. "One, two... two and a half, two and three-fo-"

"Dude..."

"Fine! Three, two, one, go!" I flung the seeds into my open mouth and watched as Luke followed after. To be honest, I didn't expect him to take more than two at most. Despite that, I had a plan: don't chew. That's all I had to do: swallow without chewing so I could face the consequences later and watch Luke suffer as he ate ash.

The seeds made their mark in my mouth. One lone seed had almost made its way down my throat. Praying for salvation, I swallowed it whole. While I was doing that, to my horror, my teeth bit down on the seeds that were still in my teeth. I heard three dry crunches in my mouth as the other seed went down to my stomach. From the opened seeds, a viscous, syrupy liquid spewed out around my mouth. This liquid was unbearably sweet and coated every part of my mouth and throat. When the liquid hit the roof of my mouth, I could feel it slowly form long webs down onto the base of my tongue and on the my mouth's smooth basin. The shells slowly dissolved in the liquid, disappearing in seconds. One final seed that I had hidden under my tongue made contact with the liquid and promptly dissolved like the other seeds. The liquid had gotten to all parts of my mouth, burning it with its sweetness. I started to cough violently as I put my hands on my knees with my head down, preparing to puke.

About ten seconds after I bit down on the seeds, my whole body began to pulse rapidly. Each pulse had one second in between, and they were powerful enough to make my body instinctively recoil back. My belly, for instance, started to slowly grow outward, expanding outward at a rate about the same length as my fingernails per pulse. A pulse went through my body. I felt my belly get heavier on my front side. I arched my back up to correct for the belly weight out of fear that I might fall over. My belly had hit my shirt and the now once loose t-shirt I had lost most of the wrinkles it had before, creating an imprint of my stomach underneath instead.

I shut my eyes as tight as I could. I gulped down the liquid in my mouth, taking in large gulps of air with little of the liquid going down. I had to breathe through my nose. The back of my mind buzzed like static and I couldn't focus on a single thought. With every heavy breath I took, I could feel my belly sag down more and more. My T-shirt, after riding up more and more, released my bare belly with a plop.

My hands were still planted on my thighs as tight as I could. Like my belly, my legs were getting fatter by the moment, pulsing out with my belly. I felt as if there was a pair of thick pants under my usual pair, as they had unexpectedly smoothed out. I lost my grip on my pants and had to readjust my grip. My hands which could wrap around my thighs before suddenly had to stretch an impossible distance to do just that. My feet had also grown bulkier and when my feet hit the tongues of my shoes, I heard a tear and cold air seeped onto my feet. They felt larger and the arch to my feet wasn't as steep as I expected. I felt the brim of my sweatpants start to dig into my skin. The bottom of my belly could touch the top of my sweatpants and when I swayed, I could feel the texture of the strings and the ridges that were on my pants.

By now, I was slowly managing the liquid inside my mouth. I tried out a new tactic that hopefully worked faster than dry swallowing, and it was simple: saliva. I put my tongue to the back of the roof on my mouth, created saliva, and then pushed it out to the front of my mouth in hope of diluting or dissolving the liquid. The liquid slowly became a more manageable, but I wasn't done yet. Every time I did this, more liquid came out of the corners of my mouth and into the middle, causing waves of sweetness and frustration to through my body.

My mouth was a battlefield, slowly changing as time went on; my mouth and tongue grew in length and width. I felt like my lips were folding out, despite not doing anything. My tongue had gotten stronger and arrow-like to that point that I could push out more of the liquid. My tongue grew to the length of my snout, which had grown to be about half of the length of my whole face. I opened my jaw and I could feel the added weight on my mouth. Some of the liquid started to fall from my newly formed teeth, which were longer, duller, and came out of my mouth unevenly.

Down at the base of my spine, I felt another object begin to form. It started off feeling like a sandbag was inside of me, carrying weight that wasn't mine. The bag had gone out of my body, but was still connected to me internally. Another bag was added behind it and it grew in size. By now, it hit the back of my pants and I could feel it brush up against its back tags. Another heavier bag was added to the line. The counter weight of this helped me not fall over when I went down once more. The object, that I now realized was a tail, grew another heavier sand bag. The tail was thick and heavy enough to pull my pants down to the middle of my thighs. Each pulse, the tail grew and grew in length and width. After about a minute, there were about ten sandbags behind me, starting from the base of my spine going down with about an arm's length of sandbags on the floor behind me.

The end was near for this pesky liquid. My saliva tactic along with my powerful tongue had started to create manageable levels of sweetness and liquid inside of my muzzle. My mind buzzed more and more and I concentrated as much as I could muster up and went on. I tensed up my hand muscles without thought and gripped my thighs as hard as I could. When I gripped, I discovered that my hands only had four digits; I counted them in my head over and over. My fingers got thicker and rounded out into large sausage fingers that could wrap around my thigh. I felt protrusions at the front of my remaining fingers about the size of a pebble digging into my legs. The insides of my paws suddenly became grippy with little ridges that stuck to my pant legs easily. I felt my skin tingle and dry out around my body, mostly in my chest, face, and arms. This feeling spread to the rest of my body before I could realize what was going on.

My face grew a little as the pulses slowed down. There was a sweet aftertaste around my mouth. I panted, finally being able to breathe without issue. Some more protrusions came out on my back and tail. I didn't feel any different, but the static in my head was still raging on. There were a few more pulses left, each one getting weaker and weaker as time went on. Soon, that only thing I could hear was my heartbeat and breathing. I didn't want to know what happened, but that's the only thing I could do.

Slowly, I opened up my eyes. The first thing that occurred to me was that everything was tinted a nice light blue. Despite the fact that I didn't see where I placed my flashlight, I could see perfectly in the dark. My field of view had changed and I had to look down more because I had grown taller. I could probably see the top of my own head if I saw myself a few minutes ago. I took a look down and saw my belly. It was a blue mass that was big enough to block my view of my thighs. Whether it's because of my height change or my weight change, my T-shirt was tight fitting around my arms and chest. My pants were still halfway down my thighs along with my underwear. As I groaned, I realized how deep my voice had gotten; It rumbled inside of me as if I had hit another puberty. The most surprising part about all of this was that my clothes had survived this, although this could be because they were already decently loose on me anyway.

Well, almost everything survived.

I placed my thick white scaly arms under my belly and pushed the fat up so I could sit down. My tail dragged limply across the wooden floor. I could see my legs now, stumpy in comparison to the rest of my body as they hadn't grown taller. My paws had four toes that left almost no space between them. They were about twice as thick as my regular feet; as a result, they tore my shoes apart. The upper half of my shoes still clung onto the top while the cushioning laid flat on the dusty floor beside me. I tried to reach towards the parts of the shoe still stuck on me, but my body had changed. First, my arms couldn't stretch enough to touch my toes; my legs had lost their flexibility because they were so different so I couldn't move them any closer. Even if that were the case, my arms would have to wrap around my belly, which was at the same height as my chest. I gave up and heaved myself up with all of my might.

After getting my footing, I heard a deep cry: "Help! Charlie... fuck! Du...de!"

I knew it was Luke, but it didn't sound like him. His voice was higher pitched than mine, but that's wasn't saying much. He took breaths in between each word he yelled out, and it was clear why: unlike a t-shirt, vests meant for winter weather aren't usually flexible. If I remembered him properly, he hadn't unzipped his vest yet. Pivoting one foot after another, I made my way to him as quickly as I could.

Luke was laying flat with his back to the ground. He had gone under the same changes as me, expect his eyes were a shade of orange. His fly on his pants was down, so I could only assume that he did try to get his pants off before shit hit the fan. "Dude... the jacket... please..." he groaned as I approached.

I was to the left of him when I approached. He moved his right arm away from the jacket and I located the zipper. Using my thumb and pointer finger on my fat paws, I pulled down the zipper in one large motion. In an instant, his belly flopped out completely. The belly was about the same size as my own, except that his belly was the same shade of orange as his eyes. Under the vest, I could see the scales that had formed around his body.

"Wait, you didn't wear anything under that vest?" I asked calmly.

Luke was still in shock at the creature he had become. "Yea, wearing at shirt under a vest is torture."

"You're a disgrace, I swear. Look at this belly of mine!" I started to rub the top of my belly with my right hand; it truly was something to behold and to be impressed by.

"Give me a hand first?" Luke asked, raising his right paw into the air. I pulled him up with a decent amount of effort on both of our parts. If we weren't dragons, we would be sweating bullets. Luke looked at his belly with a tinge of disgust. "What the hell happened to us?" he asked me.

"You think I know? Don't worry, everything will work out fine. Besides," I patted the top of my belly. "look at our new bodies! You're seriously not at least a little eager to be like this for a few hours?"

"A few hours? How do you know that?" Luke tried to move around, but his pants restricted his movement. I also noticed how his shoes, newer and slightly larger than my own, had broken apart. The laces hung limp on his foot, dragging limply across the ground.

"Dude, how do you think the Magic Man got those lions past customs?" I chuckled, and a small smile went across my face. "I'll give you a hint: he sure as hell didn't!"

"Oh... wait, seriously? So these are old, aren't they?"

"They are," I confessed. "I just wanted to make things interesting. I didn't think you'd take a fuckton of them though."

"You're a bitch. What do we do now? Ah, neither of us can go home like this!"

"You're the only one at home and I have a backup plan for getting into my room. You are wrong on every level, calm down."

"Really?"

I put a paw on Luke's shoulder. "It's fine, It's alright. I didn't know that this was going to happen. What time is it, six o'clock? How about we go home at around ten so that no one even has the chance to see us? We can use our night vision to our advantage, you get me?"

Luke seemed to have calmed down. His voice was quieter and his body relaxed. I could feel his shoulders go down naturally as he started to accept who he was now. "Yea man, what do we do in the meantime?"

He did have a point: what do we do? We're in probably the most lonely building in town, underground and hidden away. Even if someone decided to come in, they would only see the darkest of darks with an almost deafening silence. I hummed myself a tune as I thought and considered. I was almost scared to go upstairs, unless I wanted the building to cave in. The ground floor was better, although a bit barren, so perhaps we could have gone into another backstage room and raid that for four-ish hours. When I moved my head back to Luke to tell him my plan, I saw that he was staring at me blankly. When I turned more to make eye contact, he turned away from me quickly. When I questioned him about this, he ignored me. His paws were submissively cupped together in front of him.

Just then, Luke reminded me of an overstuffed dragon like the one I had when I was younger. I would hug that stuffed dragon until my arms got sore and brought them everywhere I went. Home, schools, stores -- it didn't matter to me. This was about when I was six. I lost them a few years later when my family moved. A surge of emotions went through my body. It started as a heat in my mind and spread to a wave of shock that went through my arms and feet.

After a brief moment of panic, I calmed down. "How about we help take off the clothes that we don't need right now?" I suggested to Luke. I signaled for him to lift up his feet. Like I expected, they were about twice as large with plump, rounded orange toe-beans dotting the bottom. Luke didn't say a word. After curling his toes, I managed to get both of the remaining shoes off of him. As I bent up and down, my tail moved around and kicked up dust around us. I placed my paws around his waist and shimmied his pants down and like the shoes, took them off. Luke followed suit just after me, doing the same exact things I had done in silence. We threw our unused clothing into our own backpacks for later.

I could read Luke like a book. He wandered around aimlessly, picking up things at random and placing them back down a moment later as he glanced back at me. With a smile, I followed suit close by. I've already seen most of this stuff here. The jar with the seeds sat on the table untouched until Luke moved away from it, which I then snagged. The jar was massive, so I dumped out the seeds and placed them into a plastic baggie for safe keeping.

I tried my best to be casual like I usually was to Luke. We were about an arm's length away observing a stack of boxes in silence. While I was fiddling around with a deck of playing cards, I chuckled and told him that "You're pretty cute as a dragon."

Luke's whole body shook a little; I could feel it on the floor. "So you feel that as well?" he asked.

"Of course I feel it! It might be the seeds talking, but you remind me so much of a stuffed animal that was near and dear to my heart."

"And you remind me of my obsession with dragons when I was younger. I thought that they were powerful creatures that roamed around the earth and protected us all. I guess for me now, dragons don't have to be all powerful if they're as cute as you."

"...Thank you..." was the only thing I could muster out of my mouth. I had set the deck of playing cards on the floor by the boxes so as to not step on them by accident. An alarm sounded in my head, an alarm that told me that this wasn't real, that this was just a strange dream. I knew well that this was a reality, a reality just the way I liked it. Without thinking, I held out my arms in a 'Y' shape, offering a hug to Luke. He charged at me and wrapped his hands around the middle of my back. I could feel his head burrow into my shoulders as our bellies came together. His paws slowly started rubbing my back, occasionally brushing up on some spikes that had grown on my spine. His large paws were soft and warm like the rest of his body: pleasant to the touch. I returned the hug a moment later with a warm smile across my face, wrapping my arms just above his stomach. I could feel his smooth scaly skin under my paws as I moved them around. The spikes on his back were hard with a dull point at the end. I doubt they were dangerous and quite frankly, they were only more inviting to me.

We stayed hugging for a minute or two, yet I never wanted it to end. Luke's warmth and his new bubbly personality: I enjoyed every moment of it. Luke was the one who let go of me first, letting his arms fall limply to his side as I slowly broke out of the hug. He looked at me with a sparkle in his eyes. To my surprise, I was shivering when I moved away from him.

"Dude, I think you missed some of that sweet stuff in your mouth," Luke said, pointing at my mouth.

"Really? I guess I missed a few hard-to-reach spots."

"Mind if I help you with that inside the cage over there? You can help me get to some of those hard-to-reach places as well."

"Sure, bro."

Luke was the first one to enter through the cage that was close to the stage wall. It was wide enough to probably fit four of us without any issues. He entered through the opened door and sat down in the middle. As I went in, he asked if I could close the door behind me. There was a locking mechanism for the cage, but it required a padlock that wasn't present. I placed my paws through the bars and pulled, causing the cage to close with some screeching. Looking back at Luke, He was stomach side up, sprawled as much as physically possible. The end of his tail was about to touch my feet. As he lifted his head up at me with a smile, he gave a few soft pats on his stomach. I walked between his thick tail and when my belly started to caress his, I slowly made my way onto him, using my arms and legs to help ground me. Soon, we were snout to snout with only a small amount of space separating us. I got second thoughts on this. I thought my first would have been at a park or in my bedroom with a girl I met from school on a Friday night. But this, as much as it was unexpected, was alright to me. I knew that I liked him, yet I got butterflies.

"You sure you want this?" Luke asked me in an almost whisper.

"Yes, let's do this," I responded, matching his whisper.

We both hesitated for a moment, unsure of how to approach each other. Neither of us had ever been close to making out with anyone in our lives. I took a deep breath in, swallowing hard and clearing my mind. I used my back legs to push higher up, quickly closing the distance between us. Luke's arms circled around my back to secure me in place. As I submitted Luke's belly, my feet dangled limply in the air. Our tails were laid one atop another unevenly, sliding into place like a jigsaw as I finished moving up. When our snouts touched for a brief moment, I could feel his warm breath go down my snout and bare chest. Luke cracked his maw open. His large teeth poked out as strings of saliva broke away from the opening of his mouth. I slowly closed my eyes as I came closer to him. I turned my snout clockwise and I stuck my long tongue into his mouth.

As my tongue explored his large mouth, I could feel his warm tongue go against mine as he started to make his way around my mouth. His back teeth were large and had a sweet aftertaste on them. As I made my way around the back of his mouth, I could feel my saliva intertwine with his. A rush of sudden heat coursed through me, and nothing in the world could separate us. I loosened my arms beside me. Soon after, we both slowed our exploring and we mutually stopped our tongues. Putting my paws on the floor besides Luke's head, I pushed myself back to the top of Luke's belly. My long, wet tongue pulled itself up and out of Luke's mouth before hanging limply around my rounded jaw.

We took one good look at each other, realizing what we'd just done together. My heart beat like a hummingbird flying about on a clear summer's day. Luke looked at me with a smile and eyes that were still very deep in our little serenade.

"That was... oh my goodness!" I panted out, our eyes locked into each other.

"Did I get it all?"

"Probably for now, I'm out of breath!"

Luke looked a bit out of breath as well; I don't remember feeling his stomach move. When Luke did start to breathe in and out again, his belly moved my body up and down like a wave.

"Now what?" Luke asked me.

"I don't want this to end - not yet," my breathing slowly became steady and my thoughts were lucid. "Do you want to snuggle?"

"Of course."

I began to sit down as Luke turned to his side away from me. Pushing my arm out on the ground to slow my fall, my scales were covered with a fine, soft dust. Soon, my body was laying flat on the ground. I scooched myself in until I felt Luke's warm back scales press into my belly. My arm slowly reached over his body, and I began to take it all in one breath at a time.

"Am I alright?" I asked in a hushed tone.

"More than alright."

A feeling so foreign had begun to seep through me; it was like warm water coursing through my head and heart. Time had begun to stop.

"I don't want to go back home," Luke blurted out. "All that means is that I'll go back to wasting time and living in my filth!" His heart rate had tripled instantly. My stomach was suddenly being rung like a wet towel.

"Luke, Luke," I heard myself say. "It's alright. I'm here, and no one else is. If you need to say something, perhaps to cleanse your mind, I'm all ears for you. If you need to cry, please do."

Luke's body vibrated and his breathing sounded like a car was starting up. The world was shrunk to the cage, and nothing else mattered.

Silence. I smiled at Luke, reaffirming that his feelings were alright to have. He was probably on the brinks of bursting out right then and there.

"I'm lazy. I do nothing to help myself, I'm about to fail another class in school, and I do nothing but lay around moping and feeling sorry for myself!" he screamed out weakly. That was the last cohesive sentence that came out of him for a while.

During all of this, I was doing nothing but patting him lightly while I put all my attention on him. I didn't want to give him dubious advice, yet I felt obligated to say at least something. "Luke, we're friends right? And friends help each other, right? So how about I help you study and we can clean up your messy room as well? Would that make things better for you?"

He nodded his head slowly. His legs kicked out in excitement and his breathing became rhythmic once again. Before I knew it, he fell asleep in my arms. I followed him a few moments after with a warm feeling in my belly.

--

With a claw on my finger, I woke up Luke by scratching just under his neck. "Wakey Wakey," I whispered, "We should really start heading back."

"No, no," Luke mumbled out and he shooed me off with his paw.

"I'm being serious now, it's been a few hours since we fell asleep. If we don't want to get caught, now's the time, I mean it!"

"Now? Right now?"

"Yes! We need to get our stuff and skedaddle before your parents come home." I gestured at the door.

Luke groaned: "Alrighty, whatever. Mind getting off of me first?"

I obliged and promptly flopped over. Falling on such a hard surface wasn't exactly comforting, on account of my back spikes digging into the metal below. I used the cage to climb my way up to my two feet and followed Luke out.

The theater, so loud with our commotion a few hours ago, lay still and silent now with nothing but our heavy steps echoing around the wood floors as we packed up. Our backpacks were still by the wall where we had left them. They seemed so small, like the backpacks only a five year old could wear in any comfort. I took a glance over at Luke who looked to be as exhausted as I was. Luke wiped his crusty eyes with a paw. I sat down belly to the floor. Using the claws on my massive paws, I managed to unlatch the straps on the bag. With a pull, the straps became twice as long and comfortable for me to wear.

With a click, the metal door out of the High Hat Theater was closed and we were met with yellow streetlights and only the softest rustles of wind. Beneath us both, the drizzle dampened the pavement; small puddles filled its many cracks. Almost none of the buildings had their lights on at this hour. We were both naked and exposed, and yet neither of us were cold. We started walking down the sidewalk and underneath the yellow streetlights. Luke and I had no real path home, but my worries about not coming home in time had died off.

We walked back shoulder by shoulder, hand in hand. Too big for the narrow sidewalk, my left side spilled into the street. We chuckled and pointed around in tired and good-natured delirium. When the buildings became quaint houses, we quieted down and scanned the boxy houses for the one that was on a hill and without a single soul inside.

I followed Luke up to his front door and chuckled to myself. We both could peer at the top of the doorframe. Luke could have been split in half vertically and still not fit in. He suggested that he should go through the sliding door in the back. Despite his suggestion for me to go home, I followed him across his yard and through his wooden fence.

Two lanterns on either end of the porch provided the only lights in sight. Smoothly, Luke slid open the door and ducked underneath. He promptly wiped his foot-paws on the inside mat and grabbed the door's handle.

"Goodbye, I suppose," Luke murmured, squatting awkwardly to see me through the window.

"Till next time."

He pulled the door back shut, locked it with a spin of his wrist, and headed for his room.

I took one last glance over at Luke's door. The house looked dead, like all of the other houses on the block. There was something about going home in the dark and seeing the stars in the usually bright and sunny neighborhood that made everything feel like a fever dream. I touched the bark of a neighbor's tree with my paw, rubbing it up and down and then flipping my paw to do it again. I couldn't decide if that tree was actually real or if it would disappear by sunrise.

There it was, one story high with a broken gate: my home. Garden lanterns guided the eyes to the front door. In paranoia, I tiptoed on the edge of the property with my eyes dead set fixated on the only window that was on the side of the house where my 'ma would have the slightest chance of seeing me. Once I was out of view, I crouched and made haste to get back inside undetected.

My window was smaller than I'd imagined it to be. I stuck my hand through it to really evaluate the opening's size -- or to, at least, find something to aid me -- but to no avail. My body was as light as air and the cold suddenly seeped through as shock expelled my heat around me. I trusted my instincts and my thorough conclusions on the Magic Man.

So, I accepted defeat.

---

The sidewalk steps were not a place for some lousy himbo dragon like myself to be. Pinecones and bits of dirt and leaves were wedged between my toes and my ass was already soaked through and cold. I put my snout down into my hands and sat still for a moment without any clear thought. A light misting tickled me. I sat in liminal space, thinking that nothing here was real.

I walked around the dark neighborhood once again, this time walking past the end of the street to observe the grassy fields in the dark of night. I walked past many houses, heard the animals scamper away from me, and swatted around me to clear the tree's plentiful branches. I looked beyond into the tallgrass that glistened and swam through it like a fish in a pond. In the middle, a medium sized boulder became my resting spot as I propped myself on it and looked up at the full moon and gray clouds in a vague sense of melancholy. I laid down for a decent period of time making whimsical games in my head based on where the moon was to the surrounding trees. However, I had begun my return, leaving my body to be consumed by the grass that towered over me. My wonderous view of the moon was thus blocked, and that's when I knew the night was truly over; it was my time to go home.

My stuff by the window hadn't been disturbed, although everything was now darker and soggy to the touch. I had shrunk to about half a head's height higher than my normal height, with a belly that only bulged out a manageable amount. I hucked my items in, and after sucking my chest in, I flung myself in my room. Softly, I took one final look outside before closing the window. I threw all of my soaked belongings under my bed. I took one look at the mirror: large chunks of skin appeared around my scales.

I laid in bed with my blanket spewn across the floor and drifted soundly into slumber.

--

Birds chirped. The sun casted yellow rays onto the sky without a single cloud as far as the eye can see.

The first thing I could remember is looking up at the ceiling of my room with an achy body and surrounded by a warm fog which lured me to go back to sleep. My thoughts were vaguely shaped and of nothing in particular. But somewhere, a thought went too far and my eyes dilated wide. In one fluid motion, I threw my arm over me and felt every nook and cranny of my body in a frenzy. Granted, I was naked, but I was back to being me again. Last night was some mistake, it had to have been! I had the memories of an imposter who had no regards for who I was!

I threw on new clothes in a frenzied sweat. I hoisted on my bag and ran down the hallway. Sprinting and stepping on my own toes, I was forced to grab the sides of the hallway or else I would have tripped and injured myself. I told my 'ma that I was off before bursting the door open with my foot and running off to him.

Two large cars were now in the driveway. I dragged my way up to the door. The window to the side was a bright shade of yellow and even before my knock, there were already shadows dancing around inside. I rang the doorbell. A beagle scampered and howled. Throwing out a leg, Luke's mother opened the door and greeted me with a surprised smile. The waft of bacon could be smelt from the entranceway. The T.V was playing football as Luke's dad took a nap on the couch. Everything was here, of course except for...

Luke's mother put an arm on her waist and tilted her head as she looked down the hallway: "Can you go ahead for me, Charlie, and get Luke to come out of his room? And while you're at it, tell him that breakfast is ready as well," and without much more thought, she turned back and walked away.

Luke's room had a door without any surrounding windows, making the corner unnaturally dark. The knob and even the door gave off an aura of dread to me, as if he had never transformed back. I gave two accented knocks and announced my presence. I heard some shuffling, some papers on the ground being crunched and some clothes being kicked around, but then I heard metal in the door sliding, and Luke pushed the door open just enough to let me in. Luke looked fine, albeit a bit pale. He scanned the hallway and then shut the door carefully. After locking it with a single flick of his wrist, he turned to sit beside me on the bed.

"Listen to me, it's not going to be easy for me to say this, but..." I started to say to him, "I'm sorry. What happened last night, we should forget it happened. I wasn't me then and neither were you. Please, I beg of you to understand that from the bottom of my heart."

Luke took a moment to process that and then another moment to concoct a proper response. Neither of them attempted to make eye contact. "Forget what happened, all of it, just like that? I'm sorry, but I just can't get that through my head. What about what we felt? That type of stuff happens once in a lifetime, I can't toss it out like it's trash!"

"Once in a lifetime," I tossed the seeds onto his lap, "my ass. Look, here's my idea for me and you: we are friends, period. However, we take one of these seeds ("Maybe a little less than one" Luke mumbled) and when we transform, that's when we can do those things we did last night. We get to spend our time together as friends in the same way we always have done and we both get to have that time together when we can just let go of all of that. What do you think about that?"

During the conversation, Luke had been spinning the plastic bag and letting it flip over itself; the bag was now very creased in his hands. He looked at it for a moment, stationary in thought. "I... I can accept that. Can I keep this baggy though, so I don't forget about you?"

"That's fine by me. Thank you for understanding" and just like that, there was a feeling of vague uncertainty around me. I had hoped for this to be the moment of acceptance, only for it to be squandered by my own words. It was right to not lie about my feelings, but this was still undesirable.

Luke flinched as I put an arm around his shoulder and talked passively: "We can still do our things together, remember? This is only the beginning of something greater than we can imagine."

"You think so?"

"I really do. I really, really do. I just don't want us to outpace ourselves, that's all."

"That makes me feel a bit better, I suppose," Luke nodded his head and whispered, "don't outpace ourselves, don't outpace ourselves..."

I sat in uncomfortable tension.

"You staying here today?" Luke asked as he stared down at his legs.

"Luke, I like you... as a friend... but I think I need some time to myself. I need to decompress from everything."

"Of course, of course."

"And one more thing."

"Yes?"

I headed for his bedroom door. "Breakfast is ready. Smells amazing out there, you know."

Luke broke a smile.

Making my way to the main road, I smiled as I breathed sharply out and saw my breath escape my mouth. The sound my bare feet made on the pavement echoed for a brief moment through the active neighborhood. There were no streetlamps and the sky was a vast cyan emptiness. The low sun cast a long shadow in front of me as sweat beads formed on the back of my neck.

I grinned at myself wholeheartedly. I thought of Luke and what I had told him. I liked him so much as a dragon -- I will admit to that -- but I couldn't wrap my head around the feeling of loving him as a person. But if that were the case, I couldn't understand why I now had butterflies in me when I thought about my fond memories of him. I walked back home, repeating over and over those strange words as I took the world in: "Only the beginning, only the beginning..."