FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Lew grunted in annoyance, as his hip began to buzz. Pulling his hands out of the sink, he quickly wiped his hands on a nearby washcloth, before he fished out his phone and flicked up the "Answer" button. "Yeah?"

"Hey, Lew," came Cari's voice, on the other end. "How you settling in?"

"Poorly," Lew replied, looking around at the cleaning implements, arranged neatly on the counters and floor of his kitchen. "I don't know how a house could get so dirty, after eight months."

"Well, hey. You know what would be a good distraction from all of that?"

"Ghosts?"

"Damn straight. You up to anything, tonight?"

"Aside from dusting, not really." Lew sighed, as he stepped away from the sink and adjusted the phone against his head. "What's the job?"

"You know the old Parleyville Sanitarium?"

"The one that has all the ghost tours, every Halloween?"

"Yup." Cari chuckled. "Would you believe me, if I told you it was haunted?"

"Not at all," Lew replied, sarcastically.

"Well, it is," Cari pressed, with fake sincerity. "Apparently, they've got something new floating around in there. Something other than what the tour guides are used to dealing with."

"Any idea what?"

"Not a clue. That's why I wound up taking the job."

Lew stared out into the living room, still taking a mental tally of all the things he needed to do, to get the house back to its former glory. The silhouette of the old Easter decorations once again popped into view, as if to annoy him. After a moment's pause, he turned his head slightly towards his phone. "Right, well... I guess I'll see you there, then."

"Good boy." Cari couldn't hear Lew bristle, from her end of the line. Not that it would have stopped her. "You'll probably want to leave a bit early. It's a bit of a drive to get up there."

"Yeah, yeah. Abandoned sanitarium on the outskirts of town. Way out in the wilderness. Nowhere to run when the slasher movie villain shows up. I know the drill."

"I've always wanted to see whether I was Final Girl material."

Despite himself, Lew chuckled. "Right. I gotta go. Talk to you this evening."

* * *

Parleyville Sanitarium was, at one point, the darkest spot on the town's history. The things that happened within those walls were horrible, senseless in their brutality, and shamelessly sensationalized, decades later. Great care was taken to maintain the building and the roads leading up to it, to make sure everything worked while still giving the illusion that the structure was entirely abandoned. Lew knew that the facade was in place, but even knowing that, he still felt an intimidating aura, as he climbed out of his car and stood in the shadow of the brick and plaster behemoth.

Even Cari, who Lew spotted at the front door, looked a bit disquieted to be here. She offered a reassuring smirk, as Lew climbed the steps towards her, but the goat could see that her eyes were already doing that glossy, far-away thing they seemed to do, whenever spirits were afoot.

"Yo," she called. "Hope you haven't gotten your fill of dust, yet."

Lew shook his head. "As long as I don't have to clean it up, I'm fine."

Just as he reached the final step, one of the double doors opened. A slightly chubby rabbit with piercings and a Shred Burrow T-shirt stepped outside, giving them a friendly smile. "Hey! You're the guys, right? Otherworld Solutions?"

Lew froze, just for a second, but Cari took the lead before he could recover. "Yup. Otherworld Solutions, the people you call when the dead are being assholes. I'm Cari." She held out her free hand to shake. "You must be Damon."

"That's me," Damon replied, taking her hand in a firm grip. "Damon the tour guide, the guy you call when you want to know about electro-convulsive therapy." Turning to the goat, he offered his hand.

"Uh... Lew," Lew responded, quietly, as he shook the rabbit's hand. "Pleased to meet you."

"Right, so..." Damon motioned towards the door. "Come on in, guys, and I'll try and tell you about what we're dealing with. Mind the mess up front." Inside, Damon had to lead them around a strategically turned over wheelchair, and over piles of "discarded" papers that were too yellowed to be read. "We had a real good season, this year. A few people from the Historical Society, an urban explorer who grabbed footage for his MeFeed channel. Teenagers, of course. They fucking flip for the overnight experiences."

"Of course," Cari laughed. "Who didn't traipse around old haunted places, when they were in high school?"

Lew emphatically didn't do anything of the sort, but he kept his mouth shut out of professional courtesy to his boss.

"Exactly!" Damon said, with a laugh. "It's all good fun. The problem is that some of those teenagers have been reporting some unusual sighting or other."

Unusual sightings in a haunted mental hospital? Lew thought to himself. Oh, perish the thought.

Damon opened the door to a windowed office. Inside was much cleaner and newer than the rest of the building, immediately telling Lew that it was employees only. The rabbit continued to speak, as he opened a drawer on the desk, up against the wall. "Apparently, there's been something of an urban legend going around MeFeed. Something about a doctor who used to work here, and who did all sorts of things to the patients." Pulling out a few sheets of paper, he placed them on the desk for Cari and Lew to look at. They seemed to be printouts of comment threads, full of credulous statements about someone they called The Orderly. On one of the papers was an amateurish drawing of a shadowy figure in a doctor's coat.

Cari frowned, at the paper. "They call him the Orderly? But he's a doctor?"

"Psychiatrist, specifically," Lew chimed in. "Pretty sure psychiatrists don't wear the white coat."

"Some of them do," Damon answered, almost automatically. "Doctors in Parleyville were required to, as part of their job. We've got a few of the old coats floating around, that we take out for history tours."

"Oh, neat," Lew said, blankly. He hadn't wanted that information, but then again Damon seemed like the kind of person who was happy to share the facts he knew. "So, this Orderly guy... what's he supposed to have done?"

"Slept with the patients."

Lew's eyes widened. He looked over at Cari, then back to Damon.

Cari didn't seem surprised. In fact, she merely grinned at that. "Well, wasn't he the naughty type?"

Damon pulled out the rolling chair, from the desk, and sat down. "Yup. From what I've read, he's quite fond of the ones in straitjackets. He'd bring patients to Cell 46, and visit them in the night while they were still restrained, bending them over and..."

"Wow, okay!" Lew found himself blurting out. Then, he looked around the room, and cleared his throat with a blush. "So, um, sorry. Back up a bit. You're saying that people are seeing a ghost in Cell 46 that likes to sexually assault people?"

"That's right," Damon said, leaning back in his chair. "Granted, it hasn't assaulted anybody, yet. So far, people are just insisting that they're sighting the thing. According to the urban legend, the only way you can summon it is by sitting alone in Cell 46, with a straitjacket on, chanting the Orderly's true name."

"Is that all?" Cari said, sarcastically. "They make ghost hunting sound so formal."

"So, you don't believe them?" Damon asked.

Cari shrugged. "I make it a point to keep my disbelieving to an absolute minimum. Even if your guests aren't seeing a doctor-slash-orderly with a BDSM obsession, that doesn't mean that they aren't experiencing something."

"My thoughts exactly." Damon reached into another drawer, pulling out a tourist map of the facility and pointing to a spot on the west wing. "Cell 46 is over this way. We're currently in the off-season, so you have a few days to try and track down this ghost, if you need it."

"Sounds like we've got work to do, then." Cari smirked, before looking over to Lew. "What about you? Any questions?"

Lew picked up the pamphlet with the map, staying silent for a moment, before finally he said. "So... lemme get this straight. People are saying that if they sit in this cell, with a straitjacket on, then some ghost is gonna come along and... and, um..."

"Fuck them," Cari finished. "That's the long and short of it. Right, Damon?"

"Yeah," Damon looked between the two of them, as though not quite understanding what the holdup was. "That's it, in one."

Lew nodded his head, though internally he was starting to resent the pattern he was seeing, with the jobs Cari took. He added "So, has anyone... tried to do that, yet?"

"Not yet," Damon replied. "The details of the legend only came about recently. Somebody posted the story up on social media, and ever since, people have been combing through the history of Parleyville, trying to find the name of the Orderly."

"So they can summon him."

"Seems like that's the case."

"So the Orderly can... do things to them."

"Or so they can catch him on camera, or put him in a crystal, or whatever." Damon laughed. "Ghost hunters all tend to have their own idea of what needs to happen to a ghost like this."

Lew's jaw set. Giving Cari one last glance, he reached down to heft his briefcase. "Right. Well, I'm gonna go set up."

"I'm coming with," Cari chimed in, filing towards the door behind the goat. She looked back to her employer. "If we accidentally open a portal to Hell, we'll holler."

Damon waved her off. It was only after she had closed the door behind her that he realized she might have been serious about that. He spared a concerned glance at the door, before sighing and pulling out his phone.

* * *

The hallways of Parleyville could easily have been lit. There were no shortage of industrial lights, ready to switch on whenever they were needed. However, since the asylum was still in touring mode, nearly all of those were off. Only a few weedy little lights were on, to illuminate signs and informational plaques. The EXIT signs were clearly marked in red light. For everything else, Cari and Lew were required to navigate by flashlight. Lew's eyes roved around the corridors, the only sound being his hooves on the tiles and the rush of blood in his ears. Cari, once again, made no noise at all, as she glided down the hall.

"You can feel it, can't you," the coyote asked, her voice as sudden and welcome to Lew's nerves as a gunshot.

Lew tried to keep himself from jumping too much, as he cleared his throat. "You mean the vibe? It's pretty hard to ignore. This place is absolutely creepy." Turning a corner, he got a peek through an open door, into some kind of operating room. Naturally, the table in the center was loaded down with straps, adorned on all sides by rusty surgical implements. He hadn't realized he had stopped to stare, before he looked ahead and almost saw Cari turn a corner without him.

"Cell 46 should be just down here," she said, as soon as she heard the goat catch up.

"Cari..." Lew turned his head. Were those footsteps he heard just echoes of his own, or...? He resumed staring at his boss's back. "I thought ghosts had a shelf life."

"Shelf life?"

"You know what I mean. The patients who stayed here did so almost a hundred years ago. Sure, whatever feelings they had must have baked into the walls, and became ghosts (or however that works), but after all this time? With hundreds of people a year stomping around here for a decade, trying to get those feelings to manifest? Those ghosts should have burned themselves out and faded away, right?"

"Oh, almost certainly," Cari responded, her eyes roving over the numbers on the cell doors as she slowly walked. "There's nothing left of any of Parleyville's regulars, in this building. Especially not since a place like this tends to draw the amateur psychics."

"Right, so..." Lew scanned his flashlight around the room, nearly tripping over something in the process. "...so what am I feeling, right now? Why would a place like this still feel haunted, even after the ghosts have passed on?"

"Oh, that?" Cari looked back, grinning. "That's just because the place is creepy."

Lew met her eyes, incredulously. "What, that's it? It's haunted because it's creepy?"

"Yeah. Think about it, Lew. What even are spirits?"

"Leftover emotions?"

"Exactly." Pausing for a moment, Cari put her hand on a steel door. The number "46" was stenciled on it in yellow paint. "Once upon a time, those emotions were mostly those of the residents. Other people walked around the building, felt those feelings, and they start to feel anxious. That anxiety, in turn..." She grunted, as she heaved the heavy door open. "...becomes a part of the space. Then somebody else comes in. They feel a little less of the former occupants, but in its place is a feeling of fear. Now they're anxious, and their anxiety becomes a part of the space. Rinse and repeat over a couple of decades..." She took a few steps inside. Despite her light steps, the ground squeaked under her weight. "...and you've got yourself your typical haunted house."

Cell 46 was small. Almost impossibly small. Cari's head almost reached the ceiling. Lew refrained from entering, since it would mean practically touching the coyote in the cramped conditions. A simple cot was the only furnishing. The walls were a yellowed white, covered in padded rubber that creaked and creased under the coyote's paws. A single recessed light hung on the ceiling. Turned off, naturally. One flashlight provided plenty of light to see by, since the room was so small.

Lew swallowed, nervously. He tried to focus on Cari's words, instead of the implications of the space she was in. "So, any sort of feelings I'm picking up right now are not those of long-dead mental patients, but tourists thinking they're experiencing the feelings of long-dead mental patients?"

"Yes and no. Spirits are a little bit of everyone. You might get a little bit of the old residents, or it could be just more recent guests. And that's before we factor in transient spirits and the million-and-one things that the average psychic could do..."

"I'm sorry... 'transient' spirits?"

"Yeah?" Cari raised an eyebrow. "Spirits move around, Lew. They find their way into whatever space vibes with them."

"Oh, good." Lew leaned against the door-frame. "I guess that explains why that ghost we dealt with last time was so..." Lew made a series of vague gestures around his own body, which to anyone unfamiliar with what he was talking about would be supremely unhelpful in creating context.

Cari nodded, before setting down her suitcase and looking about the room. "Not a lot of places to set up observation equipment. We can get the recorder on the bed, maybe a trail cam or two in the doorway."

"You'll have to leave the room," Lew added. "Trail cam's activated by motion. Your body's going to be in view, at all times, so you'll probably be the only thing setting it off."

Cari grinned, as she bent down to open the case. "Are you saying I'm fat, or something?"

Lew hesitated, stuck between a half-dozen different flavors of denial and too on-the-spot to commit to any single one of them. He backed up, taking an interest in the corridor outside the cell. Suddenly, he froze, as his eyes fell on something long and white, in the shadows. His expression tightened, ears flitting.

"What is it?" Cari asked, her voice suddenly serious.

Slowly, with a trembling hand, Lew brought his flashlight around. The circle of light from the beam crawled across the worn out tiles, before pulling up to point at the point where the hallway turned. A doctor's coat was illuminated, just before it disappeared around the corner. Lew yelped, tripping on the corner of Cell 46's door as he backpedaled. Cari reached a hand out, but the goat was already sprawling backwards to the floor, in a tangle of limbs.

"Lew!" Cari spilled out of the room, reaching into a pants pocket. She skidded across the floor, kneeling down next to the goat in the same motion that she pulled out an iron pentacle on a leather strap. "What is it? Are you hurt?"

Lew grimaced, a hand on his lower back as he sat up. "Fine, fine. Landed on my ass. There..." He pointed out towards the corner. "There was a man. A man in a coat."

Cari held the pentacle so it rested against her fingers, pointing it where Lew was indicating. "You sure?"

"Yeah, I'm sure!" Lew cried, more than a bit defensively. "Clear as day. I saw the grain on his coat as he walked away."

"Okay, okay." Cari stood up, talisman still in front of her. "I'm gonna go check it out. Get the equipment set up."

"What? You want me to stay here, alone?"

"You'll be fine." Cari patted Lew on the shoulder, distractedly. "The spirits won't touch you, if you reject their presence. Tell yourself that they're not welcome. Repeat it in your head." With that, she stood up and began to walk down the hall. "I'll be back in a second."

Lew watched, as she disappeared around the corner. As her flashlight faded, it became dark, and impossibly still. Groaning, he rose to his feet, in spite of the dull ache in his tailbone. He looked around himself, his ears roving about his head. Slowly, he looked back into the padded cell. Spirits aren't welcome, here, he thought to himself. His heart pounded in his chest, as he reached into Cari's case and pulled out the tape recorder. Spirits aren't wel- "Fucking...!" The recorder hissed, as he turned it on. He barely managed to avoid throwing it to the ground, as he quickly turned the volume down. Spirits aren't welcome, here. Placing it on the bed, he reached for a trail-cam.

He looked out of the room. Something in the air seemed to change. He heard a slow, metallic creak, which caused his face to tighten in horror. The cell door was closing. As fast as he could manage, he barreled out of the room, checking the door back open with his shoulder. He wheeled around, trying to find whoever was here, with him, but he found nobody.

"Spirits aren't welcome, here," he muttered, his voice wavering. "Spirits aren't welcome, here. Spirits aren't welcome, here..." His hands trembled, as he knelt in front of the cell entrance. He could feel eyes on him. He could just feel it. He put his flashlight down, fumbled with the trail-cam. "Spirits aren't... spirits aren't welcome here..."

Suddenly, he felt a weight against his shoulder.

"Fuck!" He wheeled around, flailing his hands out in front of him as he collapsed to the floor and rolled onto his back. "Spirits aren't welcome here!" he screamed, holding his hands up with his fingers in the shape of a makeshift crucifix. "Get back!"

Cari recoiled a bit, staring down at the goat with a slowly raised eyebrow. "I didn't know you were religious."

Lew looked up at the coyote, then down at his fingers. He lowered them, bashfully. "Could you, like... warn a guy, you're coming?"

"Did I spook you?" Cari asked, grinning wolfishly as she did so.

"No." Lew replied, with a huff. "That's just how I greet people, when they come back from confronting the ghost of a dead psychiatrist."

Cari chuckled, holding her hand out to help Lew up. "We're good. I didn't confront anything, out there." With a grunt, she pulled the goat to his feet. "Followed the hallway out to the main office, but I didn't catch a glimpse of the doctor."

"Cari..." Lew looked over at the corner, warily. "...I swear, I saw him. I'm not.."

"It's all right," Cari said. "I believe you."

With a huff, Lew rolled back onto his knees, picking up the trail-cam where it fell onto the floor and setting it back up again. He worked in silence for a minute longer. Then, a thought occurred to him. "That... wouldn't have worked, would it?" He looked up at his boss. "The finger-cross thing."

Cari shrugged. "It would if you thought it would work."

Lew opened his mouth. Then, realizing he didn't know what to say to that, he went back to setting up the camera.

* * *

The hours passed by, without incident. The doorway in front of Room 46 was marked with a semi-circle of crystals, and more were placed inside. Cari stood outside the circle with a tiny weight on a string, muttering to herself. Despite that, nothing emerged. The trail-cam never once went off. Lew spent the early morning with the audio recorder plugged into his laptop, scrubbing through the timeline for every single volume spike. No dice. Everything he had picked up that wasn't moving air could easily be identified as his own footsteps, or Cari's voice, or that one time he nodded off and dropped his flashlight.

Lew sighed, as he unclipped his ear-buds from his ears and leaned back against the wall. "It's no good," he reported. "We didn't even get a peep, this time."

"Huh." Cari stretched her back, with a grunt, as the logistics of sitting on hard tile all night finally caught up with her. "That's weird. Not even a voice or two from some of the regular spirits? You know, all the voices from the people who came around here to be scared."

"No," Lew replied, still scrubbing through the audio as if he was going to find something, "but I thought we wouldn't find that, since we were calling something specific."

"I was calling something specific, yes, but..."

Lew and Cari exchanged glances. The goat's ear flitted, nervously, even as his expression hardened. "I wasn't scared, Cari."

Cari chuckled. "I didn't say anything, Lew."

The goat rolled his eyes. "Whatever. The point is, what does this mean? We couldn't pick The Orderly up on EVP, we couldn't see any orbs on the camera, and yet..."

"...and yet you saw him manifest," Cari finished. She shrugged. "It's definitely unusual. Usually ghost sightings come in degrees. You don't skip straight to the full bore manifestations without there also being subtler signs of spiritual activity. You remember when you were there for the last one..."

Lew felt his face get hot. "I've honestly been trying to forget the last one."

"Right, but... you remember. It was more than just the ghost himself. The whole room was lousy with psychic energy. You could see orbs with the naked eye. The whole vibe of that place was..." She made a series of gestures, that would only be illustrative to somebody who had experienced what she was talking about, first hand. "Your typical full manifestation looks and feels exactly like that. Never mind the fact that to make something like that happen, ghosts need all sorts of help from the people on this side of the Veil, which neither of us had set up."

"Right, right, the wine and the..." Lew blushed, again. "...and the lingerie."

"Yeah, you're getting it."

"So..." Lew ran his hands down either side of his face. "...again... what does any of this mean? If the ghost can't manifest, without leaving behind EVP, then..." Suddenly, the goat's expression deflated, became more serious. He looked back down at his laptop, where he opened up an internet browser.

"What's up?" Cari asked. "What've you got in your head, right now?"

"Dunno," Lew admitted. "I just think that I know far too little about our current problem."

"You're going to do some research?"

"I'm gonna do some research," Lew huffed, looking up at the coyote with a combination of mock-hostility and mock-pride. "I don't know thing one about channeling the spirit world, or reading tea leaves, but combing through the incredulous stories of a bunch of amateur ghost hunters and creepypasta authors? Fuck, Cari, I've been doing that kind of shit since I was twelve. And now I can do it as part of my job."

"Right on." Cari twisted her trunk, still trying to work a kink out of her back. "I'm gonna see if I can't track down the client, let them know where we're at."

Lew flinched, at that. "Uh, right... we've... got nothing for him, right? Does that mean we're going to take the half-fee and forget about this job?"

"Hell no," Cari said, with a laugh. "I'm absolutely down to keep looking, and judging by that look in your eye, you're just getting started. We're gonna catch this Orderly fellow. In fact..." She began to walk away, rolling one shoulder as she did so. "...something tells me it's gonna be easier than you or I think."

Lew had a dozen thoughts going through his head. Obviously, he was fired up about getting to the bottom of this ghost mystery. Obviously, he didn't understand (and therefore didn't trust) the last thing Cari said, before she turned the corner. Vaguely, he was aware of a mounting opinion that Cari wore pants that were too tight. Then, for just a brief second, he very much remembered that he had seen that coyote getting railed, just a few nights previously. He spent a few moments hating himself for bringing the memory up, feeling guilty, pretending the knot in his jeans didn't exist...

All of these thoughts, warring in his head, manifested together into a single sentence, spilling out of his mouth. "Fuck me, I'm tired."

* * *

Lew had not ever been a believer in the supernatural, until he went in to work for Cari. Or, perhaps, he was a believer, before then. There might also have been the period just before meeting Cari, where he was convinced that he was being haunted, but... the goat didn't like to think about that, for a different but similar reason to why he didn't like to think about his boss in a red teddy. It's a bit of a complicated mess, and Lew had neither the time, patience or inclination to interrogate it. The point, if we can circle back to it, is that Lew was never a big believer in ghosts and spirits and hauntings. He was, however, always a big fan of them. Growing up, he quickly learned all the places on the Internet, where people went to tell each other spooky ghost stories. Most of the authors on these would insist that they were totally true stories. Then again, he also insisted that his story was true, when he submitted his first and only haunting story when he was fourteen...

...which was a story he also didn't like to think about, for a different but still similar reason to reason he didn't like to think about the period where he thought he was being haunted. And the point where he first saw his friend/boss's vulva.

In any case, Lew was therefore not surprised to find that he knew exactly where the story about the Orderly first surfaced. The FCPR (Free Creepypasta Repository, for those of you not in this highly specific niche of Internet culture) was the birthplace of any number of classic urban legends. The Laughing Elephant, the Tilsbury Well, the multi-chapter epic of the revenant serial killer known only as "Rojo" (whose video game adaptation was in talks to be made into a movie, last Lew checked)... all of them either got their start on FCPR, or were shamelessly bootlegged from some blog somewhere to be posted on FCPR. Their website's landing page hadn't changed since Lew was a credulous kid. Seeing it in all it's janky glory brought a smile to his face.

Buried in threads of try-hard ghost stories, Rojo memes, circular arguments about the difference between ghosts and demons, and drama concerning some former moderator and his alleged creep crimes, he found the corner of the board carved out for The Orderly. It took quite a few minutes to find. Despite how Damon described the rising popularity of the urban legend, its thread on the largest urban legend board had, optimistically, about five people regularly talking on it. Realistically, it only really had one. The leader of the conversation, a user by the name of "dfinraines," was the kind of user who eagerly replied to every single thing said in a thread, positive or negative. He was also the kind of user who was doing their level best to pretend like they enjoyed having their pet creepypasta be criticized.

Lew's brow furrowed. Something was off, about the whole conversation. The same users came around to push the conversation forward. User "metalgod" had plenty of information about Parleyville, its history, and the people who worked there. They seemed to be eager to rush in and present their new findings, which came with such regularity, Lew had to wonder what this person did for a living. People like "DnkYntS" and "Azul96153149" swung by now and then to call everyone a bunch of nerds, or to make wildly inappropriate jokes about doctors sexually abusing their patients, before they'd be shouted at by someone else or given a "strict warning" by a moderator. Every page or so, an incredulous user by the name of "burrowfan" would show up, talking about how cool it would be to go to Parleyville and try and "summon" The Orderly. The response to that proposition varied from a desire to see The Orderly on camera, to a desire to see him punished for his alleged crimes, to comments so toxic, they were deleted by the time Lew got around to reading them.

The whole time, "dfinraines" was adamant. He insisted that he had seen this Orderly, that he chased him down the halls, at least once, and that he continued to lurk around Cell 46, waiting for an appointment with a patient that would never happen. Curious, the goat clicked on "dfnraines"'s profile, to try and get an idea of who's report he was reading.

dfnraines was not online, at the moment, though he had been just an hour previously. His biography was full of irrelevant tidbits. Apparently, his favorite color was black, he was a huge metalhead, he played bass in a garage band for a few years, his lifelong goal is to go on a date with Opal "Fucking" Raines... all things that seemed normal, but which were a far cry from his apparent current obsession with ghost hunting and amateur history research.

Lew sighed, resting his head against the wall and closing his eyes. "Should have expected this," he muttered to himself. "As if I was gonna find useful information on a creepypasta site."

When he opened his eyes again, he spotted Cari, coming back. A bundle of off-white cloth rested in one arm, as she walked; she waved with the other. "Yo! You find anything?"

"Not unless the ghost turns out to be Opal Raines," Lew replied, bitterly.

"Who?"

"Opal... you know, Opal Raines? She fronts that metal band, the one that sings about..." Lew made unhelpful, but slightly inappropriate gestures.

Cari's eyes widened, in recognition. "Oh! The girl who screams about pegging people."

"Yeah, that."

"I'm surprised you know about her."

Lew's face twisted in a combination of confusion and indignation. "What do you mean, you're surprised? I know music, okay? Shred Burrow's a bit too noisy for my tastes, but you can't hang out around metalheads without running into one of her stans, at some point."

"Right, right," Cari threw her hand off, patting the air in front of her in an effort to ward off Lew's criticism. "I'm not suggesting anything. Wouldn't even be a thing, if I was suggesting something."

Lew shook his head, determined to drop the subject. He nodded to the bundle in Cari's arm. "What's that, you've got there?"

"Oh, this?" Cari grinned, wholeheartedly. "This is part of my Plan B to try and find The Orderly."

Lew raised an eyebrow. "That's not... one of the lab coats, is it?"

"Nope, it's even better." Cari pointed her thumb behind her. "See, I was talking to Damon, just now. The tour guide? Anyway, he told me that he was combing through the archives, and he found some info that we might need."

Lew looked down at the laptop again, heading back to the main page of FCRP as Cari talked. It was then that he noticed the latest post. "metalgod" had apparently updated the Orderly thread.

"So, as you might imagine," Cari continued, "there aren't a lot of complaints on the books, when it comes to the doctors working at Parleyville. Obviously, right? These guys weren't running the kindest operation, and so a lot of bad behavior's liable to get swept under the rug. But, Damon looked, and apparently, there's one doctor who's behavior was so inappropriate, not even 19th century sanitarium operators could look the other way. And that doctor's name..."

"...was Jacob Sarcady?" Lew finished, looking up from his screen with a dire expression. "Specialist in the field of hysteria, believed to have impregnated one of his patients?"

"Yeah." Cari blinked. "How did you know that?"

Lew spun the laptop around on his knees, pulling the screen up towards the coyote's face, and said "Because the thread dedicated to The Orderly on the site I'm researching just got a fresh batch of information from its resident historian."

"Huh." Cari shrugged. "That's weird."

"Yeah... weird..." Lew turned the computer back towards him, scrubbing through the thread one more time to scan over the names of the post authors.

"Look, never mind all that," Cari said, with a dismissive wave of her hand. "You and I need to get our naps in and make preparations. I finally know how we're going to bring The Orderly to us."

"Yeah?" Lew didn't look up from the computer screen. "How's that?"

His screen was suddenly covered with white cloth. Flinching back, he stared at the fabric. It was an old straitjacket. Cari held it above him, dangling it down over his laptop.

She grinned, again. "We're gonna recreate the urban legend."

* * *

Lew kept his back to the outside hall, as Cari pulled the straitjacket over herself. He still couldn't quite wrap his head around why the coyote seemed so perfectly comfortable, getting naked with him around. The second she looked like she was beginning to undress, he took a keen interest in every square inch of wall in the exact opposite direction, and had been fidgeting nervously, ever since.

Eventually, there was a moment of silence. Cari chuckled. "You know I'm going to need your help securing this, right?"

Lew turned around. Then he took an immediate, blushing interest in the ceiling. "Fucking... did you strip down entirely, before you put that on?"

The jacket covered her upper body, and a small strip of cloth between her legs kept Lew from seeing anything he hadn't already seen before. Even so, it was still obvious, looking at her legs and hips, that it was only that one strip of cloth keeping Lew from seeing everything. Cari shrugged. "Yeah? Why wouldn't I?"

Lew sighed, before stepping into Cell 46. Awkwardly sidling past, he settled in behind Cari and reached out for the straps. Open at the back, Lew could see all the way down her spine, to her tail. The cleft of her cheeks was just visible, before the crotch strap came around to cover it. Lew froze, a moment.

"You good?" Cari asked.

"Yeah, just..." Lew scrambled to think of something to say, as he began to tighten the straps, closing up the jacket. "...I, um... think we should have something."

"What do you mean?"

"You know, like a... what's the word? A high-sign?"

Cari grunted, as Lew took one of her arms, feeding it through the loop on her stomach and crossing it over to her other hip. "I'm not going to be able to give you a signal, with my arms tied up."

"No, but not, like... I mean like a verbal high sign." Lew paused, before pulling the strap that would lock the coyote's arm in place. "Shouldn't we have a signal, in case you need to pull the plug?"

Cari's eyes glinted, as realization hit. "Lew, buddy..." She craned her head back, grinning wolfishly. "...are you suggesting we should have a safe word?"

Lew whined, in a combination of fatigue and embarrassment. "Come on, Car. I'm trying to be serious, here! This isn't a toy I'm tying you into. People died in these things."

Cari's expression fell, a bit, as she realized how serious the goat was being. "All right, all right," she said, softly. "You've got a point. You got any suggestions?"

"Suggestions?"

"For the safe word."

Lew's ears twitched, but his expression remained neutral. "Doesn't matter, so long as we can both agree on it. Um... could just go with the standard 'Red.'"

"Works for me."

Nodding, Lew finally proceeded to pull the strap on Cari's sleeve through the loop on her left hip, buckling it in place. He then repeated the process for her left arm, strapping it to her right side. "Is that too tight? Are you uncomfortable?"

"Dunno..." Cari wriggled a bit. "Feels like you could afford to pull them back a few more notches."

"I'm not gonna do that. The point's to get you into this thing, not to actually restrain you. Besides, too loose is safer than it being too tight..." He scratched his head. "...I think. I dunno. I've never had to medically restrain someone, before."

"You're a natural, Lew," Cari said. "If this ghost hunting job doesn't work out, I can always pass you a recommendation to go work as a dungeon monitor."

Lew took a moment to inspect the jacket, tugging on the sleeves and making sure everything was arranged properly. "I'm not going to dignify that with a response." He blinked, looking up at Cari with widened eyes. "Wait. You know people in that line of work?"

Cari grinned, but didn't answer. Instead, she motioned out to the hallway. "Can you go open my bag? I've got something in there for you to hold onto, while we do this."

Lew met her eyes, for a moment. Then he stepped outside, reaching down to open the duffle bag that Cari had brought in, from her car. Inside was a collection of items that Lew assumed all had to do with exorcism. Black pillar candles in glass jars, a stack of papers with sigils drawn on them, held together with clips, various bits of cloth and stone, adorned with pentacles.

Cari's voice filtered out from the cell. "You're looking for a black satin bag."

After a bit of fumbling around, Lew found the bag. Pulling the drawstring-held opening, he gingerly reached a hand inside. Inside was a plastic device, large enough to be held comfortably in the hand, with a trigger and a set of metal prongs on one end, the latter covered by a plastic sheath. "Car, this..." Lew leaned back, to look at the coyote through the door. "...this is just a taser."

"Stun gun, actually," Cari replied.

"Whatever. What am I supposed to do with this?"

"Hopefully?" Cari shrugged. "Nothing. It's mostly just in case."

"In case what?" Lew held the thing up, a shrug in about half his body as he showed it to her. "What am I supposed to do, tase the ghost if he gets too rowdy?"

Cari sat herself down on the bed, slowly and carefully since she could not use her hand to guide herself. "Look, trust me, Lew. I've got... a feeling. Hopefully it's just nerves or something, but... if something goes sideways, I figured you'd appreciate knowing what we have to work with."

Lew set his jaw, then nodded. "So, you want me to keep this to hand, or just know where it is?"

"Keep it in your pocket."

Lew didn't exactly understand, but he slipped the device into his back pocket, anyway. "I'll just set up in one of the nearby cells. Holler if you need me."

"You got it, doctor!"

With that, Lew opened the door to Cell 44. It was much the same as Cell 46, the same disconcerting combination of sterile and squalor that came with ancient, ill-maintained medical facilities. Closing the door most of the way, he found himself in almost complete darkness. Nothing but the faintest ribbon of light came in from the hall. The thought occurred to him that, had he been a patient here, he would not even have had a crack in the door to see by. Stuck in a pitch-black, tiny room, nothing but the creak of the floors when he moved, his arms bound... he took a deep breath. He was determined not to think himself into an anxiety attack. Not this time.

For what felt like an eternity, he stood there, and he waited. The only sound was the nearly inaudible whisper of Cari, chanting for spirits to come to her in the next room. It was faint, so much so that Lew struggled to hear it, over the sound of his own heartbeat. Then, something new made his heart seize. Footsteps. The whistle of an old, syncopated tune. The little crack in the door turned white, as something glided past. Someone. Lew wanted to get closer, to get a proper look at the figure, but he was rooted to the floor.

Once it passed, the footsteps stopped, the whistle died down. Lew held his breath. Then, he heard a voice, raspy and deep.

"Good evening, patient."

"Hello, Doctor," Cari's voice replied, sultry and chirpy.

"Why are you laying in bed like that?"

"Oh, Doctor..." A shuffle of cloth, the creak of ancient bed springs, a heavy, charged grunt. "I cannot sleep, Doctor. I have the most devilish itch, and this confounded shirt is making it so hard."

Lew rolled his eyes, even as he valiantly pretended like his face wasn't burning. Slowly, he shifted his weight forward. He didn't dare take another step, lest the rubber floor make noise and give him away. But, by moving ever so slightly, he could get the back of that white coat in the crack of the doorway. He could see the back of a head, but the features were flattened. He didn't see ears, or anything other than the vague suggestion of black fur. Below the coat, slacks and loafers, the kind of thing one might expect to see on an old professional.

Eventually, The Orderly spoke. "You're hysterical." He disappeared from the goat's view, as he stepped inside Cell 46. "Just relax, patient. We need to address your pent-up desires." There was a shuffle, a gasp from the coyote, and then Lew heard the Orderly say "Hold still. This will only take a few minutes."

Within moments, the air was filled with the sound of husky, breathy moans. Feeling his chance, Lew pulled his weight off of one foot, gingerly. The floor barely protested, as he shifted a quarter step forward. Slowly, painfully slowly, he pushed open the door, negotiating his hooves onto solid concrete while Cari's voice became louder and more shameless. Taking a deep breath, to steel himself, Lew craned his head to look inside of Cell 46.

Cari lay on the bed, on her knees, ass pointed upward and face down on the old cot. The Orderly had pulled aside the crotch strap on her straitjacket, revealing her now glistening vulva. The doctor's fingers moved, with practiced skill, raking along her folds in a repeating motion. Down by her clit, up her folds, then pulling away to return his fingers to her underside. From here, Lew had a much better look at the Orderly. Once again, he could not make out many details, in the darkness. The Orderly's features seemed to be flattened, smoothed out, as if something held them down. It did not look like the ghost that Lew had experienced previously. For one thing, the Orderly never changed. Lew could let his eyes wander to his boss's heaving, trembling body, and when he looked back, he still saw the same tall, imposing creature standing over her.

"You're not responding to the treatment," the Orderly claimed. "We'll have to move on to more serious techniques, patient." With that, he lowered his hand a bit and began to work his fingers inside of her.

"Fuck!" Cari whined, immediately followed by "Green! Blue! P-purp...nnngh!"

"What are you saying, patient?"

Lew narrowed his eyes, reaching into his back pocket for the stun gun, but stayed put.

"S-sorry, Doctor," Cari gasped. "I don't know why I... oh, fuck don't stop."

The Orderly redoubled his efforts, pumping his fingers in and out of Cari's snatch with a low growl. The front of his face bowed and buckled, with his quickening breath, and Lew could see from the knot forming in his pants that the Orderly was being anything but dispassionate in his ministrations. Lew tried to ignore the fact that he was also something less than a dispassionate observer, himself. Removing the cap from the stun gun, he kept his eyes open for what came next... only for his expression to tighten when he realized that what came next was penis-shaped.

Reaching down, the Orderly unzipped his slacks, pulling out a thin, but painfully erect cock. Cari moaned, when she saw it, only to have her head forced down when the Orderly put a hand on the back of her neck. "Don't get any ideas, patient," he warned. "This is for your own good."

"O-orange!" Cari called.

"Be quiet. Time to... nnngh...!" The Orderly started to say something authoritative, but it was evidently hard to keep that up when confronted with that first blissful kiss of wet coyote sex around one's member. After a sharp, ragged sigh, he continued. "Time to take your medicine, patient."

Gripping onto the coyote's hips, the Orderly began to fuck Cari in earnest. Almost without preamble, his hips were slapping into her with an audible force, shaking the bed and making soft creaking noises from the rubber floor below. Lew swallowed, nervously, as the room in front of him filled with heated pants, moans and vocalizations. He flexed the fingers on his free hand into a deliberate half-fist, determined to keep it away from the knot in his pants, which by now felt like it might as well have been glowing with suppressed desire. He tried to remind himself that he wasn't just perving on two people having sex for no reason. This was a dangerous situation, and... and... and Lew was seriously regretting not just finding a quiet spot to rub one out, before starting this "exorcism."

"You're... responding... well... patient," the Orderly panted, his voice clearly straining as his rutting reached a crescendo. "Time for... your medicine."

Cari mumbled something that sounded like a color. Lew wasn't sure what, at this point, but it didn't sound like "red."

For a few more seconds, the Orderly redoubled his efforts, brute-forcing himself over the edge before, at last, he drove himself deep into the coyote, groaning as his hips jerked and spasmed. Lew watched, wide-eyed, as their mingled sexual fluids began to drip out between them, glancing off of the bed frame to spatter onto the ground below. Cari, herself, let out a strangled noise of pleasure as she buried her snout into the mattress.

For a few moments, the Orderly panted, still deep in his patient. His voice was slightly higher, slightly smoother. Once the fog of orgasm finally subsided, however, he was back to sounding like he had, before. "You see what your hysteria has done, patient?" He pulled himself out of Cari, with a lewd pop. "You've made me spill my seed inside you." Cari began to chuckle. The Orderly leaned to one side, craning his head to look at her face. "Why are you laughing, patient?"

"Oh, Doctor," Cari replied, with a droll, almost sleepy inflection. "Nothing. I was just thinking about the fact that ghosts don't produce semen."

The Orderly sputtered, at that. His voice cracked, once again, becoming vaguely familiar. "What? That's... I... I don't know what you're babbling about, patient."

Rolling over, Cari pulled herself into a seated position on the bed, leaving a trail of cum as she did so. "Yellow!" she called. "Lew, dear, can you come untie me? My arm's starting to cramp up."

* * *

Lew hadn't exactly planned for it to shake out this way, but as it turned out, walking into a room with a stun gun in his hand had something of a civilizing effect on the Orderly. In fact, just figuring out that Lew had been watching was enough to get the Orderly to start tucking his penis back into his pants with all the dignity of a caught teenager. Of course, perhaps more than the threat of a skinny goat with a stun gun, Cari's quiet, almost predatory glare was what was keeping the man in place. Which was good, because Lew eventually needed his hands free to work on undoing the coyote's restraints.

"How about you take off that mask?" Cari asked. "As fun as that was, I'd prefer to look you in the eye."

Lew finally was able to get a good look at the Orderly's face. It had been smoothed down because he was wearing a mask of black pantyhose, that obscured his features. Hesitantly, he reached down at his neck and pulled the thing off. Lew's eyes narrowed. "D f'in Raines, I take it?"

Damon seemed immediately less intimidating, with his disguise half on. Without the mystique of the Orderly, he just looked like an ordinary rabbit in a yellowed old lab coat, with pantyhose on his head. He scratched the back of his head. "You, uh... you know about that, huh?"

"I used to be a gold member on FCPR. The first thing you learn is how to spot sock-puppets." Cari grunted, as Lew managed to get her first arm free. He continued talking as he worried at the second strap. "It didn't help that you chose basically the same name for most of your accounts. They're all related to Shred Burrow. And considering we first met you wearing one of their T-shirts..."

Cari chuckled. "Wow. This is just like that part in the whodunit where we all explain how the bad guy did it."

Damon flinched. "Bad guy? I'm not..."

Lew undid the second strap. He could have also undone the ones along Cari's spine, but seeing as how that would just have exposed her... he thought better of it. "Yeah," he muttered, "it's not really that. Pretty sure I've never read a detective story that ended like this."

Cari was undeterred. Putting her newly freed hands to her chest, she assumed the role of the hapless passerby. "But, Detective Lew, why ever would our good friend Damon do such a thing?"

Lew looked from Cari, to Damon, back to Cari. "We... we could just ask him, you know. He's right there."

"Uh..." Damon shuffled, nervously. "Look, guys, this kind of got away from me. Doing the tours around here's been fun, but... you know, it gets a bit samey after a few years. So, I thought I'd... you know..."

"Wear pantyhose on your head and pretend to be a doctor?" Cari said, in an attempt to finish Damon's sentence.

"Sexually assault women while they're tied up?" Lew added.

"Hey, now," Cari interjected. "It's not assault. I was totally on board with what he was doing."

"Yeah, but did he know that?"

"Woah, woah, woah, hey!" Damon threw his hands up, as if trying to ward off the accusation. "Let's not throw around words like 'assault,' here, okay? Your boss came up to me and straight up told me she was going to summon the Orderly. She said she hoped the rumors were true, because it sounded kind of hot."

Lew opened his mouth, but paused. Stymied, he scratched the bridge of his nose and looked at the back of Cari's head. "She did, did she?"

"Yeah!" Damon insisted. Lew may or may not have believed him, but he definitely believed the smug, post-coital energy coming from his boss. Even so, the rabbit continued to protest. "And, like... she didn't tell me you guys were in on the plan, just that she wanted to grab a straitjacket, so, like... how else was I supposed to keep the story going? If you guys go around telling everyone that nothing happened, then the urban legend would've died out."

"Right, so..." Lew pinched the bridge of his nose, in frustration. "Can we talk about that, actually? This plan of yours... how exactly did you see this playing out?"

Damon flinched. "W-what do you mean?"

Lew leaned forward, met Cari's gaze. She just shrugged, as if giving the floor to him. Sighing, the goat continued. "Like... best case scenario, right? Everyone believes you. Now everyone thinks there's a haunted doctor floating around Parleyville, and that he only shows up if you put on a straitjacket and say his name in Cell 46. Do I got all that right?"

"That was the plan, yes."

"So it's, like, a Bloody Mary situation. The plan is to get people to dare their friends or whatever to put on a straitjacket and be scared in a dark room?"

"Yeah. What?"

"And what they're specifically afraid of is a spooky doctor that will try to have sex with them?"

"...Yes?" Damon's voice broke, as the implications slowly started to sink in.

Lew pressed on, regardless. "So, you don't see any sort of potential bad circumstances arriving from, say, people using the urban legend as an excuse to do bad things to their friends while they're tied up and helpless? Like, you are aware the main demographic for Bloody Mary style ghost hunting is, like, kids, right? Dumb teenagers? That's the kind of person who usually thinks they can summon a ghost by chanting their name."

Damon leaned against the far wall, taking a deep breath, which he exhaled through his nose. "When you put it like that," he responded, slowly, "it's possible I didn't think this plan through, very well."

"No, you didn't," Cari chimed in. "Luckily for you, this ghost hunting outfit happens to have a professional dungeon monitor on hand."

Lew winced, ear twitching in agitation. "Cari, I swear to God..."

"Hey, uh... so what happens now?" Damon scratched at his arm, nervously. "You're, uh... probably gonna call the cops, now, aren't you?"

"Cops?" Cari put her chin on her fist, still wrapped in the overlong sleeve of the straitjacket. "Lew, I don't know what he's talking about, calling the cops." Lew's expression was about as confused as Damon's, so Cari continued. "I mean, it seems to me that all that's happened here tonight is that we've demonstrated a critical flaw in Damon's plan to re-energize the asylum's tourist trade. And, while that happened, we all got to participate in fun, consensual bondage afterwards. I mean, if anything's illegal about that, it would be trespassing, but Damon here works at Parleyville, and so we're good." Smirking, she looked Damon in the eye. "Isn't that right?"

"Uh... yes?" Damon seemed hesitant. Even from this distance, Lew could all but see the rabbit's heart pounding in his chest, but as he slowly began to realize he wasn't about to be on the six o'clock news, sinking dread gave way to a sort of optimistic relief. "Yeah... yeah, sure. That's exactly what happened."

"Good, good!" Cari's smile deepened. She made it a point to show canines. "I mean, there's also the part where you came in me, but hey. If I wind up getting pregnant, I'm sure you'll be happy to take responsibility, right?"

As slowly as the relief settled in, it was quickly replaced with a different, but no less compelling terror. Making some barely audible excuse about needing to get back to work, he shuffled out of the room and down the hall with an expression like he had just seen a ghost.

When he was gone, Lew turned to face Cari. "Okay, so... are you all right?"

"What?" Cari made a dismissive gesture. "I'm fine. That whole pregnancy thing was a bluff; I'm on anti-heats."

"No, that's... that's not what I mean. I mean..." Lew made a series of sweeping gestures, around Cari's straitjacket. "...all of this. That was pretty touch and go there, for a second. I mean, it turns out he was just a dude, but... that could have gone south in any number of ways."

Cari shrugged. "I'm fine. Damon might have been a bit... specific, but he treated me better than some ghosts I've had the pleasure of exorcising. Besides, I had you watching out for me, in case things did turn out to be less than ideal."

"So... you knew?" Lew held up the stun gun. "That's why you gave me this, right? Because you knew our 'ghost' could actually be affected by it."

"Yeah. I mean, what can I say?" Cari laughed. "If it actually was a ghost, I could turn it away by reminding it that it wasn't welcome. For some reason, that trick doesn't really work on flesh-and-blood men, to the same extent."

Lew sighed, putting the device down on the bed, next to the coyote. "I think you overestimated how helpful I would have been, if he actually turned out to be violent."

The coyote stared into Lew's eyes, thoughtfully, then shook her head. "No. I think you would have been just fine."

"Really." It wasn't a question, that came out of Lew's mouth, as he put his fists on his skinny hips.

Cari nodded. "Yup. You're basically the best dungeon monitor I've seen, in a hot minute."

"Stop," Lew protested.

"Hell, you might even be dom material, if you're into that kind of thing."

"Fuck's sake, Cari..."

"You're even doing the aftercare thing, checking in to see if I'm doing all right. You have to have done this before."

"Will you...?" Lew threw his hands up, balled them into fists, and sighed, turning away. "Just... get yourself dressed, and let's get out of here."

"I can't," Cari said, flatly.

"Why? Have you gotten a taste for the straitjacket life? Wanna see about working early 20th century linen into your ensemble?"

"I can't reach the buckles on the back of this thing, especially with my fingers stuck in the sleeves." Lew turned around, at that. Cari smiled and continued. "Looks like I'm gonna need your help."

Slowly, the goat let out a pained groan. "Fine, whatever. Hold still." As he walked around her body, he could see her open her mouth to speak. He cut her off. "If you say 'yes, sir,' or 'yes, daddy,' I swear to God, I'm gonna leave you in this thing."

Cari pouted, turning around to give Lew access to the straps on her back. "Spoilsport."