FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Leena was starting her day much like any other Tuesday. She made the bed and rolled the trash to the curb. But while checking her mailbox, she found something unexpected. Along with her usual mail, there was a small white box. Looking at the box, she noticed the "Priority Overnight" label in large, bolded letters. She paid little attention to the other letters while walking back to her house, instead focusing on the box. Walking into the kitchen, she set the mail on the counter but held onto the box.

A slight shake gave the feeling and sound of something loose within. She grabbed a knife from the block and cut the top of the box open, revealing a moderately large pendant and a note. She left the pendant and instead focused on the note.

“To the recipient,

This necklace has been with me for quite a long time, and I am unable to provide it with the care it requires. I wish to pass it on to a new owner. I hope this gift finds its way to you quickly. I will send you a letter tomorrow with more information.

Thank you,

The Giver"

Leena was confused by the note, and looking past it into the box, she could see the necklace it mentioned. Upon removing it, she held a large three-inch round pendant on a thin gold necklace. The charm itself was not exactly attractive looking. It featured a circle with some raccoon/cat-looking creature in the middle and pointy thorns around the outside. She held the pendant by the chain and scoffed at its absurdity.

"Who would wear such an ugly thing?" she laughed as she went to set the pendant down. But on second thought, she figured her friend Casey would get a kick out of it. Leena unclipped the chain and brought it around her neck. A flash of black and white filled her vision as the clasp closed. Although it was only for a moment, she was slightly frightened, causing her to let go of the chain and leave the pendant hanging around her neck.

"That was weird," she said as she touched the ugly piece of jewelry. After a quick photo on her phone, she sent the image to her friend and awaited the response. She removed the pendant and laid it on her counter, not thinking anymore of it.

She left for work shortly after that and the day passed by normally, with one notable exception: She found herself oddly uncomfortable. Her skin itched, but beyond her legs looking like they desperately needed a shave, she couldn't find a cause. Unable to concentrate on anything with this discomfort, she clocked out early and went home.

While at home, she kept noticing the hair on her legs, but she didn't feel like going through the effort of shaving. She went to bed early, hoping to sleep the feelings away, but after a few hours, it was becoming unbearable. When she finally uncovered herself, she found gray fur covering her legs and arms. She screamed and jumped from the bed, as if reacting on instinct. She pulled at the fur, but her skin tented with it.

"What the hell is going on?!" she shouted, scared.

Running to the bathroom, she looked at herself in the mirror. She watched as the fur slowly crept across her face. The fur growing around her eyes was black; by the time it grew in, her eyes began to shift to orange. As she stared in utter shock, she felt a pressure in the back of her pants, starting small at first but quickly becoming painful. She grabbed her pants and tugged them down. A long tail with black and white bars covering it popped free from just above her butt. She felt like she had seen a tail like this before, but her thoughts were going too fast to concentrate on where. She watched in horror when her ears moved further up the side of her head.

It suddenly clicked, the pendant, the animal on the charm! She ran to the counter, although now it was more of a hopping run, and picked up the pendant. Her clothes were becoming baggier as her legs began to change. She felt her pants fall to the floor, and glancing down, she found her legs had shifted to be more animal-like. Between her furred legs was a black growth that hung in the air. Leena wanted to cry as the changes continued. She couldn't see it, but could feel her nose changing and pushing outward with her mouth. She held the chain in her hands, bringing her clenched fists up to her ears, shaking in fear and anger. Her hands changed, and her grip on the chain loosened until it fell from her grasp.

The chain fell around her now smaller head, landing on her neck while the pendant was still on the ground. She let out a scream that sounded unlike her own, but the sound shifted to more of a human cry. Upon noticing this, she looked at her hands as they slowly shifted back to her human hands. The tail began to shrink, and the fur receded. Her height returned, and within minutes, all signs of the change into the creature were gone.

She held the awkwardly-sized and heavy charm in her hands and saw the creature was glowing, but the brightness was decreasing. She fell to the floor and leaned into the corner, waiting there for the rest of the night, afraid of what she had just experienced.

Once the sun rose, she was having trouble staying awake, but she saw the mail truck dropping letters in her box from her spot on the floor. She quickly got up, threw her clothes back on, and then ran out to the mailbox. Inside, she found a letter addressed in the same scribbling as the other note. Before she was in the house, she was already tearing the envelope open. Inside was a longer message from the same sender.

"Recipient,

As I'm sure you already know, there is magic within the pendant I sent you. A spell may not be the best word for it, but a curse it sure is. I came across the object years ago during my search in the graves of other countries. Yes, grave robbing is an unforgivable act, but it was what I had to do to survive, just as I have done now.

My research seems to point to this charm being connected to the wearer's self. Upon donning the jewelry, I became a beast whenever I removed it. Out of my curiosity, I tried to withhold the pendant from my neck to discover what the beast was. I found it seemingly a lemur, ring-tailed, to be exact.

If my studies into the object are correct, the effect can not be destroyed but only moved to a new host. Unfortunately, this is where you are involved. After carrying this burden for too long, I had to find a way to free myself. So I sent it to a randomly selected address, which happened to be yours.

I did not want to do this, but I can no longer carry this burden. I am old and weak, but most of all, I am a coward for tricking you in this way. But this is now your burden to carry, and until the day you pass the charm, heed my warning.

In a single moon cycle, never be far from the charm for more than 48 hours collectively. What happens after that time, I do not know.

My apologies,

Charles, the Giver"

Leena felt like she had been taken for a fool. Some old grave robber tricked her into turning into a lemur should she remove the obscenely large necklace. His only advice was to pass the trick on to someone else. She held the pendant and stared at the cursed object. She had to sleep now, but how would she do this with such a large, uncomfortable object around her neck?

She laid in bed and tried to sleep with the pendant on. The pointed edges stabbed at her chest and kept her awake. Finally, she grabbed the chain and removed it from her head, placing it on the side table.

"This is all a sick dream," she thought, immediately falling asleep from the exhaustion.

Upon waking, she found herself under the blankets. She reached and scrambled to get out from under the sheets and saw her hands, which now resembled miniature furred versions of themselves. Looking up, the ceiling felt like it was twice as high. Panicked, she looked around the rest of her body only to find she was entirely a lemur once again. She rolled from the bed and landed on the floor with a hard thud. Pain shot up her legs when she landed. Looking down, she saw the same black growth as before. Scared of what it may be, she sat up on her haunches, sitting in an oddly comfortable position, and poked at the growth. Nothing seemed to happen at first, but quickly, something new emerged, and she leaped into the air, jumping much higher than she could ever have dreamed of.

Upon landing on the bed, she grabbed the pendant with her tiny hands and quickly wrapped the chain around her neck. Once it was in contact with her skin, the changes rapidly disappeared, leaving her naked on her blankets. This would be quite the issue, and she had no idea how she would live like this.

At first, it was more difficult than she could ever imagine. But eventually, she fell into a rhythm of working around the necklace. The worst part of the physical necklace was its size, comfort, and general ugliness. Working in sales, she had difficulty explaining why she refused to remove the charm to her clients and bosses.

Occasionally, around once a month, she would sleep one night without the necklace. This allowed her one night of good rest per month, keeping her able to change back during the one-moon cycle. Although, there was one side effect of the change only happening occasionally and her being unused to the anatomy. Sometimes, she would excite herself in her sleep. At first, she felt like a disgusting teen, but eventually, it just became part of the routine, forcing her to clean the sheets more often.

When she tried to go on dates, the necklace was the one thing that caused her problems every time. The uncanny look of the thorns covering the edges and her refusal to remove it made some men uncomfortable. This was eventually the final straw, and after three years of wearing the necklace almost every waking moment, she wanted nothing more than to hand it off to another person. However, she was left with a dilemma. If she tricked someone else into wearing the charm, she would just be perpetuating the cycle the same as the man before her did. But, the necklace was not her choice and it had been ruining any chance of a normal life for her.

So one night, she used an online tool to pick a random address, and once she verified the address was for a home, she made sure the woman there was younger. The younger the recipient, the more likely they would wear the charm. She couldn't help but feel guilty when she thought of tricking someone into carrying the curse, but she threw the thoughts aside as she printed the overnight label. It would arrive on the sixth, and she would remove the charm on the fifth. She wrote a letter similar to the second one she had received and gave it a stamp.

While sitting outside the post office the next day, she removed the necklace and placed it in the small brown box. She could feel the fur slowly coming on, so she had to act quickly. After dropping the box off, she drove home and crawled into bed. She tried to sleep as the changes took over her body. In her dreams, she was happy. She would be free of the curse and be able to live a normal life again. Upon waking up, she realized she had gotten a little too excited and would need to change her bedding again. This time it would be the last.

She pulled out her phone to ensure the package was delivered, but her heart sank when she checked the status.

"Package unable to be delivered. The recipient is no longer at the property. Return to sender, delivery estimate: July 7th."

She sent the package on the fifth, having removed it that day. This meant the necklace might not arrive in time for her to put it back on! The letter from all those years before had to have been wrong. She could hold out that long, then the package would arrive, and she could... but then she remembered... she used a fake sender's address so it wouldn't be traced back to her. She could just run to the address and grab the package in the morning. She tried to relax, but the thought of spending so much time as the Lemur scared her. She would be riding the limit of how long she could be like this.

The next day, she wasn't any more ready. She had used an address six streets over. She waited all day for the package to show up on the tracking. Every minute she felt her concentration slipping. She was losing track of what she was doing. Finally, with only half an hour to go until the forty-eight-hour mark, the tracker showed the location. She frantically ran from the house towards the delivery point, using her tail to balance as she jumped from tree to tree and down onto the fences. She had only minutes to go before her time expired. She sped up, trying to remember which house she was looking for. Then she saw it, the mailman carrying the brown box, and she sprinted towards them. The man at the house looked confused and shook his head at the mailman. The mailman then took the package back to the truck. Leena was only two hundred feet away when the truck pulled away.

Leena climbed the tree next to the truck and jumped from branch to branch between trees until she was above the truck. She jumped and landed hard on its roof. The truck came to a screeching halt, and before she could think to climb inside and reclaim the necklace, she saw the flashes. She grabbed at her head as she felt herself slip away. She was too late, she took too long, and the forty-eight hours had passed. The lemur looked around before hopping from the truck and back into the trees. The mailman got out and inspected the roof of his truck and was confused by the lack of evidence. He climbed back in and drove away.

The box with the necklace was lost to the mail system. No one claimed the box, and the postal service sent it off to be disposed of. Unfortunately, this wasn't the end of the cursed charm as the box was auctioned off on a pallet of other unclaimed mail at a charity fundraiser. The package was then sold to a man at a flea market, who bought it hoping to find something valuable. Once the box was opened, he gave the garish pendant to his wife as a gag gift. As soon as she put on the oversized necklace she was met with a quick flash of black and white light.

Its new host scrambled to remove it from her neck.