Call Me Wray
I'm going to tell you a story of my life. Truthfully, I don't think you'll enjoy it.
I'm reluctant to use the word 'you' for the primary reason that this may never reach you. From this wretched place where I write, there is a great possibility that these words might never see another's eyes. But I'll continue, regardless, because I still have a slim hope that my plans will pan out.
If you do read this and come to know my story, please do for me but one favor. Learn from my misfortune, and endeavor to steer clear form a fate like it. It has been one of my greatest and saddest torments that a love should so turn into a punishment of imprisonment.
My name is-- I won't tell you my name. Neither you, nor anyone else who I bear my soul to has any use for it. Instead, I will insist on another.
Call me Wray.
Before all this, I was as close to a normal teenage boy as I could have been. I had attended Canyon High School, lived in the Santa Clarita Valley, and enjoyed the Southern California sun. I was 16 years old and a collage bound junior with all manners of extra curriculars and honors classes, but that was a little less than year ago; I would have been graduating this month.
I could tell you why I stopped going to school in the middle spring semester; I could make it a brief and simple matter. But I believe that if I do, you won't understand the full magnitude of my scope. Instead, I'll use what I little know of language, writing, and narration to stretch this out and make it somewhat entertaining, and I use the word 'entertaining' lightly, because such a word usually implies enjoyment. So I suppose, If I'm going to tell this story, it starts a bit earlier than that, in the summer of 2007.
That was the summer I discovered the fandom, the furry fandom as it's called. I'll be blunt and answer the question of the setting of this story: Unlike the few stories I've written, and the dozens more that I've dreamed, in my world the only place one can find a fur is in the imagination. I live in the real world, with mortgages and taxes, just like you, Mr. Reader, where animals don't talk, wear cloths, or stand upright (usually). I'm not a fox, or a dog, or a cat. I don't purr, murr, or mewl. This writing is not fiction.
In the beginning of that summer I saw a particular episode of "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation", a television crime drama which has since gained much popularity. I'm not sure if it was a re-run or not, but I do know it was the fifth episode of season 4, entitled Fur and Loathing (catchy, if I may say so). It showed a pair of the main characters investigating a murder at a convention of some sort; Pafcon it was called, if I remember correctly. People were dressed in fanciful animal costumes, acted very oddly, and at one point were sexually engaged while still in these costumes. It painted quite a picture. Later, I found the truth that this episode was a very one sided portrayal of the fandom, but regardless, I was intrigued.
With a few keywords (yiff, furry, and plushie being foremost among them) I set out and hit the Internet search engines. So much all at once; that's what I believe the problem with the internet is. Pictures, stories, online stores. I viewed it, yes, but half-heartedly. I was searching, I believe, for a nurturing atmosphere. After sifting through the common dead-end links, and navigating through other more useful ones, I stumbled across one website that thoroughly caught my eye.
That website was an art archive, completely dedicated to the furry fandom.
It was an absolute hit. I spent vast amounts of time on Yiffstar.com, skipping meals and staying up late. Now I confess; being underage, I was on the site illegally, but rightly, I didn't care. I thumbed through the website, consuming all that I could find. I read the most beautiful stories and gazed upon some very ravishing (and some rather raunchy) pictures. From these I gathered inspiration and understanding of the furry world.
I also saw that Yiffstar was host to a forum. There were a number of different boards. There were some for role-playing, some for personal ads, and one board entitled F.A.P. (I still have yet to understand the acronym, but it brings about certain connotations nonetheless). From these I learned what it meant to be a furry and sampled the Fursonalities of others (Sorry, bad pun).
But Yiffstar wasn't the only source of furry knowledge I drew from. I learned of those who opposed the fandom. Phrases like 'Yiff in Hell!' and 'Furfag' were tossed about in clever animated images. Accusations of wishing to fuck horses and dogs came all too often. One night, that same episode of CSI was playing again, and I was watching it with my father and brother also in the room. Near the end, as one character said a line degrading furs, I heard my father say something. In retrospect, I can't say that I wish I hadn't heard it, nor can I say that I am glad I did. But I do know that it was mind-opening, life-changing, a full Technicolor catharsis.
"Fucking weirdos." His tone was indifferent.
"Yup." My brother answered. I hadn't told anyone of myself and so they didn't know.
When I heard my own dad say that, those two words were more that just an insult, they became a means to identify with. At that moment I knew it was official; I was a closet fur. A fucking weirdo? Sure, if the shoe fits.
As it does so slowly now, time passed. The summer ended and the school year began, all the while I immersed myself in the fandom. I created a 'fursona', I wrote stories (a few of which I dared to submit to Yiffstar), but most ardently, I dreamed.
I fantasized of the worlds in the stories I read; I was aboard the Solstice*, met Mike Wyrvn*. I imagined furs from the drawings I had seen, and I dreamed, oh, how I dreamed! They were dreams of any and every topic, all filled with furs. Feline, equine, vulpine, canine; just so many of them, so vast and so different. I dreamed of talking with them, playing with them, being one of them. I felt I'd be sick dwelling so long on these thoughts. If that were truth, then a sweet sickness it would be, I had thought.
It was nearing the end of August when this relatively happy story began to unfurl into a horror. It was coming up on my birthday, September 3rd, which this year, fell on Labor Day. A week before, I had a friend over. There was no special reason, we were bored and had nothing to do.
His name was Shawn.
In the weeks before that, my friends, Shawn included, found that I had another profile on my computer. It had no name, only a small icon of a black paw print on a white background. I'm sure that they would have left the matter alone, if not for the password that I had protected it with. Presented with a challenge, the guys set out to resolve the mystery of what was on my other profile.
Being guys, they guessed it was my porno stash (as all men are bound to have). I said it was, though they were only partially right. Truthfully, in this profile was held my furry life. All that I accumulated, all that I created was there. My favorite pictures (clean and otherwise), stories I had written, even an amazingly detailed description of my fursona were all hidden away in a folder entitled "him".
The title was a reference to my alternate mind, my furry mind; for I felt that within the fandom I had a different life. The password to this part of the computer was hinted at by a key phrase which was supposed to remind the user if ever they forgot. Thinking back, I can't think why I would ever need such a thing; I'd never forget it.
Your other name.
I watched as my friends vainly typed away at the keyboard, egged on by the aspect of a clue, just like Scooby-Doo and the gang. I was confident that they would never find it and just laughed at their odd guesses. First they tried my last name, then my middle. They typed a nickname I had picked up in elementary school, and a handle that I used over instant messengers and in chat rooms. Soon they ran out of probable guesses, and in a joking tone, they vowed to eventually get in there. I answered with a sarcastic "Yeah, sure!"
A week before my birthday, Tuesday, August the 28th I place the date, Shawn got in. I'm not sure how, but he did. I remember it vividly. He was over that Tuesday and I left him at my computer to go throw out the trash. I figure that was when he did it. He couldn't have known the password outright, but instead found a backdoor to the other account. He would have found the only folder sitting on the desktop, with its curious title. He'll have opened it and saw it all.
The rest of that week I was missing a USB flash drive. Being a student, usually recluse in my messy room, I attributed its absence to my disorganization. It turned up Saturday afternoon, when my friends had come up to hang out, Shawn amongst them. Around six they left, and said they'd swing by Monday and we'd do something for my birthday; no school left me the whole day to celebrate.
The flash drive appeared where it should have been that whole week, hanging from small peg I had attached to my computer desk. It didn't make sense, none at all. I looked there. I know I looked there. It would have been the first place I looked. Driven by shear curiosity, I plugged it in to my computer and loaded it on screen.
It should have been empty; I don't usually leave any files in there. It should have been empty; he ought to have known to empty it. It should have been empty; I do wish he had emptied it.
But, there were three files in it.
One was a picture. A vixen was set in a moonlit field, completely naked. She was traditionally colored except for a white paw print on her left shoulder. The vixen was facing sideways, but turned to look out the picture. Through her hair you could see the gold in her eye, which stared in a very provocative manner. It wasn't a picture I commonly pawed off to (as the saying goes), but I liked it. The pose was alluring but elegant, the expression on her face gave her a story, a life; I named the file simply Vixen*.
The second was the first story I had written. Naively I had used true-to-life situations and the real names of my classmates (What else does a moody teenager write about?). It was utterly revealing, spelling out opinions of people I dared not speak and confessing secret loves and secret lusts. I had written Campus Life at the top.
The third was the description of my fursona. If I was tortured with the worst imaginable methods and forced to explain every aspect of my furry life, this would be the single piece of information that I would die defending. It was my species, it was my date of birth, and it was my hometown. It was a depiction of my appearance, a description of my character and a summary of my history. It was me, but a completely different me. It was the fabricated Wray.
These files were from the protected part of my computer, and only my friends had motive to venture in that part. It must have been Shawn, he was the only person I had left alone with my computer, not to mention the flash drive disappearing and reappearing with him. I had to assume that he had done it, that he had read it, that he had compromised me.
While I sit here and write, I am absolutely dejected. I can physically feel myself churn, knowing that someone had read this part of my life- literally like an open book. As of now, those feelings still stir within me. The anger; that was what first hit me. I could have mangled his firstborn son and still have the want for vengeance. I might have pummeled him if he were still within reach. But the shame, Oh! If anger was first to hit me, then shame was the one to finish me off. My most vulnerable parts were in the open, like a mouse in a small box; I could not but fear that he would share the discovery of me, the PETA-fanatic, the dog fucker, the fug fag.
That night I was enraged and drowning in self-reproach, but disturbingly, I didn't do anything about it. I didn't scream into my pillow, nor punch holes into the walls. I didn't take any real action at all. Such was my nature all through out life, passive, enduring. Instead I wallowed in thought (I do that a lot now and I don't think it's very healthy).
What will they think of me? Am I just a guy with an odd fetish? Or am I fucking weirdo? In high school, you're not allowed to have fetishes, you're not allowed to be different. You must enjoy everything and disgust everything the same, and that includes sex. But, doesn't this go beyond just sex? This is a lifestyle that they've found, an alien lifestyle. Shall I be cast out, and left with nothing but my tainted fantasies?
I can't say how long that went on. Fear poured in, then self-pity, then more anger. I went to my furry account, and logged on. Reflexively I opened the start menu and clicked on the 'Recent Items' tab; he hadn't cleared that either.
Why didn't he clear it? Why didn't he empty the flash drive? And why couldn't he have returned it more discretely? Why! WHY! Why couldn't he have more cunning to hide the knowledge he had of me. Yes, he still would have known, but at least I wouldn't have to face that my secret was let out! Now, I know I would have preferred eternal ignorance to that treachery.
Down the record were more that just those three files. Other stories I had written and a number of other, more lewd pictures were listed. These weren't files I had accessed myself recently, so it fell to Shawn. At seeing all the other offenses to my privacy, I didn't react too violently; the word 'jaded' doesn't seem intense enough to describe it, but it does come close.
Well, I had thought that I was. Near the very bottom was a text file. It wasn't made in Word, but rather in Notepad, so I knew that I hadn't typed it. It wasn't titled (the default was 'Untitled') and it said that this file was saved in My Documents. I navigated to My Documents, not there. I opened up a search window, nothing found. What was it? What was written in that file? I noticed, though, that in the search guidelines there was an option to search for hidden objects; files and folders that did exist, but where invisible if you didn't know the exact location address. I checked the box and searched again.
There was one hit. It was located in My Documents with the name 'Untitled.' In parentheses was the word "Hidden." I opened it and what I saw made my vision wobble with disbelief. Centered and underlined in a bold, italicized, font were two words.
FUCKING FREAK
...
It's taken me a long while to continue writing. Every time I try to recall what I felt after seeing those words, written by a "friend" who hid them like a coward, I drop my pen and stare off. It's like writer's block, except this is more like a choke collar, with similar effects. I'll skip trying to tell you how I felt and what I thought for fear of freezing up again, but instead I ask that you try to imagine yourself-- No, don't. I wouldn't wish my present situation on anyone, hypothetical or not. But, I believe I'm rambling so I'll stop...
That night I may have cracked or lost my mind, but most likely I just collapsed under all that had happened. I turned off the computer, and turned the monitor away from the rest of the room. Without undressing or taking a shower I went to bed.
I think the saying 'Big boys don't cry,' is just something parents say to keep their children quiet. I cried, and I believe it was because I was a big boy, because I could understand the horror of a public secret. I'm not one to sob, nor blubber out loud. That night I laid on the sheets as tears silently rolled off my face.
I was not graced by dreams of any sort, and I admit I'm grateful. Sleep, however, was not easy to come by. I woke again in the early hours, about three or four. I tossed and turned restlessly, and tried vainly to purge all thought from my head. I kept getting brief flashes of sleep. Maybe ten, fifteen minutes I'd get, but then I would startle awake for no reason.
I woke again about seven Sunday morning, too weary to try to sleep again. Depression; I've always wondered, even now, how an emotion could become a medical condition. If a doctor or psychiatrist had observed me that morning I suppose that would have been the diagnosis. I stayed in bed till after noon, feigning sleep as parents popped their heads in to check on me. Eventually they called me out of bed, urging that I had to eat something and that sleeping all day was wasteful.
I walked to the kitchen; it was empty and perfectly quiet. On the counter sat a plate of hamburger patties someone had grilled. I decided to make myself one and went to the refrigerator. The motions came slow and robotic and I felt detached. After making a burger and setting down at the table, I realized I wasn't hungry, or at least I didn't feel like eating. Still, I lifted it to take a bite; just going through the motions.
At that moment my brother walked by the hallways. He was the heavyset sort, weighing as much as I did while being two years younger and five inches shorter. At times he could be annoying, but usually we just kept out of each other's way. I turned my head reflexively at his presence.
With his chubby face, that mischievous smile was bothersome. I looked back down to my burger without anymore notice. He stayed within view.
"Hey" he stretched the 'A' sound just so slightly, like a snake would its S.
Again I looked to him, again that smile. It was wily and two-faced. I stared at him blankly without answering, and after a short time went back to the burger. Something about his expression hurt; I just couldn't meet his eyes anymore.
He started to turn slowly and kept his eyes fixed to me as if waiting for something amusing or incriminating. "Well, I guess I'll see you later...Wray."
My head snapped toward him but he had turned his head, started to walk away.
Ignoring the burger, I flew from the chair. My footsteps fell hard across the linoleum floor until I caught up with my brother. I spun him around and pushed him against the wall.
My teeth were clenched so hard it hurt, my fingers closed around his tee-shirt stretching and wrinkling it.
"What did you say! What did you CALL ME!" It wasn't a question. I knew what he said, I knew what he called me. Wray. Wray. For so long I loved the sound of the name, now it haunted me with the thought of a dead secret.
"Get the hell off me," He said and shook loose, "You fucking freak!" I stood in the hallway, a mix of disgust and horrible wonder wretched upon my face. He walked away, glancing over his shoulder like I was some deformed elephant.
That name; he called me Wray. He knew the name, that was for sure, but did he know what it meant? Did someone just tell him to call me that without explaining to him what it meant? That was not uncommon to Shawn. Or had he been given the files to see for himself?
But that second part, you fucking freak, he had added as an afterthought; it was calculated, not just a reflexive slip of the tongue. He called me a fucking freak. That file wasn't on the flash drive, so he couldn't have been given that. Shawn had written that, so the only way my brother could have known was if Shawn told him.
Shawn was telling people, not only that but he was bragging. He was embellishing his tale with the prospect of dealing me a secretive blow and who else knows what other exaggerations.
In the hall I stood, so much thought tried to rush through me it got backed up and I just froze. I could, however, feel myself droop. The hands which were gripping my brother's shirt, the shoulders that had been tense in agitation, the spine that used to hold me so tall and proud. I sank to the floor, my back found its way against the wall, and I brooded and lost hope.
There is a brief gap in memory here. I'm not saying that I passed out or lost consciousness, it's simply a matter of 'I don't remember.' I suppose that makes me a bad storyteller, to forget a part of my own story and neglect to replace it with even a fabricated line. But it's been a while since the fact, and I told you when I started that I was going to tell a story of my life, and though I do wish it was all untruths, I haven't yet made an invention and will not start now. This hole in my recollection is not so vast though. I'd put the ends within minutes of each other, really.
So, as my remaining memories serve me, I was in my room after that. Go ahead and assume I walked there, broken hearted, or even crawled hands and knees so disgraced; your portrayal is as good as mine. What I can say for sure though is that this was worse than anything that had befallen me before it.
I was discovered. The people around me where talking about me. Abusing me and destroying me. These rumors would spread like blood pooling under a corpse, and I could do nothing about it. I clicked the door lock into place. And though it was just past noon and the light still dared to visit my window, I wrapped myself in my sheets, crawled back into bed, cried, and then eventually fell asleep.
I theorize that in great anxiety people sometimes turn to something simple, like eating. I turn to sleep, or what passes for sleep. Usually, during these episodes I don't dream. I'm just too aggravated to reach that stage of sleep where dreams are made. Not this time though.
If you've ever tried to recall a dream that happened far in the past, you'll know how impossible it is to recall all of it, you only see specific scenes which you've taken time to think about. There's one thing in this dream I remember. My mind painted pictures of awfully strange things. First, swirling colors, then all was blank and white. 'Psychedelic' describes it pretty well, but the shapes didn't look like rounded blobs, but rather sharp and rough textured.
Then, everything began to grow white. Not blinding white, not a holy light, but like a room that was infinitely big and painted with nothing but this color. Then off in the distance, something walked toward me. It was black, a pure black. When it was close enough I could see it was human, at least in shape, but because it was such a pure shade of black, it looked just like a silhouette, a silhouette of a young man.
Then it changed. I could see something long and thin move out behind it. It swayed to its left and then to its right, kind of like a tail. I soon realized it was a tail! The black shape started to move again, coming closer to me and I could discern it had a long nose, no, that was a snout. I saw it had ears too, but none like I would expect. They weren't flat against the sides of its head, but on top, pert and kind of pointed. Before long, I realized I wasn't looking at the shape of a person. It stood up straight, had arms and legs, it was proportioned just like a person, but it just couldn't be. This was something else, but not strange or scary, it was familiar somehow. Just that shape reminded me of something. It looked almost like a...
...Like a fox.
Then I shot awake, none of that after nap drowsiness. I looked around, seeing only the power light on my computer in the dark. I cranked my head over to look at the clock. In that unsettling red glow, the number showed 11:26 PM. At the time, that didn't make sense. How in hell did I sleep upwards of ten hours? Still in bed, I leaned to my window to check if it was really night out.
I slid open the window, and was met with slow cold air. Yeah, it was a winter night alright. I slid my feet off the bed and stood up. Searching for the light switch in the dark, I bumped into a stool and hissed a passing curse at the thing. I didn't want to make too much noise; I couldn't hear anything else in the house so everyone else must have been asleep.
I found the light switch, and then my stomach groaned; I suppose a day of fasting will do that to you, even if you spent it sleeping. I unlocked the door and flipped on the light, but just before I turned the handle--
"Hey!" A voice said in a whisper. It wasn't my voice, that much I was sure of, but neither was it some mysterious disembodied sound; it was clear and close, somewhere behind me. I jumped at the sound of it and spun around, nearly losing my balance.
"Watch it, man," He said. I can now say 'he' because the voice now had a body. Sitting on my computer chair, with one leg crossed over the other, and hands seated comfortable on the arm rests, was that fox.
Now here, I suppose you'll have lost confidence in your narrator. If for so long I've been saying that this story is set in the real word, your world, why am I inserting such fanciful characters? Why am I diverging from the path of reality? I 'm not trying to spice up this story, truthfully, I'm not. This is what I saw, and this is what I heard. Before the end of this tale, I'll reckon you'll believe that I saw what I saw, and all I have will be let out, but until then you'll just have to believe me. Sorry, I've digressed.
He just sat there, so cool, so laid back. He looked almost smug. I stared at him almost annoyed, brow furrowed and eyes narrowed. He was a fox, no doubt, red-orange fur, black nose, pointy ears and all; I saw him, I heard him! But despite my ever-faithful senses, knowledge wouldn't let me accept him.
"Are you going to stare at me all night, man?" He said.
"No..." I said very plainly, it was all I could think to say.
"Good, 'cause-"
"No," I said again, a bit more forcefully. "No, no, no, no, no." I walked toward him, hunching down a bit to get closer.
"What?" He checked himself over, "Is there something on my face?"
"No, uh, yes. I mean..." It was getting difficult to breath.
"Hey, hey. Calm down now. Take a seat, man." He motioned to a stool not too far from where he was sitting. I sat down and closed my eyes. "Alright. Better?"
I took a deep breath and looked up toward him.
"You don't exist, you can't exist."
"And why not?" He was taken aback; I had insulted a fox. How absurd does that sound? "Here." He stretched his paw toward me, palm up.
I reached out with both of my hands and held his paw. I had sincerely expected to feel nothing, for my hands to wisp through him, like they would through smoke, or light. But, no. His palm had soft, leathery pads on it. It felt like the finest sheet of velvet I could ever dream of. I ran my fingers over the texture, and he giggled.
"Tickles a bit."
I didn't answer; I was busy turning his hand over and examining that side. Short black fur, a bit shorter and finer than the red-orange fur of his arm. I looked more closely at his fingers; three joints, just like me. I let go.
"Ya' done?" I nodded a quick reply. "You should take a picture man, you can look at it later if you like."
"Yeah, I should. Hold on." I grabbed my digital camera from of my desk and thumbed through the controls to find the right setting. He snickered.
"I was just kidding, but hey, how can I reject my adoring fans?" I walked back a few steps and began to focus on him. He puffed out his chest and put hands on his hips in that Superman fashion. I smiled at his antics and took the picture.
"Photogenic, isn't he." Some one said from behind me.
Startled, I spun around to see who had spoken. It was a cheetah.
I've read a good number of furry stories and even wrote a few in my spare time. Now, during those ventures, reading or writing the line "It was a cheetah," isn't unnatural. But as I read back over that line whilst in my present situation, there is just this oddness in it that I can't wrap my head around.
But there she was, a cheetah, standing, talking in my room. I now had two anthropomorphic animals in my room. I just stared at her, again struck speechless.
"Was it something I said?" Her voice was genuinely worried.
"Aw, naw. Just give it a few seconds; he'll get over it." The fox said.
"Get over what?" she turned to him.
"Me. You. Us." He motioned between them. I backed up and sat down on the bed. "'Cause apparently, we can't exist." The sarcasm in his voice was practically tangible.
"Says who!"
"I know right! He doesn't believe it."
"Here." The cheetah grabbed the stool I had been sitting on and set it just in front of me. She took the seat and leaned in close. I felt her hand come down on my left thigh and slowly she began to lean her weight on it. "Can you feel that?"
"Yeah"
She leaned in a bit closer, her hand got a bit heavier; I could feel the moisture of her breath, and the warmth of the air around her. Her blink caught my attention and I looked at her eyes. Green, this cheetah had green eyes; she was also staring, studying my face.
I felt a sharp jab hit the right side of my chest.
"Ow!" I said
"We do to exist!" She said, not a little pouty. The fox in my chair laughed, delighted.
"Yeah, Jess! Tell 'im."
I rubbed my chest. "Wait, your name's Jess?"
"Well, yeah. What? Are you going to tell us that we can't have names either?"
"No, no," The words stumbled out of my mouth. "Do you two know each other?" She turned her head toward him and they looked at one another, like trying to read each other.
"Nope, never met her in my life," The fox said. Jess just shrugged.
"Then how do you know her name?" The fox thought a moment, tapping one of his fingers against the armrest.
"Hmm...I don't know." He paused another second, "Animal instinct?"
"O.k. Now you're just messing with me."
"No, seriously," Jess interrupted, "I think that's the best way to explain it, actually. I bet you can feel it too. Try to find his name."
"That's just silly; stop teasing me."
"I'll prove it to you." He swiveled the chair and grabbed a pad of paper and a pen from off my desk. "I'll write my name down, and you'll see." He ripped the sheet from the rest of the pad and folded it. "Now, what's my name? What's the first one that comes to mind?"
I decided to humor him. I thought for a brief second and said, "Alex."
He held out the piece of paper. With a sideways glance I took the piece of paper and unfolded it. The name 'Alex' was scrawled upon it in black pen.
"Whoa."
"So will you quit doubting what we say now?" Alex said.
"Ok, ok. So, Alex and Jess. It's good to meet you, I'm-" Jess put her hand back on my leg and cut me off.
"Wray," she said. "It's nice to meet you too."
Wray. She called me Wray. I wasn't going to say that. I wasn't even thinking about saying that. But still she called me Wray; I didn't care to correct her, I only smiled and nodded, making for a bit of an odd, awkward moment. Silence fell and I began to bite my lip, as I am still apt to do during lolls in the conversation.
Alex began to rock the chair side to side. He spun it once around and noticed the keyboard tray protruding from the computer desk.
"Hey! Mind if I use this?" he asked, though he really wasn't asking for permission. I don't think it would have mattered if I did tell him he couldn't.
But I didn't tell him he couldn't, on the main grounds that I was preoccupied. As I started to rise and turn in protest, Jess sort of jumped on me. I guess, she being a cheetah, the more proper word would be 'pounce'. After those first few moments of disorientation, I found myself laying face up on the bed, my shoulders pinned down, and Jess hovering just above me.
Her eyes were concentrated, not on my eyes but on parts of my face, I saw her eyes swivel as though she were looking for something. She leaned in just a bit more and took an experimentative sniff at my chest. All I could get out was an awkward "Uhm..." I was starting to feel uncomfortable, not because I felt threatened by this cheetah on top of me, but because I was starting to like the feeling of her on top of me. The weight of her hands on my shoulders, the way the bed depressed at my sides where her knees were, the fact that our bodies were now only inches from each other.
"Hey, who's this?" I heard Alex's voice. Jess took this as a queue and rolled off me, to my right so she could just lie next to me on the bed. I sat up and looked at her, wondering what that was for, and would it have continued if we were not interrupted. "Whoa...Did I miss something here?" Alex's voice came back.
I turned around to face him.
"Whu-what?"
"This, man. This picture," He was indicating the computer screen. "You know her?"
I had left those three files on screen, and Alex found the one entitled Vixen. He had scaled the window so that the image took up most of the screen.
"Uh, no. I don't know her. It's just a picture." I had almost said 'drawing' but stopped myself in time. I didn't want to bring up the fandom, or Yiffstar.com, or anything else that would show either Alex or Jess people fantasized of being like them. I feared that if they found out, they'd somehow just leave me. I hit a series of keys which closed all three windows at once.
"Too bad. She was hot." Alex said, the cheetah lying on my bed gave a friendly little scoff.
"Foxes, they've got a second head, no doubt," Jess said. Alex chuckled at that too.
"Here," I said. I had brought up a new web browser and went onto a site will a bunch of mindless online games. I clicked on random icons, I think it had a picture of a little red cross on it.
"Hey, cool!" Alex said. He spun back around to face the screen and tapped away at the keyboard trying desperately to skip the load screen. I walked back to the bed and lied down beside Jess.
We were both laid sideways across the bed. Our legs bent at the knees and hung over the side. The sheets were still warm underneath by back, and I fingered them idly at my side. The sporadic tapping of keys and the sound of breathing was all I could hear as I stared up at the white ceiling. Occasionally, Alex let out a small, frustrated groan as he lost a life, or health point, or something along those lines. Then, Jess slid her paw under my hand. I looked to her, and she was smiling at me.
"What was that for? Jumping on me earlier, I mean."
"Oh, I don't know." She said, "It seemed like a good idea at the time."
"Animal instinct?"
She laughed a soft and light laugh. It was full of innocence and a happy carelessness. I enjoyed, and still do, having made her laugh. Lying, speechless on the bed, time passed. Eventually I fell back asleep with the coming of the late hours of the morning.
**
Monday morning was not bothered by the need to get dressed and go to school. It was my birthday and, as I've said, Labor Day. When I woke, I found that Jess had also fallen asleep on the bed, about an arm's lengths away. Alex was reclined in the computer chair, his legs propped up on a stool and his head hanging over the back, snoring lightly.
Jess stirred and stretched, reaching her limbs across the bed. Her arm brushed against me and she opened her eyes with a bit of a start.
"Oh, morning," she said with yawn I though was intensely cute, she sat up and looked toward Alex. She nudged his knee with her foot and the fox woke quietly and looked around.
" 'Ey," was his only response. He yawned, stretched and rubbed the sleep form his eyes. Meanwhile, I grabbed a towel and a change of clothes.
"I've got to take a shower, you guys had better stay in here. I don't think my family would react too well to a pair of animals walking about the house."
"Yeah," Alex said. "If they're anything like you, they'll spend most of the afternoon poking us, trying to decide whether or not we're real." I saw Jess role her eyes in obvious annoyance. Something in me cringed at this, at having to annoy either of them.
"I'm sorry, but I really don't think they'd believe it. Do you guys want anything?" They said they didn't. Jess began to look at the number of books I had on the bookshelf, picked one out and began to flip through it. Alex went back to the computer where he had left the game he was playing last night on pause. When I had returned I saw Alex's lower half sticking out of my closet.
"What are you doing in there?" I said as I heard something, probably an old school project, fall from one of the higher shelves.
"I'm just looking around." His voice was a bit muffled. His tail was moving idly back and forth; for a while I wondered what it would be like to have a tail. I actually still do, and I guess that's partially the reason for why I'm still in this God forsaken place.
Jess had replaced the first book and picked up another. She was browsing though my copy of Don Quixote. I had bought it for English the previous year and kept all the sticky notes I had used inside. I sat down on the bed next to her with my back against the headboard just as she had done. She turned to me and showed me the first page.
"What's this?" The cheetah had gotten closer so that I could see as well, She pointed to the first sticky note, which had all the basic background information of the book. I flipped thought the rest of it and showed her all the other Technicolor scraps of paper.
"They're my notes," I said and explained my English class.
"So you must know the book really well." She said so matter-of-factly. I nodded, knowing the phrase 'really well' wasn't completely true. "What's it about?"
"Err..." I tried to recall what I had managed to skate by with in class. "It's about an old man who goes off to do knightly things; to be brave, righteous, and chivalrous, all the win the affectins of a beautiful maiden. But really, he's just crazy. He wears old boxes for a suit of armor and attacks a field of windmills thinking they're giants."
"Ooh," she turned the book over in her hand, glancing at the back, and then began to flip through it. "Can I read it?"
"Well, sure. Why not? You'll have to throw away all the Post-Its and--" Just then I heard my mother throw a few sharp knocks at my bedroom door.
"Your cousins are here!" She tried the door, but I had locked it when I came in. "Every one's waiting for you, Sweetie!" Her voice was a bit muffled but the sound of it still made me jump. I knew that my parents were going to throw a party for me, that the relatives were supposed to come by around 10 that morning. But I hadn't realized that it was now 10:16. Ever since I met Alex and Jess, time had begun to get away from me. Again my mother interjected. "Honey, open the door." she added with another knock.
I panicked and realized she might find Alex and Jess if I just opened the door. Both of them were looking at me with anxious faces, I looked around the room for a place to hide two full-sized bodies. Dresser, no. Under bed, no... I looked back to Alex and then remembered he had been in the closet. I grabbed Jess's arm and pulled her toward the closet
"Alex, get in. Move toward the back. Quick!" I said, ignoring their protests and faint cries of discomfort.
"Honey?" I heard my mom say, still at the door.
"Just a sec; putting a shirt on." Just after I said that I realized it wasn't the right thing to say. She had seen me walk out of the bathroom fully dressed. I closed the sliding closet door and quickly went to the door.
"Everyone's waiting for the birthday boy." The enthusiasm in her voice was dying away. Her eyes gave the room a quick glance over. "Were you talking to someone in here?" I cursed her inquisitiveness.
"No, no one's here." I was just standing in the middle of the room, computer was still on idle and nothing in my hands; I learned early on that if your trying to hid something, you'd best make yourself look busy. I heard a faint sound come from the closet looked toward the door quickly, as if the door would spontaneously collapse and both a fox and cheetah would lay sprawled on the floor. Nothing of the sort happened but my mother did notice the action.
She looked to the closet and opened the door.
At the moment her hands curled around the handle to slide the door away, I cringed and waited for some sort of reaction. A scream, a call for help, maybe even hysteria. The frame of my hanging clothes got wider as she continued to open the door. I held my hands clenched in tight fists over my temples. I imagined what would happen to Jess and Alex. They could probably run, sprint from the house in all the confusion. But where to? And I'd still have to answer whatever questions my family and whoever else would surly have.
But nothing came. My mother didn't scream or make any sort of noise. I relaxed a little and watched as she pushed aside clothes and found nothing.
"What are you trying to pull?" She was not a little annoyed. What conniving I had came back to me. I relaxed my upper body and took a seat on the bed. I smiled and chuckled a bit.
"What? Did you think I was hiding someone here? It's my birthday, what reason could I have for that?" I knew this argument shouldn't stand logically.I got up and walked toward to door. I knew that wherever the pair had got to, they'd be safer if my mother wasn't in the room. "So what kind of cake did you guys get?" I said as I guided my mother out of the room and closed the door. First chance, I thought, I'll come back and check on them.
But the party was being held for my sake so the opportunity to shut myself in my room didn't come for a while. I almost got away once, but then one of my younger cousins came running at me proclaiming they needed me to cut the cake. It was almost one in the afternoon when I got back.
I knocked on the door, wishing not to startle them, and opened it. I didn't immediately see any furred animal in my room.
"Guys?" I called out. Then I noticed one of the blankets on my bed move. There was a definite lump of someone under the covers, but pillows were strewn about it so one wouldn't notice it immediately. A fox's head poked out from the top.
"Wray? God, we thought you were someone else." Alex said. "It's ok. It's just Wray," he said a little louder. The closet door slid open, and Jess poked her head out from the darkness. After a quick look over of the room, she stepped out. The cheetah casually sat down in front of the computer and picked up a book she had set there.
"Where ya' been?" She asked, and began reading
"I was going to ask you that!" I said. "When my mother checked in the closet I almost had had a stroke! Where did you guys go?" I looked to Alex, he didn't say anything. Only tilted his head slightly and blinked.
"We were in the closet." Jess said. She hadn't looked up from her book until now. I could feel my brow furrow at this.
"Then how did my mother miss you guys?"
Alex finally interjected.
"I don't know. Hey Jess, why don't we ask her how she missed the two of us? Maybe she'll give us some cake!" The smug sarcasm stung a bit. Jess shushed him the same way my mother did when she was scolding my brother or I as we argued.
"Don't be so mean, Alex. Don't worry about it Wray, it's pretty dark in there. And it's not like she was looking for a pair of animals in your closet."
Looking back on that, and reminiscing on the layout of my room, I shouldn't have believed it. Across the room from my closet there's a window which faces East. Even when the blinds are closed enough light goes through to illuminate even the back of the closet.
But I suppose everything is clear with retrospect. I admitted she was right, asked if they wanted anything (they said no), and left the room. I would be back in an hour or so; my relatives were to leave in the early afternoon. Eventually, evening came and another night was spent hanging out with my newest friends.
**
Teusday rolled around and with it school. I left with my mother and brother, my dad had always left early to beat the traffic, and Alex and Jess had the house to themselves. I'm not entirely sure what they did during those hours, but they always clean up after themselves with great care; everything seemed to stay in the same condition it was in before we left. My parents didn't get home till five, and my brother always went to a friend's after his classes ended. So when I came home, Alex, Jess and I enjoyed the empty house. There was loud music and uncoordinated dancing, sliding contests across the hardwood floor (I found fur works much better than cotton socks); we did whatever we felt like doing to pass the time. This was the pattern we fell into. I went to school. I came back home. We screwed around in the house, and when family started to come home, we'd retreat to my room. All the while we were the best of friends, one could say.
Though I have to admit, we weren't completely inseparable. Sometimes I'd find myself a little annoyed at something that happened during the day and Jess would always find some sort of reason to leave Alex and I alone.
"Ok, What's got your tail, man?" He'd say. And I'd vent. I usually realized I was a lot madder than I thought, but I always felt better afterward.
Sometimes it would be the other way around. Sometimes I would feel a bit depressed, and Jess would usually find a way to get me alone with her. We weren't always alone in a separate room (I know what you're thinking, you should pull up your pants), but rather she got close to me while Alex was preoccupied. She'd get close, and let me hold her; put my arm around her shoulder, rest her body on my chest so that I could see her move in time with my breathing.
Once, while we were watching television, Jess had decided to jump in the large recliner with me. It was a tight fit but I made room and put my arm around her, as per usual. But this time she turned to me and licked my cheek. I was a bit surprised at first, but took it to be the animal's version of a quick kiss. I kissed her forehead in return and she laid her hear on my chest. She nuzzled me with what I can only describe as feminine feline finesse.
This was how it was, and I enjoyed it. A month maybe, it went on like this, but then something happened which, I guess, is the immediate cause for my present situation.
It was in the late afternoon, a Tuesday I think, but that is unimportant. Every one was already home, so Alex, Jess and I had gone into my room. We were watching a movie, although I must say it was a pretty boring one. We had taken to teasing each other while feigning to pay attention to the story line. One of them would reach around me and gently tug on the other's tail. The other would retaliate. I would keep it going by periodically tapping on either of their shoulders or lightly brushing the napes of their necks.
This led to all of us rolling on the floor in a mess of wrestling and tickling, shouting and laughing. It might have been me, but one of us had knocked over a glass of grape juice I had been drinking.
"Crap!" Alex said. The fur on his head and shoulders was tinged purple. Jess was trying to hide a hysteric giggle.
"Hold on, I'll get some towels and water." I rushed out of the room, grabbed a few dishtowels and some bottles of water from the kitchen and headed back. All of this couldn't have taken very long, forty-five seconds at the most, but when I got back, Alex and Jess were nowhere in sight. The empty glass lay in a puddle of grape juice, and beside that, my brother stood staring at me.
**
I'll take this time now to address you directly. What you're about to read will seem confusing. The scene will be short and the action will come quick. But before the end of this you'll understand. And if you look back, and are a bit clever, you'll see there were a few clues alluding to the true nature of things, my own mind, and my proverbial "present situation".
**
"Where are they?" The words came from my mouth with a monotone quality. I looked around the room, and there was no proof that either Jess of Alex was still in there.
"Where are who?" He stressed the word 'who' as though he only had the suspicion that someone was in there. I learned later that I hadn't locked the door on the way out and that he had gone in because he thought he heard me talking to someone. But at that moment I could see the eyes that kept staring, kept whispering: Fucking freak. Fucking freak.
"Alex and Jess! Where are they!" Anger and panic rose in my voice now. I searched the closet, under the bed, all the while chanting "Alex and Jess! Alex and Jess! Where are they!" He had kept staring at me as I tossed about the clothes in the closet. Eventually I started screaming the names, "ALEX! JESS! ALEX! JESS!" so loud it had caught the attention of my parents. They walked in my room, obviously distressed.
"What's happening?" My mother asked.
"What all the yelling about?" My father said.
I looked at them, unbelieving. I saw something change in their faces, something minute almost un perceptible. Latter I found out it was fear; I had looked absolutely deranged. My brother took it upon himself to so graciously answer their questions
"He's the one yelling! Looking for people who aren't there! An absolute fucking freak!" I looked back to him, and balled my fists. And I remember feeling a heavy weight fall from me. Just then I lost whatever inhibitions I had held. It was the most profound sense of freedom, the freedom to do what ever I pleased and enact even my most basic mindset.
What I can only recognize as a feral anger took me. With tooth and nail, as the saying goes, I attacked my own brother. The force of my initial lunge toward him knocked him against the wall. Soon he and I were on the floor. I was clawing at him, throwing whatever appendage was handy to try and truly hurt him. I felt hands on my arms, large hands, the hands of my father. He was trying to pull he off, protect my brother. I would not let him get in my way.
I turned to him and landed a good blow to his nose. He staggered back and tried to regain his bearing, but before he could I had charged him, and knocked him to the floor. The weight of his body hitting the ground shook the house.
I heard my mother scream.
"Help me!" My father said to her as he tried to get up again. But I had already went back to my original prey just as he was starting to uncurl from his protective ball.
"Where are they! What did you do with them!" I yelled, louder than I had ever before. I had grabbed him by the neck and shook him mercilessly. "The fox and cheetah! What have you done with them!"
**
And then it was over. My father swung his arm from behind me across my body and wrestled me off. Someone had called the police, and I was taken to a jail cell. My 'distraught state' was noted and I was transferred to a psychiatric hold. From there to an actual psychiatric hospital to be observed, interviewed, and studied by psychologists, psychiatrists, and psychoanalysis.
"Alex is a fox! But not a regular fox. He could walk and talk and play video games and all kinds of things!" I said frantically. I told them all about the things that the three of us did, always insisted that they were real. I never mentioned anything about the fandom though, nor anything about what Shawn or my brother had done to me.
After that session I heard the doctor talk to my parents.
"He's undergone some sort of stressful situation. Something so powerfull he's created a pair of anthropomorphic characters as a defense mechanism. He believes he's interacted and talked with them. I think he can get better, but the matter will take time."
"I took a picture of him once, it's on the camera on my computer!" I said in another session early on, while I was still adamant in convincing their existence. "And he wrote his name on a piece of paper! I know he did, I saw it, I remember!" The doctor called my family and told them to bring the camera and look for a slip of paper with the name 'Alex' on it.
They brought them in. The doctor first had me write the name 'Alex' on a peice of paper. He examined my rendition, pulled out a second piece of paper from his desk, and examined them both.
"Look here," he said, "This is the one your parents brought from your house. And this is the one you just wrote. The print is identical. You wrote both of these; there is no Alex."
"Where's the camera? It should be the latest one! He's sitting on a chair, and then Jess appeared! And-And-"
He pulled that out of a drawer from his desk too, and handed it to me
"There's only a picture of your empty chair. There were no animals, son."
There were no animals.
There were no animals.
There were no animals.
**
I guess now is the time for me to come clean, to simply say what I meant to say when I began this. I'm writing from Seco-Bonelli Psychiatric Hospital somewhere in Southern California. I've been here a bit less than one year. These words are being written on scavenged scraps of paper with a pencil stolen from my doctor's office. I have managed to give it to a person who promised to transcribe it and post it to that site I used to visit so often ago.
I'm worried that my confidante may not do as he promised and simply throw away these scraps of my life (No offense, if you do end up writing this down). I'm also worried that he may not even get them out of this prison, that they may be confiscated. In which case I hope he doesn't tell them who gave him this paper. If that is the case then I guess this will be given to my doctor. Congratulations Doc, your getting what I've, for so long, been holding out on you. I've 'opened up'; it's just that I don't mean to open up to you, but rather the only place I still trust.
There will be no way for me to know what truly happens to this, as I can't check. So what ever the outcome may be, let it be. I've told my story and now it can end. I'll continue to keep the whole of my furry life and the whole of my real life separate. I can't know what's become of my computer but I can only hope it's been forgotten.
Whether there really was an Alex and Jess, I am still not sure. After looking back and writing this story, I can't decide. I want them to exist, want them to simply have gone a way for a while, with the promise of coming back to me. But as I think of the picture of my empty leather chair, think of how they never ate anything and how objects were always in the exact same place even after I saw them move it, I sink and look around at these sterile white walls, these glass windows sectioned by wire mesh. I'm still not convinced of either path, and maybe that is why I am still here. I may be in here for a while...
But after all this you still don't know my real name. And because I still believe neither you nor anyone else who reads this has a use for it, I'm still not going to tell you.
Just...
Call me Wray
________________________________________
Everything I've written above this line is in character. Thought there may be some aspects which line up with actual events, The reader is not meant to draw any conclusion from them.
*
"The Solstice" is reference to the ship in the story series "Solstice" written by Squirrel.
http://orcas.yiffstar.com/index.yiff?pid=11319
Mike Wyrvn is a character in the story series "Life's a Bitch, Death's a Vixen" Written by Blindseer.
http://orcas.yiffstar.com/index.yiff?pid=10396
The picture described and entitled Vixen in the story was inspired by "Moonlight Beauty" Drawn by RenaAyama.