FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

I leaned into some godforsaken alley, never breaking stride. Faint calls for me to stop running finally faded into the noise of passing traffic. Some dumpsters here would provide cover should they catch up, though. The only getaway in sight was a rusted fire escape directly overhead, but it was better than being out in the open. Could I even reach it with everything I've just been through? Sure. My heart was visibly pounding against my ribcage, but with all the adrenaline coursing through my veins I felt I could run another mile. I chose to wait and see if it was necessary to climb the aging wrought-iron ladder hanging above me. My weight could be enough to snap it in two. I saw two people from my vantage point: a businessman and a guy serving him a hot dog out of a cart. They never noticed me round the corner; if they had, they would be fleeing in the opposite direction.

Luckily, my height wouldn't betray my position, at least not yet. What did she say about the pituitary gland? I was probably around eight feet tall, but the dumpster was surrounded by a pile of nausea-inducing trash bags. A light rain would help to wash away my scent from any pursuing police dogs, but at the same time running water forced me to crouch in a puddle of trash water. A rat popped his head out of one of the fetid bags. He stared at me with beady little eyes while nibbling on moldy bread. Mmm, if I wasn't running for my life... I hesitated over yanking him out, and ultimately decided against it. A cheap meal wasn't worth getting shot to death by an overzealous rookie cop.

How did this happen to me? It must have been that vial Lara showed me, but I didn't even touch the liquid inside it. Where was her apartment? Several blocks away, at least. But I had to get moving soon, lest I get arrested for the crime of existing. Why do I keep asking myself questions like a maniac? That made me guffaw on the inside. Laughing over the absurdity of all this was one of the few things I could do, other than sit and wait. Over the sound of dripping rain, I heard an unusual, steady beat.

*Tap* *Tap* *Tap*

What was that? Did they find me already? My eyes raced around, until they found the source. Whew. Just my toeclaws.

Two days earlier...

"Here it is. Awesome, right?" Lara spun the vial she was holding around to face me. All I saw was a clear liquid with very thin filaments floating throughout. I slipped the glass tube out of her hands and chuckled. This was not what I expected at all.

"So this is the famous 'Raptor in a Tube' I've been hearing about around the department? Good thing I didn't get my hopes up," I joked. Lara invited me over to her high-tech laboratory for a 'surprise,' but news like this was not under wraps for long.

"Would you shut it? This could be the only chance we have of one day replicating a living, breathing utahraptor." Lara took the test tube from me and put it back down. I noticed a few odd markings that reminded me of Cyrillic, only simpler. Was this Russia's doing?

"You know what's gonna happen. Someone will accidentally drop it and turn us all into mutant dinosaurs. Then we'll escape before they can lock down the facility and terrorize New York until a crazy idea saves the day. Believe me, I saw that SyFy movie the other night." The idea of a dinosaur in a lab coat put a smile on my face for the first time that day.

"Well, you're certainly in a good mood this morning," Lara said, eying my grin. "Putting aside the biological impossibilities, this isn't Jurassic Park. Only a handful of people outside our cell know about it, I'm told, and none of us are stupid enough to handle it improperly."

Lara and I worked at a top-secret, compartmentalized research facility disguised as just another brick-and-mortar office building in Manhattan. Officially it was a civilian entity, but everyone recognized the government had its hands deep in day-to-day business. None of us knew just how many operative cells existed in the complex, just that ours was tasked with "applications of dromaeosaurid genetic material." In other words, raptor DNA. Why they wanted a physicist like me on the team, I had no idea. But the pay was incredible and Lana, an old college buddy, sweet talked me into the gig. I ended up doing mostly clerical work, such as balancing our accounts, and spent my free time dicking around Lara's lab much to her chagrin.

"Hey, I haven't taken a biology class since high school. I don't know what kind of crazy things you guys can do," I argued. I took up the vial once again and brushed aside a mop of brown hair to get a better look at our new arrival. I marveled at what I held in my palm. "Can you believe that all the information you need to build a raptor is in here?"

"Buzz, I brought you over more than just to wax philosophical over it," using an old nickname of mine. I've had it since my hazy college days. You can guess why. Lara was twirling her blonde hair, a tell; it meant she was nervous. Her voice dropped to a whisper. "How do you think they got this? DNA normally would've degraded beyond recognition a long time ago. And don't you think the script on the side looks a little weird?"

"What do they say about military technology? That it's at least a decade ahead of what we see on the consumer market? So who knows what miracle technique produced this. The important thing is we have it and now we can manipulate it. I thought that writing was just Russian, by the way." Lara took an introductory course in college, so perhaps she had already deciphered it and was testing me. She was definitely the type to hold back knowledge on a need-to-know basis.

"No, I have no idea what language that is, if it is one. I thought you would've had some inkling, but I guess you're just as clueless as the rest of us." Lara smirked while looking over the titration of some pink liquid.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm an idiot. Anyway, I have to get back to my office. Those flasks you bought the other day won't just enter themselves into the budget." I handed her the vial and patted her on the back before leaving. "I'm glad for you. I really am."

Just before I shut the door behind me, Lara couldn't resist getting one last swipe in.

"And put some goddamn gloves on the next time you come in here!" Her laugh provided me with the second smile of the day.

***

During lunch the next day, I decided to invite Lara to dine with me in my office. In a case of serendipity, I walked into the cafeteria as she was waiting in line. I jogged over and squeezed past a few gracious coworkers, then grabbed an apple and set it on a cherry-red tray.

"Why are you guys playing mad scientist, anyway?" I queried. We both paid for our meals with the standard-issue company debit card.

"Biologists and genetic engineers are considered mad scientists now?" Lara rolled her eyes. "The implications to so many different fields are obvious. Biology, paleontology, and genetics would be forever changed, for starters. We've brought a few species back from extinction before, sure, but not on this scale." She and I strolled through a stark hallway with walls of what resembled brushed metal.

"Raptors are awesome, don't get me wrong. But why not a t-rex? A pterodactyl?" When we finally got to my office I presented my fingerprint and retina for scanning. Biometrics had completely replaced keycards and locks a few years ago. Our conversation continued over the bland meals they served in the facility.

"You already know the answer to that one. Unlocking the keys to one species of dinosaur is hard enough. Again, we don't know how the higher-ups got the candidate material, but it probably took decades to crack utahraptor's genetic code. That assumes making use of the most powerful minds and supercomputers in existence to do so. And we don't even have viable embryos yet."

"So that means..."

"No pet rexes for a very long time," she finished. "I know you're crushed." Lara sat down across from my bare desk and frowned. "What would you say you do here, exactly?" she teased, adjusting her thick, black-rimmed glasses. I called them her stereotypical nerdy ones because I knew how much she hated it.

"I'll answer your question with a question. Are you so concerned with whether or not you can do it that you never considered..." Lara cut off my allusion.

"Shut the hell up."

"Not before I ask you to dinner tomorrow night. C'mon, what do you say?"

"I say you have the grace of a ton of bricks. But, lucky for you, I'm not doing anything. Remember we get off early on Wednesdays, so come by my apartment around 5:30, OK?" She was already halfway out the door, which was unlike her. I felt as though she was putting some distance between us, but then again she just accepted my invitation. I let her go.

"It's a date!"

"You wish."

***

A few hours later, it was quitting time. I logged off of my work computer and grabbed my coat. The office door slid open automatically for me, but getting to my car always proved to be arduous. The facility was a high-rise and had no elevators, so I every night I had to descend twenty-odd flights of stairs. When I finally got to the bottom, I was panting. What kept me going was my sky blue car, nestled in the corner of the parking garage and looking like it came straight out of the early 90s. I hustled the rest of the way while shaking off a numb sensation in my arm.

Cars were not always the best idea in Manhattan, but I still had mine from my earlier days upstate and our unusual working hours meant there was fewer traffic. Plus, a gas stipend didn't hurt. I pulled into my apartment complex's underground parking lot around ten at night.

My old clunker did not possess technology as advanced as at our jobs, so I fumbled in my pocket until I succeeded in pulling out the key fob to lock it up. I put the key in the lock and my claws did the rest of the work.

Wait.

Claws? I did a double take. It was a claw. I had a dinosaur claw where my hand should be. I furtively glanced around, as if this weird new appendage would set off alarm bells. But of course there was only me, my car, and five new leathery digits.

I sprinted up to my apartment and slammed the door behind me. When something furry and alive rubbed up against me, I nearly had a heart attack. It took a few moments of chest-grabbing and heaving to realize it was just my cat. Instead of ignoring me like she usually did, she had jumped down from her perch and begun sniffing me vigorously. After huffing a few times, she grimaced as if taking a whiff of sour milk. I brushed her off because I was more interested in what else had changed to my body. My clothes came off in a pile on top of that fur ball, and I contorted my torso to examine every square inch of skin. Apart from a barely-noticeable bony protrusion down the small of my back, nothing looked unusual. I thought about my next move, but there was only one option.

***

Lara listened patiently on the phone while I explained my side of the story. "...so that's how I ended up like the guy from that movie. You know, the one with the prawns," I concluded. "You gotta help me before I end up in some kinda dystopian concentration camp." I was only half-joking. There was no telling what involvement, if any, my shadowy employer had in all this.

"Calm down. You don't have a claw. It's probably some kind of dermatitis or infection. Plenty of diseases make it look like you have scales."

"Is that why my cat is acting so weird, Lara? She smells dinosaur on me."

"Confirmation bias, Buzz. Snow's always been a bit strange, and you just want to see something that isn't there. I'm no doctor, but if you want I'll take a look at it first thing tomorrow. Now if it doesn't hurt and you're not running a fever, get some sleep. Don't do anything stupid like go to the ER and embarrass yourself, alright?"

"Last time I checked allergies didn't make you instantly grow talons, but...well...fine. See you tomorrow." I hung up. "Keep looking, cat, and you won't get fed tonight." Her tail was tucked between her legs, ears flat against her head. It was tough with cats sometimes, whether she was actually pissed off or just business-as-usual.

I lay down in bed, and despite being so keyed up, began to drift off almost immediately.

***

Normally I am not the kind of guy to remember my dreams, but that night I had one so lucid it branded itself permanently in memory. I was crouched down low among verdant underbrush, millions of years in the past. The only sounds were the buzzing of some of bees' long-extinct ancestors and my own heartbeat. In the distance, a snow-capped mountain rose above myself and my nearby prey: a fellow_utahraptor_. He was one of my own, and I was going to kill him. I was desperate for food, and he looked just small enough and weak enough to overpower.

While he busied himself with a few petty insects writhing in the dirt, I circled around until I had access to his flank. He briefly poked his head up, but went back to digging when I silently froze in my tracks. When he had fully buried his head, making him vulnerable, I pounced. In a flash, I was on top of him, my powerful jaws crushing his neck. I feasted on his meat before his reflexive thrashing became a gentle whimper, then nothing.

***

I woke up just as the sun peaked through my window blinds the next morning. I wanted it to be a nightmare, a fabrication borne from one too many bad movies. But sure enough, my hand was a claw. A raptor claw, I was sure of it. I had to see Lara in person, as she was the only other person I trusted, and most likely had something to do with my sudden mutation. But how was I going to explain my new limb to security? After all, we worked at a highly guarded facility, and I did not want to arouse suspicion.

As fortune would have it, the weather had been brisk lately, and I could get away with wearing thick woolen gloves. My "claws" strained against the fabric, but I looked convincing enough in the mirror to go along with the plan.

I left the vestibule of my apartment complex, only to be met with a cacophony of noise. I could hear every person talking on their cell phone and every last footstep. Was it because I was running on adrenaline now, or did my newfound reptilian-ness extend beyond simple cosmetics? The mitts precluded me from driving and a beeping horn could give me an aneurysm, so it would have to be the train. I hurried to a nearby subway station to get away from the street, and upon jogging down the stairs the noise diminished to a somewhat more tolerable level.

My train screeched to a halt right on time. I slipped into the crowded subway car and grabbed a metal pole to steady myself as it took off into a dark tunnel.

"Hey, what the fuck?" I heard a woman cry only a few minutes before my stop would arrive. I whipped my head around, expecting her to be staring in horror at a tail poking out of my jeans or clawed feet working their way out of my shoes.

Instead, I saw a guy in a hoodie taking off in the opposite direction with a purse in his hands. Robberies like this were much less common in New York nowadays, but every once in a while some desperate thug would take a risk and hope bystanders were too concerned with getting to work to give chase. He knew we were getting close to our destination, so he probably timed it so he could walk out of the last car and get away with her valuables. On any other day I would be one of those people and just put my head down, staying out of trouble and looking the other way. Whether I was simply galvanized by the dream I had the night before or driven by some xeno-hormones in my blood, I will never know.

I was playing a video game, and had just activated bullet-time. The would-be thief was moving laughably slow, and suddenly I was crouched against the car's floor. Thinking they were about to see some vigilante justice, people began to distance themselves, and I had a clear path to my prey. He was thrashing like that helpless utahraptor before anyone knew it.

In the heat of the moment, I wasn't paying attention to what I was truly doing. I growled into his face, asserting my dominance. He was a pathetic mammal, unprepared for the characteristic brutality and callousness of a reptile. I hooted to the others around me, warning them to stay away. This was my kill. My claws, free of their confines now, ripped his face to shreds. His whimpering for me to stop only made me want to brutalize him more. Blood oozed from puffy red lines, and I clasped down on his throat.

"Hey, don't kill him!" A shout interrupted me and broke me out of my murderous intent. The thief was alive, but 'battered' would be an understatement. Both eyes were swollen shut, and he was missing a few teeth.

I looked around the car with blood dripping down my mouth. It was dead silent. The crowd was huddled to the sides, with a few clutching a hand to their mouths. Before the subway lurched to a stop at its next destination, I grabbed my blood-soaked glove from the floor and stood against the subway doors. As soon as they opened, I ducked out before I could be detained. I never did find out if the woman got her purse back.

I was a half-hour late to work, but flexible schedules meant no one was going to confront me. "Morning, Mr. H," the security guard waved at me. I was jogging through the brick and marble lobby with my badge around my neck. I nodded at him and made sure to hide my blood-stained glove behind my back. "You see Eli last night? One more win and we're in the championship."

He just had to pick now to chat. I continued walking to show I was in a hurry and called back to placate him. "I sure hope so. Super Bowl party at my place if they make it." Instead of making a right down the hallway towards my office, I made a left and pressed my thumb to a familiar airlock.

***

"Well, that's not good." Lara's face was bathed in the glow of her computer monitor and the lab was clicking from the sound of her mouse scrolling through a wall of text. She had jumped out of her chair when I took off my glove and told her what happened on my way to work. The next few hours were spent researching various compounds present in the test tube I handled yesterday.

"What? What?" With how my transformation had been going so far, I was expecting spontaneous combustion to be next.

"The material in that tube would wreak havoc with your pituitary gland. I have no idea what adding utahraptor DNA to the mix would do." She took a pocket magnifying glass and looked over my hand once more. She didn't doubt my story anymore.

I chuckled nervously. Biology was never my forte, but I knew the basics and picked up a few tidbits of knowledge over the years. "Pituitary gland? Doesn't it regulate growth?"

"Yep. I hope that won't be an issue. It could, uh," she paused. Her bright blue eyes seemed to dim a little.

"Could?"

"Well, kill you."

"Hell of a way to start the week, you know." I was pretty lackadaisical because it had not sunk in yet, that this was all real and actually happening. Turning into a dinosaur just did not compute. "But how could this happen so abruptly?"

"I don't know. Obviously there's not exactly a precedent for this. Catalysts, maybe? Here's what we can do. Come over to my apartment tonight, but instead of a date we'll work on this there. For your own safety, you shouldn't be wondering around in your present state. Finish whatever you have to do here and go directly home until it's time. Don't tell anyone else, because I don't think we can trust the company anymore."

"My lips are sealed. And go home early? Yes ma'am!" Technically, Lara as project leader had the power to grant me leave.

"And Buzz..."

"Yeah?" I whipped my head around.

"Make sure you come. There's something I need to tell you."

***

Lunch was spent holed up in my office, aimlessly banging away on my keyboard. Hunger wasn't an issue, anyway. The thought of anything but raw meat did not interest me. I hoped that doing mundane tasks would keep my mind off it, but every time my eyes wondered down my memories all came flooding back. I decided then was as good a time as any to go home, to sequester myself in my apartment until it was time to meet Lara.

I entered my intentions into the central server and went down to the parking garage. I was momentarily perplexed by the lack of a car in my parking spot, until it hit me. I had taken the subway this morning! Walking home would take quite a bit of time and go directly against Lara's orders, but I was not thinking straight. I could handle it. I walked out onto the city street with my head down until I heard another scream. Great, what now?

A woman following close behind me was pointing at my back. "What's your problem?" I called back. Then I saw a dark gray tail swishing back and forth out of my pants. Guess that explained the bump I saw in the mirror.

"Help! Police!" She drew the attention of others on the street, including a cop who looked me over and began to cross the road. Did he think I stole something from her like that thug on the subway?

"Seriously, ma'am?" I asked, trying to bluff my way out of the situation. Despite knowing that my tail was as real as my claws, all I had to do was play it off as a joke. "What, you just immediately assume I have a tail or something? This is a prop." When the police officer made it over here, she would look like a fool or idiot for panicking. It still struck me as odd, though, why a tail would make her so immediately frightened. I turned around to get a better look at myself in a storefront window, and saw that the tail was the least of my concerns. She was screaming because my face was barely human anymore. My eyes were wider set, and my mouth was jutting out, forming a gray muzzle.

I knew then that I had to start running. There was no way I could allow myself to be detained, because then it would all be over. Just one look at my body would lead to questions, then imprisonment, possibly against my will. In a post-9/11 world, they could probably have half the police force descending on me within a few minutes. My employer, were their intentions indeed malicious, had the influence to make sure of it.

The changes to my body were accelerating, probably because of stress. My shoes were becoming stumbling blocks, so I ripped them off mid-stride. I saw my socks were all distended, so they came off, too. Dark gray feet with hooked nails greeted me. Suddenly, it felt more natural to run on the tips of my toes, and I blew past a few groups of mostly confused tourists. My tail slapped one behind the head, so he stumbled and fell.

"Sorry. Welcome to New York!"

***

So that was how I now found myself huddled among a few bags of trash in one of the city's finest alleys. After ten minutes of nothing, I thought that maybe I had overreacted about police response to a guy that simply looked a little weird. But I was still going to get to Lara's place as covertly as possible. People might assume I was a wild animal now that my proportions were all out of whack. To reach the fire escape, I pulled over a metal trash can and jumped the rest of the way. Upon grasping the highest rung, a loud creak echoed across the street. The businessman looked over, paused, then tapped the hot dog vendor on the shoulder. Both stared at me as I scampered to the roof.

There I opened up the thankfully unlocked fire door and jumped down the stairs to the ground floor. Exiting through the back would put me on the other side of the block, only a few minutes away from Lara's apartment. She would not be home yet, of course, but I certainly was not going to get all the way back home in broad daylight. Making use of my extensive knowledge of the area, I ducked into corners and covered my face with a coat when crossing the street. Without further incident, I got to Lara's doorstep. That's when I pulled out my cell phone and gave her a call.

"You what?" She yelled into the receiver. "I'll be over right away! There's a key taped to the underside of my mat. It kind of blends in, so you might have to feel around for it. Go in, shut the door, and don't open it for anyone but me."

This time, I did exactly what I was told and barricaded the door with a chair until she arrived. I was almost completely a raptor now, and had long since taken off my clothes. I was hunched over on the ground, as at my full height I would bump into the ceiling.

"Oh my God. Buzz?" Lara jumped back.

"Yep, at your service."

"Holy crap, are you getting big. But I see you're not entirely a raptor." She was blushing. I looked down between my legs and quickly covered up my shame with my paws. Lara looked away and took a deep breath before continuing.

"In all seriousness, I'm sorry, Buzz. I have a confession to make. The director pulled me aside a few months ago and told me they needed a human to test their plan of creating a new super soldier using genetic material from raptors. They wanted you as the test candidate, and promised me that it wouldn't hurt you. All they said is that there might be a few side effects. They ordered me keep you in the dark. That's why I've been so distant lately. I don't like secrets hanging over my head."

I sat in shock. "But I thought all of our research was just for advancing our knowledge of dinosaurs!"

"Think about it, Buzz. Who has lots of money to blow on frivolous research? The government, we all suspected as much. And do you think they give a shit about replicating raptors for anything other than using them in war? You can't control a raptor, but you can control a human. So all the work we've been doing so far was to that end."

"Jesus. Was it that test tube the other day that did this to me?"

"That vial?" She laughed. "No, they exposed you to the solution months ago, just after I agreed to let them do it. The compounds I was looking up were real, but I was mostly putting on a show."

"Dammit, Lara! You must think this is real fucking hilarious! What makes you think you could make decisions about my life like that? I should introduce you to these claws right now." I shoved her against the wall and pushed my wet muzzle against her face. She would not be difficult to subdue, should the need arise.

"Buzz, please, you're not yourself!" The look of unadulterated fear in her face made me back off. My friends were few and far between, and without her I truly had nothing. Her tone became meeker. "What I did was wrong, and I will do anything it takes to make it right. Besides, we can make the best of a bad situation. After all, I've never met a raptor firsthand before."

"Please, Lara, put the probe away. I'll get plenty of that when they catch me." There was no use in holding a grudge. C'est la vie and all that.

"No, I didn't mean it that way. You know I've thought dinosaurs were cool since I was a little kid. Now I see one in person, and it also happens to kinda be my boyfriend. How about I make you dinner?" Lara wasn't being nice because my claws would impede cooking; she knew I couldn't make a meal to save my life.

I gave her the raptorian equivalent of a raised eyebrow. "Er, I guess. Can't we start working on a cure for this?"

"Sure, but we can do it over food. I can hear your stomach growling from here."

"Make it meat. The rarer the better."

"Ha, ha. I get it, because you're a ra--" My glare stopped her mid-sentence. "Absolutely."

I slumped down in Lara's living room while she went and made dinner. I was sapped of my energy, and couldn't fight her on this one. She cooked while I looked through pages of unhelpful data on the raptor DNA. Then, there was a knock at the door.

"Lara, please tell me you're expecting more company." I looked over uneasily as she poked her head out of the kitchen.

"NYPD, ma'am. Please open the door." That answered my question. Lara sprinted over to the hallway and peered out the peephole.

"Just a minute, please!" She swore under her breath.

"No, ma'am. We need to speak to you immediately." They continued pounding away.

Seeing how this was going, I got back up on my haunches. "I'm sorry, Lara, but I have to leave. I don't want to see you hurt."

"Fuck, I had no idea this would spiral so far out of our control. I wish I could do something else, but...stay safe, Buzz." Lara leaned over and kissed my muzzle through her tears. With her front door not an option, it would have to be her window. I apologized in advance to her before charging the panes and blowing them out. It would be a race to the bottom before they realized I was trying to flee. For the second time that day, I was scrambling around a fire escape, only down this time. And I was less on it than straddling it at my size. When I dropped to the ground, I was twenty feet tall.

Several police cars surrounded me in anticipation of an escape from the back. They were pointing their pistols at me, too well prepared to be a coincidence. I suppose my employer knew I would run to Lara, and the police were dispatched to her apartment. I was their investment, and once I was captured I would most likely be transferred to their custody for whatever excruciating tests they wanted to run on my body. The situation did not look good, especially with the cops showing a mixture of confusion and revulsion on their faces.

"Don't shoot! I haven't done anything wrong!" Or were they going to try to kill me, just like that? They could wash their hands of their little failed experiment and I would be quietly thrown in an unmarked grave.

"Show us your hands, claws...whatever, you ugly son of a bitch!" One officer distinguished himself from the rest and shouted through a bullhorn.

They were asking for it now. Instead of complying, I flew into a rage. Raptors did not like being cornered. Before they could get a shot off, I slipped my claws under one of their barricading patrol cars and flipped the chassis over. The cops scattered as debris flew off the pirouetting vehicle and rained down among the group.

Longer strides and evasive ability allowed me to escape without a scratch around the corner. I heard the squeal of tires, indicating they were beginning pursuit. My growth was accelerating, though, and they were becoming less of a threat. I must have been adding a foot a second to my height. When motorists saw what looked like a rhinoceros barreling down the street, they made room.

In a fit of pique, I wanted everyone in the city to suffer for the government's mistake of using me as their guinea pig. Every parking meter, lamppost, and mailbox I saw was batted or kicked over. I ripped out a street sign along with its concrete anchor and bashed in every car window I saw like a teenager with a baseball bat. What wasn't smashed was overturned. I hissed into the frightened, cowering faces of tourists that were previously having a good time visiting the city. I saw I was on Sixth Avenue headed north, so my next stop would be the center of it all: Times Square. Let the government explain to an angry populace how they allowed a giant raptor to crush the city under its heel.

At a hundred feet tall, my footsteps shook the pavement and deep fissures formed under my weight. Spidering cracks shot out from under me and threw people into the air. From my height, individual humans were getting harder to discern, but I still saw clusters of them running from between my toes. I upgraded my petty destruction to more serious rampaging, putting my fist through a few buildings and watching them implode into dust. Seeing my fist slide into them and obliterate floors of offices gave me an idea for later.

Bullets from the police I had almost forgotten about bit like wasps stinging the hell out of me, but I laughed whenever they hit the tougher scales on my feet. There it felt more like a tickle, and enough shots put me in a good enough mood to mess with them. I playfully turned around and mimed firing a gun right back at them. Then I stood there with my arms crossed, leaning on a skyscraper and laughing at their attempts to take me down.

"What, you wanna stop me from ruining one of these?" I jerked a thumb through what I was leaning on. "Whoops." Then I put both hands on the spire capping the building and spread my legs. "How about I show you guys the mating habits of the male utahraptor?"

My hips thrust forward and I began grinding my cock against the smooth glass paneling of the skyscraper. My foreskin rolled over the tip again and again as I moved, getting me hard. Although they were probably all evacuated by now, I pictured a scared group of New Yorkers looking through a plate glass window at the yawning abyss of my cock, drooling with truckloads of pre. That made me want to pound the tower to smithereens all the more. My shaft exploded through the building's core and out the other end, carrying all sorts of debris with it. Then I continued humping away, flipping off my pursuers as an enormous 'screw you' to what their bosses did to me. The path my cock cleared was narrow so as to allow for some resistance, and the sensation of sticky, wet pre against me was too much. Fifth Avenue would need weeks to recover from the amount of raptor cum I blew all over the street. When I was done, I pulled out, shook a few drops on the badly damaged structure, and kicked it over in a heap. I spat on the wreckage.

Not done with teasing the police, I picked out one of the officers who looked like he was going for kill shots and grabbed him by his uniform. I asked, "Are you sorry, you little bitch?" He blubbered away while I squeezed him harder and watched him sweat it out. Then I popped the cop in my mouth. I wasn't really going to eat him, but he didn't know that. My tongue thrashed his body about, and I made sure to slobber all over him.

The ground forces had some time to regroup while I had my way with the skyscraper and abused my plaything. Their heat-seeking missile totally caught me by surprise. Without thinking, when the rocket hit me I gulped.

Shit.

Those fuckers made me eat someone! I was not a murderer, and without spilling a drop of blood they shot a rocket at my face and made me one. Couldn't they see I was playing around? I picked out the cop that fired the shot from a shoulder-mount and ground him against my footpads. "You're really gonna regret shooting at me. You are nothing compared to me. You are an insect who lives or dies at my whim." I rubbed his face in the sweaty flesh. "Suck away, you miserable fuck."

My foot had picked up pieces of cars, street signs, and all kinds of litter. I took so much pleasure in seeing his mouth latched on for dear life to the lowest part of me. When I was satisfied, I took hold of my member and pulled the foreskin back. Then I shoved him into the musky skin and let it fall it back into place. "You can fucking rot there!"

Next I took a toe and pressed against the roof of one of the police cars assembled there.

"Fuck you."

I crushed the body until the passengers were trapped inside, then continued until the car was flattened. I ground into the concrete as if putting out a cigarette. I continued on, not really caring about their fate.

When one foot came down a few blocks down the road, it felt a little wet. So I brought my paw up to take a look and saw that, in not paying attention, I had stepped on top of a group of innocent bystanders. I was horrified. This was just a lark, a joke. I didn't mean to kill anyone, and I was only getting bigger. I decided to press on until Times Square, then try to cut west and go towards the water. The Hudson would be a wading pool and allow me to plan my next course of action. The police certainly were not subduing me any time soon. Hopefully I didn't cause too much loss of life. I took the grim but necessary step of getting the blood off my foot by scraping it a few times against the ground. Then I stomped away.

Being a giant raptor with Times Square as your playground was fun, but I directed my step toward more worthy targets from then on. The sirens of several police vehicles warped and died out under my step as I decided to move uptown. But then, something went wrong. Apparently, the square-cube law was catching up with me. Moving my body was a chore and my bones strained at the thousands of pounds of raptor it had to hold up. It was easier for me just to stay and continue my rampage in place with the neon lights of New York as my backdrop.

One of the news helicopters in the sky I took by the skirts and pointed into my maw. I imagined millions of New Yorkers glued to their TV screens at home staring into a great black hole. I tried to plant a big, wet lick on the cockpit, but the tip of my tongue caught in the rotors. My tongue jerked back and I flung the helicopter towards the river. Now I was really mad.

The building to my right became rubble with a flick of the wrist. I stamped the ground until water from a broken main bubbled up from between my toes. I called my most fearsome cry at a barricade that had been hastily constructed in front of me. My paws fell down all around them but never over their heads, to give them a few nervous breakdowns as payback. They were deploying tanks now, but at hundreds of feet tall their artillery would just be annoying.

As if on cue, I heard the sound of turbines whirring through the rain. Three tiny black jets were hovering under my muzzle, each appearing to be armed. The first I plucked out of the sky and chewed to pieces. Bye. The second and third retreated, but were not fast enough to outpace my stride. I brought one to rest on top of my hand and then flicked it into the distance. The third fired its payload as I turned to face it. The ordinance deployed and exploded under my nose in an underwhelming puff of smoke. Ha. Even the military can't stop me. Just as I was about to swat it down I started feeling woozy. Then everything went black.

***

A falling sensation jolted my body and made my limbs twitch. My eyes snapped open, only to see that I was in my bed, safe at home. Snow was lying next to me, purring steadily. It was all a nightmare, after all. Lara was right; I needed to cut out the TV. We had a date today, too. I saw a Post-It note on my nightstand. "Stay Here," is all it said in a hasty scribble. Probably something I wrote in a feverish half-sleep. Before my television embargo went into place, I needed to put the news on to fall back asleep.

I grabbed my remote control from under the note and flipped the channels looking for anything interesting. A shot of rubble on NY1 caught my eye. I turned the volume up.

"...is still reeling from billions of dollars in property damage. The mayor's office and Coast Guard are standing by their statement that a freak tornado hit the heart of the city. This is despite thousands of eyewitness accounts to the contrary, now being dismissed as mass hysteria. There is no doubt there will be plenty of discussion over this incident in the coming weeks, especially with recorded video coming to light that shows an animal-like form. We take you live to Times Square, an iconic locale now in ruins."