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"So did you guys hear that Juliet fucked the clerk from that convenience store? The one on the corner of Weston and Maarloeve?"

The wolf almost gagged on his drink when he heard this. This was not the kind of conversation he expected to hear when his friends - an otter, who was the one to share this little bit of gossip, and a vixen - invited him to coffee this morning. He didn't even like coffee. "Excuse me? I -"

"Knew it!" The vixen pumped her fist into the air. "I've seen those two hanging around before - I knew something was up..."

"No, no, that's not it..." The otter leaned over the table, coming dangerously close to knocking over his drink. "Thing is, he's already in a relationship."

"Oh, man. That'll be fun. You heard about this, Crisp?"

The wolf's ears perked instinctively at hearing his name. He turned to Carmen, the vixen. "Bitch, I don't hear anything. You know all my friends are here at this table."

"Oh, come on. That party you threw last year? I swear, there were more people there than there were in my high school graduating class -"

"And I knew nobody! I got locked out of my own house!"

"Was still an awesome party."

"Really was," added the otter. "I'm still finding things from then. Did you know my belly button's pierced! In three fuckin' places! And that's not the only thing, too..."

Crisp shook his head and took another sip of his drink, then sat back when he noticed the conversation had shifted once again away from him. He loved these two: they had all grown up together, gone to the same elementary, different middle schools, and then, somehow, the same private high school. It was a damn small school, too - he knew just how many people were in Carmen's graduating class, since he was one of them, as well as the otter that sat beside her. Crisp had given up on trying to figure out how those quiet and polite students had turned into this pair of abrasive walking expletives.

"Oh - speaking of which..."

He looked up at the otter, who looked back at him with that same dumbass grin that could be seen so often on his face. "What?"

"Me n' Carmen were out late driving last night -"

"You can't drive. You don't even have a license."

"Shut up. Anyway - we were going down off the highway, and - you know that large stretch of forest between here and Sanctuary?"

"Yes?"

"Did you know there's an abandoned school back there?"

"Brennenburg High." Carmen nodded sagely. "Looked it up this morning. Closed down in the early eighties, doesn't say why. Nothing else online about it."

"Creepy as hell, going up to it late at night - like somethin' right outta the fuckin' Texas Chainsaw Massacre."

Crisp shrugged. His drink was empty; he popped off the lid and peered into the cup at the sludgy brown remains. It smelled of rich chocolate. "So? Never heard of it. Didja guys fuck or something?"

The otter turned bright red and looked away, and Carmen scoffed. Crisp always figured there was - or at least had, at some point in time, been - something between the two, but he'd never learned for certain. "No," said the vixen. She was obviously trying to keep a smirk off her face. "But we thought -"

"Is that a 'no', or just a 'not quite'? You could've -"

"No."

Crisp turned to the otter. "Like when you n' me were playing Halo that one time. I asked which half of the screen you wanted, and you said 'oh, I prefer to be bottom', and I gave you this smug-ass look, and you just said 'no' -"

Carmen couldn't hold it any longer, and sat back laughing. "No. Sweet Jesus, Crisp, no. Could you listen for just, like, two minutes?"

"Fine! Fine. You found an abandoned school. Then what?"

The otter still had his muzzle pointed down, so Carmen continued from there. "We found a way in. Front door is totally overgrown - at least, that's what I'd assume; we went all the way around twice -"

" - so from home plate, to first, then second, then third, and back home -"

"- and couldn't find it - but one of the side doors is unlocked."

"'Unlocked' isn't the right word." The otter straightened up, cleared his throat, and avoided eye contact with Carmen. "More like 'rusted off its hinges'. Well, the wood was all rotten and broken. But the hinges were rusty too. So."

"Okay... so what? Where are you going with this?"

Carmen grinned at the otter, then looked back to Crisp. "We want you to spend a night there."

"Me?"

"You."

"Why?"

"We know how much you just love dark, scary, abandoned places which may or may not be haunted. After all, you do have a bit of a past with ghosts, don't you?"

"I do not."

"Yes you do. So, how about it?"

He slumped back in his seat and huffed. There had maybe been one time, and it's not like he could even remember it that well - no, not at all, totally... "What's in it for me?"

Carmen idly stirred her coffee, a sly smile on her face. "I'll blow you."

Crisp scoffed.

"I will, too," added the otter - perhaps a bit more enthusiastically than he had intended; he turned red again, and his ears splayed back against his head. Leave it to an otter to fluster himself.

"Cool. So what's really in it for me?"

"I dunno." Carmen shrugged. "You can dare us to do something equally as dumb and risky. We'll figure something out."

"Hmm." He looked from one to the other. "Fine."

"Great! Shake on it. C'mon." Carmen extended a paw, which he took and shook, and then nudged the otter with a shoulder. "You too. C'mon."

Crisp rolled his eyes and sighed. This kind of back-and-forth thing had always been common in this group. As children, they'd often play video games together and bet in-game currency that one could do something the others couldn't (which was, more often than not, jumping off some high place without dying, or something of the like). More recently, though, these twos' dares had proven interesting, and only slightly worthy of regret. A long-abandoned high school in a forest which was in an expanse of nothing between two cities a few miles apart?

What could go wrong?

~ ~ ~

An arrival time of 7:30 PM had been agreed upon, just when the sun began going down at this time of year. The pair picked up Crisp at his place a little before seven - 'since it'll take a while to get there', explained the vixen, 'and we'll have to look around for the place, because I don't fuckin' know where exactly it is off the top of my head'. She and the otter had been bantering back and forth for the whole ride while Crisp sat in the back and listened, amused.

"Hey."

"What now?"

"Remember that time I fucked your sister?"

"Carmen, you're a woman."

"So? I still did it."

"I'm not denying that. I'm simply doubting the validity of that statement. Especially since - oh, I dunno - my sister moved to Alaska."

"This was a while ago."

"How long?"

"Two years."

"She moved five years ago."

"Yeah?" Carmen adjusted her seatbelt and slid a look over to him. "Yeah, well, you're a faggot."

"I - that happened once!"

"Oh? What? What happened once, hmm? Hmm? Let me guess: you were drunk, too?"

"...Yes..."

Crisp watched the landscape go by, the signs and buildings from the start of this trip having given way to apartments and houses, and then, to long seas of tall yellow grass. Off in the distance waited the forest, thick and heavy, like a deep green cloud which had fallen and now clung to the earth. He had always liked forests, but only during the day, when all the intertwining boughs and branches and leaves above cast uneven marbled shadows on the ground that teemed with just as much green life, bouncy in places where maybe a thick patch of clovers concealed a little dip. He enjoyed pushing back low, springy branches and feeling them whip back into place as he moved forward, enjoyed the scent of a turquoise river weaving its way around a golden-brown high embankment which had been cut back to rosy clay some time in the past...

"So you have a brother too, right?"

"...Yeah, so?"

"How big's his dick?"

"Jesus Christ, Carmen...!"

...but at night, he'd rather not be caught anywhere near a damn forest. All the shadows, deepened by moonlight - or dimmer starlight, depending on the night - melt together into something... else, something that moves constantly and erratically as those thin branches he pushed past during the day, given life by a cold breeze. At night the air is colder, and sound travels faster and farther - noises he wouldn't otherwise be able to hear become so clear, so startlingly clear to him. He got fidgety all over just thinking about it: the gentle tickle of a leaf on his fur, or an imperceptible breeze in his whiskers, or a cobweb he hadn't seen suddenly clinging to his nose.

"...How many times to I have to tell you I'm not gay? Good lord, fox..."

"More than twice, obviously. Are you sure?"

"Pretty sure."

"Only pretty sure?"

"Well..."

"Knew it. You can tell me. After all, I did your sister."

"Carmen?"

"Yeah?"

"I don't even have a sister."

"Well, I -"

"Right."

"What?"

"Right." The otter looked at her and then nodded toward the window. Crisp looked over that way; they had entered the forest a few minutes ago, and he had wiggled himself closer down to the seat in response. Maybe this really wasn't such a great idea - not that he was afraid of the dark. He just didn't like it, especially when alone and in an unfamiliar place. "If you don't turn right, we'll miss it. I remember you were all 'aaaah what's down this path aaaaah' and turned here. So, turn right. Unless you wanna spend another night driving around with me?"

"I don't think I could bear three more minutes."

Crisp held on to the armrest as they rumbled over onto an uneven dirt road hewn into the grass, and then added, "So you two can share a bed, but not a car?"

"Shut up, you."

He thought he heard Carmen mutter something like 'we were both drunk that night', but he must have been mistaken.

The two spoke less as the dirt path gradually succumbed to taller, thicker vegetation and the encroaching trunks of tall trees, and then became totally silent when Carmen had to drop the speed to two or three miles per hour due to restricted vision. Now when Crisp looked out the window, all he could see was the closest row of the trees and anything that hung from them; though the vixen had the brights of the car's headlights on, the only difference from before was the grotesque lengthening and manipulation of deep murky shadows. She often looked out the side window, and at one point straightened up and leaned forward as if trying to see something she could barely make out, before bringing the car to a stop. Earth and gravel crackled beneath the tires.

"Well," she said. The dying engine gave way to cold silence, and the shadows closed in like a living creature after the purging of the headlights. Her seatbelt's click when she removed it startled Crisp. "We're here."

"We are?" He sat up and looked around. Shadows and silence enveloped everything; he could only tell that the forest's canopy allowed so little starlight through due to the bluer tone of the night sky against the stark black that permeated everything else. He could see that the dirt path went off a little farther to the left, but not much past that. "I can't see anything."

"This is as close as I can get without seriously fuckin' up the car. It'll already be a pain to turn around in all this." She looked back over her shoulder and gave a smile, the kind which he couldn't tell was honest or sardonic or what. "C'mon. We'll walk you up."

A peculiar shiver forced its way over his body as soon as he stepped out of the car and made him pull his jacket tighter around himself. The presence of friends, especially these two, made him feel quite a bit better about being out here. A steady breeze whispered through the treetops, shaking loose a few leaves and causing a gentle rustling to sound out within the darkness. Crisp stepped around to where his friends stood, a bit of a distance in front of the car near where the path went deeper in. They had stopped in a small sort of clearing.

Carmen had her phone out, face illuminated and green eyes slitted against the bright screen. "...Okay," she said, and started off again down the path. Crisp followed, alongside the otter. "It's still going to get a bit darker, and I'm fairly certain electricity in the building won't work. You have a camera?"

"Um - on my phone."

"It have a flash?"

"Yes."

"Good."

"Why?"

"Because." The vixen used her phone screen as a flashlight, angled down at the ground in front of her feet. Had she not been doing so, they all would have tripped over a log that had fallen across the path and very possibly hurt themselves. "There's still phone service out here - another half-mile and we'd be out of luck. We want you to send us a picture every hour."

"And don't get any funny ideas about what the picture's of," interjected the otter. His dark brown fur looked black in this light - or, rather, this lack thereof - and the only way Crisp could tell where he was was how his golden eyes reflected the light of Carmen's phone, and the noises of the earth and leaves beneath his feet as he walked. "Just a picture of you - clothed - in whichever room you're in. Has to be a different room each time so you'll be forced to move around, and, yes, every hour. No sleeping."

"But I'm tired."

"Wouldn't be much fun if you went to sleep as soon as you got inside and woke up in the morning, would it? Think of all the horror movies you've seen. Never happens, right?"

"Fine. Where'll you guys be? Please tell me you're not going back home and stranding me out here..."

"No, no." Carmen had to hit a button on her phone to make her screen light back up after it went dark. In the distance Crisp could see the cover of treetops thin and part. A moon did, in fact, shine tonight, bright and full and somewhat orange. "We're staying over where we parked for the whole night - sure, we're technically and legally trespassing, but no one ever comes out here. So, yeah. We'll be there all night to make sure you don't die."

"Oh, yeah? You n' him in the car together, alone, at night? What'll you be doing?"

"Shush. Look - here's the school. You ready?..."

'Abandoned' was something about it that showed very, very well. The entire thing had been constructed in an architectural style totally different from anything else Crisp had ever seen, but it still fell apart and showed its age much the same way: its walls looked dirty and darkened, and vines climbed up a few sections; overhanging ceilings which had crumbled and now showed the iron bars of the building's skeleton; windows and doors had been boarded up from what looked like both inside and outside, and those that hadn't been boarded were broken, blocked by large plants and dirt, part of a totally ruined section of the school, or all three of these. He could just barely make out the name of the place, hanging on one of the side walls: "Alexander v. Brennenburg High School". Many of the letters were missing, but their shadows still lingered. For some reason, he felt that these weren't the only shadows that still chilled whatever they graced with their presence.

"it looks like it's two stories." The group came up close to the building and followed a sidewalk that ran along the side, cracked in several places and almost completely hidden by dirt and plants. Looking around, Crisp could almost see how this might once have been a functioning educational institution. Almost. Carmen slid her phone into her pocket and kept a paw against the brick wall beside her to know where she was going; Crisp saw the otter's ears flatten at the noise her claws made against the rough stone. "Might be a third, a basement beneath. We didn't go in."

"Well, we did. Went in, got to the end of the hall, then noped out and went back." The otter over-exaggerated a shudder and turned bright yellow eyes back to Crisp. "I don't do too well in dark places."

"I know you don't." The vixen, a few feet ahead of the guys, passed a door, paused, stepped back, and looked through its broken glass. "'Cause you're a pussy. Here, this is the in."

"Am not."

She daintily stepped over the everything in front of the door - a mass of dirt, glass, rotten wood, still-green fleshy plants - then shook her head and clomped over the rest, holding onto what remained of the door itself for balance. It really had both rotted apart and rusted off its hinges; when Crisp did the same as her it broke off, fell, and crumbled. "You clung to me like the railing on a cliff when we watched Quarantine."

"Did not!"

"Wait, you guys saw Quarantine? Without me?"

The otter sputtered. Obviously Crisp wasn't supposed to know. This, of course, forced a grin onto his face. "Well - it - you were, ah -"

"Carmen?"

Her ears threatened to flatten, but she tried to keep them raised and her expression straight. "Yeah. You were... busy."

"So it was just you two?"

"No."

Crisp looked over at the otter.

"...She has two pet feral cats, remember?"

"Did you spend the night, too? I -"

"Okay. We're somewhere in the east wing of the building." Carmen took out her phone again and pointed it around the hallway: a few closed doors lay in alcoves at a few points, and the remains of decorations from the school's final operating year still hung from the walls. The light glinted off a 'Teacher of the Year 1982: Mrs. Montgomery' plaque. "and it's... eight thirty-two. Pretty good. It'll be damn dark around ten or so."

"It's already damn dark." Crisp extended a paw out; at arm's length almost all the color of his fur had turned to some shade of grey (apart from how his fur already contained no color other than white and grey) and the outlines turned fuzzy. "What made you two think 'oh, hey, it'll be cool to go in there at midnight-fuckin'-thirty'?"

"You know we just like messin' with you."

"Yeah. Uh huh." Crisp kicked at a little chunk of cement that had fallen from somewhere. "So, do I get a flashlight or somethin'?"

"Nope." Carmen once again slid her phone into her pocket. The shadows consumed where the light had previously shone like some amorphous creature. "You said you have a phone. Do what I do."

"And if it runs out of power?"

"Then you lose! You've gotta send us a picture of your progress each hour on the hour, with an error margin of... oh, how about ten minutes. I know how time just flies when you're having fun."

"I -"

Before he could form a proper foul-worded reply, Carmen stepped by him and took the otter's wrist - or paw. He couldn't tell in the darkness. "Okay," she said, seemingly in a hurry to get out. "First picture's due in half an hour, at nine. We'll be out at the car all night in case you pussy out or something. See ya."

"Bitch -"

The otter gave him an apologetic grin and then waved. "Bye, Crisp," he said. "Hope you don't die. Have fun."

Their footsteps as they crunched over broken stone and shattered glass diminished back into silence, and then their muddy silhouettes also relinquished their farm to the night - and Crisp was alone. His canid eyes, along with what little light came in through the windows and holes in the walls and ceiling, allowed him to see most things within a ten foot radius or so with less than optimal clarity, and this radius slowly grew larger as his eyes continued to adjust. However, the feeling of discomfort and unease that entered his body back In the car still punctuated each heartbeat, and rooted deeper in him the longer he spent here - this hell ended in what looked like a lobby or gathering area of sorts, large and rectangular and open, with several other halls jutting out from it like legs on a spider's molted husk. Crisp shivered and turned to the right, towards the nearest hallway.

Just being here reminded him of back when he attended high school. He could almost hear the voices of all his classmates, muted as if they floated to him from far away; he almost saw shadowy and indistinct outlines of people against the darkness, against the rusted lockers lining the walls - some canid, some felid, some mustelid or reptilian or whatever else. His heart skipped a beat when one of these outlines turned to look at him and then disappeared after he blinked.

Damn those two, he thought as he fished around in his pocket for his phone. However, the light revealed a stretching and very empty hallway in front of him, as he had expected and knew he would find. He knew he was alone - unless, of course, those two friends of his actually knew of another way in and were currently stalking around to make the wolf's experience more 'thrilling'; or unless someone else had been dared to do the same thing as him, on this same night. If the latter of these were true, Crisp just hoped that this other person would stay in their wing of the building, and he'd stay in his. He didn't much like the thought of possibly being not alone without knowing for sure.

Rather than knobs, these doors had handles - as well as spiderwebs on the backs of these, as he had unfortunately and accidentally learned after trying one to get into a room; anything to get out of these dark open spaces. All this room's walls remained intact, and the same went for the ceiling, save for a little patch where he could see into the space between this floor and the next up. He must have wandered into a history room: maps from pull-down screens hung one to two on each wall alongside newspaper articles faded yellow beyond legibility, topic-relevant posters and pictures, and a few bookshelves containing textbooks of various heights and thicknesses. One poster that caught his eye read "Our Time: The 70's..."

Something about the desks and their layout made him stop at the door. In every horror movie he'd seen involving a school, the interior was always uneven, just as distressed as the exterior, with furniture thrown around and at odd angles with one another or on their sides; however, here, all the desks lined up in straight, even lines, chairs pushed in. Really, there was nothing that should be unnerving about it - not like some catastrophe happened that demanded the school's immediate closure while day classes were going on. Probably not, at least.

Not wanting to be close to the door, he went around to the other side of the room, slid out the furthest-back chair with a foot, and slumped down into it. A large window stretched across this wall - or, at least, one used to: long plywood boards had been nailed side-by-side into the wall, and fine shattered glass gave the floor near the wall's base a whitish dusting.

Sixty-seven percent. That's how much battery his phone had left when he looked down at it, eyes straining against the bright screen, which he promptly turned down so as not to waste any more power. If only he'd thought to plug the damn thing in while he spent the whole day knowing about this dare at home, or at least taken that cute little portable charger thing his brother had sent him with him. But, no, he had to spend the whole night with sixty-seven percent battery life left, and take a picture each hour. Just being on, even if he didn't use it, ate about two percent an hour, and the camera didn't work under thirty...

He rested his chin on his arms and closed his eyes, breathing in the scent of stone and dust, of old wood and mildew. As a cub, he would've loved exploring a place like this, just looking around and finding things, relics of the past. He used to love going to new places, something that drastically changed as he grew older. He'd be okay with going to the same place every day for the rest of his life, honestly; he wouldn't actively avoid going somewhere new, and he knew he'd be okay with it after getting to know the place, but still. New places weren't his thing.

Especially if they were old, dark, decrepit, and had doors that opened on their own -

Okay. Maybe he just hadn't closed it all the way and some breeze from down the hall pushed it open, but when he reopened his eyes after a few moments, it certainly stood open. Of course, he couldn't have forgotten to shut it; like most schools, this one's doors came equipped with a mechanism to close it unless something actively held it open.

Crisp straightened up where he sat as he started to hear noises around the room, like gentle whispering, or the noise gossamer fabric makes when it rubs over itself. However, nothing in the room actually changed: all the chairs remained pushed in, the pull-down map cords did not stir, draft ruffled his fur and chilled his skin.

Maybe it was all in his head. Calm down, he told himself, you've seen too many scary movies. Ghosts aren't real - you know that -

"Crisp?"

He jumped, and his hackles stood on end. Sitting at the teacher's desk at the front of the room was a female wolf - or, at least, the foggy blue image of one. No way that could be real... and no way was it the thing that had spoken. He closed his eyes again and drew deep breaths, trying to regulate his heartbeat - God, that had startled him. Such interesting tricks the mind can play...

"Crisp, are you awake? Dan, please nudge him..."

_Am I in a dream?_he suddenly thought, but the feeling of an ice-cold finger tapping his shoulder erased that possibility as quickly as it came. Another voice, belonging presumably to whoever - whatever - tapped him, came from behind him shortly after: "Hey, man, she called on you..."

Maybe if he ignored it enough, it would all go away. He dropped his head to his desk and kept his eyes closed. Still the whispering remained, and now he could also hear the impatient tapping of claws on a desk at the front of the room. After a moment, though, the tapping stopped, and there was a brief moment of pause before he felt an unsettling chill grip one of his shoulders, as if someone had hewn a paw from unmelting ice and pressed it down against his skin.

"Crisp..." came that female voice again. He lifted his head, and his eyes met those of the apparition, drained of all color except for that misty bluish-white, the color of liquid oxygen. "Are you feeling alright? Do you need to go to the nurse?"

"I..." What was this? He hadn't had to attend school for a few years now. "I'm... fine?"

"Then can you please do what I asked you to?"

He looked over at the door of the room. Was he dreaming...? God, he'd have to take a picture for his friends soon - "Um, what?"

"Trace the movements of the Pact into Dominion territory on the map I have on the board. We've been studying this war rigorously for the past few weeks, and you've been here every day, answering most of the questions I ask and getting upset when someone beats you to it .Am I wrong for assuming you know this one, too?" The teacher motioned up at the front of the room. Crisp looked: the blackboard had fissured down the middle nd now half lay on the floor, while time had steadily eaten away at the backing of the other half and left it a thin, cracked surface, like the exterior of a burnt marshmallow.

Memories came back to the wolf .This was probably - likely - maybe - not real, though he could still feel the pressure of all these students' eyes on him, expecting him to go up. And what could he do? What if he stood up and exited the room, only to find the whole school populated with these... these ghosts, reenacting a normal school day? Already a bit shaky, he swallowed, stood, padded up to the blackboard... and looked back over the classroom, full of fifteen or twenty students of different species - segregation based on species between the majority in ne class or school, usually wolves or foxes or another canid, and all the other species in another, had been eliminated in the early fifties -wearing clothing and hairstyles in ways that would have been humorous to him in any other circumstance.

"Um..." he was afraid to touch the half of the board that remained on the wall for fear it might not be afterward. "Miss - uh, there's no map..."

"What are you talking about? It's right there." She motioned again while making her way back to the desk. Crisp only now noticed that one of its legs, being made of wood, had either rotted or somehow broken, resulting in the entire thing being angled towards that corner. "You're standing directly in front of the White Gold Tower."

"Oh - yes..." He swallowed again. He wanted to leave, but something held him there, at the front of the class, even as he fidgeted and grew steadily more uncomfortable. "Ah... where's the, uh... the chalk?"

One of the students in the front row, a big ram, sneered and sat back. "Hey, stupid," he said. The teacher's ears flattened at his voice, and she gave him a dirty look. "It's right there. What are you, blind? -"

Whatever the ram said next was drowned in the waves of laugher this brought from the rest of the class. Suddenly, every time this had ever actually happened to Crisp came back to his thoughts, and he blushed and lowered his head.

"Ha. You sure got him!..." "Ha. Blind. That's a good one." "What a dork." "Is he stupid? that's not even that hard of a question..." "I heard he's gay. Doesn't that mean there's something wrong with his brain?"

The teacher stood beside him and held her paws up. "Class, please! Be quiet! Maybe Crisp here is just having a bad day - sweetie, you can go sit down..."

As he did, he pulled his phone from his pocket and opened up the camera. At least he would have something to take his mind off all of this... some of the other ghosts around him turned his way and started talking to each other while he fiddled with it. "What is that?..." "Oh, wow, is he an alien?"

The light from his front screen, brightness turned down, could no way take a good enough picture to satisfy his friends outside. So, he turned it around, held it up -

...do ghosts show up in pictures? -

_ _

• and it flashed, and he was alone in the room. No ghostly teacher or students, no soft blue glow, no cold, cold bodies, no giggling judgment to fuel his embarrassment... relieved, he leaned back in his seat and breathed out a sigh. Christ - had those two drugged him or something? Slipped hallucinogens into his drink? The room remained exactly as it was when he first sat down, with no signs of anyone else - living, dead, or otherwise - having been in here after him.

After taking a moment to let his heartbeat return to normal, he brought the picture back up. His face in it was perfect: a mixture of disappointment, impatience, exhaustion, and exasperation - so he added a fitting message with more than a few choice words and sent it their way.

Still, though, the thought of what had just happened in here unnerved him, and he felt a strong urge to want to leave. He didn't look behind himself as he stood and approached the door until that door slammed shut behind him... and, then, when he did, a still-empty room looked back at him.

...Well. That was strange. To tell the truth, Crisp had indeed had an experience with ghosts before, but that was a few months ago on a visit to his parents... it was somewhat enjoyable, he hated to admit, but not really something he'd go out of his way to do again. Perhaps this classroom would be the last encounter of the night, as well as the first and thus the only. He would be quite okay with that. Now, he just had to...

Just as he began to turn back around, cold arms wrapped around his waist and the stout muzzle of some felid, perhaps a panther or tiger, nuzzled up against his neck from behind. It felt like the heat of his body leaked out at those points of contact.

"Hello there, dear..."

Though no breath came with the words, the ghost's speech tickled the sensitive fuzz in his ear and caused it to flick. He shifted, suddenly a lot more uncomfortable than he had been in the room; this discomfort grew quickly as those spectral paws worked under his shirt and down to the fly of his pants. "Wait - wait..."

"I've missed you." The cat, most likely a panther, had a low voice, bent and speckled, for lack of a better word, in the way that Crisp had found to be characteristic of ghost voices. "I've waited here every day for a week, and you only now show up..."

"I -"

"I know finals are coming up, but still." The panther popped open the button of Crisp's fly with a thumb and started at the zipper, very much taking his time. A familiar shiver caused partially by the saturated chill of the apparition against him and partially by the anticipation of continuation. "Can't you spare some time for me, your sweet boyfriend? Your dear Aaron?"

...Aaron? He'd never had a boyfriend named Aaron - hell, he didn't think he knew anyone at all named Aaron. One time in high school, he may or may not have done a few things with a damn sexy panther under the bleachers in gym class. He couldn't really explain it; there was just something about knowing he could be caught that made the whole thing so... so much more for him. "I don't -"

"Hm?" The panther, paws on Crisp's hips, turned him around. God, it felt strange to have a ghost physically interact with him... and it felt stranger to be so close to one while his pants hung partially open. Like standing naked in front of an open refrigerator. "You alright? You look... confused."

"I - I don't belong here." He looked into this strange panther's eyes, yet all he could see was the lockers behind the ghost.

Aaron's ears lowered slightly, and he moved his paws to Crisp's front and drew slow little circles in the bellyfur there. "Oh," he said, a different tone in his voice. The wolf felt that if he looked down, he would see tiny little ice crystals growing wherever he was touched. "This again? Come on, hon - I thought we'd gotten over that..."

"I..." Okay, what? Not only did he feel lost and out-of-place, but now, confusion muddled his mind, too. Did these ghosts view him as another student in their remembrance, someone who they knew? Or did he simply take the place of someone else, and they couldn't tell the difference? Crisp gently took this Aaron's wrists, unsure at first if he would find actual physical resistance and then being shocked when he did, and moved them off of him. "Look," he said. Maybe he could find a wing of this school where the only things moving were him and whatever the wind blew life into.

The ghostly panther looked at him, doubtful confusion in his pale eyes of ice. "Is everything okay, dear? We've been talking about this for weeks..."

"Look..." Crisp moved one of his paws to do up his pants. Getting off was just about the farthest thing from his mind right now. "...I'm not who you think I am. I don't belong here, and when I say that, I mean it. You don't know me; I don't know you. So, just... please, let me go on my way."

"...Oh. Okay." Aaron dropped his paws to hi sides, and he looked down. "Sorry... I just thought... after two years..."

Then, before his eyes, the panther began to dissipate into the air, again like mist. He wouldn't be surprised if little droplets of cold water condensed on his fur.

"Sorry."

And then he was gone, the strange panther Aaron. His final word hung in the air like a low, low bell; a gently shiver ran throughout Crisp's body, as if the hall had become a few degrees colder in this particular area. He almost felt bad for that poor kitten - if his presence here, now, was truly influencing the procession of these ghosts' normal day, that kid just lost his boyfriend. That had happened to Crisp once, also during the particularly stressful time of high school.

He just had to tell himself that none of these... interactions... were true or had any effect on anything.

As the wolf advanced down the hall, keeping one paw on the wall to guide him in this still-so-impenetrable darkness, he checked his phone: no response from Carmen or the otter, but the message had indeed sent. He had some idea of what they must be doing to keep their attention off of him...hell, as long as they were enjoying themselves. The last sexual touch Crisp had felt that didn't come from his own paws had actually also been ghosts... and, God, such a time that was. No matter how warmly he'd wrap himself in blankets during the night, for at least a week or so after, pawing resulted in the coolest, sweetest shiver to come with orgasm...

...the half-arousal that that panther's searching paws had awoken remained, kept so by such memories.

His paw fell away from the wall's smooth tiling and brushed against stiff, splintered wood. He had reached the end of this hall... or, at least, had gone as far as he could, for a section of the ceiling had fallen in and prevented further advancement. This happened a while ago: deep mulch covered the ground at its base, congealed from many seasons of fallen leaves and broken branches. Crisp tried the door, found it locked, then put a little more pressure on it, which caused it to tear free of the rotten threshold.

He stumbled forward into a fairly small hallway, what little foot room it did have taken partially up by trophy cases of dusty glass that contained rusted and tarnished relics. Crisp felt as though he had stepped into one of the horror video games that his group often stayed up all night playing. a little more nervous before, he continued down the hallway - again keeping a paw against the wall - but stopped when a soft blue light fizzed into being at the end of the hall.

And then, a very naked male ghost crossed the other end, laughing a low, sweet laugh. Everything in Crisp's body (except one certain area) told him not to follow, but... he found himself drawn that way. The light grew stronger as he got closer, and he soon found that multiple ghosts, also naked, sat around the room; a locker room, of course.

A tall tiger leaned back against the wall outside of the room, angled in such a way so that Crisp had to squeeze between him and the trophy case. The tiger smirked at this contact, and Crisp could've sworn that he pressed his hips forward when his side brushed up against the ghost's crotch. That little shock of anticipation still came when touching such areas still occurred even with ghosts, Crisp had found...

A well-built wolf sat on the bench in front of the door. He wore only a towel, and Crisp could very clearly see up it. "So," said the ghost, and shifted his legs a little wider. "How about last night's game, eh?"

"Yeah! We sure showed those chumps." A bull stepped out of the shower and swiped a towel from the rack. Crisp had to adjust his pants after noticing that one of his balls would easily fill his palm. "Then we've got Valleyhill on Friday, which'll be easy and Rubyville after that..."

"Yeah." The wolf stood, shed his towel, and headed toward the shower. Crisp leaned forward to sneak a look at his backside, which looked - of course - as nice as he expected, under a somewhat long and bushy tail. "We've got an easy season ahead of us, I'll say."

"Right?" Crisp shrunk back as the bull, easily a foot and a half taller than him, and then jumped back forward when he bumped against the tiger that still stood there. The bull paused a moment, then turned and looked down at him. "Hm... I don't recognize you. Who are you?"

"I-I..." The towel did little to hide the shape of the bull's cock. Crisp imagined gripping his upper forearm in his paw... "Um, well..."

"Oh. You must be going to gym, down the hall?" He thought he'd passed an intersection a while back. He was too busy focusing on not letting the darkness get to him - and, of course, on naked wolves. "Football just got in - we're showering and changing. Sorry if we get in your way, dude."

And then he lumbered off to one of the rows of lockers, leaving Crisp more aroused than when he walked in. If they thought he was going to gym class, they should also think that he's here to change...and he can't do that. He can't take his clothes of in front of all these hot guys.

At one hell of a loss as to what to do, he stepped over to the nearest bench, paws in his pockets to try to hide his growing erection, and sat down as far as he could from anyone else. But, right after he did, a slim otter, thick fur still somewhat moist from the shower, sat down and leaned back for God knows what purpose; and, of course, Crisp's eyes were drawn to one area in particular, This otter wasn't quite as endowed as that bull, but he still boasted a package; Crisp had always been drawn to the ever-soft creamy fur of otter bellies and lower areas, and found this still true for ghosts. He unconsciously licked his lips; while he could fit one of the bull's balls in a paw, with this otter, he could cup his sack in one and work at the sheath with the other...

A paw on his shoulder scared the shit out of him; he looked up to see that same bull, still with a towel around his waist. The thicker, wirier fur of his pubic area leaked out from under the towel below his belly button. "So," he said, in that fitting low voice of his. Crisp suppressed a shiver. "You gonna change, or what?"

"Oh - I..." What choice did he have? Hell, this might not end up so bad... he began lifting his shirt, but still didn't stand. "Yeah, uh - gimme a little..."

But the bull didn't move. He just stood there watching Crisp undress, arms crossed in front of his chest and a smirk on his face.

"Um... yes?" He felt extremely uncomfortable, what with the throbbing heat in his pants and this almost totally naked sexy-ass beast beside him. He almost placed his shirt beside him, but accidentally brought his paw down on the leg (and probably something else) of the otter, who jumped and muttered a startled "Hey...!"

Just thought I'd tell you that you should hurry. Class starts in two minutes."

"Yeah." Crisp swallowed, rubbed his paws together, avoided eye contact. The otter beside him, apparently having had enough of his relaxation/air-dry time, stood and began fiddling with a lock of one of the lockers. "I - I know..."

He didn't, of course. This bull could just be messing with him, with the new guy... and he could do nothing but follow what he said. He pulled in a breath, swallowed, stood up -

• and instantly regretted it. The bull's eyebrows went up, and Crisp followed his gaze to - again - one area in particular. "Hmm? Oh, what's this?"

"No - no, it's not..." Crisp stumbled back, right into the otter who still stood there. That ghost muttered something else under his breath, then turned to him and placed his paws on his hips. He was still naked. "I -"

"Hey Marcus! C'mere!"

The tiger who stood at the door looked over this way, then straightened up and sauntered over. Crisp held his paws in front of him and tried not to look anyone in the eye. All this attention wasn't doing anything to make his boner go away either; a glance down revealed just how obvious it was. "Yeah?"

"Check this guy out - just walked in here, sat down... bonin' up. Just your type."

"Yeah." The tiger had a low, growly voice, and looked over the shorter Crisp as he spoke. He remembered the feeling of that sack and soft shaft against his side when he pushed past... "Do you know how to work the showers, kid?"

Crisp shook his head. More guys had gathered, although they feigned disinterest; however, ears pointed this way and the occasional glance over belied their true interest. "No..."

"Here. Let me show you."

Back when Crisp was in high school, he always tried to enter the locker rooms after everyone had left, due to him being both very much a teenager and very much gay. His wandering eyes only ever brought him one thing, and now that other people had noticed that thing... he followed the tiger, a little behind him, towards the showers. It was one open space with several showerheads and knobs jutting out from the walls. Ghosts showered in water that did not flow from rusted and askew showerheads which did not work.

"Okay." The tiger crossed his arms in front of his chest. "Well, first, you'll wanna take your clothes off. Unless you don't mind being wet all over?"

"Well, I..." When Crisp dropped his eyes, they only came to rest on the tiger's crotch. He wasn't a grower. Hopefully. Probably. Hopefully.

"No need to be shy... we're all guys here. Nothing we haven't seen before - and I'm sure the same goes for you, yes?"

Crisp straightened up, then, as a sharp chill ran the course of his back and brought with it the kind of shiver he hadn't felt in a long time. Ghosts, being how they were, possessed the ability to - well, to do exactly that: possess. He felt the icy influence spread over his body like his blood has passed through an ice chest. The favorite things of ghosts to do seemed to be to restrict the movement of whoever they possessed in order to force them to do things they otherwise wouldn't. However, the wolf found no such restriction as he twiddled his fingers, still avoiding eye contact. "O-okay... I um... need to take off my shoes first."

He was very, very aware of his head's closeness to the tiger's hanging cock when he kneeled down - he thought he could feel the heat it'd give off, if ghosts emanated anything other than icy cold. He had even worn his favorite shoes, bright cherry-red sneakers with white laces... his nervousness was clearly getting to him, for he had a bit of trouble even gripping the laces. He didn't remember making the knot that tight, either. The pressure of judging eyes bore down on him, muddling his thoughts, making his fingers fumble.

"Having trouble, there?"

He looked up past the tiger's sack and meat, inches away from his nose. "What?"

"Look at you." The tiger motioned down. "Can't even untie your own shoes. How do you expect to take a shower? You expect me to bathe you? I will."

He looked back down to see the laces he had just loosened writhing, turning, tying themselves back together, even intertwining his fingers in the knot. Giggling which was not his filled his head. He fiddled with it a little more, both hating and loving how he embarrassed himself in front of all these guys.

"Must be a freshman..." one of them muttered, and then scoffed. "Look at 'im. Bet he's only doing that 'cuz he enjoys getting on his knees for guys..."

"Here -" Whichever one that had occupied his body forced him to stand up, leaving the laces all tangled together. "Forget about the shoes. Let's get these pants of yours off."

Then, he could only watch as his paws moved to undo his fly, yet not by his actions. As he watched he also noticed the lace of his sneakers untangle themselves, then all tie together into one knot between the shoes - "so that even if you do manage to break free of me," the ghost explained, "you won't be able to get away before another of us manages to get into you."

His pants dropped to his ankles, and his shoes caused a bit of trouble in getting them off. If only he could -

"Ha! Look at that!"

A grin lit up the tiger's face. Crisp knew he'd have no luck in hoping they wouldn't notice: his boner lifted the fabric of his underwear quite a bit, and a little wet spot had formed at the end.

"Well, Marcus, look what kneeling for you has done to the boy. I think he wants something from you."

"Oh?" The tiger lifted Crisp's head with a paw on his chin. "That true?"

He was forced to nod. Good lord - he didn't want to deal with this tonight. Why did he have to spend the night at this place? he had expected a somewhat simple and only slightly terrifying night, and yet here he was, being forced to... to play with ghosts against his will, and then accepting against his will too.

"Well then," purred the tiger, and leaned back against the wall. Crisp shifted down to the floor, his nose bumping the end of the ghost's cock in doing so, which caused yet another unintentional response in his own body. "Get to it. I'm all yours."

Admittedly, there was something oddly... hot about being possessed and forced to do these things. Crisp's nose nuzzled up underneath the tiger's sack, cool to the touch but certainly, somehow, corporeal; his body still did all of these things and still had the same reactions and responses, while his mind was completely unoccupied. He could focus on the whole experience if he chose instead of just one thing in particular, such as the way the tiger's still mostly soft shaft rested across his muzzle as he slowly moved up.

"Good God, what a faggot!... oh, c'mon, Mark, don't tell me you're actually enjoying this..."

"Quiet, you." The tiger shifted a little and angled his cock down. Crisp dragged his tongue up along the presented underside, causing a kind of tingly sensation in his mouth - like he had just chewed a couple mint leaves - and then dived down on it, one paw around the base. "Get over here. I'll bet this little slut wants some of you, too..."

When Crisp felt hard cock press against the back of his throat, another ghost stepped up beside the tiger, and - whether against his will or not; he honestly couldn't tell, and the chill in his body had receded somewhat - he brought his paw up and began stroking that one while he bobbed slowly up and down along the tiger's. His own cock throbbed, hard and eager and still confined in his underwear; he tried to move his legs apart to get into a more comfortable position, but quickly found himself restricted by his shoelaces.

"Wow... he's actually liking that... what a slut..."

"Look at him! Never seen anyone - any guy - so damn hungry for cock!"

"Think there's room for one more? I could use a good spitshine, and it looks like he's got the mouth for it..."

"Okay - that's enough..." the tiger growled, and lifted Crisp's head off his length. He just turned and went down on the other cock offered to him; it belonged to the wolf from before. "I've got something else for you, hungry pup..."

He went around Crisp's body; any questions he had were wiped away when his rear was lifted up and underwear tugged down his legs in one swift movement. It wasn't hard at all to anticipate and then tolerate the pressure and slight pain of a cock against his tailhole, his mind consumed by the presence of a ghost, by raw heated lust, or both; a soft gasp forced its way out of his open mouth over the wolfcock he nuzzled up against. Cold paws gripped his sides as the tiger sunk in further, and he sighed gently with the sensation.

"Yeah... just like a bitch..."

He might be able to take a picture to make these ghosts disappear, as had happened last time, but... now, he wasn't sure he really wanted to. Nothing was really against his whim, or want, anymore; the wolf whose cock he cupped in his tongue and squeezed gently with his lips panted softly and urged him to continue with a paw on the back of his head. The tiger's grip on his sides tightened as he plunged deeper and then loosened. Crisp pressed back, and lurched forward when a gentle thrust answered; this was followed by another, and another, and then another, each a little deeper and a little harder than the one preceding it.

After a while, two separate rhythms reverberated through his body: the one set by the wolf's humping into his muzzle and throat in front of him, and the one of the tiger as he thrust in and out of him, causing his whole body to lurch forward and back, forward and back. He was completely aware of the presence of the others in the room and their judgments and comments. Somehow, for some erason, this only heightened his arousal.

A cold paw suddenly closed around his own cock and squeezed, making him jerk forward into it from pleasure. "We could use someone like you around here," purred the tiger into his ear. As he spoke, he paused occasionally to give voice to a low moan. "As a little - a little reward for after games..."

It felt a little strange to realize that he probably would have accepted had this happened during his school life. The lure of thick, meaty cock was quite hard to ignore, especially since he tried the team on for size both in his maw and under his tail. He closed his eyes and let the tiger's thrusts into him dictate how quickly he humped into his paw in turn...

"Fuck -"

The wolf in front of him bucked into his throat and held his head down, a breathy moan underlining his shuddering body. Crisp felt his cum shoot out against the back of his throat, oddly warm against everything else, and swallowed it down.

"Lord..." The wolf leaned back against the wall. Crisp licked his lips. "Better than my girlfriend..."

He felt his own climax quickly approaching, and knew he conveyed it very well to the tiger in his panting and moaning, for the grip and speed of the paw on his cock increased, as did the urgency of the thrusts into him. He let his mouth hang open and pushed back, feeling the pressure exponentially building -

He came first, with a series of moans that steadily rose in pitch, and then the ghost finished soon after, slamming into him to punctuate his release.

"Mmh..." Crisp, panting, looked up to see the wolf's face - and gasped as the tiger, slick from saliva and cum, slid out of him - but found him gone. The taste of him and his musk and his cum still lingered in his mouth, though - just as the heat and sensation of the tiger pulsed under his tail...

...but he, too, was gone when Crisp turned around. He was alone in the showers of an abandoned school, naked, on his knees, and dripping cum from both his tailhole and cock.

And he still had to figure out how to untie his shoes from each other, too.

~ ~ ~

It had been hard to remain awake for the rest of the night, but he had done it, and also stuck to the picture-an-hour requirement. Crisp trudged along what little path there was through the forest back to the car, paws in his pockets, a yawn escaping his mouth, and phone almost out of battery.

Carmen's car came into view between the trees. He breathed out a gentle sigh of relief, having been almost convinced that he was going the wrong way. He sped his pace up as he approached, eager to get out of here, to get home and to get into bed. One window of the car was open; he called "Hey!" then trotted forward -

• and saw quite a bit more of Carmen's bare body than he'd ever wanted to. She jumped upon hearing his voice and promptly scrambled to cover herself, while the otter who nuzzled up between her legs opened his eyes, looked up at Crisp, slipped his tongue back into his mouth, and looked as if he'd wished to die.

Crisp dodged the string of curses and insults that followed, as well as someone's pants. He endured it with a grin on his face. "I did it."

"You - fucker - why didn't you let us know? I -"

"...and it looks like you two did it, too. Hey - you know, I hear good practice for that is eating those pudding cups without a spoon..."

"It's hardly been twelve hours! You didn't -"

"You dared me to spend the night, not a whole day." He still grinned. The otter wiped at his mouth with the back of a paw. "So can I come in? Or'd you get enough of that from him, Carmen?..."

A breeze blew through the trees. He shivered slightly and looked around , remembering how he had shivered last night. Maybe he would come back here on his own...

Maybe.