FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

NOTE : Some very important tags have been excluded from this piece as I feel it gives away too much. So if you're below eighteen, or currently RP'ing as a character who is, please stahp.

First story I've ever actually finished. Funny, I thought the main thing I'd want to write is drama but seeing how much this ended up taking out of me I think it'll be a while before I do something similar again.

Starts off slow, prose is choppy, but it gets better if you can make it through.

11765 words

---

~x

---

There I stood, footpaws steeped in water as it drained on by to the gutter below. Rushing past and doing what it could to soak socks and shoes and making me feel as numb as I wish I actually felt. I probably shouldn't be standing on the sidewalk, I thought, where the water's dirtiest and the stream deepest. But all in all it probably really didn't matter, since I'd be getting wet anywhere that was here. Such was always the case in Memphis, fucking, Tennessee. Where the hicks and trees were endless, and standing near or under one just meant getting a different kind of wet.

The downpour started some time after my friend dropped me off in his raggedy ass S-10 Chevrolet, that poor old thing. Honestly I sympathized more with it then I did any other living soul at this point.

"Where's the ticket taking you to?" The bay retriever had asked while I was dragging my bulging Nike bag off his tailgate.

"Doesn't matter." Hoping that'd be the end of it while knowing it wouldn't.

He cocked a skeptics brow. "Okay, so...? What are you going to do when you get there? Where do you plan to stay?" Unexpectedly butterflies flooded my stomach, and in that moment I'd wanted to drop the ten-ton sports bag (despite it having everything worth a damn to me in it) and wrap my arms around the huge bastard. You never really think how alone you could be until shit starts hitting the fan. Or in this case, when the kids start running away from home. And though his question was pointed, and a decent part of me wanted to say 'hey fuck you', I knew Calvin was only asking because he actually cared.

But instead, I remember sighing at the time. "I have some family down in Waco." Which wasn't a total lie. "I phoned them when you were getting the truck, just to say 'hey, your nephew is stopping by for the next few months. Hope you have cable television and access to a steady dealer.' They were cool about it, said I could stay as long as I needed, and my uncle even mentioned getting me a job at the hotel until I could work things out with my parents."

Okay, those last two bits, not so true. Though my aunt and uncle do love me to death (and express that love by stalking the shit out of my facebook posts on a daily basis), they would phone my parents the second I went to sleep and I'd probably wake up back in bed at home. So they were out.

But Calvin didn't show he was any the wiser, giving a grunt which I took for mild satisfaction. I made sure I'd had everything in my bag: bottled water, phone, army of chargers, toothbrush, pot - you know, the essentials - before slamming the door shut and heaving my pack to the curb. I was making a few adjustments to my packings, and pondering whether if putting marijuana by shampoo was just asking for trouble, when I heard padding from around the truck.

A sudden weight fell on my shoulder, curling itself around my head and I realized the fuck had me in a headlock. I yelled something about cutting it out, and then something about shitting down his throat - but all in all it was hopeless. He was twice my size, trying to get me pinned as best he could, and all I could do was shout and squirm and try to delay the inevitable as long as possible. It felt like old times, when we were almost cubs and would always tussle for minutes that somehow turned themselves into hours. When one of us had finally had enough in those times we'd nip the other on the arm or the shoulder so we didn't wind up seriously hurt, or even better, dead. Not that Calv had to worry about that last part these days, not when you grow up to be the next freaking LeYote James, effectively making it a thing of child's play for him and more a matter of survival for me.

It was fun though, I had to admit. I missed the roughing and growling and spitting, so much that the familiar motions tore me away for what was probably the better half of an hour. But all good things come to an end. We sat there, a disheveled pile of fox fur and lab spit, while we panted our asses off, looking out at the trees and pretending for a few more moments that I wasn't leaving. Yeah, again, about those good things...

Calvin turned to face me. "Listen. I know...is everything ok?" The crack at the end of the 'ok' made me stop and look my friend square in the face. Concern was carved in that placid face of his, and I hated myself a little more for getting him involved in all this. No doubt after my parents found me missing and made the usual round of calls and searches at the park, Calvin would be the first to be interrogated. We've been best friends since I moved here six years ago, after all. And so in that moment I let my guard fall. I had to, didn't I? Everything I'd been working so hard to keep buried away, afraid he might see, now came peaking to the fore and I have no doubt the agony was as plain on my face now as confusion was his.

But still I couldn't say, not to him and maybe not to anyone ever. I did however manage to stumble over towards him, in what was supposed to be a hug but ended up with me tripping over my own clumsy feet. Luckily the guy had great reflexes, catching my stupid ass so I didn't break my face. We stood there, lost in a vacuum of time, isolated behind the trees and in this moment from the rest of the world. Tied together in a mismatched hug, the sobs casual sobs coming and going, punctuated by an occasional sniffle from above. I guess I'd always been lying to myself up to this point, about what this all meant. But right then and there I knew I wasn't coming back. He must have known it too, because his paws wrapped around me tighter and tighter until I was not only an awkward and stupid fox leaning into his best friend - but a wheezing one as well.

There comes a point in a goodbye to a true friend that you realize no amount of time or words will ever make it alright to end.

Either one of you has to be the adult and step away, or you'll stand there like that, trembling and embraced until a bus or car comes along and mauls both of your furry asses. I don't remember which one of us pulled away, which one of us was the grown up that day. Only that he was suddenly getting into his truck and I was staring straight down at where he last stood, and he was leaving for good and so was I. Staring onward like that, refusing to look up when he called out my name one final time.

"I don't know why." His voice didn't sound like his own, but like a cub who I hadn't seen for six years. "I don't know why you're doing this Erin, but I know you don't want me to know for my own sake. So I won't make you tell me. But whatever they said, whatever they did..." He sounded absolutely miserable, and I didn't miss the edge in his voice that was blaming me in part for this. "...whatever you did..." I winced. "...just know...just know that there are people here that still care about you man. They'll always care about you, and for some of them it won't be the same until you come back home. So please, please just tell me that this isn't really goodbye?"

He straightened his voice out near the end there, but I knew by people he'd meant him. And it just killed me even more. So much that I couldn't find the balls to look up at him again. That's all that he wanted out of this: not the money that he'd given me for the ticket, or the days of grief in the years that were sure to follow when my parents find out I've run away, and that he had played a significant role in the matter. He just wanted that confirming look, that promise in the eyes for him to hold on to.

That lie.

I felt him staring, what felt like an eternity and what an animal must feel like right before the slaughter. I kept looking down in return, until finally he gave a sharp curse and I heard the door slam. I actually looked up then, yeah, but it didn't really count by then. Because he wasn't looking back, only at the road that lay ahead.

I found out who had been the adult that day, as Calvin rubbed his shoulder before driving off. The taste of tang and copper filling my mouth.

Sure enough, the tell-tale mechanized whirr came from the horizon behind eventually and before I knew what I was happening, my feet were shuffling themselves and I was handing the bus driver a ruined ticket. I wasn't paying much attention, and it wasn't until the third time that I heard the weasel urge me to 'go sit my ass down please sir'. He was probably mad about the wet ticket, or maybe at the fox dripping all over his bus, which was stupid, because it wasn't actually his bus technically. The city would clean it up for him, I was sure. But judging by the glare he gave me as I trudged away, I imagine he'd be the one on the floor scrubbing in a sort of proud indignation when the day ended.

There were other passengers. Unsurprisingly since it was the early noon bus, but I had kind of expected more. I didn't think anyone would pay much mind to just another random passenger on a random bus but lo' and behold, a quick glance around and I realized almost everyone was staring up at me.

The hell?

It's what I wanted to yell at them, but I wasn't in the mood to be making new friends so soon. I did the only sensible thing and hurried for the nearest seat, forcing it to make an obscenely dissatisfying crunch as I sat down. Why did it feel like everyone on this thing wanted to kill me? After shoving the bag under my seat I all but collapsed on the nearby window. I wanted to fall asleep, however I couldn't help but begin staring off at the blur of green, gray, and rain across the glass. I wondered when the rain would stop. It had been coming off and on all month, sometimes in a bunch of small bursts, sometime in an outright torrent. Funny how it's not something you bother to think about. Not until you're caught in the everlasting downpour. I closed my eyes, inviting sleep to maybe come ferry me off to some place that was warm. Or at least didn't smell like wet fur and socks. I didn't think it'd ever come. That is, until my breath, along with my body, began to feel weightless.

Next the soft patter of rain, and then the bus itself. The lights flickered overhead.

_ flicker _

*gulp*

"Erin? Is that you?" Her voice called out from the dining room.

"Come into the kitchen son, we need to have a talk with you." Followed the deep yet timid sound that belonged to my father. The absence of the green Sudan from their driveway earlier this morning had tipped me off that something was definitely up, and I was less than eager to figure out what that was. Lately life outside of the home seemed to be constantly distancing itself from one another. A gaping divide that made it feel like every time he stepped out the door he was in a whole different world. One with sights, sounds, and life, which he'd greet happily in step. But when he stepped back through that glass-paned door, the place most would call his home, a sudden weight fell on his shoulders. And the only sight that ever lay before him was the one of the narrow hallway that was the junction between the kitchen and upstairs. Each time he met it all he wanted to do was go upstairs, lock his door, and sleep.

He didn't have so much that option now, though. If he dared blowing off the parents a third time after coming home, they'd probably march straight up to his room and demand to have a 'family talk'. Something that made him a laugh a pitiful sort of laugh every time he thought about it. His mother would ramble on vaguely on and on between each of her 'points' while his father just stood there and pretended to be engaged. But so strong was the compulsion to hurry up the steps before his parents called again, that he completely forgot that his buddy Calvin had followed him from school that day.

"Uhh..." The chocolate bay retriever rubbed an arm uncomfortably.

"Oh, sorry man!" I rubbed the back of my head furiously in turn and kicked myself as best a person hypothetically could. "The folks probably just want to talk about what we'll be doing this weekend. Lame stuff you wouldn't wanna be around for, they might ask you to join us. I grinned, hoping that'd satisfy him and send him on upstairs. Anyone else, and they would have shrugged and probably be dumping their bag on my bed right about now. But with Calvin, it was of course, different.

The bay retriever cocked that motherfucking eyebrow of his.

"You haven't told them that we're going to the Mardi Fest yet?" He stated flatly.

"Haha, no." More vigorous rubbing "It hasn't really come up is all."

Calvin crossed his arms, almost devastating me at the onslaught to come. "How did you plan on getting in, exactly? What about the cab fare? Food? Well? Did you plan on sucking one of the guards silly so you could get on by?"

Jesus my neck felt like a magic pencil.

"Christ dude! No! My parents'll give me the money, for sure. My dad has enough saved away that he could practically retire by now, and my mom just got done doing a baby shower for the Ripley's."

That caught the bay retriever off-guard, like I planned, and his jaw dropped. "Penny Ripley's 'rents? The schnauzers who also happen to be Jewish?"

I gave an odious nod of the head.

"Goddamn man. Your mom must be banking after that."

"They ordered enough wedding cake to start a national epidemic of diabetes." I confirmed.

Calvin eased his arms at that, a quiet sigh of relief escaping me."Well, alright." He said. "Just make sure you get enough to buy those fried pickle thingies you like. You know how much it weirds me out getting them for you."

"Yep, you bet pal." I gave the mutt a good-natured slap on the shoulder. "Now head on upstairs and get Smash started okay? I wanna beat the shit out of you with Kirby for a few before we have to do that reading report."

"Yes sir!" said the retriever with vigor, performing a mock-salute with such energy that might have knocked him flat out if not for a well-timed stop with the saluting paw. He rushed up the steps like a frenetic puppy, taking two at a time before finally reaching the top of the staircase.

I felt him looking down on, but pretended not to notice. I started off towards the kitchen, the good feelings from Calvin fleeing my stomach as the green Sudan out front came back to mind. My mom called out again, and I told her I was coming. And I was, for fear the Calvin might notice that my legs were trembling.

Then something wrapped itself around my leg.

And then something shook my leg.

_ flicker _

The smell of wet fur and crisp dankness raped its way back into my nostrils as reality came back on me like a musky avalanche. My neck hurt like a bitch, and being curled up in a ball did little to relieve me of the chill, let alone dry any of the dampness that'd swelled into my clothes.

Great thinking dipshit.

A thwack! hit my thigh.

"WHATTHEFFffuuu...oh?"

"Hey, sonny, are you okay?" An old woman was still poking the side of my thigh with what I assumed to be a goddamn cane. The head of it was weird though, the silver shape of a lion roaring, topped on a sleek shaft made of some fine wood that looked old and even more expensive. Something that belonged buried with some wealthy rich dude, not to marauding bus ladies that attacked foxes. She stopped poking when I jerked my head up and looked at her. I probably looked all kinds of a crazy, being in the wretched state that I was. But what can I say? I just wasn't up for my leg becoming some senile creature's point of excavation.

"Sorry." she said, getting the hint and lowering the ebony offender. "You were fogging up that window something fierce and I feared you were having a panic attack. Or were you having an orgasm deary?"

I cleared my throat and failed not to blush. "Oh, uh, no. Just a really animated dream. Is all." She met that with a simple hmm and turned her head. Was she looking for someone? Who the hell meets somebody else on a bus, only to start beating the shit out of random foxes? All the better, I thought, turning my own fuzzed up head and laying it back against the window. I really didn't want to risk falling asleep again, but I had the weirdest sensation that people were still staring at me. So I found it best to try and minimize myself as much as possible to quell the impending feeling of-

The seat beside me began to move.

It began to move? Was I sliding off or-

To my horror I saw that the old hag was beginning to make what was a long descent into the crinkly plastic seating next to me.

I panicked. I don't know why but some part of my brain really didn't want her to keep doing whatever it is that she was.

"Oh, s-sorry. This seat is actually, it's sort of, it's kind of..." but she just tossed a sharp glare at me, like who was I trying to fool? And that I should stop stammering like some schoolboy who's just walked in on the headmaster playing the bongos across one of the dormitory maids' behind. After what felt like two monologues, an aside, and one final act, her journey to the chair came to its end while she eased on into it. The plastic construct giving out a sigh that sounded much like what I imagined death would.

"You know, in my day..." she began, and I screamed a thousand screams internally. "You could sit next to a youngin' and they would feel gratified, no, honored to get to make company with one of their elders. But nowadays, you fuzzbutts look at me as if I'm some sort of apex predator. Always shirking away while you pretend to text on your ipod nanos or what-have-yous. Oh, well. If anyone's to blame I suppose it's the churches..." She trailed off.

Holy shit. Holy shit no, this is not actually happening. I'm back in my room asleep. Or at Donny's house, or under a dumpster somewhere tripping my balls off and Calvin's drawing the debut of Playgirl magazine across my muzzle while I have this insanely vivid, fucked up dream. A mild form of flight filled me (and I considered the fact that in a few minutes, I might in fact need to fight as well) as I looked around in a blind sort of panic. Towards the window, though mostly fogged I could see outside. Freedom...? No, it was latched, and besides the road was still passing by in its own lethally merry way. I could always make a break for the center aisle, I figured, and sit somewhere where the wicked witch of the South, North, East, and West might be too feeble to give chase. Sounded like a good plan, I thought, so I turned my head to calculate the maneuvers that would grant the most safety and the speed with which I'd need to-

Oh.

But I forgot, she fucking murdered Santa Claus before getting on the bus, her sack of a bag clearly blocking any hope of an exit that might have gotten me to the center aisle. I was pinned where I was for good, and I slumped back in my seat in sodden resignation. Of course this was happening. Of course it was. You escape one prison and your bound to find another right after. It's like some people were meant to be ensnared on the edge of damnation their entire life or something.

The woman eyed me with droopy hazels, clearly amused as all of this was happening. "Son, what is it exactly you're afraid of?"

"Senile old women." I groaned, not caring if she ate me right there in my seat. But she simply rubbed her chin as if there used to be a beard there, which gave the disturbing image of her donning one in my mind and I thought that it would fit her rather quite nicely.

"Something tells me, that it's the normal ones that you should be afraid of. Judging from experience that is." The word 'experience' was aimed at me I sensed, and my blood went cold. I half jumped, as best one could in a seat, and scanned the stranger-woman's face for the tell-tale signs of familiarity. Did I miss something? Do I know her? Did she know me some how? Of course, she has to. She might be one foot in the nuthouse, but even the nuttiest of nutters didn't just sit next to random boys on the bus and scare the bajeezus out of them. Unless they want something. Or something in particular.

Judging from experience.

I shuddered

"Look." I said flatly. "I don't know who you think I am, or what you might get from me, but you should know right now that I am not interested. Not in your stories, not in what you might give me, or whatever - I just do not care. So leave me alone, please."

Infuriatingly this just amused her even more, making her edge closer. Jesus Christ she smelled like earl grey tea and pepto-bismal.

"And what do you think it is I want from you deary?" She said. "What do you think it is you have wrapped away in the soggy little jacket and matted fur that would hold any interest to someone like me?" She gave my face a once over, realization flaring up on hers.

"Oh, is it that?" She gave a howl of a laugh, slapping her knee. A burgeoning mole above her lip jiggled dangerously.

"Honey, when you get to my age you're just grateful that the plumbing downstairs does what it's usually supposed to, let alone that." Someone on the bus gave a brave cough. Looking up I saw a moose sitting with a kid, probably his son, and at the old lady's words he draped a protective arm around the youth. The action made something crumble a little more inside.

"Then why?" I asked eventually without looking at her. "Why come on and sit next to me and make everyone, myself included, uncomfortable if you don't want anything?"

"Hmm." She mused for a moment. "There are two kinds of people in life deary, so if anyone ever tells you to join a course in philosophy or to read a book that says otherwise you make sure to hit them over the head with something hard. Point being is that one is what most everyone else is on this bus." She waved a decrepit hand around. "The average joe, the mundane, the type of person that only ever looks after their own lot with little ability to do for someone else."

I didn't really like or even care where the woman was going with this, but it's not like I had a whole lot of options at the moment. I considered yelling for the bus weasel as a last resort, but he'd probably just look back, see who it was and laugh and laugh and laugh.

"What's the other kind?" Came the words through gnashed teeth.

"Why, isn't it obvious?" A nimble hand to the breast, she feigned surprise. "The kind that knows and does what's good for everyone, except themselves."

"And let me guess, you just so happen to be the second kind and decided to grace me, the typically young and selfish first kind, with your ageless wisdom by saying I shouldn't be such a sourfox all the time and learn to count my blessings where I have them."

If only she knew what my 'blessings' were right now, the old hag might see just how tempted I was to take them and shove them up her ass.

God. Even if she meant well I wasn't really in the mood for an after-school special. I wanted to sit on this shitty bus, on my shitty seat, in my shitty mood, until I arrived at my shitty destination so I could begin my new shitty life in some shitty city. It was going to be rough, no ifs or buts about that, but no hippie with a cane straight out of a Stephen King novel and some backwoods worldview was going to stop me. I was set on ignoring her for the rest of the interim, even if she busted out a pair of gophers and started juggling them over fire.

But sometime words can steal your attention away better than any actions could.

"Actually." She whispered, like she was afraid others might hear. "I fibbed a little. You see there's also this third kind. The kind of person that does things for people, mostly the people they love or want to love them themselves. Which isn't particularly special I'll grant you, however there is something that makes them exceptionally more rare than the other two." I looked over and saw that the bag from earlier had completely vanished somehow, and her hands were folded over the lion-topped cane in her lap. She stared straight ahead, her solemn expression gratingly reminding me of a certain bay retriever.

"They'll keep on giving and giving even when all the skin is gone from their bones. And then they'll cry out to the world and ask why it's grown so cold."

She jerked her head toward me before I could think, her eyes catching mine. Tiny cold gray stones ensnared me like ice while I felt the uncomfortable sensation of total nudity wash over me.

"Tell me, fox. Why do you look so cold?"

_ flicker _

My eyes fluttered and the smell of rosewater ripped through my nose. I winced, the lights flickered, and before I could call out for some form of Jesus I was standing back in my home. Staring across the dining room table, my mother sitting off to my right (hands clasped in glee), my father to the left (muzzle buried in a book). And on the opposite was a shadow, no, a little black cub. A black kit, with a white tip for a tail as it danced behind him happily as he sipped at a coke with an excessively long sippy-straw.

I knew this day was coming, I knew this day was coming and still it felt like a roof had collapsed and fallen onto my chest. It felt like I wasn't even there, maybe because I really wasn't this time. But I remember it playing out like a dream, because it did. Making me stand and see as another I sat and stared at that little buoyant shadow sitting opposite of me.

What had they done?

How could you do this? I wanted to turn and shout at her, smiling that sanguine-painted smile. How could you let her? To the joke of a man pretending to be busy while this all transpired. I knew he liked to think that his work made these things slip by him unnoticed, but good luck trying to explain that to a judge.

"Oh, isn't it wonderful honey?!" Chirped the bitch. "Usually the agency has to screen us as 'prospective parents' for several months before they come to a decision. I'm sure you remember how it goes: always having the child coming in and out of the house while doing they interview the neighbors and run those terrorist checks or whatever it is the government does these days."

_shiver _

_ _

"But since we've already been through all of that with you and it turned out so well, they said all they'd need to do was update our information, ask you a few questions, and he'd be able to come home for good!"

_shudder _

_ _

"Isn't it just wonderful. Oh Erin, honey, why aren't you saying anything? Say something honey. James! For Christ's sake can you pull your nose out of that thing for one second and at least pretend to be a part of this goddamn fam- Erin, are you okay? Baby you don't look so well."

I almost lost it and began laughing right there. And laughed and laughed and laughed until she reach a teeny little paw out to me in worry and I snapped those smiling canines around her even littler wrists and bit down. Next my father would jump up, would shout. The boy would cry, ask what's going on and eventually run out of the room. Dad would set the book down, but not before I took it from him and hit him over the head with it. Then again, and again, and again until my hands bred murder and my mother was screaming it.

That always just stayed in the dream part of things, though.

"Yeah mom, great." My throat felt like ash. I coughed. "This is really great. What's your name little guy?" I managed, reaching out a paw towards the kit. He just looked up at it and blushed, making me pause and realize how badly I was shaking, so much that I almost knocked his coke over. My father actually noticed this and looked up then, but the kid saved me and the situation by saying "Um, mam."

My mother smiled. "Call me 'mom'." She admonished.

"Oh. Mom. Can you please show me where the washroom is again?"

That cunt let out a little squee and said something about how it was his washroom now and hurried off to show him what would turn out to be the fifth tour of the house.

I kept sitting there, trying my best not to hyperventilate and wondering where to go from here. How do these things happen? How did you let this happen? I asked myself. I guess, in a way, it was really my fault more than anything. At least as much as the father fox who feigns ignorance by burying himself in his work and books to avoid taking responsibility. Hell, he was just scared of being old and losing his job and family at this point in his life - when there was little hope of redeeming it all. But what was my excuse?

"You alright bud?" I looked up to see that my father was actually looking at me for a change. So long, I'd forgotten the mossy green that gave his gaze more depth than most, and made you feel like he was giving his complete attention undivided. It used to make me feel safer than anything looking into those things. Now I just wanted to hurl.

"I know this must be all kinds of hard on you, and, Jesus..." He shifted in his chair and moved an arm out to touch me. I recoiled without thinking, but if he was bothered he didn't show it, pulling the offending arm back to his side. "We wanted to talk to you about it first, well I wanted to anyways, but you know how your mother is. She got so excited talking to all the cubs at the agency and hearing their history I thought we would never leave. I had no idea you'd wanted a little brother so badly."

Neither did I. But more sensibly yet not without audible coolness, I said "Of course you didn't."

Now it was his turn to recoil, which is what I wanted, but it didn't that make me feel as good as I thought it would.

"Hey champ. I know I haven't exactly been father of the year or anything, what with the spring semester just starting and getting tenure last quarter...things have been pretty hectic, but I've been trying ya know?"

Any other family and I knew how this was supposed to turn into a particular moment. A father and son moment where I let out a sigh of relieved agnst, and let my father hug me while he whispers over my ears "I know son, I know." Any other family, and I wouldn't have felt like poking a hole in my dad's stomach and wrapping it around his little book.

I stood up and sighed, doing the best to hide the shear hatred and bottomless pity that well from within.

"It's great dad. It really is. I'll be upstairs studying with Calvin if you need me."

He looked confused. "You mean you don't want to say hi to little Eric first?"

The name had a certain sting to it, and I couldn't help think something like 'Why am I not surprised they picked a name like that?'. It could just be coincidence of course, or they just thought the near-parallel to my own would be cute, but I saw it more as a Freudian slip than anything.

"Of course! I've just got a ton to do with this English project for Mrs. Haderly. You guys know how crazy she can be about using the _right_kind of sources. Plus her formatting requirements are bonkers."

"Only from what you tell us." He murmured. In a way that made me freak a little more, just when I thought it wasn't possible. Was he really going to make me stay down here and 'hang out' with him until mom and the kid came back and we talked about this magnificent bullshit? I don't think I could handle it, I don't think I could take it...

"You know, she seems to be giving you an awful lot of work lately. We hardly even see you anymore Erin." His dad sighed. "Alright. Tell Calvin if he wants to join us for dinner he's more than welcome to. He's practically a part of this family, so he might as well start getting to know your new little brother too. Whatever the case just make sure to come down the first time we call, alright?" It was his turn to try on a smile.

It was a sad little thing, and where the blind animalistic instinct for mindless assault lay, it was quickly replaced with something far older, something I thought was lost completely. Suddenly I felt the world for him and myself.

I carried that picture of him up the stairs with me, into my room where I closed the door with a distant slam and Calvin leaped up from his slumbering on my bed. Looking him in the eyes, I saw my despair in his face.

"We need to leave." I said.

_ flicker _

Something stirred in me, then pulsed, and then pounded. I thought someone was going to break through the door any minute until I realized it wasn't a door that was being pounded but my head. Opening my eyes the dampened light on the bus felt almost blinding, but that annoyance was nothing compared to the incessant poking the old lady was doing to my noggin.

"Will you stop that?!" I said with a snarl, snapping at her fingers and almost grazing a few before she pulled it away.

"Oh, still alive are we?" She coo'd.

"No thanks to you." I groaned and laid back, the hope for rest gone once more. Peering over I noticed that the old woman's bag had finished, a feat seeming impossible.

"Now now, is that any way to speak to your elders?"

I glared murder at her. "I should sue you six different ways for harassment lady."

She howled at that, and once again I saw the buck in front of us tighten his arm around his son. "Yes, that just sounds grand. A homeless teenage boy taking a helpless old lady to court, whose wits and family have left her long ago. I'm sure you'll get plenty of sympathy from a judge with a case like that."

Playing on the knack she had, the the lady's words made my blood turn cold. "How the hell do you know I'm homeless." I asked. Am I dreaming again? I wondered. Am I really back at home, still in my bed? Did I ever even leave? The thought disturbed me tenfold more than the reality of being stuck on the bus with the old crone.

"It isn't hard to tell my dear." She giggled. "You can spot a person without a home a mile away! They're the most lost-looking creatures in the world."

"Maybe I don't want a home." I huffed.

For the first time I saw the woman's face take on a sodden expression so alien to me, it took a minute to realize it was pity. "That's what all of the homeless or lost tell themselves dear. Like a thirsty man who has waking dreams of fountains and lakes to trick himself to think he isn't without water."

She turned and faced me. "Everybody wants a home, my boy."

"Stop saying that." My voice was rising. "Stop calling me your boy and saying a bunch of old adage one-liners that I don't give two shits about!" I must have shouted that last part, as now everyone was staring at me. Great. Thinking of nothing I could do to save the situation, I turned and stared out the window. The rain had only gotten heavier.

It was quiet for a long time after that, and I started easing into the comfort that maybe the old lady might have finally decided to leave me alone in peace. I closed my eyes, and thought of summers, and the warmest places that I could. Something to escape from the wetness and its chill. But the warmth never came, or if it did, it only touched my fur in the most superficial of ways, never penetrating the thickest of ice that cemented my chest. So I thought of the old lady, and why she had struck up a conversation with me in the first place. I considered what she said about everyone needing a home, and wondered if she was speaking for herself as much as she was for me. The thought made me even more miserable. Great job, you jerk. Being a dick to old ladies like you're too good to talk to them.

Not without great effort, and almost being crushed under a resentful apathy so pressing, I turned back towards the old woman and saw that she was still looking at me. As much as I felt it should creep me all sorts of the fuck out, her eyes seemed less shrewd this time. More warm, as if searching in me for an old friend she'd lost touch with long ago and was meeting with after all these years.

"Whether you realize it or not" she began softly. "You will always be searching for your place, whether you find it will ultimately be up to the decisions you make. Maybe you feel slighted by the world, that it gave you something and stole it all away, but the idea of chance belongs in the sciences, the idea of destiny in fantasy. It's easy to feel slated to tragedy, and I won't say that it's not something easy to find in a world as cruel as this. But there are choices to be made, every moment, and the ones that you choose are the ultimate factor that decide which buses you end up on, and the people you are left talking to."

The old woman leaned towards me at that, the black cane now clasped tightly in her hands. "If ever there was a place to tell your darkest and most well-kept secret, it would be on a bus, full of strangers you'll never run into again, to a kooky old crow that no one would ever bother to listen to anyways."

She sat back again, staring straight ahead. Her words carried an incredible vagueness, yeah, but somehow their meaning wasn't totally lost on my stupid ass.

She went on. "It is your choice, right now, to tell me why you're here on this bus and why you look like you want to throw a starved tiger at someone's face every time they so much as look at you."

"That." She said. "Or sink further below, tied down by the weight you refuse to unbind. The downpour is a never-ending deary, and if you keep going like you are, one day you'll eventually drown."

"Yeah, okay." I mumbled.

What did she want? Why the hell was she here? Doing this, now of all times. The pain was now in my stomach and my head only got worse. As if from nothing it was like the world became to much, taking gravity in the center of my own, and I felt like I was being ripped in two. It was like back in the room with Calvin.

Yeah, it was exactly like that actually. It began to thunder outside.

_ flicker _

"You don't have to shout Erin! I'm just trying to understand..." The bay retriever followed me around while I paced frantically.

"What's to understand?" The words came out like poison, but felt more like blood pouring from a hemorrhage because I'd finally lost control. "You're supposed to be my friend. My best friend Calv. And I need you to do this for me. What the fuck else is there to understand?!" I shouted

I felt two paws fall on my shoulders, and the world stopped spinning, if only for a moment.

"Eric. Calm. Down. I know that's really hard to ask right now man, but you've got to. Something's got you freaked but I don't know what the hell's going on."

It was a cue to fill him in. "You're my best friend!" The words echoed around in my head, like they were being tossed back in my face. Didn't I owe him this for what I was asking? But what was I supposed to say to Calvin? If I told him now, then he'd never leave. He'd call his own parents, probably lose his shit as well when he hears the words leave his own mouth, and take the wiffle bat hanging out in my closet since the pee-wee days, and do what he could to massacre my parents with it.

"I just...I just can't Calv, I'm so sorry." Words that ate themselves, I knew.

I exhaled. "If I told you, I would never leave. And I have to leave man. I just have to." So casual are the looks when you look your best bud in the eyes all those other times, that you're never prepared when the time comes for the serious ones. I searched his then, lively browns darting and doing their own searching in mine. But what could they even find? I felt empty, and yet so heavy at the same time. It was an exhaustion, or at least in the anticipation of it for the blank horizon that lay ahead. I just wanted to tell Calv to go home. I wanted to lay down and just let the world keep happening around me, and maybe, just maybe it would grant the mercy to allow me to not participate in it for the time being.

The world that day wouldn't muster the charity, it turns out. But it would give me the second best thing.

"Okay." Sighed the bay retriever.

I quirked an eyebrow and made a sound that sounded more hippo than it did fox. "Erhuhhh?"

"Yeah, okay." He repeated. "Just let me call my uncle, tell him I'm taking us out to a movie or something. You should pack or-" he waved a paw around defeatedly "-whatever. I'll be back in about twenty, alright?"

I was speechless. I couldn't believe Calvin was actually going to let me go through with this. The chocolate bay retriever was the biggest obstacle for escape technically, and my biggest hope, and some how that latter part ended up winning out against all odds. And my big stupid muzzle couldn't keep itself shut.

"Why?" I croaked.

He just shook his head, nod as heavy as my whole body felt at the moment.

"That doesn't matter man. If you say we need to go, fine, then we need to go." He tossed an empty gym bag at me from my closet, before picking up his own from the desk chair.

"Just make sure you at least have some idea of where when I get back."

After he'd left I stared at the door like an idiot, then immediately began packing. Frantically picking up every little thing that crossed my path while I rapidly walked around the room. When I picked up one of my Bionicle action figures, I had the profound realization that I didn't really need any of this crap. Where was I even leaving to? Calvin's question came rebounding back in full. I was sort of close to an aunt and uncle on my dad's side, but they were bunk because of the last time I visited them. Ended up telling them about the first time I smoked weed with a few friends after school, you know, because I thought they were the cool kind of aunt and uncle you could tell that stuff too. Well, they showed me just how cool they really were when they called my mom not just two hours later to tell her how their baby boy was addicted to drugs.

Christ.

Another loose end to be tied up later in this shit storm, I guess. Calvin would be back soon (so long as his uncle doesn't incapacitate him with one of his infamous 'welcome home' hugs) so I needed to pack the things that I did actually need. All in all it ended up being not that much - just a bunch of clothes, old handhelds and mp3 players that I could maybe pawn somewhere, and, yes, some very fine weed. While I was putting things into the dark duffel I tried ignoring the gnawing sensation at the back of my head and the led in my stomach. A million kids, I knew, had been in the very same spot that I was in now. Packing the bags, thinking of which friends to crash at first and if their weed is any better than yours, think how much the 'rents will miss you and know they've done bad. The thing was, is that it took every fiber, every part of my being to not just throw down the bag and call this whole thing off. I didn't have a string of friends in some far off city, or wherever the hell else I was going. And most important of all, I didn't want my parents to 'miss me', as much as I wanted it to fucking kill them.

I headed to the washroom to grab a few essentials. I did my best to ignore the family of frames that lined the hallway, housing a bunch of stuff that I really didn't want to think of right now. But an orange-gold frame right before the door to the bathroom got the best of me, and I sighed and turned to it. Staring back at me was Mickey Mouse, as a dangling little red fox hung around his neck and smiled like he was having the best time of his life. He did.

We'd moved here just as I started middle school. Being torn from everything so suddenly, I was quite the drama queen. And it shadowed me all throughout middle school, so bad that I ended up making zero friends except for Calvin. My parents didn't fail to notice either, and with a birthday coming up they were afraid I'd be bummed when it bombed. So they cooked up this scheme to go to Disney World, and waited until the day before my birthday to actually tell me. I thought it was the dumbest thing ever, and acted like such a little shit the entire two-day car ride there.

I ended up having the best time of my life. I never knew how much fun I could still have with them, how cool they could really be. Come next semester I found that I had rediscovered a part of myself, and didn't really give a shit if people didn't like the shy and awkward new kid. And guess what! People really start to notice you when you don't give a shit about their shit! At least, in middle school anyways. Man I got so much tail that year.

Putting a paw on the frame, I couldn't help but wonder what happened to that fox? When did it all start falling apart. But of course we already know the answer to that. I gave the still photo one last shaky stroke, as if afraid it'd break under my touch and be gone forever, and I continued towards the bathroom. My mind was a numb haze of thoughts, white noise, and abject pain in my gut and balls. Before I knew it I was hunched over the ceramic toilet, lid lifted up, and relieving my stomach of today's lunch. Regurgitated salisbury steak and peaches, yum.

Washing myself up I caught myself in the mirror and immediately regretted it. Russet fur lined on the sides by two adjacent black wisps, melding into the creamy white of my under-muzzle. Well groomed, but still looking like I'd just got hit by a truck. Worst of all were the eyes, which said they'd gladly welcome the opportunity.

Calvin came back, which put to rest the irrational fear that he wouldn't. There were rocks in a gale, islands in a hurricane, and then there was Calvin in the shitstorm that was my life. He didn't say much, of course giving me the silent treatment while he watched me curiously. Usually it'd work and I'd fess up after maybe a few daunting minutes, but for the first time in forever, I kept my mouth shut.

He went with me when I dropped by to the kitchen to tell (hopefully only one of) them that we were going to see a movie. Mom was stirring something that smelled spicy and tomato-y and dad was sitting at the table...doing his usual thing with a book.

My heart was beating a marathon a minute but my dad just ignored me while mom called back lazily "A movie? Did you make some headway into that english assignment at least?" Like you care you sauce-stirring bitch.

"Of course." I croaked, terrified she'd turn around and see the expression on my face. She simply said "Be back before eleven. I want little Erin to get to know you better before he spends his first night here. There's this book I read that said a child identifies its family in the first two nights it spends at their new home."

I almost snorted, but not before Calvin grabbed me and we were through the front door.

The drive to the bus station was probably the worst. And here was to hoping for an anti-climactic goodbye.

"Why?" He'd asked. And then pressed twice more when I refused to answer, until finally he did something I'd never seen Calvin do in our twelve years of friendship. Letting out this choked, anguished shout he swerved off to the side so fast I thought he'd lost control of the wheel, but then stopped and slammed a fist against the wheel.

"Stop shutting me out you fucking asshole!" He yelled. "Twelve years! Twelve years Erin you've been my best bud and you're treating me like I did something wrong." That last part seemed to hang over him and he lowered his voice. "I'm sorry." He said. "I'm sorry, I know something's been going on and I haven't been able to see it when I should've and I'm sorry." He looked at me and as much I didn't want to I know I had to look back. He was here with me right now, so I had to at least do the same.

Didn't make it hurt any fuckin' less.

Seeing his eyes all soggy and red like that, when the closest I'd seen the big bay retriever come to crying was when he broke his arm on the monkey bars in the first grade, really did a number on the thing thumping away in my chest.

"What happened back at home man?" He whispered in a way that sounded more plea than question. "Why are we doing this?"

I thought about those six long years. Long, in that I'm only seventeen so three-fourths of that amount of time is pretty much the world, unless you count the diaper shitting and having a monosyllablistic vocabulary. In those six years, from sneaking out and going to shitty parties, all the tireless nights spent on Super Mario World, and all those nights spent laying next to one another, looking at the stars, I realized I couldn't keep it from him any more.

But then an image flickered in my peripheral, a fox that wasn't actually there. He was laughing, happy to have rediscovered his family and maybe even himself at last. I used to be that fox, I thought. And when Calvin saw the look on my face that told him that I wasn't going to tell him after all, I saw the one on his that made me feel like I'd lost the world.

He pulled the shift into drive, and started back on the road. "I see." He said, in a voice struck cold.

"Calvin, I..." A million words wanted to spill out from my muzzle, but before I could let past a single one Calvin just lifted up a paw and silenced me.

"Don't. Just don't man. You're making the choice, here and now. So I'll do what I gotta, but then we're done."

A million words snuffed out in only a few, I looked out the window and up at the sky. It looked like it was going to rain.

flicker

The old woman was still staring at me, question hanging heavily in the air. It was just like the one Calv had asked earlier, and I still found just as impossible to answer. But here, with this crazy old bitch on a bus headed nowhere, it was like a path was open that hadn't been before. If I'd told Calvin about what happened, I know I'd be in a much different situation, instead of on this dank submarine as it waded through the never-ending downpour. Despite this new found freedom, I still found it hard as hell to say what clawed at my insides to be said.

Where to begin?

I felt a hand wrap around my paw, making me jump a little. Looking over, and seeing the insistent but inviting expression on the old hags face, I welcomed the touch. A sensation so warm from a hand so cold.

I looked out the window, as the rain let its nameday be known against it.

"I don't even remember the first time it happened." My voice sounded as small as I ever heard it. Distant, like it was somebody elses.

"She came in and asked if I was awake. I...I was half asleep, and I thought maybe she just came in to get something." The tears started to come. They were warm, and oh how they hurt. But in the good sort of way, like when the dentist pulls an abscessed tooth from your mouth.

"But she didn't ever say anything when I stayed quiet. Just laid down right next to me, slid a hand under the sheets..." The lights started flickering again and it was like a house was being dumped on my head. The one I'd left. The smells of roses, fox, scents of years past, cousins who've come and gone, the memory of finally finding a place to call home. It felt like too much, but I held on, I held on for whatever I was still worth in this miserable torrent as it poured away at me.

"The touch, it wasn't so bad, ya know?" I gritted my teeth and steeled on. "It felt okay...nice, even. But then there came a point I wanted it to all stop. It just felt so...wrong. I asked her...asked her to stop. And she wouldn't, she just kept going faster, and faster until..." The pain inside my head had become unbearable, my head reeling back against the seat while I thought I was having the mother of all seizures. This is it, I thought. You've said what you finally needed to say and now this is the end. The pain got worse, and I really thought I was gonna die. But the shaking became less hard, and I was still there, paw being occasionally squeezed in rhythm by the woman sitting next to me.

"God it hurts." I squeaked.

"I can see that, sweetie." The words were a tease, but managing a shaky look at her face I saw her eyes awash with pain too.

"I know." She whispered, squeezing again.

It took a few moments, by God what strength I had left in me, before I calmed my breathing enough so it was more spastic than it was losing-my-fucking-mind. I owe this Calvin, I thought.

I owed this to myself.

"After the third time it had happened." I continued. "I went and told my dad. He was in his study, reading, which was rare for him because he only ever did that while going over school stuff, which he saved for when he was at the university. He looked up and watched my face the entire time while I talked, not interrupting me once the whole way through. I think he wanted to see that I was lying." I breathed. "I kinda did too. But he just kept staring at me, like I'd done something. And then, you know what he said?"

My breathing started becoming quick again, hackles rising.

"Okay. He just said fucking okay, like I'd told him the faucet was leaking and he said he'd fix it when he got around to it. Then he looked down at his book and never looked back up. After a while just standing there and feeling like a complete fucking idiot, I walked out. After a while it became easier to deal with, I guess. I would put in headphones every night so I could just listen to music on full blast while she did what she did. And she did it less and less frequently, I read online somewhere that the...abusers...lose interest in their victim after they get to a certain age. So, here we go I thought, I'm finally in the clear. And then they go out and adopt another fucking cub. Like they did me. I knew it would just happen all over again."

The tears came again, but this time the emotional torrent that followed was less strong. Enough to where I could keep talking at least.

"I thought about just letting it happen. Better someone else then me, yeah?" I took my paw out of her hand and clenched my fists. "But I saw his face...I saw me, and I realized I couldn't let them do to him what they did to me. So what the fuck could I do, you know? I knew some part of them still loved me, but they were too fucked up to show it, and I couldn't pretend I didn't know what it all led to."

Breathe.

"So I left." I said. "I left, so they'd see the price that that kind of lust and apathy comes at. I was too much of a coward, and I felt too much in that little boy's face to be a coward. This decision and my being here is my middle ground."

I let out one final exhale, feeling a lifetime lighter in my chest.

Deep silence followed, and I didn't have to look at the old woman's face to see the surprise I could practically smell coming off of her.

"Why didn't you tell anyone?" She asked in whisper after a while. "Surely you didn't think everyone would ignore you like your father had?"

I laughed. It sounded like the most bitter laugh ever. "I would always tell myself how much I hated them. Dream about it even. Along with all the little ways I'd get back at them in these macabre fantasies like sowing the lips of my dad's muzzle to the spine of one of his books, or nailing both of my mother's hands to a wooden, knotted dildo. All of these things, just to convince myself how much I hated them for what they were doing to me."

"But I don't think you can ever really hate someone without also loving them, you know? I'd picked up the phone so many times... Even got so far as to dialing this number I'd pocketed from the school counselor's office. But I just kept thinking, kept imagining the look on their faces when the police came."

The old woman's face turned a shade less empathetic, and one more curious.

"It made you happy?" She asked.

I shook my head. "Sad. It made me sad. As much as I hated them, I also loved them too much still, and I knew I couldn't be the one to do that to them. It was fucked up, yeah, and what they were doing just couldn't keep going on. But they were lost. After one of those...times...my mother just sat at the edge of the bed and started crying. She cried for fifteen minutes straight before finally stroking my head and saying she was sorry and walking out."

"Don't you have any friends though?" She asked. "Couldn't you have just stayed with one of them until you were on your own?"

"There was only one person who I'd trust enough. I said. "At least, to sleep in his house every night after what I'd been through, and whose uncle would put up with all my angsty teenage bullshit." The old woman chuckled at that, and I felt an old smile creep up on me.

"Unfortunately that friend had the problem of being too good of one, and I know he would have wormed it out of me eventually what really went down between my parents and me. I don't know what would have happened after that to be honest. Either he would show up at their front door step and kill them himself, or call the police."

"And the same thing that you were warring with yourself to avoid would happen anyways." She suggested.

All I could do was nod. Suddenly my mouth was drier than any mouth had a right being. Several more minutes passed in silence, and felt the seats begin to shake and realized that she was kicking her feet like a school girl on a swing. She leaned towards me and whispered "What now?"

The question struck me oddly as an accusation, but I shrugged. "I dunno, get a room for the night with what money I have left. Find a soup kitchen and a temp agency and work my way up from there. After everything I've been through, I'm sure I'll survive, eh?" I looked at her, offering a weak grin.

She looked unsatisfied by it and lifted a hand to point out the window.

"But we're already here." She said. "This is the last stop. The driver got off long ago, and I convinced him we'd only be a minute while you were still zoinked out. He hasn't been back since."

Wait, what? I jerked my head around, and surely enough we were parked in some obscured terminal, a silvery skyscraper peaking out of the corner where the bus station roof ended, giving the tell-tale signs of a city indeed.

"Wh...where are we?" I asked, still trying to wrap my head around the situation.

"Chicago." She chirped happily. "Home of the bears, major export of the mediocre hot dog. Need more than bears and hot dogs to make it in this shit hole though. I'm sure you'll have no trouble finding a place to stay, being the pretty young thing that you are." The old woman mused thoughtfully.

"Chicago?" I wheezed. "How the hell did we wind up here? There's no way that trip was long enough to get us to Shikawgeh." I said in an obligatory, pitiful accent.

She shrugged. "Time flies when you have company, or something to that affect. It looks like we're not in Kansas anymore."

She looked at me after I put my paws to my muzzle. "What's the matter?"

"I...don't know. I didn't ever really expect to get here, here of all places, and I guess I'm sorta at a loss of where to go now."

The old stranger didn't seem bothered in the least, and suddenly I got the impression that she was just using me as some mild form of entertainment. Now that she was at the end of her journey, she was done with me. Fitting, really. As if to exemplify the thought she thumped me on the back and said "Well good luck wherever it is you're getting of to. City life is a bit different from that of rural folks, but I'm sure you'll find your way."

My resolve wavered. "I guess. I still don't know where to go though now that I'm here."

"Do what you've always done honey. Just keep moving. People always think it's the road ahead that they have to worry about, but really it's the past they have to learn to step beyond." She stood up and was off the bus with a speed that would've put half of the Tennessee Valley track team to shame, and I quickly lost sight of her (bag and all) when I peaked out the window. With a sigh I began hauling my own bag, finally leaving the pair of seats and making my way towards the aisle. Before I took so much as three steps though, my foot tripped over something, sending me flailing to the floor.

"Came all this way just to be killed by faulty bus equipment." I groaned, looking down at my foot. It was caught on something black, and something that looked to be made of black wood. I reached down to pick it up and I realized it was the old woman's cane from earlier. Looking out the window again I knew she was long past being able to call out to, much less reach and give her back the odd little heirloom. With a shrug and cane in paw I managed my way off the bus. Looking back at it one last time, it was weird to think just how much distance I'd really traveled in more ways than one.

I wandered like that, late morning falling on the city as the wind died down. The street lights flickered on, and my surroundings told me I was at least in a semi-decent part of Chicago. That still didn't make me from eyeing the passerbys warily, though they seemed pretty indifferent to the lost fox with a lion-tipped cane. After a few hours of fruitless searching and weaseling a few numbers from some of the local shops and some place that was a cross between a strip club and a skating rink, I sat down on the steps of a closed down library. Already exhausted despite just breaking down in the afternoon.

For the first time since getting off the bus, I realized that the rain had completely stopped. A thin ray of light peaked through the clouds and just managed to catch where my paw was laying. The paw that was holding the cane. I gave it a closer look, being impressed by the amount of care and detail put into the rich silver mane that surrounded cat's head. The lion was forever frozen in a roar, as if constantly defying whatever that lay ahead of it. A second shorter and I might have missed the part of the shaft that had got caught in the chance ray of sun, glimmering an odd set of engraved marks that looked like a string of letters and numbers.

"Is that...an address?"

A question thrown to the air around, though nobody would ever bother to hear it. I still felt proud for some reason though, proud like the lion laying in my paw.

I held on to that feeling, that fraction of indomitability, as I looked out across the early evening October sky. Light bleakly but surely showing itself at last, as the clouds above gave way for the sun.