FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

"Useless brat!"

The hand cleaved across my face, and my cheek stung with his insult and the back of his palm. It took every ounce of my courage, every ounce of my strength not to stumble and fall. The room swayed around me as my temper rose, but it was quickly extinguished and drowned out by a bitter, resentful sorrow.

"You can't even go out to the shop and get a carton of milk without fucking it up! How can you be so useless?"

The slap had been painful, but his words cut deeper than any weapon could. They pierced my soul and my breath caught in my throat. I felt as if I were being strangled. I couldn't even utter a world. All I could do was stare at the floor as I felt the heat of his withering gaze boreing into my skull.

He dismissed me with a shove and a wave of his head, and all I could do was turn and scurry upstairs. I slammed the door shut behind me and sunk to the ground, my body heavy with silent, quaking sobs. Everything felt so cold, so dark...I felt as if I were going to be swallowed whole.

My life was horrible. My father hated me. My mother was dead. I had no siblings and no friends. I dressed in dirty clothes, unable to wash them and obtain clean ones, I picked at food off the floor, because I wasn't worthy to eat at the table where my father slovenly shoved instant noodles and ready meals into his gluttonous mouth. During the day, I shuffled through the halls of my school bullied, attacked from all sides, verbally abused and shunned by everyone. At night, I lay quivering in bed, praying that this night, of all nights, I would be whisked away to a magical kingdom where my life was better, where the door wouldn't creak open in the night and the weight of my father's drunken frame wouldn't threaten to squash me.

I clutched at my head, pressing it down into my tucked-up knees. I resisted the urge to wail: any noise and I'd be rewarded with another strike, another reminder of how useless and pitiful my life and my very existence is.

I crawled across the floor, dragging myself into bed, resting atop the dingy mattress that bore no sheets, with nothing but a thin blanket to cover me. I pulled my hoodie up and pressed it to my face, drying my tears. I just wanted it to all stop. No more pain, no more misery...just nothing at all.

I wish it would all stop.

Then, in an instant, it did.

I opened my eyes to a vast white space. It smelt of nothing, and the air was light and fluffy. The floor beneath me was solid, and I could see the length of my shadow cast across it. There was nothing around me: no dusty floor, no dingy broken walls, no tiny specks of charred ash on destitute furniture. Even the bed underneath my body was gone, leaving me in nothing but a never-ending, empty space.

The first thing that washed over me was relief. Finally, I was gone. Finally, I could breathe without being attacked. I almost laughed at the thought of being so helplessly alone, with no-one around to see me. The thought tickled me so much to my core that I almost smiled.

Then, after the irrationality of my situation had washed over me, I was filled with worrying questions, and that worry soon blossomed into fear. Where am I, and how did I get here? I was in my room mere moments ago, and now I was in an empty-less void.

After some time, I had sat up and looked myself over, realising I was as dressed as ever, and the dust that clung to my dirty clothes was still prominent, despite the shiny and clean floor beneath me.

As quickly as I had come to realise the danger of the world I'm in, a figure came before me, its body wreathed in irregular shapes, its face bearing none of the defining features you would find in any human. I opened my mouth to speak, but it spoke before me.

"As you have wished it, so it shall be."

The words resonated with me and I teetered on my heels, torn between several questions. I parted my lips and a shuddering sigh escaped through me as my stomach turned.

"Why me?" I managed to croak out, and the being observed me, intrigued by my lurching, my confusion.

"You were randomly selected of the millions of denizens suffering on Earth," He continued. "For that, you were granted a single wish. We have waited approximately 10 minutes and 11 seconds after selecting you for you to make your wish. Now you have willed it."

It seemed too good to be true, but also too horrible to be real. If it were lying, I would know-- at least, I hope I would know. The expansive white space around me is nothing but a testament to the 'nothingness' I had so foolishly wished for.

"What is this place?" I asked.

"It is...nothing." The being observed. It didn't elaborate more.

"Just...nothing? Nothing at all?" I was beginning to panic. "But if there's nothing, how will I live? How will I eat, use the bathroom, just...survive?"

"That was not within the scope of the wish you made," The being remarked. "And so, those things do not exist."

"S...So...I'm just going to die?" I stammered out, and when the being didn't respond, I sunk to my knees and clutched my head. "Can you bring it back? Please. I wish for it. I...I don't want to die. I just wanted it to stop...for him to stop..."

The being didn't respond for some time, observing me heaving and panicking on the floor. After a while, it seemed to hum, as if it had come to an agreement.

"These things were not within the scope of your wish..." He began. "And so, I cannot honour them, for it is outside of my job description."

A silence fell between us as my human, mortal brain struggled to comprehend something so simple, so horribly basic.

"So...you're just going to let me die a slow, horrible death?"

The being didn't know what to say. At least, that's what I like to think-- maybe it was pitying me, maybe it knew it was out of its hands and it didn't want to upset me. Or, ultimately, it probably just didn't care. It was content to leave me to die here because its job was done. After a while of watching me, it disappeared, and I was left alone.

I was neither cold or hot. Neither tired, nor sleepy. I was stuck in an endless cycle of panic and depression, crawling along an endless white space. For a while, I tried to walk, but there were no landmarks, nothing tell me that I was getting towards a goal or further away from it. After I had exhausted that option, I was content to lay on the room-temperature floor and stare into nothingness, hoping that something, anything might happen.

It never did. It went on and on for minutes. Hours. Days. Perhaps longer. By god knows when, I could feel my body wasting away. The lack of water got me first, the inevitably thirst that made me cry out for help, desperate for someone to come and save me. Nothing came. No-one heard me. The thirst became unbearable, to the point where I couldn't even move. I didn't have the strength to even lift my head.

As I closed my eyes and drew my last breath, a single thought crossed my mind. Maybe I should have made that wish.

Maybe I should have been careful about what I wished for.