FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

You pace the faded linoleum floor of the bathroom, claws clicking against the yellowed wax and perforating the floor with some subtle texture. Sweat drenched the exposed length of your muzzle, dripping dopily off your whiskers and next to your person. Your ears swiveled to meet each drop's impact, the muted blips fighting fruitlessly against the angry blow of a broken hand drier. A clawed hand sat on and around your snout--a nervous habit you'd adopted when you realized your canines weren't particularly suited to chewing nails. Or chewing at all. The backpack you'd hurriedly hooked on the bathroom door rocked lightly before falling off embracing the floor with a sickening slam. The clatter of your bagged possessions against the dirty floor was enough to shake you from your anxious routine, prompting the grip on your muzzle to release and reach for the sack.

You slipped a claw through the broken slider (something you'd come to appreciate as an inadvertent security measure against petty thieves) and dragged it down the length of its zipper teeth. You'd lost the pull tab during a particularly stressful Statistics lecture, during which you yanked the weak cheap loop off the backpack and into the air. The projectile hit the back of your professor's mustard-colored dress shirt with surprising strength, interrupting the lengthy proof he was scrawling out with a pained yelp. You stopped attending lecture after that. The upsetting memory seemed to snake down and out of your brain and down your back, coiling tightly around your stomach and worsening the stewing nausea. You pull the laptop out of your bag alongside a storm of loose papers, evaluating the lid with a tentative paw as the graded assignments hit the floor and wick your drying sweat. A thorough inspection tells you that the laptop survived the fall, and you shove the device back into bag between the front and back covers of a tattered binder. The rubber spacers on the bottom of the laptop grip against the contents and tear them off the rings, but you're too distracted to care. A lazy hand closes the backpack while the other collects its spilled contents, balling them into an uneven mass in an attempt to conserve paw space and save time.

A cursory glance at your wristwatch tells you that there are only 5 minutes between you and your approaching chemistry exam. A scared, sour taste climbs your tongue, cuing you to tense your muzzle in a disgusted snarl. You'd entered the building about thirty minutes ago, camping in the bathroom only after the anticipation of your assessment triggered an unwelcome transformation. You bolted into the nearest restroom before the change could paralyze your muscles, barely managing to stow your backpack before your legs buckled and forced you to the floor. Five minutes later and you were crumpled in the corner, fighting the instinct to cry as you unfastened what was left of your shoes. You'd be optimistic to think you could take this test in a presentable form, but a positive attitude wasn't enough to combat the erratic and uncontrollable nature of your condition. It wasn't that you didn't want others knowing that you were werewolf--the people that mattered already did. No, what was stopping you from leaving the dimly lit stall was your form itself. What fur you did have ran over the back of your skull, down your spine and along your limbs in spotted regions. Bandages blanketed the majority of your face, blinding you in one eye and pulling tightly against the back of the ear that anchored them. Lengthy canines peeked timidly from the top of your mouth and rested above your chin. A discolored, canid nose flared shakily with every uneasy breath, and pale-yellow eyes bleared with much overdue tears.

You weren't born like this. But you HAD been at the wrong party at the wrong time; a pawn in the cosmic game of chess God liked to play with his creations. And, like any good chess player, he'd chosen to sacrifice you as a pawn in the conflict between a shaggy furred frat boy and one of his brothers. An ill-mannered jab at the werewolf's hygiene elicited a fearsome snarl and lunging bite; one that managed to find its way around your raised arm and deep into your flesh. The likelihood of him turning you was a close to none. A meager .5% chance that the curse bends your breaks your body in unspeakable ways for the rest of your life. You've always been a lucky guy, unfortunately. The werewolf that bit you apologized profusely when news had surfaced that your first change hit in the middle of a 6pm chemistry lab. He gave you his number and told you to text him if you ever needed ANYTHING. And you did. To your despair, he never answered; and you never the other werewolf again.

A fleeting wave of rage began to mix with your overwhelming anxiety. His stupid decision shouldn't stop you from being able to make your own. The way you looked now wasn't going to change. You needed to accept this fact and work on getting others to in the process. A whirlwind of unidentifiable emotions compelled you to open the stall door and advance towards the lecture hall, the unease in your stomach churning with each padded step in its direction. You paused before leaving, sucking in a pungent breath of stagnant, hot air before releasing the tightly balled papers in your paw. You watched the unstable white mass nick the rim of the trashcan, hopelessly barreling towards the container's darkest depths. The roar of the hand drier stopped as your paw reached the door, and the sudden swell of silence helped calm your nerves as you made your approach towards the anxious buzz of the lecture hall.