FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Recommended Listening: [X](www.youtube.com/embed/jyLMgIR69G4)

2. ARCHITOMY

1 year after it happened

It's hot as fuck in Whitegrass in the summer. In fact, it's hot as fuck year round, Ish thought as he stared down between his legs at the railroad tracks that stretched into the distance like an eternal set of stitches. On left and right, scraggly growths of teasel hung under the weight of summer, jutting from the dried heaps of old growth at the base. Ahead, nothing but sizzling rail metal below Jesse and Mike's silhouettes framed against the distant horizon.

Ish plucked at the bottom of his shirt with his long claws. Just enough to make it flutter, bring some air underneath to try and cool his front down; a meaningless gesture, he knows, but there's something cathartic and cooling in the act of doing it. The air can't even make its way through his coat. His fur, so obsessed with keeping the temperature regulated, with keeping his heat inside, forms an impenetrable barrier. The wind warbled behind and Ish looked over his shoulder. Big stretch of brushwood behind, same as ahead, and it seemed to the Kodiak like the singing crickets grow louder as he noticed their sound.

"Ish."

It wasn't at night or when it was quiet that he'd sometimes hear it. His name. It was right in the middle of the day, right in the afternoon, when it was so damn noisy that the world was bleeding sound all over: that's when it slipped in.

"Ish!" No, that was real. The bear snapped his head back around so fast his sole slipped off the track he had balanced on, setting his body into a freefall to the left - always to the left, into that gibbous realm of nothing beyond his eyepatch. His arms shot out and wheeled, his other leg darted back to steady himself but slipped off too, and before he knew it, he was plummeting to the side, a dead tree hurtling towards the ground. He bent his knees and tried to curl up a little in that split-second, too shocked to even make a sound.

His body pulled backwards at the last moment. A grip on the fabric that took some of the fur beneath with it, a sharp tug that made him wince - that was all that he needed to right himself again, a shout quieting and disappearing back down his throat. Instead, all he managed was a stupefied "oh," turning around to look at Jesse still clutching onto his flannel with both hands.

"Fuck, dude!" Jesse panted, an incredulous laugh lifting his pitch. "You almost fucking ate it - lucky I could catch you. Clumsy fucker."

"Uh.. sorry. Yeah. Thought I heard something."

"I was calling for you, dumbass: the train's coming."

Ish looked over his shoulder again. In the distance, the air swam from heat, and a tiny plume of white smoke trailed in a line towards them. The buzzing of the cicadas matched a swelling vibration in the metal beneath that spilled into the mesh of pebbles around.

"Oh."

"Yeah, oh. What the fuck, man?"

"Distracted." Last time he'd been here, it wasn't with these two.

"Bet I can beat the train."

"You ever hear about the kid that fell into one of those bushes?" Mike called from up ahead, putting his own arms out to the sides as his paws maneuvered along the rail tracks, taking a slow line down them with his gaze fixed forward. He seemed totally sure that Ish was okay, and the bear stared into his back. He dusted himself off and smiled, even if the dog couldn't see it.

"No. What happened?"

"No 'thank you, Jesse'?" A weasel needle-claw poked into his back.

"Thanks."

"So there was this kid," Michael continued, speaking so quickly it was obvious he was going to whether or not the others were listening, "and he jumped off of the train as it was coming through town. He was hiding out on it or something, and he jumped off. Anyway, he saw a bush like those and figured it would break his fall, but turns out that underneath all the grass was this pile of old metal and barbed wire and chemicals and stuff from when the factories closed down."

"Where'd you hear that?" Ish asked, dusting off his shirt. Jesse started walking ahead.

"My dad. He said it happened in the eighties or whatever. So he lands in this bush, right, and all the wire, like, rips all of his skin off and so he can't move, and the chemicals are keeping him all messed up. So he screams for help for like a whole day before people find him, but by the time they do he's pretty much dead and they can't save him."

"Bullshit," Jesse snapped. "How would anyone know he'd been screaming that whole time if nobody was around? Think for a second." Ish's stare draped itself over the plants as Michael spoke, following the curve of the wind-shuddering trees, watching the way the grass swayed. The grass was thick in places, especially the dead matter - it could easily hide something the size of a person, let alone an amorphous mass of barbed wire. While the idea was still a little wild, there was something about it that made his lip curl.

"It's not bullshit," he protested. "My dad heard about it. Just watch out where you're walking." Ish sniffed once, rolling his shoulders and picking up the pace to catch up with the two.

"Watch where we're walking?" Jesse laughed. "You're the one still on the tracks. Get off, dude." Michael ignored him.

"What, no ghosts?" Ish called up ahead at the Brittany.

"Huh?"

"I said, 'No ghosts?' Stories like that always have to end with a ghost. Like, if you come out here under the full moon, you can still hear him calling for help. 'Heeeeeelp,'" Ish pantomimed, his voice going up an octave and coming out sounding hoarse. "Though, if you go over to help him..." He trailed off and walked faster, closing the distance to the hound. Mike threw a look over his shoulder, catching the sound of Ish's footsteps. He started to speed up, then broke into a run when he saw Ish's shoulders a drop and his arms extend in a linebacker charge.

"He grabs you and drags you down with him!" The bear growled, pulling his lips into a wild snarl. Mike laughed, the agile dog quickly gaining distance and leaping off the tracks to run ahead.

"Ish, you can't say shit like that," Jesse scratched his neck. "You're a bear with an eye patch and you wear flannel every fucking day, even in the summer. People are gonna think you're even more of a serial killer than they already do."

"Jesse!" Michael hollered, sounding insulted on the bear's behalf. The dust on the tracks began to lift and hum, and the train's rattle drowned out the cicadas.

"Yeah, I guess," Ish murmured, shrugging. He looked the weasel up and down, hammering his brow into a heavy line that, in his mind, looked like the old Paleolithic pictures of bears, all flat brow and growling lip.

"Th'fuck are you looking at, dude?"

"You. Wondering what I could make out of you if I skinned you," Ish mumbled, keeping up that heavy stare for long enough to make Jesse start laughing. He threw a light punch at the bear's shoulder, which grazed off of with the effectiveness of a rubber ball. "You're too skinny to make anything useful out of. Could barely make a set of gloves, let alone a jacket..."

"Fuck ooooff."

"A beer cozy!" Yelled Michael's voice from much further down the track. Even his tiny silhouette betrayed a wagging tail. The rattling grew louder as Ish started to cackle and the train came thundering by moments after. Wheels hammered and thundered, cars passed by in a sun-dappled mass of light and sound that whipped up a wind current, a gravity of annihilation that made them all lean towards the tracks. Amid the cacophony, the three boys could still hear the others laughing, even if it was only in their minds. It was carried by their faces and on their teeth, glinting in the afternoon light.

-

Wind rippled the forgotten water in the old inflatable swimming pool resting in Kelly Thompson's yard. Above it hung a cloud of movement, mosquitoes birthed from the singularly stagnant crescent retained by its vinyl. Somehow the sun hadn't evaporated it yet; maybe the nasty smell of old cigarettes that emanated from the porch somehow impeded it, Ish thought. Sagging plywood steps led to a plastic lawn chair pressed tight against the flaking paneling. Beside it, on a stack of cardboard boxes whose brands and sides had long melted away under rainstorms, an ashtray balanced precariously with its heap of crumbling ends, each a tight and greedy remnant of a cig burned to nothing but filter. A welcome mat said 'PROUD VETERAN'S HOME' wreathed with an American flag, but the bristles had been so long worn down it seemed almost to say nothing at all.

"Holy shit. I can't believe we're doing this," Mike mumbled, taking in a low breath and squeezing his hands into fists. He let them go and repeated it, bouncing them at the wrists as he did like he was trying to shake off some kind of excess canine energy. Watching it made Ish's eyes hurt.

"I know. You have the money, right?"

"Yes I have the money," Mike barked, patting the pocket of his jacket once. "You've asked me that, like, five times- you gave it to me at the house and I still have it, Jesse. Are you sure it's going to be enough? Can you, like... I don't know, can you, like, haggle or something?"

"It's not a charisma check in a video game, Mike," he hissed. "You can't just, like, get ten percent off because you smile at him."

"That's not what I'm saying, asshole! I just mean, like, he's selling us the stuff, and... well, it's not like it has a regular market price or something!"

"Would you both just shut the fuck up?" Ish growled, pressing his fingers to his forehead. A low wind brushed the dead grass around their ankles and the bear felt a seed of pain germinate behind his eye patch. It extended its roots through the block of his Oxycontin, feeling around like a growth that had its sedation wear off. "Kelly's not going to sell to either of you if you're acting like kids, okay? So just chill out and act natural."

Something about saying it made his voice catch in his throat. In another moment, he stood here with Anton, and it was him wound up tight, feeling the pain in his eye, roots reaching through time.

_"He gave me old weed last time. I have some of it here." _

_"What, do you think he's gonna give you a refund? It's not like he gave you a receipt, dude." _

"He'll give me a discount this time."

_"What? No he won't. It doesn't work like that. He's gonna tell someone and we'll get in trouble." _

"It'll be fine. C'mon, Ish-- it's

"- Not like walking into a department store," the bear muttered.

"What?" Mike tilted his head in pure canine confusion.

"Kelly's. It's not like walking into a department store. Of course you can ask for it to be cheaper," he finished. "The fuck do you even know about buying weed, Jesse? I've never seen you here before."

"My cousin sells it to me," he snapped.

"Your cousin doesn't count," Ish growled. The itch behind his patch grew worse and his hand twitched. He resisted the urge to plunge his claws through the fabric and scratch two inches into his head. It would pass, lapse into a pain proper that was actually easier to deal with. "That's like saying that you know how to repair cars because your cousin works at a garage. It's not the same thing and just makes you sound lame when-"

The front door creaked. All of them grew silent. It opened.

Kelly Thompson stood there, his back stooped like a fishing rod. At its lure, the butt of his cigarette burning, hanging limp from the corner of his mouth and trailing smoke into the sky. The old cat may have had fur once upon a time but it had since thinned from age so much that it was unclear whether or not he was a hairless breed, leaving his dark gray skin almost entirely exposed to the sun. When he spoke, his lips barely moved, and the bags below his eyes underlined the slow way that his pupils fell across each in turn, dragging across Jesse and Ish before rasping across Michael like a rough tongue. It lingered on him, followed the shape of his shoulder down his side and lingered low on his frame before coming back up.

"Anton? When the hell..."

"It's Michael," the hound called, speaking clearly and authoritatively like one might to their grandparents who were hard of hearing.

"Michael," Kelly repeated. He sucked in again, letting the smoke escape lazy from its cage of yellowed teeth. The steady gust of a window-unit air conditioner behind him fluttered the loose tank top he wore, warping the yellow stains set in by age across the chest and underarms. "Goddamn, you've gotten older. You're his spitting image, you know. Man. Must be in the blood." Ish felt his stomach twist. He wanted to step between them, put himself between Kelly and the boy until they left. "Fuck were you all shouting 'bout? Heard you from all the goddamn way inside over the goddamn TV. What'd you come here for?"

"Uh, weed," Jesse blurted out.

"No, uh..." Michael immediately cut in, fumbling for some way to salvage things. Kelly was so quiet Ish could almost hear the smoldering end of his cigarette as he sucked in a breath, cheeks dimpling in like his skull was straining against his leathery skin. Ish pressed a thumb into his forehead and rubbed above his left brow, exhaling.

"...A-hah!" The cat's laugh was dry, scratchy. "Can't believe this shit. Him," Kelly said, and bounced his cigarette at Ish's face, "I almost expected to come back here, what with his Daddy busting out his eye like that." Ish stopped, his fingers tensing against his forehead hard enough he felt his knuckles pop. Fucking bastard, the bear thought. Finding the one thing he knew he could dig at safely, the thing that always worked, the thing everybody knew but didn't talk about. His eye opened and he stared at the ground, forcing himself to keep his muzzle shut, jaw clenched. There was a swollen silence, and Jesse looked over at the bear. Michael wasn't moving. When nobody spoke, Kelly continued, sounding almost disappointed that they hadn't taken the bait.

"But you two?" He laughed, a dry rattle in the sound leading into a cough that shook the rigging of his chest. "That's new. Thought you were a good boy," he said. Another long drag before he threw the cigarette down to the ground underneath him, stubbing it out with his bare paw.

"Can you sell to us?" Ish butted in, forcing his voice to be steady. Like a lone soldier defending his turf, Kelly leaned against his doorframe, courage oozing from his every behavior. The urgent and unprompted image of the cat with an assault rifle across his chest flashed through the bear's mind, the weapon slung low and confident, some other country's soil beneath his feet.

"Just having some conversation, boy," the cat spit, making sure to purse his lips for the last word. He took his time after, dabbing the corner of his lips with his tongue. Kelly didn't move, and Ish felt anger budding fresh and hot in his belly, the pressure growing by the moment and a growl pressing at the flaps of his muzzle.

"I'm sorry. Can we just buy some and we'll get out of your hair? We don't want to bother you, I promise." It was Michael that time, voice quiet and soft. His ears laid to the sides, flat as a begging man's hands, and Kelly's gasoline gaze fell off of him and onto the dog.

"Bother?" Kelly echoed. "Well, if you've got money," he laughed, and his tongue touched the sides of his mouth again, "ain't a bother, just a tough sell. You've got some manners. Why don't you come on in,

_buddy?" _

"Buddy? Last time someone called me 'buddy,' I was nine and playing baseball with my dad."

"What, Anton - grew out of it? That's fine, that's fine. You grow out of baseball the same way? Bet you were good at it, mm? You're small. Bet you're quick."

_"Wasn't good at it then, sure as hell not good at it now." _

_"That's a shame. I think I got an old cap 'round here from when I played. I could go find it for you. You're smaller than I was but we could make it work." _

_"Hahah, no thanks. I look like shit in a hat." _

_"Eh? You're young to say shit like that. Where'd you hear that, Anton? Thought you were a good boy." _

_"Y'know, um. School. Around. Everybody talks like that, K, come on... can me and Ish come inside?" _

"Mm. It's cold out. Come in and

warm up?" It was goddamn hot outside. Why did they need to warm up? Ish couldn't remember what Kelly was saying, and Michael had somehow teleported forward with Jesse close behind, like five seconds had vanished. Even without hearing the rest of his sentence there was a warmth in Kelly's words that reminded Ish of the summer sun rotting roadkill. A familiarity in it made it sound like the man had known Michael for years, yet he felt sure-- sure, that this was likely the first time the younger Carpenter had ever set paw here. Robotically, Ish dragged his legs forward. Left. Right. His eye was starting to hurt, really hurt.

Michael trotted, jumping two stairs first before ducking under Kelly's arm to head inside. The cat's tail was in the shadows, and Mike's belly rubbed along it as he moved by, the smooth thing giving way like a subway turnstile. Jesse moved in too, walking in Michael's tailwind. He mumbled a quick "let-me-scooch-by-you-there" and shoulder-lifted Kelly's elbow as he moved in. Ish heard the wood steps creak under him, protesting when he rocked back on his heels because Kelly wasn't moving out of his way.

"Why don't you hang out out here?"

"What?"

"Got a seat for you," Kelly said like an explanation, pointing his cigarette at the lawn chair beside. Ish stared at it and then back at the cat.

"What the fuck? Why can't I come in?" His filter was fraying from pain and frustration alike. "You're being fucking cr--"

"Huh? The fuck did I hear you say to me, boy? Thought you and them were here to buy. That's not how you talk to your dealer." He jabbed Ish in the chest with an extended finger, his wrist hanging down limp. "Not how you talk to me." Kelly seemed so very small to him, like he could snap him in half. The only one among the three that could. Kelly leaned in closer, close enough that Ish could see the dry cracks around his nostrils, the sliver of pink under his eyes where the skin was starting to sag. It would be easy to do it. "Go on and have a seat before I kick all of you out on your tails and tell Anton's parents their kid's here with you buying grass."

"It's Michael," Ish grunted.

"Th'fuck'ever. His parents too. You listening to me, boy?" Ish felt the familiar weight of his hands, fists like wrecking balls, by his sides. His head hurt and his ears rang. Through it all, Michael's voice, higher than both his and Kelly's, floating from inside like a flicked-through TV channel.

"Ish, it's cool, really. You want anything?"

"No." No, it wasn't. No, he didn't. No to all of it, emanating from one sound. No. He stood when Kelly pointed at the chair again and closed the door in his face.

"It's chill, Ish. Just stay cool, he's harmless."

"He's a goddamn asshole. He freaks me out."

_"A goddamn asshole with the only weed in, like, the entire town." _

_"Okay... but can we hurry? I don't like being in there." _

"No problem, man. You want some Skittles? I've got the sour ones you like-"

Beep-beep-beep. Beep-beep-beep. His watch's alarm. Right. Medicine. Ish lowered himself into the chair, willing it not to break under his ass, and fished a white bottle from his breast pocket. With a slight tremor, he shook out one tablet of Oxycontin and threw it back into his muzzle. He was supposed to take it with food. Maybe Jesse had a protein bar on him or something, as terrible as eating anything sounded right now. As the pounding in his head grew steadily worse, Ish closed his good eye and tried to put Jesse and Michael alone in Kelly's trailer out of his mind. Hopefully Jesse was smart, Ish thought, even if Mikey was trusting. They'd be in and out, and if something went wrong, they'd make noise and he'd go in and smash Kelly's face in. Ish put an arm across his forehead and waited for the pill to work.

At least he had shade.

-

In this dream, they are back at the Cliff. The roadside behind them loops into nothing, excess fabric on a t-shirt pulled tight. The sun is red and becomes a halo around his head, brighter than the fire between Anton's lips. He is a perpetual dog in nirvana, here, and the cigarette never turns to ash.

"Did I ever tell you my actual name?" Ish asks like they didn't go to school together, heard the same attendance call-outs together, had their secrets rendered mundane.

"No. What is it?" The Brittany lies, and his eyes are two nuclear-white rods from the top, two sunspots burning aching holes into Ish's vision.

"Ishkode." It is music only here.

"What's it mean?" In the dream, too, he doesn't want to know.

"It's Alaskan." Anton laughs, and so does he, at the nonsense answer. They laugh until they can barely breathe, laugh until they're laying on top of each other and Anton flicks his cigarette away, unconsumed from its burning. They laugh in equal measure until they are both spent.

"I like Ish better."

-

"You sure that it went alright?" HONG KONG RESTAURANT sheds another piece of paint at the bear's insistent picking. "'Cause I'm just checking, Mikey, he's creepy and gave you guys a lot of weed for the money you had." His palm kept touching the wall, pulling off like a hot stovetop before returning and trying the stunt again, trying to master the sting like a weightlifter building endurance. Michael rolled his eyes and reached for the joint Jesse was hitting hard, twitching his fingers.

"Yeeees," Mike droned, boredom dripping from his words. "Don't worry about it, Ish. He sold us the weed and then we left." He scrutinized his face, looking for any kind of sign that he wasn't telling the truth. Finding none, he looked at Jesse, though that was worthless - the weasel was already a giggling, slacking mess.

"Yeeeees, Ish," Jesse parroted, wiggling his head. "Don't worry, papa.." he started laughing, forcing himself to finish. "Papa.. bear... everything was fine. We're not locked up in his basement or something." Ish realized dimly that he wanted to hit Jesse in the snout. "Getting, uh, haha.. killed like Hostel or Saw or whatever."

"He doesn't even have a basement, dude. It's a trailer," Mike teased, snatching the joint out from Jesse's fingers as he did. The weasel's reflexes weren't even close to being fast enough, so all he did was whine. Ish watched Mike pinch the joint between two fingers, taking a short hit first, and then a longer one. His free hand clamped over his pink nose like he was holding the smoke in, forcing the beginning of a cough to stop. Jesse laughed as smoke puffed out between the gaps in Michael's fingers, which immediately made the dog start laughing, too. Every time it seemed like they'd calmed down, one would start giggling and set the other off.

"I know he doesn't have a basement. That's not what I was talking about," Ish mumbled. "He just...

"Hey. You two like movies?"

"Uh..yeah."

"Go to the movies a lot? I bet you don't watch those kids' cartoons any more, huh?"

"Not really."

"Well, you can look through my collection there, then. Why don't you see if anything catches your eye?"

"It's fine," Michael gasped between fits of coughing and laughter. Tears welled in the corners of his eyes that he blinked away, and he waved off Ish's muttering. "Relax, dude. Don't worry about it. Come on, loosen up! Take a hit!" Ish clenched his jaw. The back of his neck hurt when Michael said it. He couldn't loosen up. That was the goddamn problem: someone had to keep an eye on the two of them to make sure nothing happened. To make sure that they were safe.

"I'm good. I can't with my meds."

"Laaaame," Jesse called. "You can't go get Chinese unless you're stoned as fuck, dude."

"Whatever, man. Suit yourself," Michael laughed, leaning back and taking another hit before passing it back to Jesse. The bear busied himself with picking at particles of dust between the links of his watch, trying not to make it obvious that he was watching the joint go back and forth, watching Kelly's weed move between their lips and lungs. He smiled when they did, laughed a bit when they did, and the dusk eventually loosened them all up. Michael's laughter was so hard to remain separate from, his joy as inescapable as thermodynamics. Ish even ended up taking a couple hits, even if he held them in his mouth instead of his lungs.

Despite it all, Ish couldn't shake a strange feeling of unease. He kept seeing something out of the corner of his eye, if only ever for a moment and always when he was looking at something else: Michael staring at him, blue eyes perfectly wide like a doll. Just staring, and he never actually was when Ish turned to look at him. Nothing else about his face moved in those moments, not his muzzle and not his ears, leaving Ish with flashes of Mike's face locked in an inscrutable, symmetrical, maddening smile.

-

"You're the fuckin'... the fuckin'.. Mount Everest guy of orange chicken," Jesse sputtered, trying not to laugh as he pointed at the demolished heap of craggy meat on Ish's plate. Michael wheezed in a desperate attempt to not laugh hard enough to draw attention, doubling over their table and almost putting his muzzle in his own sauce-smeared plate. His sweet and sour had vanished as quickly as it arrived, but it was a portion half as big as the bear's.

"That doesn't even make any fucking sense," Ish grumbled, but he could feel laughter creeping into his words.

"You're - it's a mountain," Jesse cackled, squeaking a shrill sound in the middle as Ish ate. Nina, the waitress, looked over at them, and Ish launched a kick under the table. Hopefully the parakeet couldn't see as his paw smashed into the weasel's shin, making him jump and smash his knee into the bottom of the table hard enough to rattle the glasses.

"Dude, chill! People are looking," he growled, and Mike pushed Jesse on the shoulder, pointing at the entrance.

"Go!" He giggled. "Go, go outside! We're gonna get in trouble." He had to take care of this.

"I got it," Ish grunted, and slid out of the booth. Jesse was laughing so hard by that point he was crying and scarcely making any sound at all, sucking in desperate breaths whenever he could. The grizzly put an arm around his friend's shoulder, lifting his hand and smiling a fake-apology at Nina as they walked by. She looked down her beak at them as Ish offered a flimsy excuse.

"Uh." He swallowed. Jesse cackled. "Asthma attack."

-

"Holy fuck, dude, my heart's gonna blow up."

"Your heart isn't gonna blow up, man. Just breathe, okay? I told you two you were smoking too much. You don't know what kind of shit he gave you. The strain." Was it a strain? Ish contemplated the word. A species? Type, maybe? He couldn't remember what he'd heard it called, but Jesse seemed to buy it.

"Take me to the hospital, Ish. Fuck - oh my God, I'm having a heart attack. I'm having a heart attack," Jesse whispered, doubling over. Ish looked around again to make sure they weren't followed out, but it seemed the side parking lot was totally empty aside from them. Night came quick while they were inside and HONG KONG RESTAURANT was on the edge of town, so the light bleed from the more impressive buildings on Main Street didn't reach it. Darkness across the entire parking lot, punctuated only by a lone streetlight in the middle illuminating a few desolate cars. While he mindlessly patted Jesse's upper back and waited for him to calm down, Ish looked closer at the vehicles.

A couple he recognized by bumper stickers. 'My Kid's An Honor Roll Student' - Nina. 'Keep Christ in Christmas' - that was Frank Lynn, an old guy who lived a few streets down and would drop off church fliers on his dad's doorstep when Ish was a kid. Eventually Frank's divine patience ran out and they stopped, but not before a few years of his dad crumpling them up and hurling them back into the yard to stay like the evidence of a trophy kill.

The others he didn't recognize. Maybe some people got something Whitegrass-new (less than ten years old) from the dealer on Highway 183 or had family visiting. Nothing here had that new gloss to it, after all. Jesse quieted down, and Ish squeezed him on the shoulder.

"You doing okay, man?"

"Nnhhuh. I wanna... go home." His words were sluggish and involuntarily thoughtful. Ish's muzzle twitched into a smile as he swept a look across the parking lot again. He ignored the impulse to stare at the shrouded cars more carefully, see if any were familiar. They weren't going to be the one he wanted, and each confirmation only made that amorphous absence he felt more real.

"Alright," Ish chuckled. "We'll go grab Mikey and head out. It's only like a ten minute walk to his place from here." He swallowed against a bout of dry mouth and cleared his throat. "I'm sure Anton and Mike's parents would let you stay the night. Just say you're sick or something."

"Mike's dad is gonna be sooooo mad..." Jesse whispered. The complete sincerity in his voice made Ish laugh a little by reflex, but something bloomed a sour taste in the middle of his tongue like an apple left in the sun. "Hold on... I can't walk. My legs are jelly. I can't walk, dude. Dude," he mumbled, kicking one leg out and throwing his head back like his bones were made of rubber.

"Okay, now you're just being a bitch. Come on, man. Don't make me carry you." Jesse resumed his giggling as quick as he paused it it, using Ish's knee to help himself up. "I'm gonna.. I gotta piss. I'll go get Mike and piss."

"Not in that order."

"Fucker. Fuck off." Jesse scrunched up his face and turned, straightening up and walking back in a relatively straight line. Ish watched, smiled, and waited for the weasel to make his way in before letting his back fall against the restaurant's wall. The night yawned open before him, distant yet infinitely close, given form only by the specks of light framing the road up to the Cliff. It was the only measure of distance. In their absence, the night was one sheet, and there was nothing that separated that hill, miles away and so small he could cover it with his palm, from something that was close enough to reach out and touch.

From here, the lights looked like a tight spiral winding in towards that place, a gold spiral - a Fibonacci spiral, Ish decided, though he couldn't remember for the life of him what that meant. It sounded good to say in his head.

His stomach gurgled. A wave of cold nausea followed, like his body understood what he saw before the rest did. In the distance, one of the lights along that highway road turned on. Ish's chest tightened and he tasted the chicken from dinner, yet he couldn't look away, not as the dot of light remained and the one beside it turned dark before it too re-appeared. In a sequence, the tall streetlamps that stood proud against the tree cover darkened and lit again. Something inside of the bear knew that they weren't turning off at all, though, and he couldn't pretend that they were. He felt it like a grainy, forbidden film through the thin skin of closed eyelids, the heat of a fire through fur.

Something moved along that road, tall enough to blot out the lights as it went. It ascended, blocking each in turn, before the shape vanished from the confines of the spiral, melting effortlessly into the night around it. Around him. Ish shivered violently, hard enough that his teeth chattered and an involuntary 'nn-nn-nn' rattled in his convulsing throat. Some impulse of the rational mind crucified his gaze to the edge of the spiral, waiting for some sign that it had come back - that it was still over there. He tried to swallow and failed, tried to blink and failed too, a computer with a line of broken code waiting for something that wasn't there any more.

In the dark to his right, a car creaked down on its tires like a family climbed inside all at once. Ish's heart was in his ears, now, and his fear amplified again and again, doubling, spiraling out of control with every moment that he didn't move, struggling with all the futility of a dreamer against a bout of sleep paralysis. A tear gathered in his good eye and his bad one started to sting. The streetlight's circle in the parking lot grew more defined.

Michael said something - he didn't know what. The world rushed back and Ish moved all at once, his hand swinging up to shield his face from the world, legs collapsing in terror. His back slammed against the cement wall, his skull whipping back and cracking against it, too. Michael's voice buzzed high and incomprehensible against the low pounding in his skull, the pain of fall knocking on his Oxy's door.

"Holy shit! What happened? Are you okay?!"

Ish kicked and rolled onto all fours, his elbows quaking under the infinite weight of his upper body. His eye was wide, staring deep into the safe asphalt underneath him. Panic ignited his hand and he swiped at his eye patch, ripping it off of his face. His skin stung under it but he didn't care. He didn't care. He needed it off, needed the dark behind it away from his socket, from his face, from the blackened, sightless eye turned down to the ground. His breaths came slow and shallow for what felt like years, crouched against the ground like an animal, vulnerable and hiding his organs, unable to bring himself to stand. Ish couldn't bring himself to move, not even look up. Not until he felt Michael's hand on his upper back, soft, that familiar canine feeling of the pads, the blunt claws, the warmth of it.

"Ish?"

He looked over. Michael flinched. His eye patch wasn't on.

"Sorry," he mumbled.

"It's fine-- it's.." It was an ugly thing, black and red, no discernible pupil, the fur around it patchy and flat, bare in places from surgery scars. Ish knew what it looked like. He'd looked in the mirror.

"What's wrong, dude?" Jesse asked. The weasel's eyes were huge and afraid, sharp with adrenaline.

What's wrong?

He looked into Mike's eyes, meeting the twin blue skies. He looked for constellations and found none, but the Brittany must have seen something in his, because he stood up straight and stretched his hand down, just far enough for Ish to reach up and grab. The bear helped himself up, shooting a nervous look across the parking lot which seemed back to normal, at least for the moment.

"I just... saw something, I thought." Michael kept looking at him.

"Your eyes were probably playing tricks on you," Michael said. Ish's spine trembled and his fur stood on end.

"No, I don't mean... him, I mean, like..."

"I wasn't talking about him," Michael interrupted, still smiling. Ish swallowed and stared down into the Brittany's face, along his ears, along his wavy dark hair, his lips, his pink nose. He seemed so faint here outside, ringed on one side only by HONG KONG RESTAURANT's red sign, like an oil painting with too few layers on a dark canvas. Delicate. Even that smile looked fragile, Ish thought, like it was made of bone china.

"You're right. I'm sorry. I think I just.. I shouldn't have smoked," Ish murmured. He forced a smile of his own that felt as unconvincing as the excuse was. "Probably stressed myself out."

"Yeah," Michael said. Jesse rubbed his eyes. Ish looked back over his shoulder, staring up at the Cliff. The lights were motionless.

"Can we go?" The weasel asked, his voice quiet.

"Mhm. Hey, Ish."

"Yeah?" The bear turned back around, forcing himself to look away from the road at Michael's prompting. Terrifically small against the parking lot, he held out Ish's eye patch in his open palm.

"I'm here," he said. I'm here. "Let's go hang out at my place, okay?" Ish heard a soft sound, something like a half-deflated basketball getting squeezed. He realized it was coming from the middle of his chest, a shuddering breath with air he didn't know he was holding. It made him shiver. It was a cold night, Ish realized, and Mikey's hoodie was thin. He shouldn't be outside in this weather.

"Yeah. Lemme walk you."