FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

On my knees

Dim lighted room

Thoughts free flow try to consume

Myself in this

I'm not faithless

Just paranoid of getting lost or that I might lose

-- Flyleaf, So I Thought

SHELLY

I was in the truck. It was unlike the car. I liked the car more. The dash was too high for me to see well out the front and it smelled like things old humans use on their bodies to keep them working smoothly. The music was good though, at least the half I heard of it. I was pleased I'd secured a place for at least one night where I could bathe. I hoped it would pass the test.

Kevin was quiet, but he always was back then. He seemed to be more interested in the music and the road ahead than in me and I got the feeling there probably hadn't been an occupant in the seat I was using since the previous owner's dog sat there. There was a slight aura of left over tension in the cab of the truck that I recognized as belonging to Kevin. He was adding to it a bit. It wasn't hard to tell that it was because he wasn't used to having passengers and I felt sure that after we got out the iron in his shoulders would work its way free. See that's what he does to me, I use words that don't mean what they should.

He was listening to Judy Blue Eyes and humming along as he shifted the gears. I sat back and watched the unchanging dash for miles. I knew we were headed toward Portland but I wasn't sure where I was at any time as the air pressure changed, the air got cooler then warmer, then the sounds of city clutter began to push in all around us. The cassette clicked over to the other side as we slowed down and left the Interstate.

It was at this time I leaned up to peer over the dash. Kevin was focusing on piloting the growly truck down Beaverton Hillsdale Highway, then briefly on Scholls Ferry and finally onto a small local road. The apartment complex we rolled into looked like it was designed to look good to someone who was fond of water. I sat up straight. Then I got onto my feet and leaned on the dash.

"There's water!" I said.

"Yes, there's water," Kevin said, unimpressed, as though I'd told him he was holding a steering wheel.

"Are we staying here?" I asked. My eyes were wide and I couldn't have given a better attempt at looking endearing if I'd had my head out the window with my tongue hanging out the side of my muzzle, wind in my face.

"I'm staying here," Kevin added in a tone indicating that my situation was precarious and I'd better be on my best. I would be on my best.

Kevin rolled the truck into an empty spot marked by a dusty shadow of a number on the tarmac that may have marked the spot at some time, but was likely soon to retire to a life of leisure decorating the door of a bingo parlor somewhere in Florida, judging by its reluctance to show any pigment. I had to pee.

Leaning over to open my door Kevin brushed his arm across my chest. It was an experiment I felt more than a courtesy for someone who, clearly, could open his own door and looked about to do so anyway. His face was solid like those statues on Easter Island but his eyes said was what happened back there real or did I imagine it? I was revealing nothing other than the fact I had to pee by squirming and quickly hopping down onto the hot pavement. Then quickly off of it. Although I was on four I restricted the urge to bolt for the water and gaze into it, asking questions. It could wait, my need to go could not. I looked over to see Kevin headed off in another direction without his guest and quickly scampered to catch up. Add to my urge, I wanted to see what my new digs had to offer.

The calmness with which Kevin turned the bolt and opened the door made what was behind it even more surprising, as if there was nothing wrong. As if I wouldn't notice. As if to him the surprise I was about to behold was routine, and perhaps it was. The surprise was nothing. Well, next to nothing.

For someone of my stature the empty apartment wouldn't have been a surprise as much if it had been inhabited by my type. Skiltaire, being low to the ground, tend to prefer having things close to the floor and their hands. But even we had low tables and shelves. Knowing better but searching for something to say, I looked up and said "you've been robbed..?"

Kevin smiled and shook his head. "I've been poor," he said. "No one ever comes over and I've never had a need for all the stuff people tend to keep in their apartments." Then he gave me the tour.

"Bathroom," he said as he walked down the hall, pushing the door open to a small closet with a shower and a toilet, apparently having never been cleaned. "Bedroom" came next at the end of the hall, with another door pushed to reveal several piles of clothes, a computer and some blankets on the floor. There was a mattress but I was fairly sure it contained more skin cells than I did. I became physically confused, unsure if I wanted to tense and breath heavy or hold my breath. There wasn't much odor, really, but it was a reflex urge, replacing the one my body had been nagging me about earlier. That other one, in fact, was completely gone as if my kidneys had thrown up their hands and given in to my brain's preoccupation. Kevin sat down on the floor by the mattress looking at me. I looked at Kevin.

"Um" I said, indicating him.

"Kevin," he informed me, his expression one of a lonely painter sitting by his great work under the sharp eyes of a museum curator.

"Shelly," I said with the involvement of said museum curator. "Ke-vin."

He was clean, which didn't make sense. There was carpet between us, two and a half feet. Two feet, six inches. I looked back at the bathroom briefly, then up at Kevin as I moved closer.

"Kevin, your apartment is empty and it's messy," I said, as if telling him he was sitting on carpet.

"I haven't had the money for cleaning supplies" was his retort. "And I just never got into the whole cleaning thing. I'd pay a maid if I could afford it but that may have to wait a while."

"I like you" I said and I put the tail he'd been glancing at off and on into his lap, along with the woozle attached to it. The room was silent and the walls were miles away. Our voices echoed off the barren walls as we began the dance of knowing one another.

Kevin's arms went around my chest and I let out a breath I'd been holding since Reagan was in office. I allowed myself a happy wiggle and hugged his arms. I asked questions.

"Kevin, I'd like to have a shower and if it's permissible I'd like to sleep here tonight," I said. "If I help you a little with your rent will you let me stay? Can I use the shower? Do you mind if I clean up a little?"

Kevin nodded a lot and shook his head a few times, all to the accord of the woozle's questions, all in the way I was hoping for. He wasn't thinking, he was relaxing and holding me. "Do you mind your hair's on fire?"

"Nice try," he said to that last and touched his nose to mine.

My heart exploded and became a hutch of doves freed. I'm sure at the moment there was a procession of drums and the wailing of guitar from Yes's Hearts in the air, complete with airy ride cymbal. I think it was playing on the small clock radio by the computer on the floor, or maybe it was in my mind. Sailing down the river. I needed to pee.

I looked up at Kevin with a pleading expression. "Yes," I said you can stay tonight," he said and I laughed, then shook my head.

"If you don't let me go to the bathroom soon you'll have to put me on the paper," I said and Kevin promptly let me breath again. His face was half on that he knew I was kidding and half that he was put off by a hint of uncertainty. I fell onto the floor on my own and walked down the hallway a hundred miles away from those hands that left impressions on my chest and belly. I hoped it wasn't because my fur was matted.

KEVIN

I've never really been the type to host dinner parties or anything like that. In fact I don't really like having things. It's true that when Shelly came to visit I was afraid of how he'd react to the way my home life was set up. To say I've been a loaner would be an understatement. I don't think I was born with the lonely gene. There have been times when I've had things in my apartment like chairs and couches and things, but I got rid of them because I felt like they were in the way. So I was conflicted. I didn't want to have these things around me, but I couldn't invite people over because of the way they reacted when they saw how I lived. I'd tried it with one of my co-workers once. I figured I'd try that thing where you invite someone over to hang out, but there were some things I didn't take into consideration.

For one, I didn't think about the fact that I don't have a television, any board games, chairs to sit on... When the guy came in, he kind of scratched his head and glanced around. I stood there for a while, not knowing what to say. I was scared, unlike I've ever been scared. I didn't know what to say, where to start. I wanted him to be happy and think I was normal, but the awkward glances that passed between us made it clear I was getting neither. I wasn't giving him the cool guy vibes, and I was starting to go through that familiar set of feelings I'd come to know so well. It was the look of disbelief that I could be so strange that came first, always. Then the wringing of the hands, the shifting of the feet. Awkward laugh. My heart was pounding in my chest and I'm sure I must have looked quite flush. The bravado I'd built over having someone visit flowed away from me to be replaced by a shroud of horror that surrounded me like wet silk. There wasn't anything to do, or to say.

I couldn't think of anything to do or say and I'd never had to deal with that situation. I looked around my nearly empty home, then to my co-worker. I could invite him to go for a beer, but the damage was done. Besides that, I didn't know where there were any bars. I'd never had a need for a bar, and even if I knew where they were, I wouldn't know how to handle interaction in a bar. The damage was done, so I took the easy way out.

"Listen," I said. "I've never really hung out with people, and so I don't know all the social rules. I don't mean to be rude and I still respect you, but I think I'd like for you to leave. Please don't think things are bad between us, it's just that, as you can see I'm not any good at this stuff." There was a moment that took careful consideration, a coy expression dancing on its twisted lips.

I could see I had successfully transferred some of my discomfort to my coworker. First he looked unbelieving, then he had a break of confusion. He laughed, said "no, it's cool," then he turned and showed himself the door. As the door shut behind him, a wave of relief washed over me, to be followed shortly by the question of what to do now.

What I should have done was pretend the awkward encounter had never happened and got on with my life. What I should have done was nothing like what I did, which was to never return to work. What I did was take a shower, then I put on my pajamas, and I stayed home for three days. The phone rang three times, once each day, then on the fourth day it stopped. I didn't answer it and I didn't listen to the voice mails because I knew who was calling and there was no way I could admit to what I was doing. In the process of deleting the messages I heard "Kevin this is your supervisor," and that was all I needed. On the fourth day I went outside and it was like touching down on the moon.

After three days of seclusion in my apartment, the giantness of the world around me, rushing in, suffocating me took away my sense of direction and focus. I walked for a while around the complex, not sure where to go or what to do, even though I had a goal in mind. There was so much to consider, so many things to parse. I felt the tingling heat of insecurity in my arms and fingers and I stopped to think for a bit, closing my eyes, disappearing for a moment into the world of my mind. The seclusion of my truck would put me back on track, I told myself, and I crossed the property to the parking lot and got in. Knowing the roads and that they were mine alone kept my straight of mind as I headed down town to the Oregon Department of Employment Assistance office. I'd driven that route many times in case I might need it some day. It was the office that changed my frame of mind.

In an office I could cope with the people. I knew the rules, they knew the rules. There were no in between times where I had to make emotional decisions. We were both machines and our jobs were to fill out the forms to get the things we wanted. The dead eyes of the lady behind the counter at the help desk were a solid reassurance that this would be a breeze. She handed over the forms, I sat down with a pen and I began to make a copy of myself in scratchy black ink. It was a time when I was in control. I could complete the form and turn it in without a word, or I could ask questions and they would be answered. But the empty apartment I would return to would never come into play. My plain clothes were enough to get by, my flat expression a placard that read don't touch me. I didn't dislike her and she didn't dislike me. We weren't to each other. I would remember this moment but she would forget as soon as the door closed behind me and I was fine with that. I completed the forms indicating I had left my place of work due to emotional distress, and two weeks later I began receiving checks.

SHELLY

And I did pee. It was like a tickly dance in the sky, finally the relief coming to me that I had longed for. It was the kind of experience that took away all of the problems around you for a while in a way that gradually faded away as your other senses came back together. And when they did I realized the bathroom was kind of gross. I felt like I needed to clean up the bathroom before I took a shower, or I might come out less clean than I went in. So I flushed and went to find Kevin.

I looked in the bedroom, but it was a harbor for piles of clothes and no humans. The clock blared eight o'clock to me with its bright digital segments. I put my back to it and checked all of the other places that had open doors, none of which contained a Kevin. By elimination I decided he was in the bedroom with the closed door, so I knocked.

When the door opened, I was greeted with a face full of black curtain. I'll admit that wasn't what I was expecting.

I was quickly pulled in and surrounded by dark fabric, the door closing behind me, then I was born into the crimson room that made me stand by a moment. It was very dark, except for a few red lamps and the shimmer of pans of fluid. Dave Matthews was the soundtrack to my sudden realization that Kevin was into photography. Whether or not he "goes" did not come into question at the time. Well, "into" photography may have been an understatement.

There were lines strung up with photos hanging to dry. There were cylinders that were probably lenses. There were camera bodies, old and new. As I looked around, surrounded in blood, I felt the heat of discomfort rising in Kevin's body and I looked up at him. "You like to take pictures, huh?" I said, and the heat faded to be replaced by a cool calm. It was even a little tingly. The contrast was heady and this time when he knelt down and put his hands under my arms, I let him pick me up because I wanted this.

I wanted him to show me the chemical baths, shifting me in his hands. I wanted the hands to go under my bottom and to support my chest as each piece of equipment became a topic that was explained in great detail until its purpose and history had become a part of me as much as the hands that were holding me. I accepted the growing comfort in Kevin's eyes and posture as this thing that consumed him also consumed me; the pictures he had made of a world he grasped and struggled through. The significance of each picture transformed through his words -- it became more clear that these photos were his way of fixing the giantness of the world outside into individual portions of understanding.

This one was a picture of a flower in the garden outside, near his apartment. It was special because unlike all the other flowers in the world it was close to his home. This was a photo of a sign where the dust had been smudged by his fingers. This was a picture of the door to his apartment. It had been closed behind one other person. This one was in the fixer bath: It was a photo of a water bottle.