I’m not sure what’s going on, but Furries are attacking my town.
I don’t want to divulge my real name, so you can just call me Rosco - the name of my border collie “fursona.”
Yep, I’m a furry myself. Laugh all you want, but it’s the only reason I’m alive to type this right now. They don’t seem to attack you if they think you’re one of them.
At the moment, I’m holed up in my parent’s basement, my pathetic excuse of a residence before whatever the heck is going on began. Again, laugh all you want, but it’s turned out to be a surprisingly adept bunker to cower in against the nightmare occurring outside.
I can hear the gentle, soft “UwU”s and “OwO”s drifting in from the slit-like windows adorning the top of the basement walls, letting in thin shafts of light that illuminate the setting sun against the floor.
I’m not sure if I’ll live to see it rise.
I live way out in a small town in West Virginia with my family, right in the middle of rural Appalachia. My family weren’t much better off financially than I was, as the sticks weren’t exactly oozing with job opportunities. In fact, my income creating furry content online likely made me one of the wealthiest citizens in the area by default, and the rent I paid for the basement made up a large portion of the family’s income.
It was this reason that my otherwise traditional, Conservative family begrudgingly tolerated my “satanic” lifestyle - while whispering against me behind my back. Subtly but constantly nudging me about “getting a real job” or “returning to the Church”.
They’re a lot more accepting now.
I can hear their voices outside my basement door even now; Ma’s, Pa’s, and my 7-year-old sister Lily’s:
“Honey, we realize how silly we were! Please come out, we’re sorry for doubting your wisdom!”
“Son, come out and let’s cuddle together!”
“We’re furries now too!”
I try to ignore them. Having my family accept me the way I am has been one of my biggest lifelong dreams - but not like this. Not like this … I can only pray Jim made it out safe. I haven’t heard his voice yet, so there’s still a glimmer of hope he got out okay …
I’m also not sure how any of this got started. All I can say is no, it WASN’T my fault - so don’t ask.
However, I do have a guess as to where it all began - the factory.
“factory” isn’t exactly the right term to describe it - it’s closer to a military base or laboratory, a massive complex of interwoven, massive buildings built into the side of a nearby mountain - however that’s what us locals called it when it was first constructed around a year ago, and the nickname just stuck. None of the locals knew who exactly the company who owned it was - they just called themselves “the company” - but nobody cared, either.
After all, the factory’s existence was a massive, vital boom for our starved economy, an oasis of opportunity in the desert of poverty and despair. Not only did they provide jobs - high paying jobs at that - for the local populace, but they reinvigorated the town itself, transforming it from a desolate, abandoned strip of decaying brick and mortar into a thriving town center, complete with trendy restaurants, shops, and an income to enjoy both. For the first time, we could see a glimmer of optimism for our future.
It seemed like a dream come true at the time. In hindsight, though, it now feels like it was nothing more than a massive bribe - to get the locals on board without asking questions. And boy, did we fall for it.
My older brother Jim was the first to join. Pa quickly followed, eagerly jumping into the factory’s workforce, with my ma soon following. All three pressured me to join as well, but I declined - I was content living the way I was. I was happy making content and working to my own schedule, so why submit to becoming some wage slave?
And so life continued peacefully onwards. Ma, Pa, and Jim went to work, I stayed home with Lily and did my thing. Life proceeded as normal.
That is, until around a week ago.
It started when 3 vehicles - two trucks bearing the company’s logo and one SUV - screeched to a halt outside of city hall while I was having a stroll down main street. Two men - one wrapped in an expensive-looking suit and another in a lab coat with thin, rectangular glasses - disembarked from the suv and dashed into city hall, angrily muttering between themselves.
I shrugged my shoulders and carried on with my day, not thinking anything of it - company vehicles often rode into town, whether to discuss business with town officials or ferry factory employees downtown to relax and dine during breaks.
I first really became concerned when I saw the posters.
I had just finished my lunch at one of the diners lining main street, exiting to find them hastily plastered on every light post in sight. They read:
“Warning: report any and all furries you see to your nearest company personnel. Avoid all contact if possible, contact us at …”
I frowned, initially thinking it was some sort of personal attack against me. Unfortunately, me being a furry was no secret - and neither was the town’s general aversion to anything that went against “tradition”. I shrugged and headed home - I had learned to simply ignore the haters - tolerate them in the same passive-aggressive manner they tolerated me.
Which was why it was odd when one of them cheerfully greeted me with a beaming smile during the walk home, going so far as to compliment my fursuit and asking where to buy one.
The compliment was so out of place that it actually had the opposite effect, giving me a deep unsettling feeling in my gut … or was it just the way he was smiling?
I gave a hasty response and basically sprinted up to my house, slamming the door behind me. I then retreated to the comfort of the basement, deciding to bury my nervousness through several hours of gaming.
Over the next few days, things got progressively stranger.
First was the noticeable tension in the air. Ma and Pa were arriving home later than usual, with visible stress permanently plastered onto their faces. Company vehicles roared down main street more often than usual, like an endless army of worker bees. That creepy neighbor of mine was abducted in the middle of the night, shoved into a featureless black van with the company logo faintly visible against the glow of the street lights. Nobody seemed to care.
Rumors of strange animal sightings began to swirl throughout the ears of the town’s residents - first around the factory, then in the dense forest surrounding the town. Animal carcasses were being found with unexplainable wounds, with every inch of skin having been completely peeled off from the flesh.
The company then began doing “road work” on the only road leading out of town, effectively sealing us off from the rest of the world. People who tried to escape by foot through the woods were never seen again. The populace was becoming more and more paranoid - except for the increasing number of people seemingly infatuated with me and my fursuit.
Things came to a head when a small group of company trucks came slowly riding down main street, several men in full hazmat gear and wielding semi-automatic rifles standing in their beds. One man was holding a loudspeaker, yelling at the people gathering outside to witness the bizarre parade:
“Stay inside your houses! For your general safety, this area is under quarantine!”
Quarantine?? That can’t be good …
On a whim, I decided to put the head of my fursuit on. I mean, it couldn’t hurt, right? Hopefully it would stop any potential disease from entering through my mouth and nose…
The voice continued:
“There is an unknown pathogen circulating within the area, so please stay inside until further notice! I repeat, there is an unknown pathOWOge -”
Multiple gunshots rang out as the announcer was riddled with bullets, his now lifeless body falling off the bed of the truck. People scattered in a panic as something bolted towards the rearmost truck - something colored bright pink.
It took me a second to fully comprehend what I was seeing, but no, my eyes weren’t deceiving me:
It was a husky. Or rather, a husky fursuit.
No, not a fursuit. It couldn’t be.
It looked almost identical to one - big, cartoonish plastic eyes, unnaturally bright pink fur spanning the back with a white, dirt-smeared underbelly, fake immovable grin with a tongue stuck in a permanent blep.
Yet, it was running on all fours. Not quite unlike the way a human would on his hands and knees, but it looked too … natural to be your average Joe stuck in an overheated, clumsy costume. Its speed was almost inhuman entirely, closer to an actual canine.
Despite the sealed mouth, the pink and white husky was managing to speak, a high-pitched, cartoonish voice audible above the screams and shouts of its now-panicking audience.
“OwO wet’s pway!”
The husky leapt up with surprising agility, pouncing onto the screaming men firing blindly at it. The sounds of gunfire erupted as the other trucks sped away, abandoning the last one to its fate as more creatures appeared, pursuing the fleeing vehicles along with any civilian unlucky enough to be spotted. Some looked similar to the husky - various mammals in dizzying neon colors, with cartoonish wide eyes and muzzles soaked with what looked like blood.
The others, however, looked far more nightmarish. Instead of a cheerful, artificial fursuit, their bodies were wrapped up beneath the skins of dead forest animals, crudely stitched together in a horrifying imitation of the real deal.
Mortified, I closed the curtains and tried my best not to vomit all over the living room floor. Wh-what was going on? Those … those aren’t actual furries. They can’t be. Who are they? What are they?
I heard a sound coming from the kitchen - Whack.
The sound of a knife hitting flesh.
A deep, dreadful feeling rose in my gut as I cautiously headed towards the noise. I was tempted to say screw it and dive into the basement for cover, but morbid curiosity drove me on. And besides - what if it was my family? I couldn’t just abandon them to the nightmarish scenario that was happening outside - and potentially inside - my house.
What I saw was worse. So, so much worse.
Ma and Lily were sitting in the kitchen. Ma was hunched over her daughter, who was barely visible inside the skin of a dead fawn. Ma was sewing the fawn’s skin into Lily’s, blood-soaked needle tearing in and out of skin and flesh and cementing the two together. Lily winced with every prick, but otherwise sat still and idle, a dazed smile flashing across her face before ma shut the fawn’s muzzle, removing any trace of the human girl from my eyesight.
Ma turned towards me at the sound of my entrance, eyes wide with a horrifyingly gleeful glimmer dotting across them. Lily squirmed slightly beneath the fawn skin, attempting to wave with arms forcefully broken to squeeze into the dead fawn’s forelegs.
“Hello, Honey, you’ll be glad to hear that we’ve finally come around about furries! I realized just how disgustingly pathetic our human bodies are, and how evil, stupid, and corrupt we are as a society. Humans are nothing but a parasite on our beautiful, overburdened planet - no wonder you wanted to pretend to be another creature!
We can reject our human molds, however, and return to nature. I can join you soon, I just need to make my own fursuit …”
She gestured behind her where the carcasses of two bucks and a doe lay on the kitchen floor, the blood forming a pool stretching the entire length of the room.
“I even have ones for your father and Jim too, once they get back from work!”
I lost against the urge to vomit, barely managing to lift my suit’s head in time before hurling my stomach’s contents onto the floor. It barely made a difference, however, simply mixing in with all the other bodily fluids that turned the floor into a shallow lake from hell.
Ma, once a stickler for cleanliness, didn’t even flinch.
“You want me to sew that head on for you, honey? That way, you won’t have to ever take it off again …”
It took every ounce of strength I had to mutter a weak “I’m good” before stumbling shakily out of the room. Luckily, ma seemed more concerned about Lily and herself than me, which enabled me to shuffle over to the basement stairs and flee into the only shelter I had left:
Basement sweet basement.
The good news about living in a basement is that everything that you need is already down with you. I had a private bathroom, which I immediately used to clean myself of any remaining bodily fluids. I also had a bed, tv, and gaming computer, and there was plenty of extra food messily left behind from parties and game binges. I suppose being a slob has its benefits as well.
That’s basically where I am right now - stuck in this basement, waiting for something - anything - to happen.
Pa arrived later that day. He only wanted to rescue his family.
I could hear everything from the thin-walled basement. Ma was ready for him. His cries promising help quickly devolved into cries for help as little by little he too was forced into the grotesque deer costume meant for him. I heard every slash of the knife. Every snap of a bone being broken to conform the human body to the smaller, inhuman proportions of the deer. Every pained gurgle coming from Pa’s mouth as the skin was stitched on. Eventually, the gurgles became moans of increasingly animalistic pleasure before ceasing completely.
I spent an entire day weeping.
They’re still outside my door, trying to get me to join them. Little by little, their voices are becoming more cartoonish. More high-pitched. More and more singular, until they are so uniform I can no longer tell who is who:
“Come pway with us!”
“Be ouw fwiend pwease OwO ”
“I just wannya boop chu”
This is a nightmare.
I have no idea what’s going on outside my basement. If we’re winning or not. I haven’t seen anything about this on the tv or internet, and I can still post, so I think this has been successfully contained. But if that’s true, then where’s the rescue mission? Why haven’t I seen anybody human in the past few days?
The days have been endlessly dragging on. I’ve been wearing my fursuit more and more now. Something about it just seems … comforting, like wearing a fuzzy shield against the pain and suffering outside … a shield against reality itself.
I’m having trouble remembering my actual name now. The only thing that keeps coming to mind is Rosco … Rosco the border collie. That’s my fursona … that’s me.
I can’t help but wonder what it would be like to be sewed in like Lily. Forever one with the costume. Fighting was silly … after all, isn’t this what I wanted? I only wanted my family to accept me for who I’m meant to be. For who I am.
We’ve been apart for far too long. I was only trying to enlighten them, show them the way to ascend past their corrupt human bodies, only to be meant with their ignorance. And now that they finally want to listen - no, to play - I’m down here ignoring them? What kind of a good boy would I be?
I want them to join me.
I want to join them.
I want to pway!