Meeting 011: “A Non-Biodegradeable Fox” by Not Tube

Okay everybody, we had a good time talking about dongers and hoohahs and what have you, but now it's time to remember that we're all going to die and there's not a damn thing any of us is going to do about it, and if you can't deal with it, just go ahead and go crazy. Why not? It went well enough for Newberg, the aging taxidermist at the heart of this week's story from Not Tube. Inside his head, the chattering of stuffed animals fleshes out the various subsets of a broken man's mind.

We hope you enjoy the podcast! Sure hope it's better than swallowing yourself into the black and endless!

Story 011: 'A Non-Biodegradable Fox' by Not Tube

Much appreciation to Not Tube for providing this week's story!

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Matins

Newberg's eyes cracked open to the sound of bells. He had no alarm clock; many years ago his need for one had vanished. He had begun waking just a few seconds before it went off, and then found that he didn't need to use it to wake at all, though he'd kept the thing for a while out of habit. The cool grey light of dawn filtered through the film-spotted windowpanes. These days, mornings were quiet affairs. He remembered when he used to wake to the sound of mockingbirds outside, and jays, chattering noisily at the morning. Now there was only the sound of the bells, doleful, resonant, sonorous tones that pealed a discordant, but oddly melodic, jumble of sound.

They had started a few years ago, about two years after he lost Lettie. Tinnitus, the doctor told him. A ringing in the ears common with age. Drink more water, rest more. That should help. Newberg had chuckled when the doctor said that. What did doctors know, anyway? This was no ringing in his ears. It was music. A ringing in his mind, perhaps. As his head cleared, the sounds began to fade away, and with them went the faintly wistful, longing feeling that always accompanied them, drifting back into the same foggy forgetfulness that took his dreams.

He paused at the edge of the bed, body imploring him not to get up, to take it easy for once, let that old spine go a day without bearing the weight of his enormous head. "One day," he told it. "One day I let you lie there and then that will be it. The next day I'll lie there and the next, and then I won't ever get up again."

That wasn't exactly true, he knew. If he lay in bed too long, he'd start to drift back into sleep, and then the bells would return, louder than before, more insistent, somehow.

He stood. His knees were already sore and protesting. His back settled into its old, semi-comfortable hunch as he reached for his glasses on the low bookshelf next to his bed and put them on. The world shifted into semi-focus; he hadn't been to an optometrist in ages, and he had never subscribed to those new, fancy services that promised to regenerate your eyes while you waited. The people that came back from those places, their eyes looked like glass to him. You could never be sure what world they saw. Besides, the weight of the glasses on his nose, like that on his spine, was comfortable, even in its irritation.

He undressed in the bathroom and showered. Much as he would have preferred a bath, there wasn't time to soak. Today might be his last day of work. Then perhaps the next morning he could lie in, or take a bath, or even not wake up at the dawn. Maybe the bells would finally stop. He stood at the sink and shaved, his left thumb and forefinger tugging under his neck, pulling the loose skin of his face tight so the straight razor could catch the coarse, grey hairs. He could have used an anti-follicular cream instead of shaving, of course. He was no Luddite. But his fingers knew how to shave, and that was worth something.

He pulled on black slacks, buckling them at the waist, and matched them with a white shirt covered by a dusty black jacket.

"Hey!" called a voice from down the hall. "You still alive, Old Man? Get that bony ass of yours moving! There's work to be done!"

Newberg ran a comb, once white, but now a dingy yellow, through the remaining hair on either side of his head. Some dark left there still, he noted with a twist of satisfaction. Seventy-four years old, and not completely white yet.

"Coming, Fox," he said.

Liturgy

Fox was waiting for him as he walked down the hall, past his kitchen, past the dusty living room, and entered his laboratory. Fox had been waiting for him for a long time. Years.

"No breakfast today?" Fox asked.

"I never have breakfast anymore," Newberg said. His old eyes glittered behind his glasses. He moved into the dimly lit room, along a wall, piled high with boxes of rusty tools, decades-old magazines, and clipped newspapers articles, and to the center, where his work table stood. He dragged his old work stool back from the table, its once red leather now cracked, revealing the white stuffing inside. Seating himself comfortably in the chair, he reached up and pulled the cord for the fluorescent light that hung over it, and it flickered into cool brilliance, its sterile hues glittering on the array of scrapers, knives, needles, prods and electrical tools neatly arranged across the table's surface. The table itself was immaculately clean, but the concrete floor beneath it was covered with old brown and yellow and white stains, pitted in places as if corroded, and marked with dried streams leading down a slight angle toward a brown iron grate in the center of the room.

"You should eat," Fox advised from the back of the room. "Don't want your old bony ass falling over before you finish your greatest work, do you?"

Newberg didn't reply at once. He checked each instrument carefully, making sure they were all clean and in the proper place. He took a pair of thick, leathery gloves from the top of the table and put them on, then got up from his stool and headed to the back of the room, past shelves bearing various-sized jars of various-colored fluids, some dark and syrupy brown and crusted around the edges, some powdery-milky, some murky yellow. Below these shelves were bookshelves, the centers sagging with the weight of their books, books like Mounting Vs. Recreation, Taxidermy in the 21st Century, Finishing Birds & Feather Preservation , and Tools, Technology, and Taxidermal Traditions. Taking up the back wall behind all the shelves were a set of four, humming, polymer-based freezers.

He opened the third freezer, the only one that still contained anything. The air that wafted out was so cold, his breath left frost patterns on the glass door. "You should have a little more respect," he told the vulpine muzzle pointing, upside down, at him. Grunting with the weight, he took the metal tray with Fox from the freezer and carried it over to the work table. The freezer hissed as it closed, its cooling system humming in mechanical panic as it tried to accommodate for the sudden influx of warm air.

Fox lay on the table and didn't move. "Respect? Respect is for humans. Foxes find it ridiculous."

"Is that so?" Newberg flicked a switch on the side of the tray. A little orange light inside it turned on, and the ice crystals on its shiny, metal surfaces began to melt away, the water dripping down the side into a trough at the edge of the table and into a drain at one end. A gurgling sound came from the iron grate on the floor. He took off the gloves. "Then I suppose you don't mind if I don't do so good a job on you, hmm? Maybe I'll just be a little sloppy. I'm tired today."

Fox barked a laugh through his stiff muzzle. "You might! But it's not me you're doing this for. This is all for you and yours, right? You just have to make sure I last. A little memento to remember me by, skin and bones."

Newberg pulled on another pair of gloves, latex ones this time, thin and pale blue. "Seems to me you were the one hounding me to get out of bed this morning, eh?"

"Aw, you know I care about you, Old Man. And me, all this, your work. It's important to you, ain't it? That's why I get you up out of bed. Anything to keep you goin'. We foxes may not have much respect, but we do care. And skies above, turn off that heating tray. You're going to scorch me."

Obediently, Newberg flicked off the switch again. "Are you ready?"

"Ready?" Fox sounded incredulous. "Old Man, I've been ready for more than four years. I was ready when you started with Beaver, and Mole, and Sunfish, and Mockingbird. And I thought you would never finish with Mockingbird."

Newberg's face creased. "I liked Mockingbird."

"Of course you liked Mockingbird," Fox said, exasperated. "Mockingbird wouldn't shut up. You like people who don't shut up."

"Must be why I've kept you so long, hmm?"

"No, that's my charming personality at work. And how do you answer back? You stick everyone you like in a freezer for four years."

Newberg picked up a scalpel. "Not everyone." He bent over, tentatively taking Fox's left hind leg in one hand, and finding that it was no longer cold, gripped it more firmly. The scalpel dipped down toward Fox's belly.

"No, not everyone," Fox said. "Not the female."

Newberg froze. "You keep your mouth shut."

"My mouth is always shut," Fox protested.

"Lettie was different. You know that. Lettie wasn't like you."

"Just another animal."

"She was a human!" Newberg found himself getting angry, and the scalpel punched in just behind Fox's navel, deeper than he had planned.

"Humans are animals," said Fox, seemingly unconcerned by the silvery bright crescent sliding down toward his tail. "They're just not very good at it."

Newberg's eyes watered. Just from the eyestrain, peering too closely, he told himself. "Lettie was... you don't preserve people like you do animals. It's... there's laws against it. And it's creepy."

"Creepy!" barked Fox. "And what do you call this, Old Man? You live in a house out in the middle of the woods by yourself and spend all your time practicing taxidermy on dead animals that you talk to . Come on. How much creepier would it be? You can see us every day, if you want to. Wouldn't it be nice to have a stuffed wife sitting at your breakfast table? You could talk with her just like you do with me. You could sit with her and watch television, even carry her to bed and curl up with her at night, saggy Old Man arm around her cold f—"

"Stop it!" shouted Newberg. "That's horrible! Absolutely horrible!"

"Is it?" Fox's left eye stared resolutely up at the fluorescent light, the twin pair of glowing tubes reflected in it like a gleam. "I wouldn't know. I'm just a fox."

Newberg's left hand trembled as he reversed direction, tracing the scalpel up toward the fox's throat. He stopped, trying to compose himself, trying to ignore the tingling pains going up his arm. He forced himself to breathe more slowly. "You wouldn't understand."

"No," said Fox, "I suppose I wouldn't. You humans are strange about these things. You want to make things last forever, or make them go away so you can pretend they never were. I remember when I saw you and the female, when you were eating on the ground. Remember?"

"I remember." Newberg pulled off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. How long ago had it been? Not so long ago, perhaps. This fox could remember. Foxes lived how long? Eight, ten years? So it couldn't have been more than fourteen. He and Lettie had sat on a tablecloth, out in the woods near the stream. It was summer; the air was heavy and hot and filled with the scent of pine and earth. They were together to forget for a while, their sons off in the wars. They had sandwiches, and iced tea, and she was grumpy because her legs hurt, and they'd had to walk over a mile to get there. She was wearing a flower-print hat, and he'd helped her sit down, and then they'd seen the fox.

"Look," he told her. "Now isn't that worth coming out here for?" The fox was drinking from the stream.

"It's lovely," she had said. "Just think how nice it would be, all dried out, with its head all tilted to one side, stuck on a metal bar in the living room!"

That had hurt. Lettie had never approved of his work.

"I like living things, you know that," he'd scolded her.

"You tolerate living things," she said back, and then he told her that lately she barely qualified as a living thing, what with her moping around, and that was why he only tolerated her. It was a terrible thing to say, and he regretted it instantly, but was too bitter and angry to apologize, or take it back, and probably the only reason that she didn't head back right away was that her legs were still sore. Instead she threw a rock at the fox, and it darted back into the forest.

She ended up saying she was sorry first; she always apologized first, and she leaned against his side, and he put his arm around her, and squeezed a bit, and that way he didn't have to apologize at all.

She was right, in a way. Perhaps he didn't pay as much attention to the living as he could. But she was wrong, too. He did care about them. He'd always told her that was why he did what he did: to cheat death, if only in some small part; to give back some of the life that it took away. His way, even if the dead couldn't live again, at least it made it easier, for a while, to imagine that they were alive. To see what the world had been like with them in it.

Lettie had hated taxidermy because she said it encouraged hunters to kill things, but he said, no, they would kill whether he mounted the animals for them or not. Better, he said, they should come to a craftsman like him, who loved the natural beauty of wildlife, who could give their kills a sense of dignity, life, respect. Better than if they took their animals to some hack who shoved them into false, hackneyed snarling poses and crammed them full of sawdust. Better than if they turned that animal into a hat or stole and wore its carcass around.

Newberg was an artist. That's what Lettie never understood. His fingers excelled at recreating animals in death just as they had appeared in life. Admittedly, he didn't see many of these animals in the wild, but he had photographs and videos to work with, and his creations were so startlingly realistic they often fooled people. He had won several awards. He had even been commissioned to create a southwestern diorama for the Smithsonian, once long ago, but hadn't wanted to spend that much time in the city.

"You there, Old Man?" said Fox.

Newberg rubbed his eyes. "I remember," he repeated, replacing his glasses.

"Reflect tomorrow. Work today," Fox snapped.

He nodded, and began gently peeling the loose skin away from the underlying tissue, then picked up a longer blade, and cut deeper, severing muscle walls and visceral tissue, opening up the abdominal cavity to the sternum. "I have something special for you," he said.

"Oh, goody. What could that possibly be?" Fox stared upward disinterestedly. "A mouse? Wait, can't eat. A vixen? Wait, can't mate. Are you going to put me outside and let me fall apart and be eaten by worms and beetles and turn into dirt?"

Newberg grunted. "I have a canister of VL-89 preservative. I've been saving it for you. You know what that means?"

"You're a crazy old coot?"

He put down the knife and picked up the bone cutters, in two quick movements crunching Fox's sternum in two. "It means I don't remove your skin, your bones, your muscle tissue. This stuff is top of the line. Ten grand an ounce. I just flood it through your vascular system and it preserves everything but the organs. Even your eyes and nose will stay, though I do have to varnish those. Less work for me, and you stay looking pretty well into the next century. No glass eyes for you, my friend."

Fox scoffed. "Sounds like something special for you, not for me. What do I care about pretty? I'm dead."

Newberg bit his lip. "You're no longer with us."

"No, you're the one talking to dead animals. You're no longer with us. I'm just plain dead."

Newberg pulled open Fox's abdomen, the white sheets of visceral tissue tearing apart like stubborn cobwebs. He slipped his gloved left hand inside and pulled a length of intestine partway, having to use his right, with the scalpel, to separate the tissue so he could pull it free.

"Ooh yeah," Fox groaned. "I've waited four years to feel you inside me, Old Man."

"That's disgusting," snapped Newberg. "And stop calling me Old Man. I have a name."

"You call me Fox."

"I tried to think of a name for you, long ago." Out came a kidney, and the scalpel freed it. The intestines and kidney were dropped into a metal bucket by the table.

"Something fruity like Sly or Chester or Reynard, I guess." Fox seemed unconcerned by the growing cavity between ribs and legs. "But none of those fit, do they?"

Newberg pushed the heart aside, and with both hands carefully removed each lung. "No. They were all too... I don't know. None of them were right."

Fox hissed. "They were all too specific. To you, I'm Fox. Not a fox, but all fox." His voice grew as cold as his skin. "And to me, you are all old men. That is why I call you Old Man."

"This may sting," Newberg said, feeling suddenly angry, and unsure why. His fingers curled around the now sagging heart, and the scalpel cut through Fox's vena cava as easily as if it were a cooked noodle. He got up and went to a small refrigerator at the end of the freezer.

"Nothing stings anymore," said Fox. "How about for you?"

Holding a small, sealed jar in one hand, and a pump in the other, Newberg returned to the table. He inserted one end of the pump into the opening in Fox's heart, then attached the other end of the pump to the top of the canister, and turned it upside down. A thick, viscous fluid began to fill the pump, and Newberg squeezed the bulb on top once, forcing the fluid into Fox's heart and arteries. "You can't feel this?" he asked, squeezing again. "I'm beating your heart for you again." He sighed. "As for me? No, not much hurts anymore, I suppose. You either learn to live with pain, or you don't."

"Not even the female?" Fox asked. "Are you sure? Who is beating your heart, Old Man?"

Newberg stopped squeezing the bulb, half expecting Fox's rigid body to contort. "You should really be more grateful. This is great stuff."

"Why don't you try it then?" Fox asked.

Newberg ignored him. "In about twenty minutes, all your rigor mortis will be gone. I can pose you however you like. And in a few hours, you'll set that way. I was thinking something active, lifelike. What about you?"

Fox was silent for a moment. "How about eyes wide open, tongue sticking out, with all my limbs bent backward?" he suggested.

"Don't be morbid. You know, when people have their pets preserved, they'll often choose a relaxed pose, curled up, or sleeping. Maybe that would work best for you."

"Is that what I am, Old Man? Your pet?"

"Now," Newberg said, "You're just being difficult. I think I know what to do."

Again, Fox was quiet. Newberg pulled the pump out of his veins and set it aside, along with the empty canister. Thousands of dollars gone into this animal. Beetles would never taste it. Insects would not crawl on it because of the scent. Bacteria could not survive inside it. It was, for all purposes, non-biodegradable. A permanent fox. It would last until the wind and rain wore away its fur and skin, ate it down into tiny particles of matter, like a rock. Why? Newberg wondered. Why this animal? He opened a drawer, took out sponge-like organ fill-forms, and carefully inserted them into Fox's chest and belly.

"You hated Bear," Fox accused, as if reading his mind. "You did a terrible job on him. And he was so polite and eager and willing to help. He practically bent over backwards for you. In fact, I think he did, on one occasion. But Mockingbird you loved. You spent so much time on her, and she was a real harpy. Berated you every step of the way."

Newberg's hands were trembling again, as he picked up needle and suture. He could use a dermasealer – probably should – but needle and thread would do here. There was love in it, somehow. Carefully, he began to stitch Fox's belly back together. "I suppose I like the give and take, the challenge, the bickering. Mockingbird fought me, like you."

"I'm such a terrible burden," Fox teased. "You didn't like it when the female fought you, though."

Newberg's voice was harsh. "What would you know of it? You weren't there." His fingers made swift, deft movements with the needle, drawing the white-furred skin together as if it had never been separated.

"But you didn't, did you?"

"You don't know what you're talking about." Newberg closed up Fox's throat, and briefly imagined sewing up his voice box as well so he couldn't talk. He frowned. No, that made no sense. That was insane.

"Are you sure, Old Man?" Fox's eyes glittered coldly in the fluorescent light. Only just now, Newberg realized, his teeth were bared slightly. Were they like that all the time?

"Sure of what?" he asked. He cut away the ends of the suture with his scalpel.

"Sure it's not your dead mate you've been trying to sew up all this time." Fox's head suddenly turned to the side, staring directly at him with those cold, slitted eyes. His mouth hung open, teeth bared, tongue lolling mockingly. Newberg's hands jumped, the scalpel falling and skittering across the concrete floor. He stumbled backward, a sudden pain shooting up his left arm, his chest feeling suddenly as if he were being sat on, heart crushed beneath a terrible weight. He gasped for breath, voice grinding in his throat like a car failing to start, his eyes fixed on the terrible gaze of the dead animal on his table.

Fox slumped a little more to one side. "Don't die on me yet, Old Man. You've got work left to do, don't you?"

The pressure on his chest grew greater. Talking was one thing, but he had never seen anything move before. How could it be looking at him?

It was the preservative, Newberg realized suddenly. It had softened the muscles – the rigor mortis was leaving Fox's body. He was just going limp. That was all. No supernatural nonsense, no confirmation that his wits had gone utterly. He was fine. Alone, in his way, but fine. Slowly, his breath returned, the pain in his chest eased. He got shakily to his feet. "No more talk about Lettie, you understand? It's cruel."

"Nature is cruel," Fox observed, but his voice softened. "But no more talk about your female."

Leaning on his table for support, Newberg prodded the animal with his knobbly fingers. It was completely limp already. "You really have no preference as to how I arrange you?"

"Not at all would be my preference," said Fox. "I told you before, though. This isn't for me at all. This is for you."

For all old men, thought Newberg.

The Hours

"Do people really," Fox asked, looking bright-eyed and alert, "have their pets preserved?"

Newberg peered at him over the top of his glasses, then adjusted the rods holding Fox's head upright. "They do. In the last few years, it's nearly all taxidermists have had to do, once the hunting stopped. There. Now each ear." He bent the wires keeping Fox's ears perked so that they swiveled forward a bit. This was the most challenging part of the process: keeping the animal in position while the preservative set. Completely limp and uncooperative at this point, it was difficult for Newberg not to view Fox's continually sagging and twisting limbs or drooping tail as some kind of passive-aggressive tantrum.

Fox grinned at him, his tongue lolling. Newberg made a noise of exasperation and pushed the tongue back between the sharp, yellowed teeth, closing the muzzle again and holding it shut with a loose rubber band. "And don't look at me like that. I know it doesn't actually make sense. But maybe for some people it's easier to pretend nothing ever happened, that outside, their little worlds are still going on just like always. Sometimes we need a few props. Maybe it just helps us remember?"

"Outside?" Fox's voice was suddenly sharp. "Outside what?"

Newberg fumbled. "Outside themselves," he decided. "Anyway, you're just about done now. All posed."

Fox sat in a half-crouch, looking like he'd just risen up for something, his ears perked forward, eyes glittering keenly as he looked straight ahead, muscles bunched as if ready to dart. His tail rose out behind him – Newberg had used conditioner and hairspray to make it look bushy and natural. "How do I look?" he asked.

"Good as new. You look like you've just smelled or heard something interesting." He reached for a bottle of varnish up on one of the shelves, a little dark brown bottle much like a fingernail polish bottle. He opened it, and took a long, slender paintbrush from a holder near an upper corner of the work table.

"I remember smells," Fox commented, not bothering to wrinkle his nose as the flat brush spread a clear liquid across its black, bumped surface. "Very informative. I remember what you smelled like, out there next to the stream."

"What's that?" Newberg asked. He dipped the brush back into the varnish and then painted it across one of Fox's bright amber eyes. He marveled at the effectiveness of the preservative; it seemed even to have restored the vivacity to the irises, the whites, which had gone bluish grey before, with clotted veins, seeming clearer again.

"Death," said Fox. "Death, and poison."

Newberg put the lid back on the bottle and dropped the paintbrush into a jar of water, sitting back heavily on his stool. "Ironic," he said.

"What's that?"

"Just that my business of restoring a little life should make me smell of death, eh?"

"That's not ironic," Fox sniffed. "It's to be expected." His voice went a little harder. "But don't kid yourself, Old Man. You don't restore life."

Newberg rubbed his rough hand over his scalp, the few hairs that remained on top tugged between his fingers. "We've been through this. I know you don't see it that way, but you're just an animal. You don't understand our world."

"I don't understand?" Fox's voice was scornful. "Old Man, you don't understand your world. What you do, making corpses stand up, keeping them from going back to dirt, it's not bringing back life. It's prolonging death."

Newberg's voice shook. "I said you don't understand."

"It's the way of things. Nothing lasts forever. But humans don't get that. They want to hold onto everything for always when they should just let them die and decay, fall apart and be forgotten."

Newberg stood up suddenly, the stool falling to the floor behind him, his face red, the tingling going back into his arm. "You are a pompous and arrogant creature." Spittle flecked from his mouth, spattering across the bridge of Fox's muzzle, one tiny droplet landing in an unblinking eye. "You think you know so much, but all you know is your own little forest. All you are is one little fox."

"I am every Fox," Fox reminded him calmly.

"Nevertheless!" Newberg's hands gripped the edge of his work table, his fingers turning white. "You know only single deaths, the personal cycle of birth and decay, but that circle can be interrupted, do you understand? When one fox dies, nobody cares. What about when worlds die?"

"Like foxes, worlds die."

"And like foxes, dying worlds – or even worlds that are just sick – will scrabble and fight and bite and do everything they can to survive."

Fox paused. "And old men? Is that what they do, too?"

"And old men." Newberg found himself breathing heavily again. He crouched down, hearing the creak in his knees, and uprighted the stool, sagging onto it, his whole body suddenly very, very tired, and he found himself wishing that he had slept in this morning, even if only for just a little. "You never know, do you, when you're just sick, and when you're dying?"

"Yes," said Fox. "You do. Trust me."

Newberg leaned on the table. "We just wait now. It's okay, isn't it, if I sit and wait with you?"

"I don't mind."

He stared at his work, or rather, what there was of it, most of the difficult part taken care of by the preservative. Fox looked so lifelike, so ready to jump up and run, perhaps off the table and out the front door. Newberg took off his glasses and cleaned then with his tie. "How did you die, anyway?" he asked.

Fox's voice was sharp. "If I answer that, you have to answer a question for me."

"All right."

"You won't like it."

"I'll be fine." Fox was silent. Newberg cleared his throat, then asked again, "So, how did you die?"

"Slowly. Painfully." Fox chuckled.

Newberg shifted on his stool uncomfortably. "I mean, what caused it?"

Fox took a moment to answer, considering. "I don't know. I started getting sick in the mornings. Then one day I got too sick to hunt. I ate grasses, bark, but it wasn't enough, and I died."

"I 'd guess it was the stream," Newberg said. "There were toxins in it. They warned people not to drink or wash their hands in it. Some chemical plant up the way or something."

"The water died, so the fox dies." Fox growled a little. "Do you mourn the stream? Do you make it stand still and pretend it is clean and beautiful once more?"

"No," said Newberg. He sat next to Fox, who said nothing else. An old analog clock on the wall ticked sluggishly as the day crept by, past noon, then one. Newberg vaguely realized he hadn't eaten lunch as well as breakfast, but didn't feel that hungry. His mind drifted in and out of his past, remembering the day at the stream, his boyhood, remembering Lettie, and her grumpy, argumentative moods, her sweet conciliation, her flowered hat. The stool should have grown uncomfortable, but it seemed a part of him, a new pair of legs tirelessly holding him up. He found his fingers unconsciously brushing along Fox's fur. Fox did not comment, but he made himself stop anyway; it was disrespectful somehow, and creepy. And now that Fox had put the thought in his head, he felt like one of the old women who preserved their cats, set them on their windowsills to stare endlessly out into the sun with glass eyes, waiting for something to come up the drive – not death, because death had already been and gone, but perhaps forgetfulness, oblivion. That would not come for them for a long time, not until the sun glaring in through the window had baked cracks in their noses, had melted the glue that held in their glass eyes, caused the drying skin under the fur to flake off bit by bit.

No, that was all wrong, he realized. He didn't feel like the old women. He felt, himself, more like one of the preserved cats, watching days go by with eyes that could not see, little more than a skin stretched over a stiff, unmoving frame, waiting for a delayed decay.

He looked down at his handiwork from time to time, and occasionally touched an ear, tugged lightly at a limb, to see how the preservative was setting. "But it doesn't matter to you," he said. "Because you aren't there anymore. You hear and see nothing."

"What doesn't matter?" Fox asked.

"What I'm doing," Newberg said. "This whole process. I'm not making things worse for you, am I? You're not really here."

"No," said Fox. "I'm not. I told you before, this is for you, not me. I can accept that I'm gone and dead."

Newberg said nothing.

"What caused your female to die?" Fox asked.

"That's none of your business," Newberg snapped, but he didn't really feel the anger. Perhaps he was too tired to.

"I told you you wouldn't like my question," Fox said. "But I answered yours."

"You said you wouldn't talk about her."

"I never said I wouldn't ask."

"You said---" Newberg stared at the floor. "It was cancer." Fox wouldn't know what that was, of course. "A sickness. Like you had. But not from the stream." Or was it? Subtle little cumulative effects, in the atmosphere, collecting in the food, in the berries she picked? "At least, probably not." The question wasn't bothering him as much as he'd feared; it was relaxing in a way, freeing to talk about it.

"The last few months she wasn't the same at all. She was mean, argumentative, bitter. I'm not sure if she hated me then, but I told myself she did, that she couldn't stand being with me. So I worked a lot."

Fox sounded surprised. "You left her?"

"I worked! I stayed in here, in my lab. You don't understand. I couldn't be with her. She wasn't the same." He found his voice breaking, the pushed-aside sense of loss welling up, seeping through all the cracks in his memory. It was easy to remember her from before, as cranky as she could be sometimes, as challenging and difficult: that was the Lettie he loved. It didn't hurt to remember that, though that Lettie was gone.

He looked at Fox. "Every moment I was around her, she was... there was so much meanness in her. Her face, all twisted with loathing for me, spite, bitterness. I couldn't bear it."

"I've heard," said Fox, "that dying foxes will scrabble, and fight, and bite, and do whatever they can to survive."

Newman could feel the pleading expression in his face, his eyes unable to focus. "It wasn't her! It was just a cancer that had taken her over, eaten her up."

Fox said nothing.

"I just wanted things to be the way they were before." He looked at the animal, who stared resolutely out into the distance at something far away, something Newberg couldn't see or hear, that fixed its attention.

"I can't move," Fox observed.

Newberg poked him. The creature was stiff, his whole body sliding a bit across the table at the prodding. Rigor mortis had reclaimed it.

Vespers

Hunger was gnawing at him now, but distantly, like a pup left outside, scratching to be let back in. He was suddenly aware he had been sleeping. For how long? He glanced at the window. The light was already fading. It was not yet summer, so the nights were still early and cool, but it was darker now than he'd hoped. He looked back at Fox, crouched in eternal curiosity.

"Don't look at me, Old Man. I've got all the time in the world. You I'm not so sure about."

Newberg got to his feet. His bones were so stiff, so unready to move, he found himself almost wondering if he hadn't inhaled some of the preservative himself, been left half-frozen in a perpetual slump, his joints, muscles chilled and set like gelatin.

His hands slipped around Fox's back and belly, ruffling the orange fur. Fox was as unyielding as a mannequin, even the strands of fur seeming oddly stiff and spiky. "You ready, old friend?"

"Ready?" Fox said. His voice sounded sad. "I'm already gone. But are you ready? After me, it's over. Do you understand?"

"It shouldn't have gone so quickly." Newberg's voice trembled. "I should have spent more time on you. Days, weeks. I shouldn't have cheated. This damned... damned technology, all it wants to do is take everything away from you faster."

Fox barked. "What are we talking about, again?"

"I'm sorry." Newberg picked up Fox. The animal was far lighter than he expected. "You weigh almost nothing."

"We foxes are creatures of air! I'd dance for you, but, you know." Did his legs twitch just a little? No, Newberg decided.

"Then let's go." He tucked Fox under one arm and opened the door.

Outside he breathed deep in the cool night air. It still smelled the same as always; that was one thing that hadn't changed. He stepped out into the forest. Stars already glinted in the evening sky, or perhaps they were satellites. Pine needles crushed under his feet, and he realized suddenly that he had forgotten to put on socks and shoes, that he was still wearing his bedroom slippers. He hadn't noticed. He walked deeper into the forest. Once fireflies would have winked at him in the twilight, but he hadn't seen any in the last three years.

His feet knew the trail as always: in and around the white pines, the oaks, the hickories, past rocks layered with heavy mosses and lichens, through a hollow that still smelled earthy and rich. Fox was silent for the journey, and under his arm, no burden at all, as light as if he didn't exist, just a phantom clinging wispily to his jacket. Still, occasionally, Newberg heard the rare cricket, though once these woods had nearly split apart with their exuberant chirping. They had chorused with frogs then, too, but now there were no frogs to be heard. He wondered if he should hurry, as the light was fading fast, but behind him the moon was heavy and round, and it would help him find his way back home easily enough.

The trees as he traveled began to look less healthy; he saw fewer leaves on them, and broken limbs littered his path, tripping him up several times. He began to see the now-familiar white splotches on their trunks, looking like leprous sores eating their way through the bark. He didn't know what they were, or what caused it, beyond a certainty that it had to do with the poisoned stream. Frequently, now, he saw the white streaks of bone in the tattered carcasses of fallen birds littering the floor. There were no scavengers here to take them, and any passing animal who thought to grab an easy meal would not travel far beyond these woods again. The earthy smell of the forest was gradually supplanted by the reek of decay, and another scent underneath it, plastic and needlelike in his nostrils. He could hear the sound of the stream now, rattling and hissing as it wound its way through the forest.

Rounding a large rock, he saw a huge shape looming up before him, over six feet tall, massive paws spread wide, with claws three inches long sprouting from them. It was leaning against a tree. "Hello, Bear," Newberg said.

"Newberg!" said Bear. "I'm so glad to see you! Ever so glad! Give Bear a hug!"

"Another time," said Newberg. "Back still itching you?"

"Not bad," said Bear. "It just won't stop. I've been scratching it against this tree for days or minutes or at least a very long time."

"Why don't you just pretend to scratch?" suggested Newberg. "That way, it will only pretend to itch."

Bear looked pleased, as if something that were bothering him was finally being taken care of. "That's a great idea, Newberg! I'll try it right away."

"My eye!" screeched a high-pitched voice. "My eye my eye my eye my eye my eye!"

Newberg looked down next to the rock. "Weasel, what have you done? Your eye's fallen off."

"Geddit geddit geddit! Bloojay did it, I just know! Put it back on! We'll bite her horrid little head off! Eat all her wretched little bebbies! Peeppeeppeeppeep that's how they go!"

Newberg set Fox down in the leaves.

"What's he looking at?" asked Bear. "Is someone coming? We should hide."

"Don't worry," Newberg assured him. "Weasel, where is your eye?"

"Off off off geddit! My eye! My eye my eye my eye!" His teeth were bared furiously.

In the dim light, Newberg fumbled around in the leaves. "Here it is, right by your foot." He reached into a jacket pocket and produced a small bottle of glue, dabbing a bit on the tip. "How did you do that to yourself?"

"Bloojay! My eye!"

"There, it's fixed."

"Upside down!" screeched Weasel. "Whoa, the world! It falls! My eye! Upside down!"

Newberg ignored him, and picked up Fox again. "We're almost there."

"Suits me," said Fox. "You haven't much time left."

"My eye! You bastrid!"

Newberg tucked Fox under his arm and headed toward the stream. It glittered in star and moonlight, seeming clean and fresh, but all the trees were dead, their limbs and even tops fallen off, all along the riverbank a series of decaying spikes thrusting defiantly up at the skies. In places they had dammed the river; it welled up around them and continued on. One huge fallen trunk lay across the spot where he and Lettie had picnicked that day, and across the stream was where they had first seen Fox. Newberg eyed the water distrustfully. "I don't think I should cross. Here should be close enough."

"Hah!"

He looked up. "Still awake, Mockingbird? How are you?"

"How are you? " she retorted.

He looked around. "I don't know."

"You don't know anything!" she sang. "Nothing of what is, only of what was. Mister Know-Nothing, couldn't save a tree. D-E-N-Y-I-N-G!"

"Mockingbird!" Fox's voice was harsh. "That's enough."

"Enough for him?" she scoffed. "Never! Never learn anything, he will. Never forget anything, he won't!"

Newberg lifted his head. "What was that?" he asked.

"Never learn—" Mockingbird began, but stopped. He wasn't looking at her, not listening. His eyes were staring off into the distance.

"You have such inferior human ears, all non-moving," complained Fox. "I can't tell what you're listening at."

"Quiet," said Newberg. There was a slow, sonorous resonance in his ears. At first he wasn't sure he heard it, but then it grew louder and louder, a tolling, rhythmic ringing. It was the bells. Never before had he heard them during the day, while fully awake, but only in the cobwebby distance of half-sleep when he lay in bed, refusing to continue his work. These were the bells that rang every morning, drawing him out of his dreaming, tugging him back to the waking world, forcing him to open his eyes, to get up, to continue. Only this time, he was wide awake, clearheaded, paying attention to them, and he knew what they were. They were funeral bells.

"Time," said Fox from his arms, "to say goodbye, Old Man."

The bells rang in his ears, behind his eyes, in his mind, vibrated his chest, shook him down to his gut, until he wanted to be sick. There had been a funeral. The bells had sounded just like this then. He had woken to a funeral every morning. And every morning, he had gone back to sleep, gone back to his work of making life last just a little longer. But now Fox was finished. The dream was over, and he couldn't ignore the bells any longer. Now he had to wake up. There had been a funeral for her, yes. That was what you did for dead people. That was what you did for the living people left behind.

He had seen Lettie lying in her coffin, her face so pale and perfectly preserved, not looking like she was only sleeping, not looking like she might spring to life, but coldly and unmistakably dead, her flesh empty of Lettie and everything that was her. He had stared at her, tried to imagine how this could be his wife, how this waxy thing in this box would look if it sat up and smiled and spoke to him, and the thought was so horrible that he closed the lid, refused to allow it to be opened, and told the few people visiting that they would have to remember her how she was. That thing hadn't been Lettie. He wouldn't let it be her. He would always remember her, instead, just as she was.

The bells rang and rang and he could not drown them out. He put his hands over his ears, but the sound came from his hands, or from his ears, or from inside his head going out. They tolled for the passing of Lettie, and their sons, and the stream, and the trees, and Fox and Weasel and Mockingbird and Bear, and for the ways of the past. They tolled for needle and thread and straight razors and fashions and friendships and peace and the stars in the sky that had already died centuries ago, but whose light was only just now falling down on his face as he shook.

Pain shot up Newberg's arm and into his chest, a vice crushing the air from him, making him fall to the ground, and his first instinct was to push it away, because it was terrifying. But not all that is frightening or unpleasant is bad, he thought. Not everything familiar is sweet, or useful. His heart clenched once, again, and his body dragged in the dirt and sticks and old leaves as it twitched. He felt sweat on his skin. He gasped for breath. And then he let the pain in. It flowed away from his chest and arm and heart and into his mind and eyes, into all of him. It filled him. He let it wrack his bones, he let despair and loss and regret pour into him. Oh god, he thought. She's dead . He caught his breath in a few full, gasping gulps. He stared up into the broken trees at the black sky until he realized he could hear his heartbeat, steady and regular as if nothing had ever happened. Tears were hot in his eyes, but cold on his cheeks, streaking down to his ears.

The sound of the bells faded. They didn't go quieter; they simply began to sound less and less genuine, until they seemed like echoes, and then like the sound of a voice immediately after waking from a dream, not quite imagined, but not quite real, and then they were just a recently summoned memory. Had they ever been there, he wondered? Or all this time, had he been listening to echoes?

He looked up in the tree above him. There was a strange clump of old feathers there. "Goodbye, Mockingbird," he said. Mockingbird did not reply. She would not. She had been dead for years. There was not, really, any mockingbird there at all, but he did not think it was too late to say goodbye.

He got to his feet. Fox had fallen on its side where he had dropped it. He knelt, and gently set the preserved animal he carried in the leaves by the tree, let it stare out not back toward the house, nor back to its own side of the river, but upstream. He put a hand on the head that once belonged to a fox, felt the coarse, unfamiliar strands of fur against his skin and knew that they were no longer vulpine fur; they were something else. A remnant. A reminder. "Goodbye, Fox," he said. "Goodbye, all foxes."

"Goodbye, old man," he heard his wife's voice dance, laughing in his head, bouncing back to him across time.

He smiled. "Goodbye, Lettie."

He stood again, the soreness of his joints flaring up, and he allowed himself to hate it. He shuffled down the path, which was now almost completely dark. Time plucked at his ankles as he walked, and he broke its tendrils, breathed deep. His shoulders straightened, forcing the hunch upright, accepting its weight on him, though, he knew, futilely. He managed to stand tall all the way back to his house, which sat in a clearing at the end of a gravel drive, looking oddly small and forgotten, muted and distant versions of the places they had once been.

In through the door to his lab, and to the back of the room, the freezers hummed, glowing blue and expectant. On the left wall near them was a small white box. He opened it, turned a key, and pressed a red button. The freezers shrieked in alarm, their dying wails echoing in the room as their thrumming heartbeat wound down. He pressed a second button and the alarms went off. Then he turned the key again, closed the box, and went over to his work table. He cleaned it off with a nearby rag, hung up the rag on the side of the table, and pulled the cord for the fluorescent light. It went out, flickered back on once in protest, and the room was dark.

I'm hungry, Newberg thought. Ah well. I can eat tomorrow. Tomorrow I can do whatever I like.

The rituals of preparing for bed seemed unfamiliar to him, new, as if he had not done them in years. The heat of the shower on his skin was immediate, and soothing, the damp air full in his nostrils, the smell of the soap oddly fragrant. He took his old, threadbare pajamas out from under his pillow, and thought that tomorrow, he might buy a new pair. He did not feel ready to sleep. Surely the pain in his bones would keep him awake. Perhaps he would never feel ready to sleep again. But his eyes closed heavily, and the next morning, he slept in.

Meeting 010: “Buckets” by Jinxtigr

Jinxtigr serves up a sinful story of high-stakes lust and Skip gets a little emotional about it being our tenth show. Toonces is a little unnerved by the book club's first hetero story, but as always, there is always real estate for diplomatic relations between the breeders and the queers.

We hope you enjoy this week's meeting!

Story 010: 'Buckets' by Jinxtigr

Much appreciation to Jinxtigr for providing this week's story!

[display_podcast]

By the time Daucery was done with Boodins, everybody in the Cathouse was up. She didn’t hurry him, which was surprising- but she explained that she liked to take time for herself, too. He counted as ‘me time’. Boodins found this gratifying, and by the time he had his pants on and was wandering back out into the common area, he was further gratified by a plethora of kitties.

Daucery was talking with the fat white fluffy Nerre in the black ribbon bikini- Demarle? Yes, Demarle… and the little one, Alonifi, was talking with Faisand. She caught sight of him, but Faisand led her away.

Dene was trying to talk to Rai, but she was having some difficulty, because Rai had given Boodins his pants. The elegant little ninja was not the least bit self-conscious in only a shirt, and apparently the Nerre way was to make no mention of this, but Dene wasn’t a Nerre, and she was visibly trying not to look at his small fuzzy testicles.

Leaving them to sort out their problem- or not, since Rai seemed unaware of a problem- Boodins joined Daucery and Demarle.

“Here’s our big boy!” said Daucery jovially, elbowing him.

“Really? Me? I guess you’d know, huh?”

“Sure. You might even need to tone it down with some of the others. Like we talked about, I’m not exactly a little waif myself…”

“Oh now, you must be joking,” said Demarle. “Seriously?”

“I told you,” said Daucery, “he’s a rowdy puppy in the sack.”

“Yeah, I know.” said Demarle. “You always grab those ones. You know you shouldn’t try to work them up like that…”

“Come on, gimme a break. You don’t do it that way, Faisand either, Brittery is the opposite thing- somebody’s got to let the wuffies and puppies cut loose. Right?”

Demarle tsked. “I know you’re tough, Cery, but it’s really not a great idea. They’re still happy with the rest of us, and we don’t have to make emergency runs to the hospital.”

“That was once! And that was a couple years ago! C’mon, Arle.”

“We panicked. Magarce had to drive you. She thought it was the coolest thing ever. She’s… odd.”

“I’ll say!” said Boodins.

“Yes, you’d know, wouldn’t you?” said Demarle. “How does our Cery stand up to the notorious Magarce, anyhow? I’m damn sure Cery’s roomier, for what that’s worth.”

Daucery glanced hastily at Boodins, but he was in a generous mood.

“Cery was way better. It felt more good.”

Demarle purred. “I should hope so, dear. I’d never let her hear the end of it if she didn’t. We’ve got standards to uphold. But I suspect she had some kind of personal motives as well?”

Daucery shot Boodins another nervous glance.

“Dunno. I was busy.” said Boodins loyally.

“Hm.” said Demarle, and fell silent, studying him. It was a little disconcerting, and after a bit, Boodins asked, “Did I do something wrong?”

“Oh, no- I’m just deciding whether to give you the madam’s bed after you rest up. It’s that one over there.”

“I’m not sure I can sleep in the daytime, or with those big windows there.”

“You misunderstand. It’s a special thing we have for certain clients. I’ve got this room zoned as my bedroom- so I can have fun right out here if I like. The rest of the girls have to stick to the regular bedrooms. Furthermore, if you’re getting the madam’s bed, it’s a sign of special favor, and you may not be asked to pay. It’s been a while since I’ve given it.” The white Nerre looked sour. “I’ve been doing bookkeeping for this place, and keeping abreast of the legal situation.”

“You have a legal situation?” asked Boodins.

“This is Verss. There’s always a legal situation. It’s just a matter of who you can influence to deal with it. Faisand is a huge help there.”

Daucery had padded off in search of more coffee, presumably, leaving Boodins with the fluffy white madam. She was eyeing him up as if he was a questionable side of beef. “Faisand says you were rough with Daucery, dear.”

“I’m sorry! I… she didn’t seem to mind…”

“No, our Cery doesn’t mind that, but I hope it didn’t give you wrong ideas. I said she’d show you how to have sex nicely, but I didn’t mean just nice for her. I don’t think you’re learning very useful things, Boodles.”

“Boodins.”

“Sorry. The point stands. And it might matter- your friend Rairate says you’re here on some mission that is now more confusing, because you’re supposed to be finding and rescuing Elistary, and believe me, you won’t have trouble finding her now, but rescuing is going to be a bit of a problem…”

Rai, hearing his name, padded over. Boodins noticed that Rai kept well clear of this Demarle lady. “You were saying, ‘aons?”

“Honey, you might want to not remind us of the protocol back home, okay? Some of us ran away from that on purpose.”

Rai didn’t reply to this. Boodins knew the little word, ‘aons, was short for a hell of a lot of kitty expectations and rules- he hadn’t followed the whole explanation, he’d got bored, but it meant something like ‘listen to me without interrupting, please’ or maybe ‘let me have my way as long as I ask politely’. Rai certainly came out with it more often when he needed to be bossy.

“You were speaking of our mission- repeat, ‘aons?”

Demarle rolled her eyes. “I was saying, it’s easy enough to find Mistress Elistary, but I’m not sure how you propose to rescue her. Anything that gets her out of our way would be great. She won’t want to go.”

“What’s she…” “What exactly is she doing?” Boodins and Rai looked at each other, each ready to apologize for interrupting the other. Demarle looked on, more amused than she had been.

“Maybe you’d heard. She runs the house ‘Mistress Elistary’, and she’s our main competitor. Faisand thinks she’s trying to send us rough trade, but I think that would take too much effort. What I can’t figure out is what’s making her so obsessed with it all. You can see she comes from money. She wears pearls around. I’ve heard she’s had them snatched, and she just gets new ones and carries on.”

Rai said, “Yes, she comes from money- her family is paying handsomely for her rescue. We were told she’d been kidnapped.”

“Not her! She came into town and bought a damn building and started running her show. Honey, some Resten ladies come to the Runge homeworld because they like that wolfish flair- though, honestly, Resten guys are every bit as well hung. I’ll test that on you later, sweetie…” winked Demarle.

“I don’t suppose I could stop you.” said Rai. “I’ve rather given up on trying to protect this boy from himself…”

“From what Daucery tells me, you might need to protect me from him!”

“Not interested, ‘aons.” said Rai coolly.

Demarle lifted an eyebrow. “Hm.” She regarded Rairate with matching coolness. “Let me speak your- okay, our- language, all right?”

Rai nodded, carefully.

“I don’t mind your haughty attitude, Nifi’s been spared much contact with our culture, and the girls- Brittery and Daucery- they’re busy working their trade.” said Demarle. “I ask that you be courteous to the old grey cat you’ve seen here, Faisand. She was the first of us and the treatment she received from our people still haunts her. You will not scorn her- vraonse.”

Rai said, awkwardly, “I… understand things have changed… for some of our people who’ve travelled far from home…”

“Faisand was here before anybody understood. Seriously- you will not scorn her, ‘aons.”

Rai nodded slowly. “I… may understand a little of what she felt… though I have kept faith.”

“Yes, dear.” said Demarle, softening her tone. “We all understand that. And just because we don’t obey protocol, it doesn’t mean we… okay, never mind. I saw how that made you frown.”

Rai looked unhappy. “I’ve given offense…”

Demarle smiled wryly. “Actually, we like you. It’s amazing you care. I can’t believe we have a Hse-Nerre in here, with the claw implants and everything, and you’re caring what we think and not just gutting, say, Cery for things she’s done…”

Rai looked still unhappier, mewing “Nooooo…” while Boodins became alarmed.

“Why would he do that? No way! Rai, you wouldn’t do that?”

“Hush, puppy, he’s not doing anything of the sort, or we’d have called the police on him hours ago…”

“We’ve met them.” said Rai politely, “and please don’t tell me any more about this ‘Cery’, ‘aons!”

“Certainly not.” said Demarle, more in command now. “You may not think it, but we still feel obligations towards you, maybe less… formally.”

Rai blinked. “What other sort are there?”

“You’d be surprised. If I know your type, you’re bound by protocol like any Nerre on Ause, but you may have ideas that here on the Runge homeworld there are things that don’t count…”

Rai unaccountably looked away, which interested Boodins. Did this have something to do with that mysterious night at the anarchist base? Where, the morning after, Rai’d looked amazingly smug and said nothing?

Rai’s reaction wasn’t lost on Demarle, who continued, “…like almost every Nerre who figures out the gaps our protocol was never designed for. Okay, honey? You’re right, there are things that are just not covered in your obligations.”

The deadly ninja-kitty nodded bashfully, still looking away, his hips tilting coyly.

Demarle chuckled. “Runge guys! Equal opportunity kitty crack. I think I get it. But listen, Rai- ‘aons?”

Rai looked back at her, hesitantly, as if she’d caught him doing something and might yet let him go.

“Just because we don’t obey protocol doesn’t mean we have no rules. We want to do right by you- and those yummy wuffie playtoys? Those are people, honey, we want to do right by them- but sometimes they’re terribly alien, and we have to try to understand what they need and want.”

“…ump…”

“What’s that, honey?” said Demarle, her ears perking.

“…I’m pretty sure what some of them want!” said Rai.

“Of course you are, but how much do you really know about them? Sometimes what they need is terribly complicated and peculiar. We’ve actually got one coming in who’s all of that, and I’ve got to talk to Brittery right away and find out if she’s okay with it…”

“Yes?” called a sultry voice from the upper level of the Cathouse.

Boodins glanced up to see a striking new kitty. This one was shorter than Daucery, and probably Demarle as well, but not as tiny as Magarce. She was covered in short black fur, dense and glossy- lying so close to her body that her figure remained shockingly well defined. She was curvaceous, but not in the manner of Demarle, whose roundness was only exacerbated by rampant fluff- this one was more muscular, like some small huntress. Though her fur was black, her eyes were not unlike Magarce’s- ice-blue, and wild.

“Tery! I need to talk to you.” said Demarle.

Brittery swarmed down the wooden pole that the kitties used as stairs. Boodins couldn’t help but stare as she did- the compact, lithe little creature made effortless work of the climb, and every angle of her motion revealed more elegant, muscled contours to her body. She resembled a feline gymnast crossed with a fertility goddess. Boodins stepped back as she approached, as if he’d be burned by waves of erotic hotness. She moved as if she believed that as well, and liked it…

“Is it this boy?” purred Brittery. “Any special requests?”

“I’m afraid not.”

Brittery stepped back. “You didn’t.”

“I can still call him and tell him deal’s off- but yeah- it’s Buckets.”

“NO way!”

“Aw, come on, honey- it’s worth your while!” pleaded Demarle. “It’s good for all of us when the margin is that high!”

“You don’t have to put up with him!”

“I would in a second, Tery! It’s not that outrageous, honestly! I’d do it for him, but he doesn’t want me.”

“He KNOWS I don’t want to do it! He creeps me out with all that stuff! I don’t like knowing his little routine!”

“Well, supposing that’s why he wants you…”

“Of course it is! He wants me exactly because I don’t want it! I don’t get paid enough to put up with this b…”

“Three thousand.”

Brittery froze.

“You wanna repeat that again, Arle?”

“I spent ten minutes on the phone telling him he was done. He doesn’t want to be done. Three thousand. I told him I’d run it by you.”

Brittery looked angry and disgusted. “That’s crazy. How can he have that much?”

“You know he travels from Restred just to do it with you…”

Boodins’ ears perked, but he watched without interruption.

“It’s got to stop, Arle,” pleaded Brittery. “I don’t like not wanting to work. I don’t like cringing.”

“Tery, honestly! It doesn’t hurt! Well… not in the usual way, not in any severe way! You’re just too damn fastidious.”

“Fine! You do it. With my blessing!”

“He’s not offering three thousand for me, Tery. It’s gotta be you.”

“I shouldn’t have to do such things!”

Demarle lost patience. “What? I’m the one who unclogs toilets around here. I wash the sheets afterwards. All you have to do is wash your fur…”

“Eeeesh, stop saying the WORD…”

“Listen, they all have some private thing, okay? I’m sorry that this one is hung up on you. I’m sorry he likes the fact that you don’t like it. I’m even sorry he’s offering three thousand. But I want you to stop wasting my time and decide if YOU are going to put up with it for three thousand, or whether I call him back and tell him not to come. And that had better be soon, because you know he always rushes right…”

Outside the Cathouse, there was a motion towards the door, and it began to open.

“Tery. Now. Yes or no?”

Brittery remained staring at Demarle, as the door opened, and kept staring as an elderly Resten priest shuffled in. He spotted Boodins and gave a start, making an ‘erk!’ noise, but after peering at him for a moment, shrugged and continued approaching the two kitties locked in the staring contest.

Boodins was staring a bit himself. This fellow seemed quite harmless. He was your perfect middle class Resten shopkeeper/vicar type, rather potbellied. He had the short arms and legs, the long dangling ears and droopy muzzle. He seemed to waddle a bit.

“Yes.” said Brittery. “You should have told me. Now that he’s here, yes, damn you.”

Boodins looked back and forth, perplexed at the bizarre conflict. This Resten priest fellow, this hound-like innocuous guy, didn’t seem to justify this level of tension.

Rai padded off unobtrusively, on the assumption that whatever was about to happen, might well be disturbing or even impossible to tolerate.

Demarle met Brittery’s eyes, and looked stricken. “I should have been quicker. I… forgot, your thing about professionalism. Are you sure? I ought to be able to say no FOR you if you really need it…”

Brittery turned slowly to face the Resten. He trembled, slightly, just looking at her.

“No,” she said. “He is our guest. Tomson, damn it, I told you. No more! Why don’t you take one of the other girls? Daucery would love to do it for you.”

“Hell, yeah!” said Daucery, from across the room. “You told me more than enough!”

“No…” said the Resten. “No, it’s you I need.”

“You’re a damn sicko. I know it’s harmless enough, but you want me just because I don’t like it. It’s not comfortable. How long did you wait this time?” demanded Brittery.

“I’d rather not say.”

Brittery looked at him, gritting her teeth. “You know I have my pride. You’re here now. I want to break my own rules and tell you to get the hell out.”

“Four thousand.”

“Where the HELL are you coming up with this money, Tomson? I don’t give a fuck HOW much…”

“Five thousand.” said the hound priest.

Brittery’s ears went back. “…you promise not to do that thing with your fingers?”

“Ten thousand.” said the hound priest.

“Holy shit.” said Brittery. She was trembling as well, now. She had the feeling she was being outmanuevered. “You realize you’ve just gone to five times what you used to pay? You do realize that’s going to be hard to keep up? That you just won’t be able to do it as often as you’d like?”

“I don’t care. Ten thousand. I need you now. I can’t tell you how bad I need it.”

Brittery padded forward very slowly, and touched his nose with a paw. “I think you just did. Damn you anyway. You’re so nice, except for…”

“I need my except-for. Please. I have to go back home and be endlessly nice again.”

“You realize you could go to Mistress Elistary and be really mean for much cheaper than that? If it’s not-nice you want… why does it have to be your goddamn, insane, ridiculous kink?”

“Ten thousand to go along with it. I can’t help how I’m made. Not now. Yes, it has to be my way. Please.”

Brittery sighed. “Come along, damn you. I should cut you off. I can’t believe this is good for you. Among other things, you’ll injure yourself one of these days…”

“No, it’s not dangerous, honestly.” said the Resten, following her with his peculiar waddle.

“You’re even walking funny! God damn it.”

“I know what I like.”

“I’m going to regret this.” said Brittery.

“I know.” said Tomson.

“Yeah, that’s your favorite part.”

“I’m so glad I met you.” said Tomson.

“Yay.” said Brittery bitterly.

She led him into one of the back rooms, not too quickly- neither seemed inclined to move too fast. Brittery gave a sudden leap, pantherlike muscles convulsing in an outburst of nervous tension, and pounced onto the bed. “Let’s get this over with, shall we? At least the beginning is always nice.”

“Funny,” said Tomson, “it’s the ending that does it for me.”

“You’re teasing me, doggy. Any chance you won’t go through with the whole damn ritual?”

“Nope.”

“Well… for God’s sake, fondle the hell out of me at the start. You know we’re on the same page for part of it. Oh shit you’ve gotta be kidding me!”

Tomson had dropped his already low-hanging pants. “Don’t take that name in vain, Brittery.” he said, but it wasn’t his reprimand that had shocked her.

The Resten man stood revealing the first suggestions of a simply enormous canine penis- and two blue-balled testicles, already huge enough to affect his walk, engorged with abstinence and self-imposed frustration until they looked horribly sore. Tomson’s balls looked like they were about to explode.

Brittery bit her lip gently. “Damn it, Tomson. This can’t go on.”

“Nobody else can please me like you do.” said the Resten.

“Because you have that ridiculous fantasy! Why does it have to…”

“But it does,” he said. “It does.” He removed his shirt, and began carefully working his turgid sheath. Very quickly, Tomson’s erection began to appear, already leaking precome, pliant and shockingly bulky.

Brittery licked her lips. “You’re sure I can’t… just enjoy you the way I’d like to? God, Tomson, it would be something. Why must you spoil it?”

“You can enjoy the beginning. I’ll even touch you the way you like. But you must allow me my turn.”

“Devil’s bargain.” purred Brittery softly, licking her lips again.

“Please don’t say that. But it’s in character. Shall we?”

“Character, hell. It’s hard for me to resist that humongous cock. You’re even nice and gentle with it, which at your size is helpful. C’mere.”

The Resten priest didn’t need a lot of persuading- but he did have to walk carefully, almost wincing with each step. “Harlot.”

“And damn proud of it. And good at it. Come HERE.”

He did, still working his sheath awkwardly, and the sensuous black Nerre fell upon him hungrily, stroking his body and favoring his swollen member with tiny delicate licks.

“Nhh!” said Tomson, as he grew even stiffer. “You’re trying to get me off early. Won’t work. Harlot.”

“Hope springs eternal. How do you want me, she asked knowing what he will answer?” said Brittery, mockingly.

“You know.”

“Tell me. At least I can get you to blush.”

Tomson did, a bit, at that. “I want you to straddle me like the harlot you are, and pleasure yourself in the most sinful manner imaginable. That’s what I want. Same as ever.”

“Just think,” said Brittery, “the first time it was just me acting natural. You know, the other girls are just as good at harloting? Well… nearly as good.”

“I want you. Nobody could be as good.” said Tomson.

Brittery crouched, her paws set apart, her tail lashing, taking in the sight of the Resten’s shocking, bountiful cock, bobbing with his pulse and gleaming in slickened red, and she hesitated no longer. She might dread the end result, but in the immediate moment, her feline pussy pouted hard, heavy and swollen with urgent need, and the cure was right there asking her to pounce it. The lithe black cat specialized in her predatory air, her seeming ferocity- it was said that nobody and nothing in Verss compared to her intensity.

She sprang- and in moments, the trembling feline was straddling Tomson’s larger, bulkier body, and pressing back against his erection, which she had effortlessly aimed for and tucked between her labia in a simple, graceful swoop of her hips.

Brittery lifted off Tomson’s body, rising up, guiding his cock with her, until she was poised atop it, sitting bolt upright, her hips swivelling lustily as if she was trying to chalk the tip of him like a pool cue. Tomson’s eyes nearly crossed with the sensation, but they couldn’t cross because they were needed for staring at the wanton Nerre. She was running her paws up and down her body, over all the clearly defined elegant little belly muscles, fondling her perky breasts until the nipples stood out boldly. Her eyes were mere slits, her teeth bared in a snarl of pleasure.

Then, her paws dropped to his chest- she leaned forward a bit- and began to press back onto him, her pelvis writhing and twisting as she forced the swollen Resten cock into herself, beginning to moan more and more loudly, eyes still passionate slits with glints of ice-blue peeking through.

Tomson was frozen with excitement as the black cat took him, inch by inch, his shudders matched by hers. She was so taut, so impossibly excited- such an utter harlot and virtuoso of lust. As if of their own accord, his own hands slowly came up to either side of her bold, curvaceous hips…

Brittery more than suspected she was going to have help- she had lingered and gone slower than she had to, just in the hope that she’d get more action out of him. Her eyes opened wide as his hands grasped her, partly because it was good form, but partly because an honest jolt went through her as she realized what he was going to do. And then, he did. In a single, very firm motion, Tomson pressed Brittery down all the way, his fat canine cock thrusting powerfully and deeply into her until it took her breath away and left no space, none at all.

Brittery shrieked- she knew just how to combine the sounds of pain and savage pleasure, and the Resten’s cock was so ridiculously bulky that she didn’t have to try, it was pretty much authentic. He held her there, and the black cat reeled and caterwauled, heaving deep breaths and releasing them as ragged screams, gripping his arms as he gripped her hips, locked in a tableau of erotic tension. Very quickly, Brittery began coming hard enough that her tail bristled and thrashed, and her feline pussy clenched and spasmed on Tomson in frantic rhythm, begging and demanding his own release.

She tried to hold his hands onto her hips, but the Resten had become alarmed and anxious, and before she could stop him- one hand had vanished between her legs, to encircle his cockbase in the manner of Resten masturbation- except for one thing.

As always, he’d managed to pinch her pussy shut around him, in a very stubborn handgrip. It wasn’t that uncomfortable- by itself.

Brittery was coming so hard she could barely focus, and that was a mercy, but she managed, “….ohfuckhereitcomes…”

“Say it!” begged the Resten priest.

“Hhhh! Ngyaah! ReOWWll!”

“Say it! Oh please say it say it!”

“Hhhh! Hhhh! Damn you! Can’t… breathe, hh!”

“Say it, you’ve got to say it!”

“Dammit! Tomson! hhhh!”

“SAY IT!” howled the desperate Resten, his teeth gritted, his cock impossibly hard in her still spasming pussy.

Brittery set her jaw, a feral grin on her face as the orgasms shook and tossed her. Well- this was IT. And she satisfied- no matter what. And through gritted teeth, with blazing scorn, looking Tomson right in the eye, she hissed…

“You… can’t… wash… MY… sins away!”

Tomson’s entire body bucked under her. It was like he exploded… He didn’t unpinch her, as much as she would have liked that to happen. Instead- he let go, and those agonizingly swollen testicles vented themselves in a torrent, expressed in jets of come so forceful she could feel them blasting her insides. The first blasts kicked her into still hotter orgasms, because under normal circumstances, it was unspeakably erotic to have your lover spurting into you that forcefully and passionately.

With Tomson, circumstances weren’t normal.

Brittery mewled, and squirmed, at the sensation, one she’d felt before, one that always seemed just entirely too much. Even on a normal day, when you were knotted, it tended to cork you up and the come didn’t escape until after. Tomson was huge and didn’t leave room to start with- and his fingers didn’t let go- and Brittery’s ears laid back and her tail bristled hard as she felt him keep coming, and coming, and coming- pumping into her, the hot slippery liquid oozing into her feline womb, and steadily filling that, and not stopping…

Tomson didn’t let up. It was rather frightening, his eyes burned and he no longer looked like the fumbling, gentle Resten priest. He was like the cock of an angry God- transfixing her, flooding her, and with the help of his very stubborn fingers, pumping her full of come until she whimpered and begged, stabs of pain poking her insides obscenely from the pressure. Even then, he didn’t let go- only when her wails turned to sharp screams and her claws gripping his arms drew blood did he relent.

His fingers pulled away, and he drew Brittery down belly to belly with him, and held her as she sobbed. He shifted his hips, and the motions worked the knot within the hysterical feline, and come began oozing urgently out… more urgently than he’d expected.

He wondered if he’d blown it for good, this time.

Slowly, the black cat’s head lifted, ears flattened, and he saw the cause of the weeping. This was not a harlot to be shattered by pain and ill-use. It was tears of rage he saw in her eyes.

“You… fucker. You’re… hhh… done.”

“Ah. Um. I… may have held on too long…”

Brittery tried to rise, but her body trembled and would not heed her demands. The maddening thing was, there was a huge dose of post-coital limpness involved. The stupid fucker had taken her to some of her highest peaks and THEN hurt her by inflating her like a damn balloon with come. She’d been coming so hard that it just took her into sensations she’d never imagined, combined with the pleasure to flare outward into indescribable planes of experience. Ones she hadn’t asked for, and didn’t wish to explore further.

“You… stupid… fucker…”

“Oh, no. Oh, dear. I… I injured you?”

Brittery wriggled, feebly. It was tempting to tell him yes- to claim he’d done terrible damage. She was almost certain that would be a total lie. As the hydraulic pressure had been released, as the shiftings of that vast cock in her coaxed the come to squirt out and soil her leg fur and his crotch fur, the pain had vanished. Now, her body glowed, as it often did after an intense fucking, but at the same time it felt like her womb, and every hollow place in her body, was literally filled with warm Resten spunk. The feeling still unsettled her terribly- but the experience had taught her something.

Brittery considered herself very competent, an artiste and business-woman equal to any situation. She stared at her impossible client, considering the arc of his behavior, what he was doing to himself and to her.

“I should have said this a long time ago. I can’t believe I didn’t figure it out.”

Tomson stared at her, terrified.

“The part I can’t take is… that pinching. I don’t know where you got that, but you did it a lot harder this time. You’re done.”

The Resten priest’s eyes filled with tears. It was as if she was sentencing him to death, as if his life held nothing but this.

“…with that. Next time, I don’t care if I have to handcuff you, you will NOT pinch me shut. Ever! Not ever again.”

“…n.. next time?”

Brittery nodded weakly, and let out a tiny, exhausted purr. “Damn if I know what else to do with you. And I’m gonna soak you, but never ten thousand again if it causes you to take liberties like this. And you’re going to give me some time to recover- and you’re god damned well going to beat off or something, between sessions!”

Tomson’s tail began to wag, beneath the two of them.

“Seriously, why, Tomson? You’ve always done that. I can’t stand it, nobody else ever does it. Whatever gave you the idea that was okay?”

Tomson looked woebegone. “I… with my fantasy… I just need to be washing you clean. I do it because I want to pretend that I’m filling you completely. Which is probably impossible, so I have to pretend by, you know. I pinch, and then I imagine I’m filling you up…”

Brittery gave him a weary look. “Tomson.”

“Yes? Beloved harlot?”

“Tomson, you’re huge. Why the fuck do you think I scream? You’re already taking up all the room in my pussy by the time you do that. Your knot is a motherfucker of a knot, it’s right at the limit of what I can handle. Knots are MADE for that purpose. Don’t you get it?”

“You’re saying that…”

“Yes. You sweet, cruel idiot. By the time I’m screaming and struggling, you have ALREADY filled every bit of me with come and not noticed it, and kept going. Liquids don’t squeeze, dummy. You’re over-filling the cat every god-damned time. Is that really part of your stupid fantasy?”

“Why, no! No, it certainly is not! There’s… that little room in you?”

Brittery’s expression was the height of exasperation. “Darling, your dick is the size of part of my forearm. It’s impressive enough I can accomodate that. We do exercises to not just stretch out in every direction. You stretch me in every direction anyhow. Why do you think I let you keep doing it?”

“For money?”

“How about we cut the money back again, and do it in a way I can enjoy? That’s really all I wanted from the beginning.”

“Are you sure you’ll be okay with that? And me, besides… I mean… well, I like the way I triumph over your wickedness… um, no offense…”

Brittery sighed. “Okay- how about, you don’t pinch, I don’t hurt- that will help a lot, you have no idea. And… how about instead of me saying that mean and haughty, like it’s a fight… how about, right when you need to let go…”

Brittery leaned closer to Tomson, eyes big and cute in her best innocent-kitten look (something few johns got to see).

“Won’t you wash my sins away?”

Tomson’s eyes widened, and next Brittery moaned and melted against him, for the outlandish canine cock had suddenly given a surge of hardness in her. She nuzzled his chest, and purred loudly.

Tomson wagged manically. “My. That should work.”

Brittery purred louder. It was a good day when you could tame the nasty excesses of the notorious Buckets, and keep the bits you usually didn’t get to appreciate.

“I daresay I shall even, ah, masturbate, and not build up such a quantity of seminal fluid…”

Brittery gazed up at him with half-lidded eyes.

“Liar.”

“I’m afraid so.”

Brittery kept purring. Life was improving.