A Fox Behind Bars part 3
#3 of A Fox Behind Bars
Part 3, y'all... Kinda dark, this one... I think I want to try having more than one project going at a time again. I'm thinking something lighter, that way I'll be flexing different writing muscles and the two works won't influence each other plotwise.
Anyway, I hope this is entertaining, if not "enjoyable"... Yep.
On the technical front, I heard about paragraph length, and while the short one might work for somethings, they could be jerky and off putting to some. So, I'm paying more attention to when a new paragraph is really warranted. (I can't remember where I was learning about that, but I'm pretty sure it was either a book called Reading Like a Writer or from the Writing Excuses podcast (both are fountains of knowledge for beginning writers like myself, so I recommend them for like minded peeps))
As far as the prose goes, there's not much of an improvement over my last post, but I can't say I think regressed any. For me, that is a good sign.
Back to that hypothetical second project, I know I've only written a few things, so it's hard to analyse things too deeply, but I'm a little concerned that I have a thing for generally unlikable protagonists. In and of itself, that's not necessarily bad. But I need to make sure I don't rely on that. Remember, I'm trying to write outside my comfort zones :-) If it's not hard, I'm not learning... hah, double entendre :-)
If anyone wants to throw me some harsh criticism or whatev's, I'm listening.
This is getting to be a long "Author's Note," I must be in a chatty mood. I'll just stop now and hope you like part 3
3.
With a grating buzz the cell doors reopened. It signaled the post lunch headcount, taken to show no one escaped. Escape was not yet a subject I gave much thought to. First I needed to ensure I would live through the next week. By then, with any luck, my lawyer will have me on the road to freedom.
Dimitri was engrossed in his television. I really wanted to mingle in the common area, but fear kept me standing in my corner, afraid to interrupt him by asking if I could leave, and afraid what he might do if I just left. I knew how ridiculous that sounded. I also knew a little about a few of his previous cellmates. My coyote friend told me the stories, or, at least, the rumors that trickled down to him. Two spent the better part of a year in the infirmary, one committed "suicide," and one was beaten to death in what was somehow considered an act of self defense on the part of Dimitri. The coyote said there were others, but he only knew of the four most recent. How could Blake have put me in here with that monster? This state doesn't have a death penalty for any crime, much less for what I accidentally did. Who the hell did that wolf think he was?
I craned my neck, trying to see as much of what was going on, while keeping both my hands firmly wrapped around the metal bars next to the open door. Most of the common area was hidden by the railing of the second tier walkway, but I could see the tops of a few heads, more if they were standing, grouped around the area of the four tables. The flatscreen on the blank wall was showing a gameshow. The volume was too low for me to hear, but just seeing something as familiar and mundane as that made me smile.
I turned to Dimitri again. He was still watching his private TV. This could go on for hours. My mind barked at me to get a backbone. Just get his attention and ask if I could go play... Easier said than done. And for ten minutes I watched what I could of his screen, which was very little, seeing as I was reluctant to leave my corner, and his face, looking for clues as to when there might be a commercial break or a time when his attention wavered. Finally when he did glance at me, I was leaning leaning forward with such an urgent look on my face I couldn't be ignored.
"What," he sounded annoyed.
"I was wondering if I could," I cleared my throat, "maybe, go walk around? Out there?"
He sighed, probably weighing if dealing with my pleading looks all night was a bigger inconvenience than having to walk the few steps to the railing outside the cell and call me if he wants a blow job. I waited with bated breath.
"Fine. Don't get into any trouble, 'cause I'm not going to rescue you," he said with a dismissive wave.
My tail wagged in spite of myself. "Thank you, sir." I actually gave a quick bow. The thought of Dimitri eliciting such a reaction from me sucked away much of my happiness as I made a for the stairs at a quick walk. No time to mope, I didn't want to risk him changing his mind. Not that I could ever really get that far away from him.
At the top of the stairs I took a moment to survey the room. Much to my disappointment the vibe was the same as it was in the cafeteria and the yard. What I wouldn't give for my spray paint, and thirty minutes alone with those big blank walls. The message practically writes itself. I sighed loudly and headed toward the designated canine table. Hopefully I would have a better time than my last attempt at socializing.
I stuck to the wall, not wanting to cut too near any of the other three tables. Who knows how territorial these idiots might be. When the Pack noticed me, which was almost immediately, I gave an encore of that little half-wave that failed to go over with the Alphas outside. One of the wolves whistled and waved me over to them.
The table was the kind you'd find outside a fast food restaurant. Immovable, the chairs attached at the base. My mind wanted to run with that thought, to lose myself in a memory of eating bad food, when the most pressing concern I had was fighting my hipster sense of ennui. God, slipping away was tempting. But I forced myself to stay in the moment. I looked over who was at the table. Three wolfs, a jackal, and a husky that was almost as buff as Dimitri.
I stood in silence, letting them make the first move.
"Dimitri let you out, I see," said one wolf.
How the hell do they know that? "Yyyeah, heh. It's not like that." I'm not sure who I thought I was fooling.
"Why don't you have a seat?" offered the husky. His fur pattern left him with a permanent look of menace, and his eyes were such a radiant-blue he looked almost supernatural. For a second, I wondered if they would glow in the dark.
"Thanks," I said. The round table only had four seats, all occupied. One wolf must have brought a stool, like the one in my cell. There was no way I was going back to press my luck interrupting Dimitri to borrow a stool. "Um... I'll just stand," I told the husky.
"Nonsense," he said jovially. "Max, let him have your seat." A tattooed brown wolf scowled but rose.
"No, please, I can just stand." I didn't need help pissing furs off.
The husky laughed. "Nonsense," he said again, "have a seat so we can get to know you." He spoke with an air of finality that made further argument pointless. Maybe I could apologize to the wolf later.
I walked around to where Max had been sitting. The wolf with the tattoos snarled and walked off toward the cells. The husky motioned to the now empty spot next to him. I began to thank him for the invitation when I was stunned into silence. Surely I must have been mistaken, but instead of a stool I saw red furred fox, on all fours, his eyes locked on the floor. The husky's gang's laughter at my gobsmacked expression made it clear I wasn't hallucinating.
"Don't insult my hospitality," the husky said, biting back laughter.
My eyes searched for a guard. There's no way they could allow this?
"Seriously," growled the husky. "Sit down. That's just Jake."
Just Jake? That was a living, breathing fur! Like myself, like any of them. How could I let him be so degraded?
"Kole, if he's not seated in the next five seconds, kick him in the balls."
The jackal rose with a smile at the husky's command. He was tall and lean. I got the impression that his kick could reach me from across the table if he didn't have the target he had. Needless to say, I sat down, gingerly, onto Jake's back, acutely aware of what he must be feeling. I tried not to put a lot of weight on him, but even under my scrawny frame his back bowed. Sorrysorrysorry, my mind shouted to him. Of all things, I suddenly wondered if he thought I had a boney ass... Would that make it less comfortable, or more? And, again, why didn't a guard stop this? I stared at the llama in his CO uniform, standing against the wall, as he watches the small flatscreen showing a gameshow, willing him to turn his shaggy head and give a simple command like "knock that off."
"You seem tense, Regal," said the husky.
"How do you know my name," my attention temporarily diverted.
"I'm the Pack's Alpha in cellblock H. I make it a point to know all my furs."
"Oh..."
"My name's Piter by the way," he stuck his hand out.
I shook it weakly, wondering what else he knew about me, and what opinions he'd already formulated. We talked for a while, in what seemed to be an informal meet and greet. I felt guilty about using Jake as a chair, but at least the fox wasn't complaining. And it was warmer and softer than anything else I've had to sleep or sit on, which made me feel even more guilty for noticing that.
"You said someone briefed you on the Pack?"
"Yeah, a coyote, I didn't get his name," I was slightly embarrassed at being so self absorbed that I didn't think to ask the name of the only fur who'd been nice to me since I got here. "I think he was working," I wasn't sure if that was the right word to use, "for a wolf named Vince..."
Piter grew quiet. "That son of a bitch. Did he try to recruit you?"
"No," I lied. When the husky's mood matched the demonic fur patterns of his face, it was terrifying.
"He will. When he does, tell him to fuck off."
"Got it." I had a feeling that no matter how hard I try, everyone was determined to suck me into their own agendas.
"So, have you made your first donation to the Pack yet?" Piter asked with a fresh smile.
"Uh, um, sorta," I stalled, hoping my overactive imagination would come up with a halfway plausible way of deferring this topic.
"'Sorta?'" Piter questioned, still keeping that smile.
"Yeah, I guess..." Fuck. I had nothing. "No, not yet."
"That's too bad, 'cause tribute is due on saturdays, in my cellblock." His smile wavered for just a second.
"Oh, I- I-,"
"I know," Piter said with an overacted hint of paternality. "My sources told me you transferred all your money to that cat," he spat the last word. "They say you were more than willing to give it up, but when it comes to your own Pack?" The smile was gone.
"No! I- He forced me to give him my money! He was going to kill me!"
"And what do you think the Pack will do. Especially to a traitor?" Piter's companions were staring at me, hunger in their eyes.
I tried edging back from the table, forgetting I was sitting on a fellow fox. Poor Jake lost his balance and we both ended sprawled on the floor. Before I could untangle myself I was pinned under that jackal, Kole's, foot. I tried twisting it off my chest but had no leverage. "Guard!" I called out. Kole lifted his foot up giving me the chance to roll out from under him and get up. The room had gone quite. I looked at the llama, the one paid to protect me from things like this. He flicked hair from his eyes, looking the situation over.
"He fell," Piter said.
The llama shrugged and went back to watching a game show. My jaw dropped.
"Bad move," Piter whispered. Before I could think, the husky drove a hard fist into my gut. I didn't have the air to scream as the two wolfs each took an arm and started dragging me towards the cells. I was dropped in one, finally able to cradle my stomach. I could just about groan while Piter began lecturing me.
"You don't involve the guards. That's something you should have known even if no one told you. And to think how nice I was being. Giving you priceless advice, letting you use my chair... and I was willing to work something out so you could afford the Pack payment."
I managed to get into a sitting position. My eyes focused. The wolf with the tattoos poking out from under his shirt, was on the top bunk, looking at me with that smug look of someone who thinks they'd just witnessed instant karma. A sheet had been strung across the bars, giving a limited degree of privacy, the analytic part of my brain thought that was probably not allowed, but was a clever way of making a cell more room-like. "I'm really sorry," I choked out.
"I know," he reached down and ran a hand over my head. I shuddered at his creepy touch. "The question is, how are you planning to pay up now?"
"I don't have anything..." my mind searched for a way out of this. "You can have my desserts!"
Piter looked down at me while speaking to his men. "Hold him." I was wrenched to my feet as more hands ripped at my clothes. It was a blur, but I managed to yell for help up until a fist knocked my head back. The next thing I knew I was tossed onto the lower bunk, naked.
"God, don't do this," I said to Piter. He was pulling his pants down, and I suddenly became aware of how claustrophobic the cell was with so many furs crowded in. The air was so close, and I was smelling growing arousal. I wanted to yell again, but who was going to help me? "Please, Piter, don't," my voice started to break.
Piter reached around my head, clamping down on the nap of my neck, and pulled my closer. "Be a good little fox and don't fight it. I know your kind enjoys this." The world started spinning even before Piter flung me face down on the bunk's thin mattress, my legs hanging off the edge. Piter kicked my legs apart. The last time I'd felt this exposed was when I was naked and searched during my arrival. I would trade anything to go through that again rather than what was coming.
A crack, that would have echoed had there been less of an audience, cut the air when Piter smacked my ass. I yelped and jerked up, only to be shoved back down. My tormentors laughed. Piter yanked my tail up, I yelped again, too scared to make any other sounds. I felt him feel me up, pressing his thumb onto my rosette.
"Fuck, you are so tight. You a virgin?"
I found my voice. "Let me go," I whispered.
"Go get Jake," Piter ordered one of his men.
"Let me go," I said just a little louder. If Piter heard me he gave no indication. I heard the rustle of the sheet and footsteps, indistinct voices speaking at once. Eventually I could pick out Piter's voice again.
"Loosen him up," the husky growled. A body collided with mine, cramming my head into the cell wall. I didn't have to look to know that red fox that was just being used as a chair was being given a new use. I hoped he would remember how reluctant I was to use him, and return the favor.
Soft hands rested on my hips. Something wet pressed into my crack, I screamed in protest and pulled on the mattress, trying to rip myself away. Before I could realize the futility of that, a wolf pulled my arm behind my back turning my screams of protest to a howl of pain.
Piter was on my other side, "keep struggling and I'll have him break it." The wolf shifted my arm to emphasize Piter's threat.
I nodded, gasping in pain. The wolf let go. I pulled my sore arm under me like it was strapped to a stretched rubber band. The warm wet pressure was back. I clenched tight my eyes, hole and mouth, waiting for Jake to stab into me with a flesh-dagger. Then it hit me, he wasn't using his cock, he was using his tongue. It made a sick kind of sense. Why would a status freak like Piter allow his lowly fox the honor of raping me first? It sickened me, what Jake was doing, the sensation of his rough tongue pressing firmer with every drooling lick.
His tongue pushed through my tight ring of muscle. I whimpered, loudly, for me and for Jake. I don't know why, I mean the red fox might been a serial killer for all I knew, but I just felt, believed, he was in the same situation I was. When Jake pulled back and stroked my side while tenderly wiggling a finger into me, I became convinced he was a kindred spirit. He was so gentle, working a second digit in and scissoring me looser, that I could have imagined myself willing letting him fuck me, like when I'd experimented with my friends back on the outside. I'd never gone this far, nor wanted to, but under such captivity I think, if I imagined hard enough, I could imagine something consensual happening with Jake in time.
Of course, those thoughts were moot, and probably just synaptic misfires from a mind hanging on the edges of shock.
Jake's warm body was gone in an instant, coinciding with a thud and stifled cry. Then Piter's voice, "That's enough. Get the fuck out and make sure we get some privacy." A new, rougher set of hands seized me. I knew what was coming, but Piter's cock was so much bigger than Jake's tongue and fingers, and even if Jake's gentleness was an illusion, even the illusion was gone. He slid in me slowly the first time, but I think he was just adjusting me so he didn't break his dick on my pelvis. It was like getting skewered with a rod of red hot iron. It burned, and I could feel him sinking deeper. It got to the point where the searing pain became unbearable. I screamed, not even bothering trying to muffle it in the mattress.
I expected someone to hit me, or cover my mouth, but Piter wasn't planning to stop once he got started. The burning pain worsened with every thrust. My screaming turned to wailing, and finally to sobs. He shot his load and pulled out, spilling his hot seed down the inside of my legs.
"Max," Piter panted, "I think this fucker owes you for taking your seat. Care to collect?"
I heard the tattooed wolf's cackle. He was on me like a feral wolf on a moose carcass. It wasn't fucking, or even what Piter just did to me, this was something more primal, like he was rutting. My vision was whiting out with hurt. I cursed my body for not giving out. Where was my release from consciousness, or even life? Why was I still enduring this living hell? Maybe I did lose my mind during the rape, if only sporadically, because time, as a concept, just disappeared. I was fucked for eons that went by too fast to remember. A strange paradox, I know.
One of the other wolves, or maybe it was the jackal, complained about how disgusting my hole had gotten. The next thing I knew I was pulled off the bunk, someone holding me by my sore arm, stopping me from sinking lower than my knees. I yelled out from the fresh points of pain, I have no idea where I found the energy to make a sound. That sound was soon corked with a cock. I'd stopped caring who was taking their turn at violating me by that point. I couldn't even bring myself to bite down. I just wanted it to end. They didn't seem to care if I swallowed, so I knelt there like a lobotomized vegetable, letting cum dribble out my mouth almost as fast as it was pumped in.
When they'd had their fill, I was left naked and sticky, collapsed on the floor. Finally, after the damage had been done, my mind retreated in on itself, leaving me feeling like an acid dipped zombie.
***
Someone was shaking me by the shoulder. I kept my eyes shut, five more minutes, that's all I needed.
"Time to go home," said a distant voice. I knew that voice. It was all coming back to me. I opened my eyes to see Piter's squatting form. "C'mon Regal. If you're not back in your cell for lockdown, they'll write you up." He held up my shirt and shook it out. Damn it, I was still naked.
The world tilted to it's proper position. I looked at my arm and saw a brown furred hand with the spider webbing tattoos of Max. No matter how sore and tired I felt, I couldn't stand his touch. I shrugged him off and reached for my shirt.
"Good boy," Piter said.
I rushed to pull on my pants, not wanting to see the mess I'd been laying in. With the help of the bunk, I clawed my way upright before they could lay another hand on me. I wasn't going to take the time to put my shoes on, I just carried them with me. I'd say I ran out of there, but it was mostly momentum from tilting towards the door and letting my legs try to keep up.
Piter laughed and called after me. "Welcome to the Pack, Regal!"
It must have been getting late. I was one of the last furs to reach their cell. Just as the klaxon sounded, and the doors started sliding shut, the last of my strength gave out. I let myself melt down the wall, becoming a puddle of broken fox in my corner.
Dimitri looked over at me and furrowed his brow. "Jeezus. The fuck happened to you?" He took his earbuds out, so I assumed he wanted a response. But I couldn't give one. I tried, but my voice just devolved into a whine and I started crying again.
"Dumbass," Dimitri admonished me.
I jumped at a second voice coming from behind me, outside the cell. "Shit. Is he alright?" I turned to see the scruffy haired llama.
"Fuck off, asshole," Dimitri answered. It was somewhat comforting to know he was a jerk to everyone, not just me.
I heard the llama snort, then he clicked his radio. "Everyone accounted for."
The llama left without a second thought.
"Wash off," Dimitri said. "And use the bowl, not the sink. I don't want wolf jizz where I wash my hands."
I should have mentally said some snarky remark about that, but the truth was I don't think I could have stood long enough to use the sink anyways. I knelt in front of toilet. Nice of him to at least have flushed. Scooping up handfuls of water to get as much of the cooling goo off my face was the saddest experience of my life. The wet fur masked my tears, at least.