FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

I

“So, there I was…walking home to the missus, yeah? She knows me never to stray, outside the occasional wink or nod to a pretty lady, but we’re all guilty of that, ain’t we?”

The man sat hunched over his pint, speaking in soft whispers that made Samuel strain to hear him above the chorus of drunken voices rising up from the floor below. Although the lofted seating area of the pub provided them with some intimacy from onlookers, it could do nothing to hold back the raucous cries of merriment and jubilance.

Samuel’s companion for the night wasn’t the typical bawdy girl that seemed to prefer the company of an intellectual, or rather, the coinpurse that hung from his belt. For as hard as it was to part a working man from their coin, Samuel had never seen issue with letting slip a few pounds when it meant he’d be in good company for the night. At least this hulking individual, whose genealogy could most likely be traced back to a machamp - or some other uncouth fighting type - had offered to buy the first round. His fingers clutching his drink were as white as the snow falling against the window they were seated next to, the great expanse of the city blanketed in a slowly falling sheet that showed no signs of stopping.

With a clink of his fingers against his glass, Samuel remained silent. Taking the cue, his beleaguered companion continued his tale.

“Never been one to fear staying out late, been in my fair share of scraps since I could toddle to the corner and back. Sure, sure, they say that’s when the wild ones are about, the pokemon that elude the catchers and run their own little kingdom.”

He was a dock worker, from what his wife had told Samuel, although the pungent reek of fish that hung about him in a cloying cloud was quick to give that away. Edward, a fine name for a man who took his living from the bosom of the sea to feed his family. It took everything in Samuel not to politely clear his throat and turn his nose up on him. The last thing he wanted to do was insult the man who looked as if he could easily snap Samuel’s cane with a twitch of his hands.

“Right, the catchers.” Samuel agreed, the name conjuring the image of a black wagon pulled by twin Mudsdale and accompanied by the screeching of the damned occupants there within. “Seems to me the paper has declared them the surest solution against any stray insurrection we have, would you not agree? Right proper chaps, and all.”

Samuel took a sip from his drink and once again found himself regretting it. No matter how he urged the cheap swill to taste better, like some of the finer fare he’d partake in, it stubbornly refused to taste any better than the piss of the aforementioned Mudsdale.

An excellent vintage, full of body with a hint of hay and speckles of dirt. Why would any hard working man of the earth turn their nose up at it? He instantly regretted that thought process and pushed the drink aside to lean closer to his unlikely compatriot for the night.

He had been so caught up in the poor libations he hadn’t noticed how quiet the hulking behemoth of a man had grown. His eyes, cloudy and sullen, had fallen aimlessly on his glass for quite some time. Moving abruptly, Edward tilted back the glass and drained it in one massive gulp that caused the veins on the sides of his neck to bulge like straining cords.

“Another round!” He bellowed down the stairs, spittle and beer spraying across the table in an unkempt storm of bodily fluids that made Samuel wince. “Two flagons!”

Samuel tried not to let his calm smile break. There was certainly something to be said for the temperance of a man that could find themselves enjoying the egregious failings of life and keep on going. Although Edward’s resolution didn’t seem to hold up under closer scrutiny, not while Samuel examined him like a particularly interesting specimen under a microscope.

“Bah! The catchers will tell you anything that make ‘em look good. You know that, don’t you?” It wasn’t so much a question as much as a pointed accusation that made Samuel tense, breaking the illusion of calm that he had so carefully projected. “Sure, they kicked them out of uptown and the bowerys where the high class folks gather, but the docks?” His knuckles rapt against the coarse wooden tabletop, making Samuel’s drink tremble and slosh against the rim of his glass. “They’re as thick as rats in the alleys. It’s their wonderland down there, whether we like it or not.”

Samuel reached up to make sure his hair was still slicked back and wiped the excess pomade off on one of the stained rags set aside from the remnants of the Edward’s meal. The gristly, fatty meat still hung from the bones with potatoes that looked as if they had been scooped from the compost bin and served without a hint of remorse for their spawning. Hungry though he may be, Samuel couldn’t imagine subjecting his tastebuds to such a pathetic meal. Not for the first time he thought back to the young woman who had opened the door for him when he stopped at the Edward’s dwelling and the rich aroma of something that put whatever bachelor meal Samuel typically had to such shame.

There was something to be said about married women, he thought with the smallest of smiles. They usually cooked as well as they spread their legs.

It wasn’t like him to take jobs on contingency, nor that he’d be expected to somehow weasel the money out of the very person he was sent to investigate. Men like Samuel weren’t typically treated with respect, not by those homewreckers and debt dodgers that were the typical ilk whom his business periodically had him rubbing elbows with. Perhaps it was the cloud of guilt that hung about Edward, the very one that seemed to crush down on the man like an anchor and had him mewling into his drink like a tepid pup that kept Samuel’s interest. Since the only thing that could ever make a man quake like this was fear of his own mortality or a woman, Samuel was beginning to understand the fears that his young wife had shared with him.

“So, what does this have to do with your absence from home?” That Edward flinched at the direct question just fueled the building confidence that Samuel was feeling. “Do these…pokemon keep you from your marital home? I cannot see why a man would be willing to forsake a warm homestead for…this.” He gestured towards the table in a sweep arc, including the abominable alcohol and the loathsome meal that any pokemon would have turned their nose up to. “Unless, you have lost the fancy of your wife? There are a fine few ladies in this town…”

Samuel knew it was a mistake as soon as the words left his mouth, for the man who had seemed to be whipped into submission jerked his head up to face him. With eyes burning like smoldering coals, he began to stand, his body swaying with the rigorous ordeal of handling too much alcohol in too short a time frame. He had already been well and half in the barrel when Samuel strode up to him for the conversation, and it was a miracle Edward could find his feet under him.

“You come to me with your holier-than-thou attitude and your hoity toity outfit, and you accuse me of something as heinous as that!?” Edward’s voice rose a few notches, enough to rival the joyous revelry which had begun to calm. “You think I don’t know who you are, Samuel Griffith? The man with the golden tooth and the cane? You’ve ruined just as many marriages as you’ve ‘saved’.”

Samuel’s tongue flicked against the metal tooth that had replaced his top right canine. Perhaps it was a mistake to replace the porcelain prosthetic with something as gaudy as metal, but he had taken enough blows to the face to know the value of something that wouldn’t so easily shatter. Hell, he was still sporting a black eye from the last debtor he had run down just a few nights prior and probably would have suffered worse if he hadn't had the benefit of his cane. The one of solid mahogany, deep, rich brown imported on a merchant’s vessel and payment for one of his first jobs. Back before he knew he could charge the exuberant fees that kept him in a lap of luxury.

“Now, my friend…there is no need to raise your voice. I am simply a man of logic, and logically…” Samuel trailed off when the wooden steps behind them creaked with the weight and speed of a swiftly ascending climber.

The waitress was by no means an attractive woman, but Samuel was thankful for her presence all the same. Her face was as weathered as the stone facade of the building itself, and she looked between the two of them with an expression that suddenly made him wonder whom the bigger threat was. That she strode towards the table and set the drinks down hard enough to spill a generous helping of it across Samuel’s notebook didn’t endear her to him any further.

“Don’t think I won’t throw the two of you out.” She snapped. “Edward, you know better than to let your drink get to you.” Only when the man had collapsed to his chair hard enough to test the strength of it did she turn on Samuel. “If you don’t put that cane down, stranger, it’s going right in the fireplace… after I give you the whipping that your mother clearly decided to forgo.”

Samuel was quick to drop his makeshift weapon at his side, lifting his hands in front of him in the clearest attempt at surrender he could offer. He might have waved the rag he grabbed to blot away the liquor that was soaking into the pages of his notes, but it had long ago lost its white glean.

“Sorry, it is my fault.” Samuel grumbled, not that he wished to give any legitimacy to the man’s outburst. “A slip of the tongue and a momentary lapse of the wits. Do not blame my compatriot.” He reached for his belt and fished a few gleaming coins from his pocket, enough that he was certain he could buy the entire barrel of fetid alcohol if he so hated his brain cells enough to drink them into oblivion. “For your troubles.”

Their overseer snorted like the pig whose backside she resembled and snatched the coins with a talon-like hand riddled with arthritis. That she didn’t even thank the young gentleman made him wish that he had slipped her the wooden coins he kept buried at the bottom of the bag. It was all she deserved for her disrespect.

“Dreadful woman.” Samuel mumbled to himself, although he bit his lips immediately after the words escaped him. Speaking the name of the devil was to invite him in, and he half expected her to storm back up the stairs. “Now then, as we were discussing.”

“I didn’t want to leave Merida…”

Samuel turned to his companion, once again seeing the weakness that had overtaken him, sapping away any semblance of the man he had been just moments before. He looked as weak and downtrodden as those poor lechers who roamed the streets, picking in bins for their next source of sustenance and begging for a pittance to get them through the day. It almost left Samuel feeling sorry for him, and with a sigh he returned to his seat and crossed his arms over his chest.

“You know, I typically don’t work for free.” Samuel grumbled, although the way Edward stared at him made him feel as if he had robbed whatever innocence remained of the young woman. “Nor do I partake in the act of charity.”

Not if it doesn’t benefit me. The thought came unbidden and unwanted, refusing to leave no matter how he tried to toss it aside. Not if charity counts as accepting more than just coin.

Just how well-known was his track record around the city? How many bedposts had he added his notch to? Edward was keenly away of it, it seemed.

“I can’t look her in the eyes, not after…” Edward cradled his flagon tight to his chest, grasping it as if it were the tether holding him afloat in a sea of sorrow that sought to engulf him. “Every time I look at her, I see the Hound.”

“The…Hound?” Samuel asked with a droll flourish in his voice that he just couldn’t quite keep down. Arceus knew he had been destined for the life of a showman. “And is this Hound the reason you haven’t been home for five days?”

If it were possible to kick a man deeper into the ground when their mouth was full of dirt, Samuel had found the way. At the edge of the great man’s eyes rose tears that hung at the corners, stubbornly hanging on with whatever willpower Edward had left. It was admirable, to say the least, if not a bit mortifying to share a table with him. Such theatrics were best meant for women on the stage, not in the loft of a rundown bar. It was pitiful.

“Have you ever looked into the eyes of someone and known that you loved them?” Edward had gone back to his insipid whispering, as if he were afraid the gods themselves might hear his confession. “What trick allows a pokemon to look as enticing as Merida did on our wedding night? And why would Arceus allow me to give in?”

The surge of disgust that overwhelmed Samuel was more than any cheap beer could produce, greater even than the man’s fishy aroma or the thought of scrounging through bins for a meal. It rose like bile in the back of his throat and in that instant he knew he could no longer be seen with this man, not while the tears had begun to fall from his eyes to land with wet drips in his beer.

“I was taking in the last of our haul, putting it on ice in the back of the warehouse. I looked away for a moment and then…then it just appeared.” Edward shuddered as if some great chill had possessed his body. “Its fur was as black as coal, I thought it was a shadow at first, if not for the eyes.” He droned on, taking no notice as Samuel began to pack his things into the messenger bag that was always at his side. “Red eyes, as red as the fires of hell. Don’t you see, it was a demon, just like the reverend says on Sunday morning. A succubus, sent to test me…and I failed.”

“My friend, you need help, but not the kind that I am able to offer you.” Samuel spat. He grabbed the mostly filled flask that had been brought to him and placed it directly in front of the sobbing man. A peace offering, perhaps, or just an excuse not to have to empty it himself. “Go home. If you have such shame then attend confession, do not make your wife pay for your detestable short-comings.”

“It’s still out there!” He lunged forward, grabbing Samuel’s wrist with a grip that could have shattered stone. Edward drew him closer, close enough that the repugnant aroma of his body mixed with the grotesqueries that could only arise from a week-long bender assaulted Samuel’s nose. “It’s waiting for me! It’s not done with me, and you would have me try to forget?”

“My friend, you have taken to too many stories and fables. Think logically!” He chastised him, “clearly you wish to create a reason for why you would betray your love. For a pokemon of all things!” Samuel wasn’t a strong man, and he knew it, but the man was drunk and easy to pull off balance. With a quick step back and a sweep of his cane against Edward’s knee, he dropped the hulking man to his knees and left him groaning like a wounded animal. “I will not tell your wife this. As I said, go to confession and return to her.” Samuel stood a little straighter and flattened the front of his jacket. Blast him, he nearly ripped the buttons out. “Damn it, man, you have a family to look after. This Hound is an animal, and you should be ashamed of yourself.”

Samuel didn’t bother staying to hear a response, instead sweeping his tall hat from the table and heading for the stairs.

“You wouldn’t be saying that if it came for you!” Edward sputtered from behind him, his words interlaced with the sobs of a man who knew themselves to be damned. “I hope it does, I hope you learn what it means to have your pride ripped from you!”

Samuel’s hand tightened around the head of his cane, the urge to turn and strike him with it so powerful that he feared the raging beast that was rearing its ugly head. Such uncouth thoughts were beneath him, and he would entertain the thought no longer. A gentleman like himself shouldn’t tary another second in this hovel.

“Sober up. Go home. I will not charge your wife for this so that you may attempt to buy back her favor. God speed, man.”

There was more Samuel wanted to say, each thought crashing around him with each step he step downward. To judge wasn’t his place, he was simply the investigator, after all, the one that brought man’s failings into the light so it could be seen for how abhorrent and vile it was. What came next wasn’t up to him.

Oh, but how he wished he could have served as the judge and the jury. What sweeter nectar was there than justice being served to those of wicked nature.

He could still hear Edward’s sobbing as he stepped onto the snow-blown streets, where wind bit into the uncovered parts of his face like razor blades. It brought with it a familiar ache in his right leg, one that led to him relying more heavily on his cane on the slippery cobblestones. It was only in the cold that the old injury returned to the surface, digging itself free from the muck of the riverbed of his mind and reminding him of a dark, unfortunate night.

We all had unfortunate nights, however, that he had learned. From the debtor who gambled it all on one bad hand to the loyal, doting husband who let their judgement slip and were taken to blaming those saucy wenches and seductive women of the night for their own failings. Perhaps Samuel wasn’t the greatest of men - no, he knew himself not to be, and his confession was still forthcoming for when he’d build up the urge to step within a church again.

Not since the last time.

It wasn’t red eyes that haunted him in the night, as poor Edward had described. Samuel was cursed with the image of red lips on a bed of white, cold and devoid of the life that had once possessed it so fully.

Samuel froze when he heard the noise, mistaking it at first for the sound of the wind rushing down the narrow alley between buildings. It was deep and continuous, a sound that cut through the snow and raised the hair on the back of his neck, a sound some not-too-distant relative might have feared as they sat huddled in their caves. A howl that broke the serenity of the night, reminding him that even in the middle of the city, he needed to be cautious of dark corners and those untamed parts of the world that existed there-within.

Because in these parts of town where the catchers held infrequent sweeps, the pokemon thrived. On spilled trashcans and stagnant water spilling from gutters, they lived like a cancerous sore on the underbelly of the city. Their own little wonderland, as Edward had put it. Foul and fetid, untamed and uncontrollable.

For some time he stood there, even after the sound had dispersed and gave in to entropy, leaving a night that seemed far less safe than it once had. It was the ache in his leg that finally got him moving again, albeit with a renewed pace and the fear of flaming eyes peering out of the gloom.

II

If dreams could test the sanity of a man, Samuel was certain that he had neared losing himself to the aether that night.

It wasn’t like him to dream so vividly, not when the new bottle of port he had purchased just the morning before had been emptied until he could see the disappointingly desolate glass bottom. It was all to get the horrid taste of that pisswater out of his mouth, although he couldn’t manage to get the smell of it out of his leather-bound journal, not after that hag had spilled on it. Just the thought of the rancorous odor had him dry heaving and fighting not to expel the contents of his stomach.

Samuel sat upright in bed, nursing a hangover sent straight from Arceus themself. The sound of wind tearing at the shutters was the only thing that kept him conscious, and every second he prayed they would withstand the gales. His landlord had promised him he had repaired the damnable things, but even now he could see the first contemptible ray of early morning sun slipping through him.

He did not know whether the trembling in his hand was from the cold that seeped into the room like some loathsome, insidious beast and decided to stay, or the accursed dreams so surreal he could not tell what was real and what was fantasy. Of desolate streets and buildings that towered high above him, that cursed howling, oh, that loathsome sound ripping the fabric of his reality and tormenting him even in his sleep. Those eyes blazing as red as the furnace of the devil himself with a gaze that tore through him and scattered his spirit to the wind. He had turned and tried to run, but the streets were never-ending, and the pain in his leg was all too real.

Samuel struggled out of his bed with all the enthusiasm a man with a self-inflicted sickness of the mind and body could be bothered to put forth.

The room was cramped yet cozy, so he did not need to go far, nor did he think he’d be able to before he fell into the chair set before the stove. Its flame had gone out at some point in the night and allowed this frigid chill to take its place, and now his matches fought against the notion of lighting. To strike them against the side of the box felt like it took a grandiose amount of effort, and when the box fell from his hands he welcomed the trembling palms of his hands pressed flat against his face.

What excuse did he have to drink to excess? Was he no better than that sniveling traitor to his species Samuel had left to soak in shame? Edward, he had simply brought up foul memories that had deserved to stay buried in the grave.

An early grave, he reminded himself. Just like Victoria.

He rushed to the water closet with just enough time to catch the porcelain throne before his stomach betrayed him. Samuel retched into the bowl, pulling back the black hair that fell in his face and urging the world to stop its troublesome spinning. It didn’t help that his leg had locked up on him, refusing to acknowledge his attempts to move it and rewarding him with only painful cramps that battled the pain in his head to see which wicked torture could come out on top.

The next thing Samuel felt was his back slamming against the wood paneling beside the toilet. This time, as consciousness betrayed him and he was left floating in a sea of darkness, he didn’t see the eyes.

They would have been preferable to the blood red lips resting upon an empty face.

—

By the time Samuel finally managed to drag himself back to the land of the living, the afternoon sun was high in the sky. The pain in his head had diminished somewhat, not that the same could be said for his leg. He might as well of have been a beggar on the street, dragging his lame leg behind him and stumbling back into the kitchen without the aid of his cane. This time, he was able to focus long enough to light a meager fire in the belly of the metal stove and fed it with old scraps of newspaper. Better that the charlatans writing their blithering articles about whatever mundane dribble of the day were put to some kind of use, after all.

Samuel wrapped his blanket tight around his lanky form and moved with trepidation towards his desk, each step feeling like it was going to give out on him. When he fell upon the chair, he brushed aside the new journal that he had begun to write in the night before. It would take some time to transfer the entirety of his well-thought out, tight handwriting to its new home, and once again he bemoaned that he should even be forced to do such a thing.

Looking back over it, he couldn’t help but shake his head. It made him chuckle to see the progression as his writing grew sloppier the deeper he sank into the sauce. They went from the structured lines of an intellectual to the asinine scrawlings you would expect to see in a sanitarium by the time he had finally blacked out and gave in to a night of torment. That didn’t make it seem so funny anymore, and left his mouth tightening into a thin scowl.

He had been intent on following up with Merida this day. Yes, it was a decision he came to after several glasses of port where bad ideas became good and the less desirable of street walkers earned a second glance. It was Samuel’s intent to inform her of her husband’s infidelity, thereby saving her honor and preventing her from sharing a roof with one that would lay with pokemon.

He would then sweep her off her feet, take her to her marital bed, and well…

“An excellent plan, raise the sword of noble intentions and damn the consequences.” He mumbled, shaking his head ruefully soon after. “And you shall be the one to take her in, child and all.”

Perhaps he hadn’t thought it through deeply enough. Or rather, he should not be allowed to make such choices for another, certainly not when he was inebriated to the point of falling down. It was not his life to ruin, and if she wanted to waste it with Edward and whatever mewling pups fell from her womb, then so be it.

Samuel had his own life to ruin.

His eyes darted towards the corner of his desk where a pristine, brown box sat, its surface covered with a layer of dust that he couldn’t bring himself to wipe away. It bore on the side a mural in metal, of bright silver that had long since dulled with neglect. Arceus was always with Samuel, staring at him from the side of the box and engulfed in a crown of light from the heavens.

After all, Arceus on high was the one who had seen him fail. It was only proper he reminded Samuel of that every time they locked eyes. The sinner in the hand of an angry god. He wondered if Edward would find such solace in knowing that Arceus would forgive him.

Probably. Samuel wasn’t a clergyman, so he wouldn’t have been able to offer him any respite from the battle raging in his soul. Nor did her particularly want to forgive such egregious sins.

As far as cases went, this had been one of the fastest he had the displeasure of undertaking, and it opened up the question of where his next meal ticket would come from. The thought of finding another debtor was always on the table; there was no shortage of man as loose with their wallets as they were their fist. This caused his black eye to ache, as if to remind him of just what might await him. At least he had been paid a little extra for his troubles, and all the women he bought drinks for insisted that it made him seem so much more masculine.

The scarecrow of a man could certainly use any help he could get in that department, especially when it came to the young features that never seemed to harden with the passing years. Edward hadn’t been wrong in suggesting he had never needed to spend an honest day’s work in the elements, and it made him wonder just how his skin might crack and peel should he step foot on a fishing boat. The salt and the sea air tossing him about, enjoying the company of naught but men and magikarp. If his stomach wasn’t still empty, he would have lost it again right then and there.

By the time he roused himself, the room had grown hot enough for him to shrug aside the heavy blanket. The ache in his leg had diminished enough that he finally found the strength to strip himself free of the night gown now soaked in the reeking scent of a man grappling with demons both real and imagined.

Still, it took a considerable effort for him to pull down his leggings, and even then he paused to look over the circular scar on his thigh. Even all these years later the skin was still red and agitated, prone to itching in the heat and tormenting him in the cold. A divot of flesh was missing from where it lay, and he knew that there was a matching, albeit larger scar on the opposite side of his leg.

“You’re lucky it went all the way through…” He reminded himself. It had been something that had been repeated to him time and again, although the memory was usually lost in a morphine-induced haze. “Luck in the flimsiest sense of the word.”

His black suited attire was far more welcome, dapper and unsoiled, not a single wrinkle covering the surface of the silken material. Appearances mattered, no matter if you were the son of a noble or an outcast that had the silver spoon plucked from your mouth. His closet was full of just such attire, each one as splendid as the last.

With cane in hand and a fresh layer of pomade smoothing the long strands of black hair from his face, he headed for the door. In a pause he regarded his beer-stained journal and the messenger bag slung across the back of his chair. As reluctant as he was to carry that rank, stinking thing with him, he would have felt naked without the strap slung across his shoulder.

His door opened to a narrow flight of stairs leading down to a deserted alleyway, thankfully clear of snow despite the winter gales already sending daggers through him. It was too late to turn back now, and with cane in hand, he lost himself to the motion of walking the streets.

—

“He betrayed his wife, can you imagine?” Samuel asked, scoffing to himself as he leaned back against the trunk of the towering tree. “Giving up your marital vows to partake in the company of a woman, now…I know what you’re thinking, but I would only ever do that to something with two legs.”

The mercurial smile that hung on his lips fell like the snow landing around him, leaving nothing behind by a cold memory of what it had been. It was always hard to be happy these days, as the dying light of the sun fell behind the buildings and he was left in the twilight of his own thoughts. He was certain the caretaker would be around soon to kick him out, boorish man that he was. There was something to be said about taking your job too seriously.

“I told him he needed to go back to her and forget what he did, but…I suppose there are certain sins that we just can’t forget.” His hand drifted to his right leg and slowly traced along the front of his tailored pants. It ached, crying out in an accusatory voice that wouldn’t be ignored ever since the day he had been blown off his feet. “I would have never sinned against you, my beloved. That I promise you. It was why I was willing to give it all away…”

He was a Griffith, and that name invoked certain ideals that would not be expected to serve such a mundane occupation. The name spoke of lavish balls in private estates, of generous donations to the societies of medicine and intellect. His parents had ensured he’d never see such glorious events, but at least they had allowed him to keep his signet ring.

Samuel regarded the fat, silver ring on his finger that was in desperate need of a good polishing. The face bore a pidgeot posed on the horizon, its wings curling about to hold a stylized ‘G’ in a loving embrace. It had once seemed so much warmer and kinder to him, but now he noticed the talons that grasped the base of it.

The promise of care with the absence of love, that was his mother alright.

It made him smile to consider what she would say if she had interacted with someone that consorted with pokemon. To see her upper lip twitch and her well-powdered face cracking against the deplorable thought would have made it all worthwhile, even better if it was brought up as casually as his brother’s love for the poppy. But of course she would not care. That slavering invalid had enough sense to keep mommy and daddy pleased with him, he was the golden child after all.

Any wealth he was set to accumulate would certainly be inhaled through a long pipe resting over an oil lamp.

That thought was as frustrating as it was sad, not that he cared much for his brother’s addiction. If anything, it just invoked his ire further to think that they would so brazenly throw in Samuel’s face just what they were willing to forgive. After all, as long as he was passed out in a stupor in his room, his brother wasn’t suiting women below his class.

Samuel stared at the metal ring that rested just below the signet, a simple, unassuming piece of metal that he had so desperately scrapped the money together for.

At least he didn’t consort with the lower classes of society.

It wasn’t his intent to traverse down paths that had left him circling the root cause of his dismissal from the family estate.

“It was all worth it in the end, wasn’t it, Victoria?”

If the monolithic stone sitting across from him had any thoughts on the matter, it kept it close to its chest. It was startling white marble, sealed with a heavy slab over the top to deter erstwhile tomb-robbers. There was no price he hadn’t been willing to pay to seal her against the cruel ravages of time, to leave her as perfect and pristine as the memory of that final night by her side.

Victoria Griffith: Taken before her time. Loved, and never forgotten.

What cruelty of man or nature would ever be so willing to destroy the heart of a man such as he. Had he not lost enough? Perhaps he had been destined for such a fate through some past sin of a previous life that Arceus deemed despicable enough to carry on into this one. To see her growing weaker and weaker with every passing day, her frame losing its shape and becoming skeletal with paper-thin skin as white as bone.

Oh Arceus, but her lips, they were an ever present memory in his mind.

He wished he could have kissed her one last time as he slid the ring upon her finger, to seal their vows and officially join them in their final days. To join her in that wasting disease that was so beautifully poetic, yet swift and unkind. All he need do was press his lips to hers, and perhaps he would have fallen ill as well. If only that doctor and his orderlies hadn’t stopped him, perhaps he wouldn’t have tried to seek out more boorish methods with gunpowder and steel. Then perhaps he wouldn’t be nursing the mocking reminder of his failures as both a man and a lover.

“It isn’t my place to tell them. Isn’t that what you always said?” He looked upon the sprawling cemetery grounds and released a breath that danced in a white cloud before dispersing in the air. “I am just the messenger, to step back and simply reveal their failings, never to try and fix them.”

It had been silent amongst the headstones, a empty expanse of white broken by gray stones. The only remembrance of the diseased, their voices crying out in silent desperation to be honored in some way. In that way, they would be sorely disappointed, as Samuel had the entirety of the graveyard to himself. Not once had he heard the ancient, rusted gate screeching with the strain of opening. Perhaps that was for the best, he would have vastly preferred if he could silence Victoria’s voice beckoning him out here.

The sound of shuffling feet made him perk up, and he sighed and began to stand.

“I know, the grounds are closing and I must leave.” He expected an answer, but none came but the shuffling of snow. “The graveyard is closing and I must be on my way, you needn’t remind me.”

It was difficult going, especially after how long he had spent sitting there and watching the rest of the day go by. His hunger gnawed at the corner of his stomach like the remnants of his hangover toying with his mind, reminding him that he had yet to seek nourishment of any kind. He grabbed his messenger bag that had until now served as a makeshift seat to protect his dignity and his clothing. His cane strained with the effort of holding him up, the stiffness in his body leaving as fragile as a newborn deerling.

“I…” The words hung on his lips, for he had seen movement across the cemetery.

It was impossible to mistake the slovenly form of the groundskeeper and the hunch to his back, a shovel slung over one shoulder to prepare the final resting place for some unlucky chap. Samuel had become rather adept at hearing the heavy footfalls of a man who seemed to delight in sneaking up to voyeuristically listen in on the whispered conversations between mourners and their recently departed.

The response from behind him wasn’t a word or any semblance of intelligent mutterance. No, it was a growl, deep and more chilling than the freezing core of hell itself brought manifest on this earth. It rendered him as helpless as an invalid waiting to be pulled from their bed, his body refusing to give him the grace of moving away from that point. To look upon the owner of such a sound would invite claws and gnashing fangs, to give physical form to it, within his heart he knew it to be true.

His hand clenched tight around the head of his walking cane. A snuffling sound was heard, of great nostrils inhaling the taste of its perceived prey. Now all he could do was wait for the blow to come, and he thanked Arceus for the tree that stood between him and whatever devil had been conjured up to torment him.

Then, in a flurry of heavy footfalls, the sickening presence of whatever vile specter had been stalking him was lifted and he could breathe again. He nearly stumbled and had to catch himself with his cane, the sweat that beaded on his forehead freezing against his skin and rendering chills throughout his entire form. Now there was only him and Victoria, as it had always been, as it should have been the night that she left this mortal coil.

Samuel found the courage to glance around the tree and past it, to where the cemetery backed up to the city and the river. He had paid quite a pretty penny to entomb her here overlooking the river that she had come to love. Even if Samuel had found its dark waters undesirable and possessing all manner of revolting creatures just waiting to grasp at the ankle of a swimmer, it seemed improper to leave her without a final view of it.

It wasn’t the river that he was focused on. He stared at them for some time, trying to make sense of it all.

They were steaming in the dusk air, large paw prints that were still fresh in the snow. They circled from tombstone to tombstone, growing ever closer to where he had been resting. Their owner clearly possessed a cunning intelligence, one whose circuitous route would have protected it from view should he have ventured a glance. That alone made him tremble irresistibly.

How long has it cared to listen to him blather on to whatever remained of Victoria’s spirit? Had it been content to stalk him? Soaking in the air of his sorrow?

The trail leading up to the edge of the tombstones had already been partially filled in with falling snow, leading him to believe it had been for quite some time. What secrets had it heard that should have been kept buried beneath six feet of earth and a marble slab? Secrets that should have been shared only with his beloved.

Samuel did not have time to ponder this, for the sanity-rending howl that had haunted his dreams was calling out again. It rose far past the wrought iron fence that the pawprints led to, across the sparsely forested region and ending at…

The docks. It was coming from the docks.

A sickness formed in the pit of his stomach, far worse than alcohol could ever hope to produce. The world felt like it was closing in on him and every breath had grown to be a struggle. In the darkness of the trees, he could have sworn he saw the damnable red eyes that Edward had so vehemently insisted belonged to a demon itself. But that was a foolish notion, for evil did not walk amongst men, corrupting them and tempting them to blasphemous acts while Arceus turned a blind eye upon them.

“Victoria…I must be leaving now…” He whispered, the approaching form of the caretaker mobilizing him to action. To speak to him would only serve to fuel what was surely a trick of the mind, a temporary psychosis brought upon by hunger or localized mania. “I will…return on the first of the week, as I always do.”

Samuel urged his feet to move, and when they did it was mechanically, as if leaden weights had been shackled to him. His fingers glided along the top of the tombstone, and although he managed to pull himself away from her, it was with a glance thrown over his shoulder with every step he took.

III

Perhaps he had been foolish in his notions to dismiss what he had seen two days earlier. The chill that had possessed him upon returning home from his beloved’s resting place had left Samuel laying in bed, fighting for a warmth and comfort he had not felt for years. To say that he cried would have been denied vehemently, and the stains upon his pillow were certain to be sweat left behind from one of his hot spells.

A true man did not give in to such emotions. Not when they were better suited to the fairer sex upon whom hysteria was accepted if not expected.

Victoria had seemed so perfect that final night, the final time he had been allowed to look upon her before they pulled the sheet over her face and carried her off. It vexed him that that was the only way he could remember her, not for the days they went upstream of the river where the foul pollutants of the city were unable to reach. In those days her skin had borne a light golden glow that reminded him of the fields of hay they would pass on their way to their favored picnic spot. She had been boisterous and lovely, a gift that he had been unable to accept was truly his.

For his family to deny what Samuel saw in her and to speak such foul things upon her deathbed was what drove him to slip the ring upon her finger. If they would not welcome her in life, they would be forced to in death with her name forever tied to his family. That they had been ‘willing’ to offer a mere pittance for her final entombment was more a slap in the face than anything they could have voiced about her in life. If he hadn’t been so desperate to give her all she could have in death that she couldn’t in life, he would have told them exactly where they could put their money.

That was him, however, always weak of will. Money tainted by shame still spent the same as any other ill-gotten note.

Perhaps it was for the best that most of his hours were spent in a stupor, caught in the claws of a fever that would not release him. What moments of clarity he was afforded came with bleary sights, sounds that weren’t there. Of rushed pawsteps or blood-chilling growls whispered inches from his ear. There was a reason he welcomed the empty eternity of nothingness that awaited him when he closed his eyes.

On the third day after his meeting with Edward, Samuel lay in his bed staring up at the ceiling. Part of him silently willed it to fall upon him and give an end to the terrible ache in his body, or for sleep to once again claim him. It would have been preferable to having to get up and face the day, although two days from work had left him uneasy. His coin purse had already grown quite low after buying the flowers he had left upon Victoria’s grave, as well as the two-day old bottle of port that sat mockingly upon his desk, waiting to ensnare him in its wicked clutches. It was an enigma amongst its brothers, for it have survived untouched longer than any that had come before it.

As tempting as it would be to break that record before the sun had risen to take its place in the morning sky, he was not so far gone like the bowery bums chased off by the constables. Nevertheless, it was with a running nose and a tickle in the back of his throat tormenting him that he got dressed for the tasks laid out ahead of him. Regarding his stained journal, he tutted under his breath. He still had to find the Sanderson fellow who had run afoul of a local magistrate for invading the bed of his daughter and left her with a bastard to raise on her own.

Such an amateur.

One of his watchful eyes on the street had already given him a lead on where the wayward father might have been hiding. As detestably as they gazed upon a man such as Samuel, with animalistic greed in their eyes that made him certain they would have gladly pried the gold from his mouth, Samuel knew just which palms to grease in order to get the information he needed. Alas, that didn’t mean they were convenient.

They had come the day before as he festered in bed, offering to him a note scrawled in the shaky hand of an addict who had gone too long without their vice of choice. It was in such a state that he received him that Samuel was left wondering if it had truly happened, or was just another phantom sent to haunt him. The beggar had a grinning face and hopped from leg to leg in a merry jig that made Samuel think of the devils that played in the picture shows at the theater. The thing that told him it had actually happened, was that he could now see the bottom of his coin purse where the false wooden coins lay. He had cursed himself, for surely the beggar would have taken them as gladly as any other. They typically weren’t clever enough to test it before running off in search of their waiting fix.

At least he had not suffered the taint of foul dreams upon returning to his slumber. The phantom Hound hadn’t troubled him in the night, nor was there any sign of it this day.

That didn’t prevent the fright that overtook him when he heard the clatter of a garbage can being knocked over as soon as he stepped from his door. Samuel held his cane at his side and took a few cautious steps around the stairs of his building, only to release his held breath when he saw the culprit. Strays were, after all, in abundance in the city, and the ragged-looking rockruff that had its head buried in his overturned garbage was no exception. It noticed him and raised yellowed fangs at him, the fur along the side of its muzzle coated in a viscous mixture of saliva and whatever it had found desirable in the waste it feasted upon.

“Loathsome cur.” He snapped, but lowered his cane all the same. “Fill your belly and be on your way. If you’re still here when I’m back I’ll have the catcher set upon you.”

If the deplorable creature was intelligent enough to understand the meaning of his words, it didn’t care enough to reciprocate them. The canine turned, its tail jolting upwards in an expression of mockery that made his face redden. Perhaps it was the notion that had been plaguing his mind these last few days that caused his eyes to alight on the dark sex of the creature, and the puckered pink hole set just above it. Its curly tail left nothing to the imagination, a grotesque spectacle that made him turn and begin to walk away with no intelligent word left to grace his lips.

An uncouth, dirty creature. Was this what Edward had given in to the urge to lay with?

The city streets were just beginning to come alive with the denizens of the city when he stepped on the cobblestone sidewalk. He instinctively pulled back from the street when the large, black wagon of the catcher’s rolled by, and although part of him wished to raise a hand and call out to them, he let it slide. It would have been too perplexing to bring up the conversation about the stray, especially if it would lead to a question of why his face had grown so red.

Samuel plucked the beggar’s note from his pocket and once again made an attempt to decipher the address that was scrawled on it. He had complained in the past about the man’s ignorance when it came to the art of calligraphy, not that such efforts ever bore fruit. It wasn’t expected of the lower class to care about such a gentleman’s art, of that he had begrudgingly accepted. From what he had said, however, Samuel was able to piece it together, no matter how much it left him unsteady to admit it.

He would have to travel amongst the docks, close to where the ships came in to unload their harvest.

Images of red eyes and sharp fangs flashed to mind, returning him to that dark world of nightmares. It was foolish, he assured himself, to think a creature like that would still reside in the city. Surely, it would have been captured and drug away and taken out to pasture, such abominations of nature had no place in modern society.

The journey across the city was a torturous affair in navigating the commoners that looked at him with eyes full of ridicule and envy. Victoria had assured him in the past that such thoughts of his self-importance were greatly exaggerated, and they saw nothing other than another person trying to live their life. She had always been positive when it came to what others thought about her, even when they spewed such vitriol and hate to her face for being of low class.

If only he had the confidence that had been buried with her.

In every face he saw judgement. Knowledge of him that he himself was unaware of. Perhaps they need only look upon his cane, his attire, and the way he held himself to know that he wasn’t one of them. Perhaps he truly was just a paranoid lout, like Victoria always insisted, jumping at shadows like his brother had when his opium supply was running low.

He knew that he was coming upon the docks when the air grew salty and the streams of people on the sidewalk became less dense. Even so, he took to the alleys more than he would have liked, more out of a sense of clandestine nature that made his duty feel far more exciting than it truly was. They would be left wondering who this man was, what his business was with the castoffs from society. He was fascinating, he was interesting. Samuel knew they wanted to be him, and he pitied them for it.

There he passed more of the stray pokemon, a majority canine with the odd feline mixed therein, each regarding him with suspicion that he could be certain of. The people of the town may not have hated him, but these creatures dwelling in the alleys of civilized society shared their feelings amongst the entirety of humankind, and he was no exception. That was fine, to garner any kind of reaction was better than to be ignored.

On one occasion he had to raise his voice and bang his cane against a metal waste bin to send a pack of them scattering. That was truly the only thing he feared; their small statures were irrelevant when they had the strength of numbers. Perhaps he would actually care enough to inform the catchers of these, although that rockruff was still present in his mind no matter how he tried to cast her aside. Would she still be there when he got back, tail cocked to the side and teeth shining with saliva.

That image made him shudder.

To clear his mind, he entertained the thought of the street walkers whom he passed, their makeup smeared and their clothing torn after a night of debaucherous sin. Was he so desperate that he would seek out their company soon? Just to relieve himself of the burden the male gender suffered from?

Anything to remove the sight of that darkened sex that turned inwards like a spade on a set of playing cards. Why would Arceus in his judgment give females of different species such oddly shaped sexes? Perhaps to accentuate how they should be kept apart, as he felt about Edward and his foray into the natural world. Such a fascinating grotesquery was impossible not to be marvelled at, he assured himself, there was nothing strange about pondering on it.

It was upon the street facing the wharf that he came to catch his breath and steady his constitution. From his bag he plucked his journal, the pungent odor of it making his nose turn up worse than the remnants of rotting fish washed upon the sides of the canal. There was no chance to continue copying its contents over the night before, and he had made the regretful decision to keep using it for now, at least. It was his lifeline, his personal world that was only his to indulge in, and he would be lost without it.

If his information was correct, then his target would be hiding in one of the less-frequented warehouses along this strip. The buildings were old and some had begun to collapse in on themselves, lowering the number of hiding places he would need to search.

He plucked a pencil and began to scrawl notes, anything to take his mind off of such ludicrous, intrusive thoughts. They would come unabated, sneaking up on him under the shroud of thought and leaving his hand trembling. At one point, he found it beginning to draw a soft curve, a gentle slope that came together at a softly pointed tip that looked all too familiar. Samuel was thankful there was no one around to see it, for he didn’t understand what compelled him to draw such a thing. As big as the city was, and as dense its population, it truly felt like he had been alone ever since he stepped foot upon this avenue

Alone if not for the barking of strays and their dirty paw pads scraping against the cobblestone.

Samuel cursed when the tip of his pencil snapped against the page, nearly piercing the paper with the amount of force he had been putting upon it. Where the surge of anxiety that washed over him had come from, he was uncertain. It was as if someone had grabbed him by the shoulders and proceeded to shower upon him a bucket of cold water. His hands shook while he dug in his bag for a replacement, but as his eyes fell upon the ground, he realized something.

The glass of a broken window had been scattered at his feet, the surface dirtied and scratched, but still maintaining its reflective nature. It was through one of these pieces that he saw something that caused him to choke upon the air in his lungs. In the piece of glass he could see the building behind him, the dilapidated warehouse no more than a silent sentinel crumbling in the musty air and left to rot in obscurity. It was the second window that he found himself focusing on.

And the glowing red eyes that were peering down upon him.

For some time he could only stare at them, at the way they slowly closed before snapping back open. They watched him as sternly as a god gazing down from the clouds, ready to render a justice upon him that was specifically his own. As if they saw the crude mockery of a woman’s sex that he had shamefully drawn in his journal.

When they disappeared from the window was when he finally made his move.

Samuel turned in a great rush of motion, intent on catching his watcher full on and getting the answers that he so desperately seeked. Be it man, be it beast, there was no doubt in his mind that there was a rational explanation for this. What he saw was worse than the blow to his face that left him with his black eye, or the blast to his leg which had robbed him of its full mobility. He didn’t know how to comprehend what he saw, leaving his mouth to gape and close like a magikarp dangling on the hook and heading for the cookpot.

It wasn’t red eyes that looked back down on him from the window. It was Victoria, perfectly porcelain Victoria with ruby red lips.

She smiled at Samuel. Something shattered within him.

Samuel walked fast, mind bleakly empty except for the command to get away. The streets, the judgemental faces, they were a blur that passed by him. Nothing mattered in that moment, just an animalistic fear and the need to run. He didn’t stop, not even when he got near the stairs to his apartment and was left screaming at the sudden barking that broke him from his hypnosis. The rockruff, that damnable bitch, had darted forth from a corner of the alley where a stack of haphazardly tossed crates appeared to be the beast’s new home.

He was left to stare at its slavering maw, noting just how sharp the teeth were on such a small form. If it had been fully grown, would it have warned him away, or simply taken to striking him down?

Or would it stalk him through the streets, savoring the taste of fear that grew with each passing second?

What would its sex look like then?

Samuel didn’t know, but that night, he slept with his table pushed against his door, fearing any sound that came from the alley beyond.

IV

For quite some time Samuel had sat upon this bench pondering just how he had managed to find himself grappling with such demons of the mind. It was with leg tapping impatiently that he waited, uncertain of why he had come here or what answers he had expected to gain.

The night before while he lay cowering beneath his covers and trying not to accept that he had been rendered little more than prey, there was one constant. Edward, the bastard had been the one that put the infectious idea in his mind where it had thrived like a loathsome parasite feasting upon his rationality. Although he had dared not to knock upon the door to his home, for he feared having to meet with Merida. For what if Edward had never returned from his unusual sojourn and she was still waiting for him to report back on his whereabouts?

No, that wouldn’t do. He didn’t have it within him to maintain the air of intellect and certainty that he normally displayed. Even his outfit was disheveled and wrinkled, for he had not cared enough to clean them in the past few days while he fought not to lose his mind.

A losing battle, if yesterday was anything to go off of.

It was late in the afternoon when he saw Edward, but it was different from the man that Samuel remembered him to be. Edward walked upright, easily standing above those in the crowd that passed him by and moving with a sense borne of a lifetime of needing to mind his considerable frame. He was engaged in conversation with a man of similar dress and the rumpled appearance that only hard labor could produce. From Edward’s expression Samuel could tell that he was laughing, and that made Samuel clutch his cane tight. For what purpose did he have to laugh after damning a man to see the phantoms of his past?

What reason did he have to laugh when he committed so egregious a sin?

Edward saw him when he stood, for the man’s face grew sullen, then angry all at once and he snapped something to his friend. The companion looked at Edward oddly enough, but lost themselves amongst the crowd while Edward began to approach him. No longer did Samuel feel any kind of charitable condolences towards the large man, nor did he feel the barbs of intimidation Edward would have projected otherwise. There was only one thing that he feared at this moment, and it wasn’t him.

The crowd cared not for one of their members being plucked from them, and no voices were raised in alarm when Edward drug Samuel into the alleys. They were not alone, for a rattata perched atop a shipping crate hissed at them, before racing off when Edward threw Samuel towards it. He had just enough of a mind to catch himself on it, and then Edward was back in his face.

“What are you doing here?” Edward said, speaking in a hushed whisper that conveyed all the fury of the sea upon which he made his living. “I have nothing for you here, if you’re looking for a handout.”

“Tell me,” Samuel began, “what purpose do you have in denying me the peace of mind that I am accustomed to?” When Edward was left with no answer to this, Samuel pressed on with all the desperation of a man left dangling over the edge and certain of their own mortality. “This Hound that you mentioned. Tell me that it’s not real. Tell me that you made it up.”

Perhaps he had spoken too loudly, for a few heads turned to regard him like any other crazed street walker. It might have been how they all thought of him, he now realized, nothing more than a mad man still trying to cling to the vestiges of nobility that had been torn from him.

Fools the lot of them, what reason did they have to consider him a invalid!? How dare they not recognize his greatness!

Edward’s face grew as firm as stone, and he grabbed Samuel’s shoulder hard enough to warrant no discussion on the matter. It wasn’t difficult for him to drag Samuel away even when he brandished his cane as if to strike him. That would be as foolish as striking a charging taurus, he quickly rationalized, so he let the indignity of being manhandled slide, at least this once.

“If you have come to ruin my life, to extort me for what little coin I have, you can save it.” Edward pushed Samuel back until he collided with the unforgiving brick surface of the building. “I have already told Merida. There is nothing that you can hold over me, you conniving little worm.” One meaty boulder of a fist curled up, pressing against the underside of Samuel’s chin, not that he felt its malicious kiss. “If you d-”

“I saw it.” Samuel blurted it out before he could think better of it. Then again, what would he have to gain from keeping mum about what appeared to be a shared psychosis between the two of them. If nothing else, it caused Edward to falter in his aggressive posturing. “The Hound. It’s following me.”

Edward stared at him as if Samuel were a most curious puzzle that he was trying to piece together. For such a simpleton, Samuel imagined it would take quite some time for him to make sense of just what he was hearing. To his credit, the behemoth of a man did release the deathgrip that he had on his shoulder and took a few steps back.

“I…” Edward said, suddenly looking about him with a panic that brought to mind the quivering creature he had met in the tavern what felt like a lifetime ago. “I…hadn’t seen it since I went to confession. I told the priest what I had done and Arceus absolved me of my sins.” Perhaps Samuel had been wrong in assuming him too ignorant to connect the dots that had been laid out before him, for he suddenly smiled. “It’s after you now. Hell has turned its eyes on you.”

“Shut up.” Samuel snapped, his growing malaise only intensified as the smile built upon the man’s face and he began to laugh. It was a deep, boisterous sound, the mockery leaving Samuel furious enough to raise his cane at his side. “You have no idea what you’re speaking of. It is not a demon, you blasted fool, it’s a pokemon! An animal!”

“It’s the sickness in your heart made manifest, is what it is.” Edward had calmed himself enough to wipe the tears from his eyes. Samuel had preferred when those tears were associated with his own self-loathing behavior, rather than jubilant in his mockery of him. “You can deny it all you want. But if you’ve seen it, then…certainly, it’s taken an interest in you.”

Edward reached out to smooth down the ruffled frills of Samuel’s suit, ignoring the aggressive stance that he had taken. Like an old friend he did him this grace, making him at least a little more presentable than he had been. Once he was done, he plucked his hat from the ground and handed it to Samuel, before giving him a hearty pat on the shoulder.

“Good luck. It couldn’t have happened to a nicer person.” Edward’s voice became venomous, his expression souring as if he had tasted the bitter tang of vinegar. “I have a wife waiting for me. I wish you luck, because you will need it.”

Samuel wanted to scream as the man turned his back on him with no shortage of contempt. Edward didn’t even spare a second look at the well dressed man with his silly cane and soiled notebook standing there with no direction, no aim.

Samuel felt like the stray rockruff, all fangs and snarls, but with nothing of substance to back it up.

“I have a wife.” Samuel whispered, although there was no one to hear it but himself. “I…had a wife.”

For how long he walked the streets he was uncertain, all that he knew was that the church bell had rung a dozen times when he finally stepped into the alley behind his apartment. Through the quagmire of his mind he had somehow come back home, and although he had been expecting the boisterous appearance of his new stray companion, he was surprised to find it cowering beneath its box fort. As he approached, its fluffy head dipped back into hiding, accompanied by a whimper pathetic enough to tug at what little sympathy remained in his heart.

Then, even that was chilled and shattered like an icicle falling to the cobblestone street.

His door hung from the hinges, creaking and rocking in the wind with a layer of snow already scattered across the floor of his apartment. The doorway yawned open, the mouth of some toothless beast that was gasping its last. Samuel wanted to deny the scattering of books and paper, of the bed that had been ripped to shreds and the feathers that lay piled around it. He wanted to ignore the shattered bottle of port and the sickly sweet aroma of alcohol.

Samuel especially wanted to deny the pawprints in the snow. So much larger than what he had seen in the graveyard, almost as large as his fist curled around the shaft of his cane.

The tallyman had come to collect him, and he hadn’t even had the grace to be there for him. The demon knew where he lived, and it could claim him at any time. There was no longer any hiding from it. It made him laugh, an emotion that tore through him and robbed him of any sense.

He laughed, and laughed, and laughed. Continuing until each breath felt like he was swallowing broken glass, and nothing remained. Only then did he allow himself to cry.

V

Whatever this was. Whatever was happening to him, it needed to end.

This Samuel repeated to himself through the night while sleep evaded him and left him trapped within the prison of his own mind. Every time he closed his eyes he would hear the door snap open and sense the thundering of paws running towards him. He expected to feel a weight fall upon his bed, to feel the sting of fangs digging into his unguarded neck. The few times he did manage to fall into an uneasy slumber he was soon to awake, gasping and clawing at his throat as savagely as any pokemon could muster.

The world outside his door hung in a haze of mist that rendered it no more real than the belief that he was going to survive this encounter. Should he fear the reaper, or the hound at its beck and call, prepared to drag his soul to the underworld? Perhaps he should instead fear his own hand, for it had been the one thing that had been the closest to severing the string of his mortality.

Samuel paused on the precipice of his door and reached into his bag, shuffling past the wooden box and the accusatory stare of Arceus painted on the side. It was a meager meal, little more than salted beef that he had been saving for any additional fortitude he could inspire. This he tossed to the rockruff as it cautiously emerged from its hiding place, its brown eyes staring upon him with distrust. In the end, the canine’s stomach won out and forced it to accept the gift, which it did before darting back into the dark gloom of its resting place.

Was he expecting a release from the crushing pressure on his chest? For all that he had done, feeding a worthless stray didn’t seem like it would be the thing to render his misdeeds null and void.

“You saw it too, didn’t you?” He pondered, not that it was willing to be forthcoming with its secrets. “That was why you were afraid last night, wasn’t it?”

Samuel turned and began to walk into the gloom of the early morning, each step bringing him closer to his doom. One way or another, this was going to end today, and perhaps he would be reunited with Victoria after all.

—

Returning to the lair of the beast had been easier than he would have imagined. It seemed like he was drawn to the place, the streets themselves conspiring to deliver him in front of the boarded up entrance. There was no one here on this desolate strip of failed humanity to bear witness to the man braving it, no one to come if he were to call out for help.

The wooden planks set across the door were unyielding, but the foundation the nails had been driven into was rotten and crumbling. A scent of mildew hung in the air, a taint that spread from deep in the innards of the building. It smelled like pokemon, of dirty bodies huddled in close proximity to themselves that had gone for too long without a proper wash.

It made him cringe when the board came free and clattered against the ground, the sound echoing across the cobblestone. He waited for a response from within, but heard nothing other than the splash of the waves against the wall of the canal. There was no reason for it to hide, for it wanted him here, didn’t it? Why chase your prey when you can so easily tempt them into your den and sup upon their soul in comfort and peace?

Perhaps peace wasn’t the correct word, for he had no intention of allowing it without a fight.

The wooden box was pulled from his bag and set upon an open windowsill, the hinges crying out for oil after so long left sedentary. As loath as Samuel was to gaze upon its contents, let alone reach out to grasp the handle of the revolver, it was a necessary evil. The twitching in his leg started up again as his hands curled around the handle of it, the weight and heft as familiar as the last time he had held the damnable thing.

He swung it open and examined the chambers, finding that of the five chambers, four of them were still loaded. Samuel’s ears rang as the church bell sounded in the distance, its melancholic rhythm pounding in his mind long after the toll had dispersed. It would be daylight soon, and a demon cast out into the light was far less insidious than one basking in the shadows. That was what Victoria had always said, that was why men like Samuel were important.

To reveal those tainted souls to the world, even if he counted himself among their numbers.

The floorboards creaked with an audacious groan that made him certain he would not be coming in secret. In the dark corners of the room amidst clutter and loose boxes, dark shapes darted about, dodging the sweep of his oil lantern. Bright eyes glistened from various hiding places where cautious, canine faces stared back at him. They seemed to congregate here, servants that felt comfortable enough not to strike out at him or attempt to run, even while he passed them by. Perhaps they were aware of the foul device in his hand and the bloodshed such a thing threatened, if they had seen similar things used by the catchers on friends that had been forgotten by the city.

All he knew was that they were allowing him to pass unheeded, his feet carrying him across rotting floorboards until he reached a narrow flight of stairs leading upwards. If he saw Victoria again, what would he do? Would he dare to bring his weapon upon her, and even then, what use would a manmade weapon be against the ethereal world? At least he could confirm that he was well and truly mad, for nothing else would have convinced him to set foot in a place that Arceus had forgotten.

From below him sounded the growls and whimpers of numerous voices, each serenading him in a feral symphony. A funeral dirge, perhaps? No, something told him it was the callous laughter of the creatures he thought less than him.

The second floor was a grand open space with a bank of windows along the far wall looking over the canal. It was here that he had seen Victoria, her enchanting beauty so far and away from this dismal place that it seemed asinine to consider she would step foot within it. It was just as crowded with detritus, although the great piles had been pushed off to the sides of the room, creating a narrow alley that lead to the windows. He walked slowly, part of him fearing that the wood beneath his feet might give out and spare him the fate of having to meet with his stalker.

Samuel had to set his lantern down and cover his nose against the fetid stink that rose from the pile of makeshift bedding that lay before him. It reeked of pokemon, a sulfurous smell that offended his nostrils worse than any dock worker or rancid beer ever could. The bed lay upon a raised section of floor, a mockery of a throne and a royal chamber that made him shake his head in disbelief. Could pokemon show such witticism as to mimic what they had seen humans do? How would they even understand the importance of what they were looking at?

Their own little kingdom. Would they be so smart as to consider themselves with pride, with the sense of regality that came from monarchy?

The floor creaked behind him, soft enough that he could just hear it over the onrush of his own thoughts. It was followed by a shattering of glass and a great whoosh of flames when the oil lantern was batted aside, its guiding flame snuffed out. Some damnable small, furry shape with a mark on its forehead resembling a skull scurried away from it, leaving him in darkness. The fog had not cleared like he expected it to, its choking embrace clouding the windows and leaving him in darkness.

And he wasn’t alone. The growl came low, harsh as two stones grinding together and reverberating in his very being. It was one of anger, of triumphant, of hellious delight that soaked in the knowledge of what was to come.

Samuel clutched his revolver tighter to try and soothe the shaking in his hand, and all at once he turned and raised it before him.

The gun cracked and gave a sharp report of booming thunder in the enclosed warehouse. In the flash of light he saw it well and truly for the first time.

Standing upon four legs, it was easily large enough to reach up to his waist. With fur as black as the night, bones like macabre jewelry seemed to pierce through its skin. Along its back ran a series of ribs, as if it had been flayed and hadn’t had the decency to realize it should be dead. He fired again as the red eyes approached him, seeing the flash of silver bangles around its ankles and the curvature of horns that didn’t belong on such a canid form.

“Is this what you wanted, beast?!” He screamed, already taking a step back and grimacing when the back of his foot hit the base of the raised platform. “I am here! You will not find me easy prey!”

The animal moved with unholy agility, each time his gun went off it stood at a different spot, ever approaching onwards. Surrounded by the growing cloud of gunsmoke that spewed forth from the barrel of his weapon, it became impossible to judge where it would be next. It was slow and methodical, creeping forward as inescapable as the grasp of time itself. Those red eyes were a shining beacon in the darkness, and when he was down to his last shot, he leveled the barrel right between them.

Samuel wanted to pull the trigger. His finger was wrapped around it, but no matter how he urged it to apply just a little more pressure, it betrayed him.

The eyes hovered before him, although they were no longer glowing with red malice. They had changed, softened and faded to a soft, rosy pink color like the first blossoming roses of the spring. In that instant he was removed from his body, a sense of cold calm washing over him and his hand falling to his side.

The fog broke and the morning rays shone through the cracked window behind him, illuminating the pale form of Victoria. It truly was her, he realized, from that solemn smile to the brown eyes as rich and decadent as cocoa. That they flashed with an otherworldly pink glare made no difference to him. The world was melting away in the corner of his vision, dark spots swallowing him up when a pair of hands pressed down on his shoulders. They were remarkably heavy, pushing him backwards…and then he was falling.

They were on the shore of the river again, on a bright, sunny day with fat, fluffy clouds floating lazily across the sky. Beneath them was the blanket they had laid across the warm sand and he was holding her in his arms. Samuel’s hand caressed Victoria’s back in a tender caress while she tucked her head into the small of his neck. It felt like she was smelling him, but that was a strange thing for her to do, why would she do something like that?

He blinked a few times and he was back in the warehouse, resting in that tangled bed of cloth with a lupine face hanging next to his own. He tried to jerk upwards, only to be shoved cruelly back, the back of his head colliding with the floor hard enough for him to see stars. Samuel could only watch as it dragged its wet nose across his neck, the brush of sharp fangs accompanying a slimy tongue that ran slowly over his jugular in one firm swipe. The hellhound noticed him staring too intently at her, and the next time he blinked he was back on the beach, far from the entrapment of the city.

“This is what you wanted, isn’t it?” Although the voice was familiar, Samuel couldn’t remember a time when Victoria had spoken with such a commanding tone of voice. “Poor little Samuel, sitting in the graveyard speaking to the dead, bemoaning the fracturing of his heart.” It was devoid of the love he was used to, the care that always made him melt into her arms. “I want to bite you. To silence your insolent mewling, but…why would I break my toy this soon?”

Each time he blinked he shifted between the warehouse and the warm beach, the last time he had felt truly happy. It was the sweetest gift he could be given, but it was a bitter tonic to be ripped back to reality where everything was so dark and grim. The notion reminded him of his brother who had once confessed to him that the drug-induced trick of the mind was the only thing that mattered to him, and reality was far too foul a place to be. He found himself craving it, struggling to keep his eyes open to the warm sand and Victoria as he remembered her.

Don’t blink. Don’t come back. Don’t admit that you are in hell.

“Stop fighting it, Samuel. You are weak.” The hound was back, hovering just before him with lip curled back to reveal teeth like jagged glass. That long, black tongue ran along his lips, leaving a glistening trail of tainted saliva that he was not allowed to wipe away. “You want me, don’t you?”

Then she was Victoria again, laughing cruelly with a face possessed of hell’s fire. It wasn’t her, he knew it wasn’t, but…

Reality was so disappointing.

“What are you?” It was all he could find himself to ask, the only thing that would keep him from spiraling into madness. “You’re a demon, a monster.”

“Me?” That world on the beach was so far away now, the visions coming less and less while leaving him burdened with the weight of the heavy canine on his chest billowing its rancid breath into his face. “I am the one who decides whether you live or die. I am the one that listened as you told your poor, lost Victoria how much you have failed her.” Those teeth snapped together and above her back a tail swished about, the tip ending in a dangerously pointed bit that pointed down at him in an accusing fashion. “I am the queen of sin, and you have given me your confession.”

The pokemon that wasn’t truly a pokemon, but a manifestation of the hubris of man and the fires of hell, leaned closer. How he was able to understand it he was uncertain, but his reality had been torn asunder enough that he could understand it as it whispered in a low, growling voice.

“I have found you wanting.”

Victoria had returned, but they were still in the dark confines of the rotting building. She was digging her nails into the front of Samuel’s suit and slashing into the fabric, ripping through the cloth to tear at the skin below. Her pink eyes roiled and churned with a mystifying light that kept Samuel placid and pinned beneath her, even though he knew now what lurked behind them.

It was Victoria. His Victoria. He would do anything for just one more moment with her.

“I saw you leaving the bar with the other man who was to be mine.” Samuel couldn’t stop her, even as his clothing was laid to waste and rendered little more than fresh shreds for the bedding beneath him. “The smell of your guilt was so…enrapturing.” Her eyes sparkled with a maddened, feral glee, a whirlwind of carnal emotions that Samuel could feel beginning to tug at the edge of his consciousness.

It was a physical presence, as all-consuming as when he had drawn the rockruff’s puffy sex in his journal. It was so delicious in its sinful alteration of his mind.

Those damnable eyes were flaring up again with such vivid pink that he could feel his body beginning to react. The worst joke was when he closed his eyes next, Victoria didn’t return, it was only the hound looking back at him. She didn’t come back no matter how many times he blinked his eyes, leaving behind only the deep, longing ache within his soul that made him tremble for her.

“Please…I need her…” He began, only to be silenced when one of her large paws flattened against his chest.

“You are no better than a dog, Samuel Griffith. Chasing females of your own species to fill that need within you.” She laughed, cruel and heartless. “A need so craven that it will never, ever be sated. You think your brother an addict? Wait until I am through with you.” Those heavy paws pressed against his pale chest and began to grind in an oddly sensual motion that made him gasp under his breath. “In this city, all dogs bow to me, and so shall you.”

When that tongue ran along his lips once again, more forcefully this time, his mouth creaked open despite the scant resistance he was trying to field. His mind was going mad, thoughts scattering like the fraying ends of thread pulled to their limits and ripped apart. The amorous feeling that came over him was unlike any brought on by alcohol or the provocative nature of the women he took to his bed. They had all been so easy, and he had manipulated them to get what he wanted, even though he thought himself better than such repulsive tactics.

Her tongue entered his mouth, a twisting, living thing that spread its vile taste everywhere it could reach while tickling the back of his throat. His arms were moving, but they were no longer his own, controlled by an invisible puppeteer that made him extend one over the bitch’s back and draw her closer to him.

His Victoria. His lover.

Samuel kissed her back despite the insistence she made in controlling it and giving him no opportunity to breathe.

The entire time he stared into those eyes as bewitched as a moth to the flame. They swirled with such intricate shapes and colors, although he could pick out the shape of hearts as a recurring motif that collapsed in on itself only to form again with a fresh flare of need aching within him. They pierced his very soul, forcing the mental image of the beach on the river to begin to crumble, for the face of his beloved to begin to crack and chip. The pieces fell, scattered and left to the wind, and the face hiding beneath that beautiful facade was the same as the one whose tongue was shoved down his throat.

Samuel kissed her even as her drool leaked from the corner of his mouth, and still there was more. Despite his reservations he gulped down the hot pool in the back of his mouth, lest he drown on her frothy slobber. It wasn’t Victoria, he knew it even if his body didn’t want to accept it, yet he was a prisoner within his own mind, forced to watch the sickening show before him. If he wasn’t damned before, he was certain he was now - for what god could look down upon this debacle with any form of approval?

It seemed an eternity had passed before she finally pulled off him, her tongue remaining deep within his mouth even after her muzzle had slid away. Finally, she snapped it out with a wet lap of her lips, heedless about the drops of drool she spilled upon his face and the mess she had left behind. If a pokemon could grin, she certainly was, although it left her snarling visage even uglier than he could imagine.

“You are mine.”

What words were left for him? While he was left floating in a haze of need, of ecstasy that brooked no argument?

The hound moved off of him, but the crushing weight on his chest remained behind. It kept him pinned to the bedding, watching with dazed eyes while she began to turn about him, circling him as if deciding how best to strike at.

“I wish you to know, the last man I tried this with was able to break my spell. You…” She snorted and tossed her tail a little faster, already beginning to turn to face away from him. “You have already fallen for me, haven’t you? You don’t deserve to call yourself a man. You are a dog.”

The words cut worse than the bleeding lines running down his chest. He could only watch in indifference as she began to back up, a hind paw on either side of his shoulders until she stood just above his face. Samuel had seen what her canines possessed on the rockruff, but that still didn’t prepare him for the puffy, black spade that hung above his head. Almost enshrouded by the fur that surrounded it, he might not have noticed it in the gloom if it weren’t for the sheen of liquid that caught in what little light breached the darkness.

The sound of her breathing had picked up, exuding heat each time her chest compressed back in on itself. Even with the broken windows above them, Samuel didn’t feel a touch of cold, only the heat radiated from both ends of the monstrous creature.

She stood there for some time, letting him admire the view into a garden forbidden to him before dropping the entirety of her weight on his face. He was blinded in an instant, exiled to a dark void and left choking for air. Each breath was tainted with a sickly sweet odor with a bitter tang that removed any allure it might have held. For the first time he struggled, the panicked animal in his brain demanding release lest he choke.

There was no respite, not while something warm and wet slithered across the lips her tongue once had. She was grinding against his face forcefully, her puckered rear entrance bumping against his nose each time. Her scent was purely feminine, distilled to its simplest form and all he could inhale. Her fur was coarse to the touch, grating against his face, but it was the touch of her sex that was the worst part.

It was as soft as a flower petal and delicate to the touch, the dark flesh sticking to his lips each time it passed against them. He could hear her derisive panting, echoing through the chamber as she laid claim to her newest prize. Whatever great need that compelled him to obey now forced him to even lower depths, for his lips parted and he was forced to taste her womanhood.

He needed her. For she would satisfy the want that left him shaking.

There were certain things a gentleman of his status would have never resorted to, and that included putting his face between the legs of any woman. Victoria perhaps, but she had never been bold enough to ask him. Now his tongue was rendered little more than a tool of her pleasure, and by Arceus did it hurt.

She was so damnably hot, her taste so spicy that it made him cough whatever air remained in his lungs, and even then he recoiled away from her. It mixed with a bitter taste that diminished with each pass of his tongue, giving rise to a sinking revulsion within him. Had she cleaned herself from the last time her body was used? No, why would she when she had a servant to handle that for her?

“That’s right…” She cooed, “this is your place.” Her voice was melodic, drifting through his ears like the kiss of a bow on a violin’s taunt strings. “You humans come with your guns and your ropes, you haul my kind away to be exterminated, but you…” She trembled, in pleasure or vindictive delight he couldn’t tell. “I will show you all. One man at a time, if I have to.”

Samuel lavished her sex with his tongue as best he could, his former struggles weaning off to lethargic twitches that afforded him no advantage. There was air to be had, tainted as it was by her musk, his poor olfactory senses cursing him for putting them through such a herculean task. His tongue probed the center of her sex, pressing against the outer lips which had begun to unfold for him under the lashings of his tongue against her.

“Get it in me, human.” The hound trembled above him, the taste upon his tongue becoming sweeter than he would have imagined. “Don’t stop, damn you!” The snap of her jaws accompanied a verbose snarl that vibrated down her dark form and left him whimpering into her sex.

She was becoming more incessant, lifting her hips to give him a glimpse of light that evoked the promise of mercy, should he fulfill his duty. It was his duty, wasn’t it? With every sultry, dark word that fell upon his ears, it seemed so much more real. Why else would Arceus allow this to happen, unless it was in recompense. She need only sway her hips against him thrice more before his hands grasped at her haunches, eliciting a snort of surprise from her as he jerked her furry ass back into his face.

It was easier to hide beneath her, to deny himself the knowledge of what he was doing. To hide his shameful, growing addiction to the world. His tongue had reached a frenzied peak within her, lashing against her walls like a flagellant’s whip and gathering as much of her as it could. Samuel hated her, he needed her, he couldn’t get enough of her. There was no other choice, and he wanted her, to show her the love that he couldn’t give Victoria.

Her approval came with a deep howl that tore through the building, quickly picked up by voices from below joining their queen in unison. They sang of his defeat, his collapse and of the morality failing him in that moment. As a splash of hot juices covered his lips and dripped down his tongue, he gave in to the debauchery. The sound of his lapping was all that remained after her howl tapered off, each wet smack emphasized with her haunches tensing up under his hands.

“That’s it…” Samuel flinched when he felt her paw pressing against the front of his pants, teasing the bulge that he wasn’t aware had formed. The touch was so gentle that he couldn’t have mistaken it for Victoria’s playful fingers, and he groaned in appreciation for the attention. “You are ready, aren’t you?”

To be returned to this reality was so jarring that he turned away from it, offended by the brightness and the lack of her scent. He longed for the return of her touch, even if only for a moment, to give him what he needed. It was a cruel world that provided no warmth, no care, it was her that was all that mattered, and he blathered it all out beneath his voice.

“Please…please I-” He said, only to be chastised with the slap of her tail across his face.

“Open your eyes, you fool.”

As much as he didn’t want to, he pried them open only to sob with joy at the rapturous sight that befell him. She stood on all fours, legs spread with her tail cocked high to the side. Her spade dripped with the excess of his saliva and her own juices, promising him what he so desperately needed while her pink eyes bore through him.

“Your duty is not done. Give yourself up completely, and take me.”

The lack of autonomy that had befuddled him had vanished, leaving behind a trembling sense of urgency that forced him to his knees. He caught sight of himself in the glass shards that littered the floor, and he truly didn’t recognize himself. His hair was matted and hung in wild streaks, marks of dirt befouling his skin and leaving him looking like no more than a beggar. It was his eyes that surprised him, for they glowed the same bright pink that his queen’s did, of shimmering colors and hypnotic sways. Samuel did not take long to ponder this question of his person, for the most important moment of his life waited before him.

Beneath his silken undergarments his manhood sprang outwards, hard to the point it was bordering on painful. His tip was fat and hidden beneath a layer of skin, his shaft thickening towards the base where it ended in a mess of black hair. No matter how many times his female companions had told him he was the largest they had ever had, he had always felt that his six inches of length were lacking. If his queen was disappointed by it, she made no mention of it and simply growled at him with more intensity.

“Put it in me.” The underside of her pointed tail curled around and pressed against the underside of his balls, its touch just reminding him of hard his manhood ached for release. “This…is now my property.”

Samuel shimmied across the bedding towards her, his arms wrapping about her haunches in an awkward attempt to hold on to her. Her body type was difficult for him to work with, his typical position of having the woman atop him of no use in this situation. His hips rocked against her, leaving him to curse the natural world for just how close, yet how far she remained from him. Their movements were awkward while they sought to aid the other, Samuel’s unbidden excitement proving to be a detriment to her while he humped like a mutt in the throes of his first rut. Finally, she had to snarl at him to freeze him in place, to wait for the enrapturing top of her spade to press against his tip.

It shouldn’t have surprised him that his queen was able to succeed where he had failed. She was perfect, she was meant to be the one ordering him around. Each thought brought with it a flash of pink before his eyes as the words echoed deep in his mind. His queen was perfect, she could do no wrong. He was lucky to serve her.

Samuel was so lucky to serve her. She would satiate the need in his soul.

With her gates open before him, he could withhold himself no longer and forced himself forward, expecting to sink in to her as easily. It proved to be a folly to think of her as a common woman of the street, for her body was unwilling or unable to take him without putting up resistance. Her tightness was excruciating, crushing the tip of his erection and choking sounds of desperation from his throat.. With trembling legs, it took everything within him not to lose his composure and collapse atop her. Samuel steeled himself for the task ahead of him and forced forward, prying apart her tight wall with a slow stroke of his hips.

It was a dog he was holding on to, and that was all that he deserved, to make love to a creature he once thought beneath him.

Samuel had thought her heat intense before, but nothing prepared him for the furnace that he was entering with no hesitation. It felt like his body was set ablaze, burning away the shame that lingered in the pit of his souls and left him wanting for more of it. Inexorably he pushed forward, her form trembling beneath him.

Something slid around his waist before it pulled taut and jammed him up against her at the same time she took a forceful step back. Samuel was wrong to think that she was the one that needed preparation for this, for the compressing vice of her womanhood accepted him as if he were made to fit within her. The curvature of his balls slapped against her damp folds, and for the moment he could only try to hold it together, for there was no force on heaven or earth that could be so sinfully enticing.

She looked upon him with amorous eyes that radiated the want and need reflected in the deepest pits of his soul. The lust and the hunger for more, more, more made manifest on four legs. With tongue hanging from her mouth and her tail tight around his waist, he began to pull back at a torturously slow pace, missing her body for every inch that he drew free of her.

“Mate me. It’s all you’re good for.” Those words were all the permission he needed.

Samuel only dared to pull three inches of his shaft from her, and even that was more than he would have liked. Her body held firm when he thrust back against it, driving a grunt from his lungs and a cool growl from her lips. Before he could allow himself to succumb to the desire to simply remain in her, he was already pulling back again.

Her furry, toned ass never moved, nor did he think he had the strength to actually push her forward while her paws were driven to the floor. Her body demanded him as much as he wanted her, and he drove himself against her harder with each thrust.

Their bodies rocked in union, connected together in the most carnal of ways while he sought to drive them both to the heights of ecstasy. It was better than anything he had experienced in his life, better than Victoria and the lovemaking that he had tried so hard to emulate night after night. The hound’s heat had him convinced that he was diving into the pits of hell each time, willingly throwing himself to perdition just to have a taste of what sins he could delve up.

Samuel was lost to it all, his body working mechanically and desperately while sweat began to pour down the sides of his face. Even the welcoming chill that blew in through the cracked windows offered no respite from the infernal hellfire, and it left him gasping on sulfurous air that scorched the inside of his lungs. The darkness and the light mixed together in an enchanting display before his eyes, a show that he had only seen once before on the night he had been stricken by the stray bullet.

He had been foolish to fire it off, to prove to himself that he could pull the trigger even if he was too cowardly to follow through with it in the end. That it had caught the edge of his stove and ricocheted back into his leg had been unintentional, but there was no ache to stop him or hold him back. For the first time since that night five years prior, his leg remained silent, showing him no ill will and simply allowing him to bask in this moment.

Samuel wasn’t sure if he was hearing it correctly at first, but now he was certain that his work was coming to fruition. To have reached his peak before that of his lover was a detestable notion that he wouldn’t entertain, they had to reach it together. Or rather, she had to reach hers, and then deem him worthy of having his own. That was why he was thankful to hear her growls had become more agitated, lighter and accompanied by a trembling in her body.

Her walls squeezed around him rhythmically, each one accompanied by a burst of heat that singed his pubic hairs. They were already drenched with her juices, and his own would simply steam and dissolve on her super-heated walls, rendering them useless. He should have been burned by her, a fitting sin for an act that flew in the face of Arceus. Her heat was so intense, it burned deep within him, leaving him feel as if he had swallowed hot coals that now set heavy in his stomach. It was a punishment he was all too willing to endure.

In that moment, there was only his queen, and the service he could render onto her.

That howl that he had come to fear now brought sheer joy to his heart, for it was accompanied with an impossible squeeze that held rooted him firmly in place. He had no hope of moving away from her even if he wanted so blasphemous a thing. His balls twitched as they ground against her supple lips and were coated with a fresh wave of her sweet juices.

His eyes closed as the ultimate satisfaction overtook him, and he swore he could see the face of Arceus themselves. Funny, he hadn’t even cared to see if they were disappointed or not.

The ropes of his seed fared better within her canine pussy than his pre had, sizzling in hot streaks within her but maintaining their form. Her fur pressed against his face, only for him to realize that he had collapsed against her back and was finding it difficult from putting his full weight upon her. This matter she took into her own paws.

His queen was not stricken with the same lack of control that his failing willpower provided him. Samuel found the familiar embrace of her bedding when she lunged to push him back over, never once pulling his stiff rod from her hellish depths. It was humorous that he was still able to maintain his constitution in one part of his body, any other time he would have been done and content for the night. Then again, that was before when his body was his own.

Samuel hardly felt the bite when it came, tossing her head from side to side to tear the skin. It crushed his throat, left him gasping till all he could do was simply lay there while her tongue lavished the ugly, raw marks dug deep into the skin of his throat. They were undeniable, impossible to hide, a testament to what they had just done with each other. For him, it felt like it was a small price to pay, especially when the hound began to rock her hips against him once more.

“We’re not done…” she cooed, one paw slapping against his cheek firm enough to bring him back to reality. It brought with it the sting in his neck, of a new ache that would never let him forget about this night. “You are my toy, and I am not done playing yet.”

Epilogue

Where once Samuel had felt some semblance of assuredness while he walked the streets, now nothing remained but an empty pit. With no strength remaining in his body or fortitude of the mind left, it was a wonder that he was able to drag himself all the way back to familiar streets.

Three days. He had to wait three days before he could return to her.

If Samuel wanted to return to her, he reminded himself, as if he had a choice in the matter. The throbbing pain in his neck had become worse, carrying with it a phantom heat that kept the cold at bay. It was much needed, since his suit jacket was little more than the tattered rags you’d expect upon a common beggar.

He would stop often, whether to catch his breath or to gaze at his face in the shop windows, searching for any sign of the pink aura that had once enveloped his eyes. Where it had once existed nothing remained but a bloodshot, empty gaze desperate for something. That he knew what that something was didn’t give him any solace, for he had been feeling the craving since he was dismissed from his queen’s throne room. His brother had worn this face when he realized he had run through his entire stash and the horror of sobriety was sinking in.

It didn’t matter to him that the women he passed that night were of an unusually vivacious lot, or that they called out to him, wondering if the broken man in ripped clothing needed assistance. Whether they saw the scratch marks across his chest and the bite to the side of his neck, they made no mention of it and eventually left him to his solitary, shameful walk. What was there that could be said to give him any kind of relief from the desperation plaguing his mind.

Three days. He had to wait three days before he could return and grovel at her paws for the privilege of serving again.

Demon or mortal, it mattered not. She had enticed him with a face that he had once love, one that was ripped away from him. He wanted a muzzled-face, of glowing red eyes and a wet nose. The thought of Victoria offered no comfort to him, a sickening realization in the pit of his stomach that filled him with more shame than he thought himself possible of enduring.

Victoria no longer held control of his heart. Now…there was another.

His cane tapped hard against the alley floor while that roiling need gnawed away at his stomach, the last remnants of her decree rattling around in his defenseless brain.He needed relief that the street walkers couldn’t provide him. He needed satisfaction that could only come from…

Samuel paused and gazed upon the scattered waste bins that had vomited their noxious contents upon the alley floor. At the small, furred shape that no longer showed interest in it after tasting the supple meal that he had given her. The rockruff was still combative in stature, but it didn’t bare its fangs at him this time. No, instead its nose had taken to the air and it was sniffing rather curiously while looking in his direction. Its head tilted off to the side as if it didn’t know what to make of him, or the scent of sin radiating from every pore.

That fire burned deep within him, wanting, needing, desperate to feel the press of a furry body against his own. When he came upon his doorway, he hesitated and looked down at her, at that tail that naturally cocked so high and of what lay beneath it.

“Do you…want to come inside?”

Samuel was uncertain of what to expect of her, although the rational side of his mind hoped she’d run off. A new thought, though, the one that drooled and foamed at the mouth upon the sight of her, refused the notion. It needed to be satisfied, whether Samuel liked it or not. Even now it howled in the midst of his mind as the canine’s tail began to cautiously wag in its approach towards the open doorway.

As she stepped past him and slipped into his flat, Samuel watched with the first smile of the night turning up the corners of his mouth. Those chocolate brown eyes were so beautiful, if only she had a pair of ruby lips…

“I think I’ll call you…Vickie.”