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He stared at the eviction notice, not quite believing it.

It was a square piece of yellow. The text was large and bold. He saw words like “violation”, and “truancy”, and “non-payment of rent”. Further down, the laminated paper continued to say that, if he had not vacated the property within seven days, the authorities would be called, and all the costs of enforcing this eviction would be his responsibility, including any further damages to the property. The owners were prepared to pursue legal restitution.

With his keys in one hand, and his weekly supply of groceries in the other, Mike stared at the eviction notice, thinking about numbers.

How long had he not paid the rent?

“Fuck,” he said.

The thing was, he had always been able to avoid paying the rent every month. All it took was a little juggling. He paid the rent one month, and the next month he spent his money on the utility bills, and the next month he would have some emergency with his car or medical treatment or whatever, and that would swallow all his savings like a hungry vulture, and the month after that he would pay his rent again, and everything would be fine. As long as he didn’t go too long without paying one particular bill, things would be fine.

He stared at the eviction notice again.

“Shit,” Mike said. “Fuck me.”

Well, okay—how much cash did he have in the bank? Could he try paying the rent this month, just to heed this off?

He rested his head on the door, taking a deep breath.

The thing was, he had been getting steady work from Smash Queen Productions. He had shaken hands with a lot of vice executives, filmed shorts with big industry girls, suffered through the more niche and fetishy vids, and even headlined another feature-length film. The Major Manly brand was consistently growing stronger. It had grown so strong, in fact, that he and Austin had been able to negotiate a working contract with Smash Queen Productions. The four yeen girls and their humie chew toy now had corporate sponsorship.

Mike glared at the piece of laminated paper.

The thing was, the cash never lasted long. He earned a fraction of his female co-stars. There were taxes on his wages. Worst of all, the film studios were very good at finding loopholes in every contract he signed, and they always gave the short end of the payment to him. He had seen royalty checks that totaled less than a dollar.

There had been bills to pay. A hundred little daily expenses. And, sure, Mike had to admit that he had been less than frugal with how he’d spent his money, but who could blame him? He was always scrounging for every cent he could find. Why shouldn’t he splurge every once and a while?

Cigarettes weren’t cheap. Take-out was expensive. Occasionally, he had done coke with a couple of his co-stars, and maybe some other drugs too.

It all added up fast.

And when the advance from their contract had arrived, Mike had offered to take all four of the girls to Seven Stags for the day, even though they had tried to decline, knowing he was having problems with money. He had insisted. It had been great. They had felt like little kids for a while. His heart had skipped a beat upon seeing the ticket price, but he had paid without hesitation.

The yeens were his friends. He was part of the cackle, the greater collective.

Why shouldn’t he give back a little?

Mike felt an urge to punch the fucking door.

But he stopped, and he sighed, and he stood in the dimly lit corridor for a while, trying to control his breathing. He had gone through this before. He needed to stay calm.

He had seven days to comply with the notice. He would need to find a new place to stay.

And, of course, there was the orgy.

The thing was, upon signing the contract with YEEN’D.com, and turning it into one of the many subsidiary studios under their command, Smash Queen Productions had given a production order for Major Manly and his four yeen compatriots, in the freshly vacated studio that was to be their new shooting ground. They wanted a big video. They wanted something that would really be worth their investment.

Hence, the orgy.

The Yorgy.

The Spectacle of Spots. The Yabbering Year of Yeen. The Hardcore Hyena Hysteria.

Daisy was having fun with the names.

The thing was, he would get paid for shooting this orgy. He might not be getting paid very well, but he would, indeed, receive a paycheck for managing to survive all the bites and pelvic trauma, and he could use whatever chump change he got to hopefully afford the security deposit on a new apartment.

Of course, a lot of places wanted first and last month’s rent in advance, and the rent itself was highway robbery, to the point where he could barely afford a bus ticket for the rest of the month. And how quickly was he even going to get this paycheck in the first place? It might take a while to show up after the shoot, and he needed it right now.

Mike attempted to breathe.

With a flutter in his breath, he pulled his phone out of his pocket, idly flicking through the menus. He settled on old contacts.

Mom.

Dad.

His sister.

A couple friends still living a ways up the coast, where they had all grown up.

Mike scrolled through the old names, and he looked at all the numbers that now had different area codes than him, and he thought about calling, and he felt a wave of embarrassment, and a coursing of shame, and an even deeper burning of resentment.

He squeezed his phone until his knuckles were white.

He felt a wall closing in around him.

He stood up, paced in front of the door, glared occasionally at the yellow stamp of the eviction notice, and eventually lit up a cigarette in the middle of the hall. He didn’t care about building regulation. He wasn’t going to live here much longer.

He took harsh drags. Clouds of smoke gathered around his head. He glanced at the old contacts in his phone.

He felt like he could barely breathe.

The more he paced, the worse the feeling grew, and the worse the feeling grew, the more he needed to pace. There was a feedback loop happening here that he was conscious enough to notice, but powerless to stop. All the usual worries flooded into his head.

He kicked the door, suddenly bursting with rage.

And just when he realized he was starting to cry, the phone in his hand began to buzz. When he glanced at the screen, he saw a picture of him and Austin pressed together for a selfie, where they were both clearly drunk, laughing hard, sticking out their tongues.

Austin was calling him.

He stared at the picture of them together, heart fluttering in his chest, considering the benefit of disappearing entirely.

He answered the call.

“What’s up?” he said.

“Hey.” Austin’s voice was deep and smoky, slightly muffled, mixed with the familiar rumbling of her car engine. “We’re outside.”

With the phone pressed to his ear, Mike stared at the eviction notice. A cigarette burned lazily in his hand.

“You there, Mike?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Right.”

“It’s the big day, dude.”

“Yeah,” he said.

“Good to go?”

He didn’t answer.

From somewhere else in the car, Veronica made a muffled comment, speaking in her usual stage-ready contralto. Summer replied in a chatty tone. He didn’t hear Daisy at all.

He felt very alone in this barren hallway.

“Mike?” Austin asked.

“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, just, uh. . . .” He hefted his bag of groceries. “Just give me a minute.”

Austin seemed to hesitate. He heard a few aborted words.

“You good, dude?” she asked.

“I’m fine,” he said, fumbling with his keys.

“I know when you’re full of shit, man.”

He got the key in the lock, twisted hard, and bashed open the door. His cigarette fell to the floor, still curling with smoke.

“I’ll be down soon,” he said, hanging up.

---

The studio lot hadn’t really changed.

It was still the same collection of flat, low-top warehouses Mike had seen during the production of The Three Hotties Problem. It was still located slightly too far outside the city. It was still surrounded by nothing but open desert, heaps of barren rock, and the gentle curve of a single, lonely highway. Out here, the sun was always hot, the distances were empty, and all the movie magic had to be done inside the protective kernel of concrete walls.

Mike had returned to this lot a couple times since shooting Three Hotties. He had even spoken to Tammy once or twice, though he had always tried to keep those conversations short. As Austin drove into the parking lot of Smash Queen Productions, he found himself doing the same thing he’d done every time he came back to this place—glancing over the rows of cars, trying to pick a particular one out from the crowd.

There was no sign of Kaylee. Not the car itself, nor the thick white bristle of her fur. Every time he didn’t see her, Mike was a little relieved.

He hoped she was doing better.

At the moment, he wasn’t doing well himself. The drive out to the studio had been awkward. None of the four yeens had spoken much. Veronica was clearly thinking about something else. Daisy had been quiet and subdued. As the silence dragged on, Summer had been the only one to try and get a conversation going, which made her embarrassed when it failed. The worst of them all had been Austin, who was constantly glancing at Mike in the rearview mirror, in a way that very much suggested she wanted to ask him something.

She was the pack leader. It was her job to be the strongest of the group, to be the rock that the others could reach to for support. She always took it personally when he tried to keep to himself.

It just made him feel worse.

When they parked in the back of the studio lot, and all of them shuffled wearily out of the car, Mike could feel the gnawing weight of his eviction pressing on his shoulders, the same way that the sun pressed down from the sky. It was all around him, all the time, smothering every breath he took.

He felt very tired.

He didn’t know what he was going to do.

And as he stood in the parking lot, feeling the silence of the soundproofed studio walls, and the great expanse of the desert beyond, he could tell that the rest of the girls were feeling just as tired and beaten down as him, in their own separate ways.

This was supposed to be the day that YEEN’D.com made it big. They were about to shoot an orgy. And none of them were happy.

“Come on,” Austin said.

She led the way across the parking lot, through the concrete thoroughfare, between the pale walls of the rectangular buildings, passed the film crews shuffling across the sunbaked alleys with golf carts and overloaded vans. Numbers were plated on the studio doors. It was the only way to distinguish them.

YEEN’D.com had been given temporary residence in studio 17. It was the same studio where they had filmed The Three Hotties Problem.

Mike tried not to assign meaning to that.

When they arrived, they found the wide sliding doors of the studio had been thrown open, and there was currently a hive of film crew crawling around the interior, already hard at work setting up the shoot. Mike could see a forest of light reflectors, directional microphones, SLR cameras, video taps, boom mikes slung up on the rafters above, endless amounts of folding chairs. There were so many wires he could barely see the floor.

Usually, when he filmed with the yeens, he spent more time setting up the shot than actually getting pounded. It took a lot of work to do proper lighting and blocking. As he watched more than a dozen people scurry around the set, Mike had to admit—it was kind of nice only having to worry about being the talent.

His relief didn’t last long.

He saw the white sheets of a king-sized bed, center stage in the studio, where he would soon be pounded by four very large yeens.

Even worse, when he and the yeens stepped inside the studio, a tigress immediately cocked her head from a dolly-mounted camera, as if the five of them had tripped an invisible wire. Her fur was well-groomed, her suit and skirt striking a professional cut. She held a clipboard in her paw like it was a symbol of all her concentrated authority.

Her gaze was direct and challenging.

“Christ,” Austin whispered.

The tigress broke off from the crew, gracefully stomping over wires and dolly tracks, making a direct line to the studio entrance. Her gaze never wavered. She had an expression like someone about to swallow some nasty medicine.

“You’re the talent?” she asked, barely slowing to a stop.

“Uh,” Austin replied. “Sure. Yeah. Nice to meet you.”

The tomboy yeen stuck out a paw, but the tigress was already scratching out some checkmarks in her clipboard ledger, no longer glancing at any of them. The hand went unshook.

“Daisy, Veronica, Summer, Austin. That right?”

“Uh, yeah. Just—”

“Oh,” the tigress said, suddenly perking up. “Major Manly, too!”

Mike felt an immediate sense of dread. He was quick to notice how her body language changed, how the tone in her voice went from strictly professional to eager and excited. She was about to flirt with him, like so many other managers before her, and he was going to have to put up with it. With his co-stars, he only had to play nice for the camera. For the actually important people on set, he had to pretend to like their affections.

He didn’t need this shit right now.

“Barely saw you there!” She peeked over Austin’s shoulder, giving him a white whiskered grin. “Come on out. Let me touch you up.”

Mike repressed a sigh, stepped out from the cover of the yeens, and presented himself to the tigress. He did not appreciate the way her tail was swishing behind her skirt.

“Oh, you’re cute.”

Without asking any kind of permission, she grabbed his chin, pinching it between thumb and forefinger. She tilted his face from side to side. She inspected the texture of his skin, the cut of his cheekbones. Her claw was dull on his lip.

“Can I get some makeup?” the tigress yelled, still jostling his face. “Concealer, please!”

In the distance, a grey-furred rat jogged deeper into the studio.

Mike tried not to grimace. He could feel the yeens tensing up behind him. More than anything, he just wanted all of this to be over.

“Let me hear some moans,” the business tiger said.

Mike tried to swallow his pride.

The tigress pinched his chin, leaning close, the white fur on her neck shining beneath the afternoon sun. “Give me a moan, sugar.”

“Ohhhhh,” Mike said.

“Ohhhhhhh,” the tigress replied, with emphasis.

“Oh!” Mike responded, loudly. “Ohhhhh! Oh! Oh!”

“Eugh! Ah! Ooooooo!”

“Hnnnnh! Hah! Oh—hnnnn—haaaaaahhhhh!”

“Ooooooouuugggggghhh!” the tigress yelled.

“OHHHHHHHHHHH!” Michael shouted.

“YEAH! OH, YEAH! OHHHHHH!”

“GOD, YES, OOOOOOHHHHHHHHH, YES!” Mike took a deep breath. “AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH—”

Her claw pressed his lips together. The tigress leaned so close he could feel the ghost of her whiskers.

“Good boy,” she said, her thumb firm on his chin. “I’ll take some of that later.”

“Hey,” Austin said, stepping between them. “Excuse me. Just one thing, but, uh—who the fuck are you?”

The tigress barely looked at Austin. “Charlotte Dubois. Unit Production Manager.”

“Austin. Nice to meet you.”

“Isn’t that a boy’s name?”

For a long moment, the three of them did not move.

“So,” Austin said, loudly. “Production manager. Below the line stuff, huh?”

“That is what it means.”

“It means you’re in charge of everything but the actors.”

“You could say that,” Charlotte answered.

“I am saying that.”

The tigress gave Mike a roll of her eyes, as if him and her were privy to a special secret. “I wear a lot of hats around here. Not every shoot has a director. Sometimes, I step in.” She finally spared Austin a glance. “You might not understand, being small-time.”

Austin’s muzzle began to curl.

“If it needs to be said,” Charlotte said, “we do things differently than whatever amateur website you were fucking for. From now on, you’re the talent. You do what you’re told.” She grinned at Mike. “Some of you do it better than others.”

He felt a looming presence behind him, as the other three yeens stepped close. He was surrounded by fur, claws, and muscle.

“Hey, Manly,” Charlotte asked, giving a low purr. “You do private shows? I can pay—”

“Okay,” Austin said. “Fuck off.”

She pushed the tigress. There was a swiping paw, a responding rake of nails. Hisses and growls filled the air. Mike felt himself being pulled by Summer and Veronica. After a few vicious shoves, Charlotte was standing a little distance away, trying to smooth the wrinkles in her button-down shirt, while Austin stood directly in front of Mike, her tank top ripped open at the chest.

From the side, a grey-furred rat arrived with makeup.

“Eat a dick!” Austin snarled.

The rat scurried away.

Charlotte fixed her shirt, striding forward again. Her legs were long and slashed with black. “Who do you think you are?”

Austin folded her arms. “Same to you, bitch.”

“I’m the one in charge of this production, its budget, and all its fucking crew, so you better not fuck with me.”

“You don’t fuck with him,” Austin replied, flicking her head. “He’s mine.”

“He’s ours,” Summer added.

“Part of the pack!” Daisy offered, flexing her arm.

“You want him,” Veronica confirmed, “you go through us.”

Mike was momentarily squeezed between three different mountains of spotted fur. Before he could offer any kind of defense for himself, Austin reached back, wrapped a large paw around his bicep, and yanked him away from the other three girls. The tomboy yeen pressed him so tightly against her side that he was practically in a headlock. His cheek squished the sides of her breast.

“He’s mine,” Austin said. “So fuck you, and fuck off.”

Charlotte straightened herself, the pleated grey of her skirt clashing with the bright orange of her fur. “Let me tell you something. Do you have any idea what’ll happen if you break your contract with Smash Queen?”

“Why would we break our contract?” Austin replied. “I just want to make an orgy. You’re the one being an uppity bitch.”

“Because I don’t like you now, you uppity bitch, and I think I’ll tell the suits you attacked me on set. I might even press charges about it. Who do you think they’re going to believe?”

Austin paused.

“I’ll tell you what’ll happen,” Charlotte said, “if you break your contract. I don’t even need to read it. We make every podunk little website sign the same one.” She jabbed a claw. “We’ll sue your company for the advance payment we gave you, any personal damages, and all the revenue we lost by delaying production. By contract stipulation, all of you will be forced to participate in several more shoots, on our terms and at reduced payment. And just to make sure you really get the fucking point, we’ll have you blacklisted with every other big league studio in the country, because they need to know you’re too stupid to just play ball.”

The tigress glared at Austin. Her words hung in the air. Behind Charlotte, more than a dozen crew members had stopped to watch the confrontation. They did not seem very surprised at what they saw.

“So,” Charlotte said. “You still think you’re special?”

Mike couldn’t see Austin’s expression, but he could feel the way her arm tightened against him. “No,” she replied.

“Good.” Charlotte raised her chin, peering down her nose. “Now I’m going to go over there, and I’m going to lick your humie boy toy, and if I get the slightest hint of resistance from you, your contract is broken. You understand?”

Austin didn’t answer. None of the other three yeens responded. There was a silence filling the air, mixed with the heat of the sun and the gentle thrum of stage-ready lights.

Charlotte stalked forward. She did not look at Mike. She kept her emerald eyes focused on Austin, and the girls behind her. Once the distance was closed, she bent down, gripped Mike’s face in both her paws, and licked him roughly across the cheek, the dozens of little spines on her tongue dragging across his skin like a bed of nails. He started to bleed. She never once met his eye.

The tigress straightened herself.

“Know your place, bitch.”

She walked away, paying them no more attention. Slowly, the rest of the crew members filed back to their tasks.

Mike felt Austin begin to squeeze him very hard.

“Hey!” he shouted.

Austin blinked, let him go, flicked hair from her eye. “Sorry, I—” She blew a breath through her nose. “You alright?”

Mike touched his cheek. The skin was raw and peeling, slowly growing wet with blood. All the bristles on Charlotte’s tongue were designed to strip flesh from bone, and that wasn’t even mentioning her claws. He could imagine what would happen if she ever took more than a passing lick.

“I’m fine,” he said.

Austin grimaced, balling up a wad of her tank top.

“I’m fine!”

“Shut the fuck up.”

Austin grabbed his shoulder, raised a wad of her shirt, and wiped the blood from his face. By the end, her shirt was torn and red, like she was playing an extra in a zombie flick. All the other yeens gathered around them.

“You know,” Austin said, “not to be rude or anything, but I think Charlotte has a trench between her legs.”

Mike looked up at her.

“She’s a cunt,” Austin said.

“I got that, thanks.”

Austin held up her hands, spreading them as far as her arms could manage, like a toddler saying they loved you this much. “Big.”

“Like a hallway,” Mike said.

“Like a mineshaft,” Austin replied.

“Like a subway tunnel.”

“Like a fucking missile silo.”

Mike cupped his mouth with his hands. “Echo, echo, echo. . . .”

Austin cracked a smile. None of the other yeens joined her. Summer looked nervous. Daisy inspected the wound on Mike’s cheek. Veronica was keeping a steady gaze deeper into the studio, watching the goings-on of the crew. Austin noticed their subdued response, and her own smile began to fade.

“You always get treated like that?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he said.

“I mean—” She paused. “I knew about it. It’s what people do in the industry. But, I mean. . . .”

“It’s different actually seeing it.”

Austin looked uncomfortable. Her tawny ears flicked from side to side.

“Look,” Mike said. “Thanks, but . . . don’t do that again. You just made it worse. It’s my job to make people like me. It’s easier just to smile, talk when I have to, and get it all over with.”

Austin made a face. “Jesus, Mike."

“What do you expect?”

She threw up her paws. “I don’t know. Something?”

“Don’t be naïve, man.”

“Naïve?” Austin’s fur began to bristle. “Fuck you, naïve! I’m the idiot for protecting you?”

Mike wiped more blood from his cheek.

“He’s not wrong,” Veronica said. “You don’t get famous by making enemies. It’s all about who you know, and how much advantage you can take.”

“V,” Austin said.

“Austin, darling. It’s better if we don’t make a scene.”

“Yeah,” Summer added, rubbing her arm. “I just . . . I don’t know. I’m not feeling it. I don’t really think we belong here. Let’s just keep our heads down.”

Daisy gave a bit of hesitation before speaking. “She was right—I mean, Charlotte—the missile cunt—wow, I don’t like swearing—” She cleared her throat. “She was right about the contract. If we break a single clause, Smash Queen has every right to sue us. We’ll be bankrupt just from the lawyer fees.”

Austin had an expression somewhere between shocked and dismayed. “Guys. This was supposed to be our day. You know? This was our big break.”

They all avoided her gaze. A silence drifted through the open studio shutters.

Austin tried to speak, took a deep breath, and lowered her gaze to the floor, slowly shaking her head. “I just—” She threw a paw towards the inner studio. “There you go, man. We don’t have to set up anymore. We’re just the talent. All we gotta do is fuck.”

No one answered her.

“Cool,” Austin said. “Fine. You guys do whatever. I’m gonna get cleaned up.” She turned away. “See you at the orgy, I guess.”

“Hey,” Mike said.

The tomboy yeen glanced over her shoulder.

Mike felt a fluttering in his chest. “I mean, thanks for trying.”

“Sure, Mike.”

They looked at each other. Her tail slashed to the side. Soon after, Austin walked away, shrugging off her torn and bloody shirt. With her back turned to him, Mike found himself glancing at the strap of her bra, and the spotted fur that flexed above the muscle, until she had disappeared from sight.

Outside the studio, a golf cart drove by, carrying a rainbow grassland of dildos.

“Well,” Veronica said, holding up her phone. “Need to make a call. Do some vocal stretches.”

“Yeah,” Daisy said, stretching her arms. “I’ll do pushups. Get a little pump.”

Summer looked around the open studio. “I’ll . . . try not to look weird, I guess.”

Mike shrugged.

Slowly, the crew of YEEN’D.com separated into their own little tasks. Veronica went outside. Daisy shadowboxed the air. Summer wandered over to the catering table. Mike tried to look for Austin again, but she was already gone.

He sighed.

Feeling alone, he walked over to the smoking area, lit a cig, and leaned against the hard plastic shell of a microphone case, trying to focus on his own problems.