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Easy now Sprocket, our time here is short. There is much we have to experience together, our most wanton desires, our heaves of retching mingling like two lost lovers. Will you curse me when you puke at a certain point in this obscene little tale, like I did? Will you instead hold me, lick away my salty tears of long held anguish, and yearn for more? All characters, living, dead, possessed, or undead, are copyright Eldyran. Hellraiser and its intellectual properties are the rights of Clive Barker. Only by Vanity do you Taunt Happy Fun Ball(tm) !!!

Hellraiser: Hellsent

5th Piece - For thy Days are Vanity

2006 by Eldyran

England, 1684, the Age of Reason

As the elderly mathematician Brouncker shuffled down the bleak sideways of London's back alleys, his shadow crept away from the flickering dim lighting cast by the occasional house lamp. The weasel huddled in his thick winter robe as his hind paws scraped across the frigid, crumbling clay bricks underneath them. While the heavy linen afforded him some protection against England's most bitter winter on record, the biting creep of an impartial, uncaring world could not be cast off forever.

As the mustelid wandered down the riverside streets between Black Friers and White Friers, he cast an off glance to the unmoving Thaymes, locked in black, icy slumber. He stopped for a second underneath a lantern to gawk at the tiny lights of oil lamps dotting the ice. He stood silent vigil for the tents of the Frost Fair, and for a fleeting moment, wondered how this world could carry on with such revelry, even in such dark times. Aside from the thin trails of smoke trailing up from chimney's, and the slight twinkle of their associated lanterns, the mathematician might have mistaken this scene for a bleak still life.

No wind whispered dark promises to him; no rustle of another living, breathing soul for leagues.

He turned his gaze to the silent heavens above, to their twinkling, ageless stars, and wondered if that barren, alien landscape was any more gelid and unwelcoming that the one under his hind feet. The constellations spoke to him of some underlying order among the celestial chaos, and for a fleeting moment, gave him a errant sense of false hope. As his breath misted in the frigid air and billowed from his muzzle, he watched it disappear before barely reaching for oblivion's expanse and its scattered points of wayward promise above.

The weasel pulled out the strange cubic relic he had acquired through the foreign, often overlooked, markets of the the East India Trading company in Canton. Underneath the dead lights of an alien sky, the fractal pattern of Orno's Puzzle Box twinkled with a ominous curio. As his claws ran the fractal etched lines, a leaden emptiness built deep within his chest, and his paws worked over the strange box.

He had worked on this box for decades, unable to solve its complex design through sheer reason. Tonight however, on the last night his aching body would draw breath, he hoped that a desperate yearn for a universal solution might guide him to a verbal equation that would, at least for him, bring order back into this hell spun chaos.

He didn't even look at his shaking, numb paws, letting his intuition, his last desire, lead them. With a final click, the fractal patterns of the box rearranged, and William stumbled back as bluish black lights broke through the etched cracks, the box now spinning in midair. The sudden screech and shrieks of the trained birds of the Chipperfield's Circus broke London's impassive silence, right as emancipated paw of a derelict clamped down on the weasels shoulder. The mustelid gave a shout of fright before turning around and staring at the scruffy goat pauper.

"Lord in Heaven ... what are you ... ? William began.

For those who yearn for final answers the scrawny goat spoke suddenly, Their wait stretches further than the enumeration of Pi ... The weasel shrank away suddenly from the old, unusually learned goat, who continued. Lord Leviathan slumbers, awaiting his time when he can bring chaos to the orderly creations of his Brother Yahweh.

"B ... but why ..?" the distraught weasel stammered.

Because his Brother Yahweh cares more for Order; the Frailty, the Flesh of this substantive world than him. And so Chaos; Destruction, Pain, must be brought to Earth. To bring them together again. The four. Yahweh. Leviathan. Behemoth. Ziz. Fire. Water. Earth. Air.

"N ... no ... there must be a more complicated, logical reason!" William lurched forward, falling on his knees before the deceptively calm, analytic goat. The weasels paws balled up the tattered vesture of the goat's rags, the small drops of salty tears freezing on his frost covered furry cheeks before they could even fall to the ground.

Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem, Mathematician ... William's lungs burned as his last sobs brought in unbuffered, icy stabs of frigid air, which impossibly as it seemed, were even colder now. He opened his tired eyes up to that last glimpse of the alien sky, his mind blanking out the true form of the Guardian demon Orno before him. Before the winged, skeletal goat's bony fingers plunged deep into the orbits of his skull, William wondered if corporal death would be his last intellectual reprieve.

It was Logical, if not Naive ...

Florida, 1974

"Tell me again ... Joshua ... why do you spend so much time on puzzles?"

Laura leaned back into her dark velvet cushioned high back chair and waited from any type of response from her patient. Instead, the young black fox ignored her, his vibrant green eyes intent on the 3x3 lacquered wooden puzzle cube in his recently scarred paws. His muzzle wrinkled a bit, not used to the weight of the black, horn rimmed glasses on it. As the manipulated inter workings of the mechanical puzzle clicked in the ensuing silence within the cozy psychologist's office, the female lupine closed her crystal colored eyes and gave a soft sight of frustration.

It had been this way for six months now. Ever since Joshua's uncle, Gabriel Merchant, had brought the introverted young fox to her office, it had been an exercise in futility to rehabilitate him. Once a week, he'd sit in her velvet green chair, and shut out the outside world, even as she tried to pry the reclusive fox out of his mental shell. Whatever abuse his father delivered upon the poor, withdrawn vulpine must have been strung through many years, most likely right up to his grizzly murder.

It was always the children who suffered so.

Laura couldn't understand how anyone could beat children. They were so fragile. So delicate. Like glass actually, so smooth under the fur. And yet someone could always see themselves reflected in glass. The female lupin opened up her gorgeous blue eyes to the multitude of small decorative mirrors mingled in with the small knick knacks adorning her selves and bookcases. She loved seeing herself in them; looking at how well groomed her black and white fur with gray streaks fell across her smooth skin. The only other thing she loved looking at more was children.

Especially young boys.

Although Joshua had not whispered a single word to her in the successive series of hourly visits, it was not all in vain. Sometimes she would just watch the young fox sit and sleep. So innocent. So pure. So broken. In the ensuing months she grew to know his mannerisms, the subtle ways he communicated to her without his muzzle lips ever ushering a single word: The way he would stop momentarily if she asked a particularity upsetting question, the way he narrowed his eyes when she tried prying into the more intricate details of his father's gruesome demise.

She probably knew him better than any soul on earth, all without whispering a single word to her. In a way, she had every right to grow to covet him. Handsome. Intelligent. Crafty. Joshua's father certainly had shown his barbarous way of love. His uncle had done no better, in difficult times he handed the baton of responsibility to her, shirking any obligation of paternal care. Joshua was hers now. They all were. All their little cherub faces, their silky fur and unspoiled flesh. Captured for all eternity.

And hers to keep for as long as her private treasure box remained a secret.

Just as she brought her daydreaming gaze about to engage Joshua in another round of parley, her muzzle parted in startled surprise. On her desk in front of her lay the wooden cube; its once jumbled sides rearranged in uniform lacquered hues. After Laura's paws plucked it delicately from her desk and examined the odd cube, her gaze drifted past her canid muzzle to the silent black fox. He sat still in his seat with his paws folded into his lap; a good two meters away. Joshua's gaze met hers, a sly look in his green crafty eyes that belayed all the vulpine cunning and viciousness that wasn't immediately expressed in his outward appearance.

"Its a Rubik's. From Hungary," the black fox whispered in hushed tones, his black muzzle lips barely moving.

"But how did you ..." Laura's words died off her own muzzle lips as she leaned back into her chair, shuffling the mundane puzzle cube from a different world back and forth in her large, lupine paws. She could have sworn that he hadn't moved an inch in her peripheral vision, but that strange oddity was overshadowed by the fact that the black fox had actually spoke. The cunning predator fought with the clinical psychologist, but the inner moral struggle over how to proceed was lost before it even began.

The Needs of the Flesh always overcame the Wants of the Spirit. Desire once again overcame Reason.

"I bet you love secrets, Joshua, am I right?" Laura whispered, leaning forward. The female wolf kept her voice low so that her eye candy male receptionist couldn't hear her clandestine advances through the office door over the clicks and ching of his typewriter. Joshua pushed his heavy glasses back up the ridge of his muzzle with a paw tip, but just stared at her, saying nothing. The psychologist adjusted the loose cuffs of her silk angel blouse, and hastily scrawled something on a scrap piece of paper before getting up from behind her desk. She knelt down next to Joshua and placed a large canid paw on his slender shoulder even while the other placed the crumbled address to her apartment into Joshua's miniature paw.

"If you come by later tonight," she whispered, throwing off an disarmingly gentle and materialistic smile, "I'll show you some of my secrets. Would you like that Joshua?" The black fox shuffled a bit in his chair, unsure of how to respond to this odd touch from this odd wolf.

"It will be our little secret, so don't tell anybody. Not that you would anyway my little silent, beautiful fox. Ten o'clock, Joshua, and don't be late." She placed a paw on his back and gently led him out the door, confident that her little seed of carefully planted curiosity would bring the innocent fox to her den. As Laura closed the door behind him, she covertly ran her sharp lupine claws down her blouse, raking the tingling, flushed mounds of fat and fur under the silk material.

Joshua would make a perfect addition to her little collection ...

* * * * * *

As Laura gave her Cabernet a slight swirl in the wineglass resting on her upturned paw, she surveyed the setting and mood of her apartment, and decided everything was finally perfect. Her crystal eyes roamed over the carefully rearranged furniture, the way the candles cast a soft glow about her abode, flickering shadows filling every corner. She sipped her wine and savored the flush of heat that coursed through her, the haunting movements of Ave Maria drifting through her apartment from a Hi-Fi system in the bedroom. The tingling sensation that crept through her fuzzy muscles had taken the edge off the knife like anticipation she had felt all day.

Laura decided soon after Joshua left to take the day off early, just to make sure that every preparation could be made for her subject's arrival. The wolf had dusted and vacuumed, gone out and picked up some jasmine scented candles, and after coming home, decided to vacuum again. She waltzed through her apartment, the material of her black, shear nightgown gliding across her well groomed fur. Laura stopped just outside the doorway to the dark spare bedroom, leaning against the doorway with a slight frown on her muzzle. The wolf never allowed guests into this room, and although a few visitors had asked about staying the night, her den was very, very private.

Oh yes, her public mask was one of quiet contemplation and contentment, so why would anyone suspect that she would need a companion? She shivered at the ghastly thought; someone in her bed. They would probably come to bed unshowered, and snore. Children didn't snore, nor did they reek of old sweat, stale beer, and cigarettes. She closed her eyes and thought about all the times her subjects spent the night with her, her arms wrapped around their small, furry forms, keeping them warm throughout the night.

Why couldn't she just have her own?

A small tear escaped her grief and slid down the perfumed fur of her cheek, just as the doorbell chimed. She opened her crystal eyes and wiped what further tears threated to spill, before dropping off her wine glass on the kitchenette island. The wolf hurried over to unlock and throw open the front door, but for a frightening moment, she was worried that no one was going to be there, the hallway empty. Or mayhap even worse, that there would be a drunk vagrant standing there, staring at her in a glazed stupor, wondering how she had gotten into his apartment.

Instead, Joshua stood patiently just outside her door, the young sable vulpine staring up at her with unblinking, emotionless green eyes.

Relieved, she fell to her knees and hugged him tightly. The fox frowned a bit, unsure of this sudden gush of emotion from this wolf, and the reason for her suffocating embrace. Sensing the sudden tension in his body, Laura released him and backed off, not wanting to startle her quarry.

"For a while, I was wondering if you were going to show up ..." Laura said, almost having to wave the hesitant fox inside.

As the female lupine shut the front door, Joshua shuffled his backpack to the other shoulder and looked around to the puzzling, dark atmosphere. He sniffed the air attentively, and scents of candy and spice waifed to his nose from the kitchen. Everything around him looked so spotless, so perfect; every décor planned meticulously out, not a single speck of dust on any of the frames on the walls. It reminded him of the first time he had stepped a hind foot inside his uncle's home six months ago, but for some reason it sent a electric pulse of wariness up his hackles.

The real reason for his apprehension abruptly stuck him. A multitude of mirrors lined the walls, of many shapes and sizes. Some of classic European design, some styled in Art Deco contemporary, encompassing old world and new. The sudden empty stares of numerous clones almost made him dizzy, and he tore his brooding eyes away, instead looking up at the female and her strange manner of dress.

"Are you hungry? Thirsty? I have chocolate cake and milk in the fridge. Boys love cake ..." Laura said, chewing her lip a bit, wondering if her subject had second thoughts about sneaking away in the late evening twilight to see her. She doubted the fox had told anybody, but still, she couldn't afford to take any chances. No one had found out about her little appetites, and she hoped it would forever stay that way. She gave a slight inward sigh of relief when Joshua shook his head gently, taking off his jacket and book bag. Laura smiled a bit, and took Joshua's more direct approach with her as a good sign.

"So do you want to see my most private secrets?" the sly wolf asked, wondering if this atypical vulpine would take the bait of suggestive secrecy. When the eight year old fox gave the slightest of nods, Laura's heart couldn't help but start pounding from sheer exhilaration. The wolf felt light headed as she ushered the prepubescent vulpine through her apartment to her bedroom, her keen nose just now picking up Joshua's immature scent.

Oh so close. So perilously close.

She mentally chided herself for her reactions. Joshua could more than likely pick up the scent of her arousal, her excitement, and nothing spooked young ones more than unfamiliar, potent bodily aromas. As the large female wolf flicked on the light to her bedroom, she hoped that the fragrance of her expensive designer perfume masked her heat. Joshua blinked in the bright light, and stood in the doorway as the wolf went to her bed and pulled out a lock box from underneath it.

As she took out a hidden key from behind a loose light switch cover, the black fox stood impassive and tried to make sense of her unusual scent, dress, and behavior. So foreign. He didn't understand why he was putting up with her, but for some reason he felt compelled to find out what was in the box. The two canids knelt by the security box as it opened, as if they were about to share in something forbidden, a secret that neither could ever talk about. The older female lupine's paws drew out a stack of black and white photos, and placed them before the young black fox.

Naked children smiled back at him with innocent, carefree poses.

Some gave bashful, half peaks to the camera, hiding behind their tails. Others gave wide grins, and tumbled about, eager to have their picture taken. Joshua's scarred paws shifted through the photos, unsure about the small twinges of ... feeling ... now tricking through him. He found himself unable to stop looking, each young form unique in shape, each personality distinct, each inch of naked flesh and fur captivating.

The only other fur that Joshua had ever seen completely naked was his cousin, Adrien. A few months ago they had done something together, something disgusting and satisfying at the same time. A part of him wanted to see his cousin naked more often, rub their furry bodies together in his bed, but the other part of him loathed what they had done. Anyone who ever did anything like that with him always died in gruesome, horrid ways. As he pushed the grotesque memories of Brazil from his conscious mind, his paws froze when the unsure gaze of a white wolf stared back at him, the budding musculature of a future athlete already taking shape in his preteen body.

Laura smiled as her collection captivated Joshua's attention. She noticed the fox linger a bit more on the boys, and the clinical scientist in her came to the only logical conclusion: that Joshua would most likely grow up to be gay. Not that she had any problem with that, for by the time the fox figured it out on his own, she would be most likely another muddled memory in his mind. The wolf's grin widened when the fox stopped at one photo in particular.

The white wolf pup's name was Raymond, and had been her favorite patient up until last year, when she deemed him ready to return to foster care. Such a tragic case really, and she was fairly confident that his last set of foster parents would be in jail for quite a long time after what horrendous things they did to the poor pup.

Still, she really couldn't complain, as he was so eager for any attention and affection that he practically jumped into her already awaiting arms. The nights that he spent with her, her paws on his timid body, her soothing words nurturing his shattered ego, were some of the happiest memories in his life. Although his outward confidence grew over the years, inwardly, he soaked up any attention anyone gave him.

Ten years later, it would prove to be his tragic undoing.

Joshua stared at Raymond for a long time, the outside world seeming to fade away till it was nothing more than a small pinprick on his perceptions. He didn't know why he felt like this, this feeling like he was about to fall off the earth. The black fox had never felt desire before. Curiosity, eroticism maybe. But this new sensation welling up deep in his dark heart, felt so directed. He didn't know who this white wolf was, but he knew he had to have him.

"I see you found my boy Raymond," Laura said, smoothing out the bristled fur on the back of Joshua's neck.

"Ray ... mo ... Ray ... m ..." Joshua began, unable to sound out the name, as if the very breath had been stolen from the lips of babes.

"All these boys and girls are beautiful, Joshua ... would you like to be beautiful too?" the sly wolf asked softly, her paw running down his back in a soothing, coaxing manner. His eyes looked up to her, and although they brimmed with uncertainty, they were more alive now than any other time Laura had seen them. "I know your scared Joshua, everyone is the first time. They are worried about being beautiful. But you don't have to be. Raymond was at first, just like you are now, but you should see him now Joshua, hes so happy, he feels so loved. Maybe you can be beautiful together, my little fox and my little wolf. My little boys. Would you like to meet him Joshua?"

The black fox's jealous eyes beamed back to her all his want, all his need. His slight nod was cursory, an afterthought. Deep within, the predator inside Laura knew her quarry would do anything now for Raymond. The Predator had caught her Prey. In such games, the Predator feels safe.

Unless the Predator underestimates the Prey.

"Come now," the lupine said, and grabbed his wrists gently, her paws damp from perspiration. Her heart thundered, the anticipation of getting Joshua under her talented lens almost driving her out of her vain skin. She led the young fox to the spare bedroom, and opened the door. Inside, her portable little photo studio had been carefully set back up. Joshua had never had his picture professionally taken before, so the lighting fixtures, the tripods and cameras, all the cords and miscellaneous equipment, almost excited him in a small fashion.

The bedroom's mattress frame had been taken apart and set inside the closet, the only reminder in lens view was its mattress, laid square in the middle of the floor underneath the soft glow of umbrella lights. Numerous vanity mirrors had been spaced around the mattress, their oak and maple finishes setting an austere mood. Boxes of jeweled necklaces adorned the dresser, exotic clothing filling the closet. All children love to play dress up. Incidentally, they have to take their clothes off to put new ones on.

Laura moved Joshua to the mattress, before taking her place behind the barrage of box like, clunky cameras. As she triple checked her equipment, her paws shook badly, and she wondered if she should have another glass of wine. She wished her boys and girls would like the taste more, as it would calm their camera shy jitters. After deciding that she had spent to much time fidgeting, making the shy fox even more nervous, she took a deep inhale and tried to relax.

She couldn't afford to spook him, not as close as she was.

"Joshua honey ..." the female said, her trembling voice trying to be as soft, as sincere as possible. "... you have to take off your clothes if you want to be beautiful." Joshua closed his eyes and hid his muzzle behind his bushy black tail, his sable vulpine ears laid flat across the back of his skull. "You'll never get Raymond to want to meet you unless I show him how beautiful you are." Joshua's sad green eyes opened back up at her, a mixture of uncertainty and want swimming around in the dark, deep recesses of his irises.

"Let me show you how easy it is sweetie ..." Laura said, and slipped one of the straps of her nightgown off her furry shoulder. The female wolf let the silk material slid down the mounds of her furry breasts, where it caught for just a moment, before falling to her hind paws in a pool. Joshua's ears perked back up as his curious eyes ran over the soft furry curves of her adult form, lingering on the strange, swollen mounds on her chest, and again at the moist slit between her thighs. Among these things, it was only her flagged tail and perked lupine ears that kept Joshua from growing uncomfortable. They reminded him of a certain picture, his fanatic obsession already taking adamant root in his cavernous heart.

"Now honey. I'm beautiful. Raymond is beautiful. Time for you to be beautiful too." Laura cooed, leaning on one of her tripods. She let the hesitant fox sit on the mattress for a while, telling herself to be patient. After a few moments, the young fox stood up on the mattress and pealed off his shirt, and her gawk snatched every snippet of his slender, undeveloped vulpine chest.

She almost forgot to squeeze the shutter trigger.

As the introverted fox undid his pants and unzipped himself, Laura's felt her pulse quicken, her now exposed sex growing even more slick with each inch of flesh and fur this innocent fox gave up to her. The female wolf almost gasped as Joshua slowly inched down his pants, his small furry sheath now freed from its cotton twill confines. He kicked off the small pool of garments at his ankles, and starred at the camera with a blank look.

"Your glasses, Joshua ..." Laura said behind the view piece, her paw tip twitching just on the shutter button, waiting for just the right moments. Some of her subjects only allowed one window of opportunity, and she had spent many years building her amateur photography skills. Joshua slid off the heavy horn rimmed glasses and tossed them into his pile of discarded clothing, now feeling completely naked. Laura took the opportunity to capture his the priceless look of vulnerability with some more snapshots.

"Now look around you Joshua ... look at yourself ..." His unsure gaze drifted to the long mirrors around him. Seeing himself from different angles almost caught the fox off guard, a momentary wave of vertigo washing over him, and he had to set gain his unsure footing on the spring mattress. Still, his paw drifted behind himself to run his claws through his thick, bushy vulpine tail. Joshua never gave this part of his body much thought, but a small seed of vanity had sprouted in himself now.

He started to believe he was beautiful.

The sensation of his claws on his tail sent a shiver up his spine, and they drifted to his furry ass cheeks. Laura almost swooned as she watched Joshua explore his body in the reflection of the mirrors. A single claw parted his cleft, circling the right ring of his tail hole, before pushing itself inside, just up to his first knuckle.

Laura's composure faltered, and before her wobbly legs could betray her, she set two of her cameras on time lapse, and walked up behind the fox. As her arms encircled the small fox, she slid a paw down his tight little stomach, and planted her square nose between Joshua's perked ears. His unintentional exhibitionism of self exploration unhinged any final amount of hesitation inside her, and her lupine tongue lapped out to gently lick the oh so soft fur between his vulpine ears. This was what drove her deviant appetites.

This damning first Taste of Innocence.

As was Leviathan's Law, Desire overcame Reason, and she pulled the small boy down to the mattress with her, her greedy paws running the gamut of what they thought was unspoiled flesh. Joshua small frame stiffened, struggled under the insistent touch, his mind going blank again as her rough paw pads gripped his juvenile sheath. Laura heard his whimpers, and a small inconsequential part of herself realized she was hurting him.

"St ... stoppp!!!" Joshua cried out, his limbs flailing underneath the larger canid. Laura licked up the small streaks of salty tears falling from his cheeks.

"Shhhh ... quiet my little fox ..." she whispered, trying to soothe his struggles.

She tried to be a delicate as possible, lest the fragile glass mind and delicate body shatter into broken shards, but she knew he would grow to like her touch. All her children eventually did. As she pressed her muzzle lips to his to stifle his whimpers, Joshua's green eyes fluttered around, anywhere else but the larger canid pressing down upon him. His dull gaze wandered to one of the mirrors, and from a strangers viewpoint, he watched a pitiful fox get molested. The victim wearing his skin and coat had wandered into this well laid trap, willingly at first. Now he feasted the on fruits of such ignorance.

Never again.

As the monster in lupine form ravaged his unwilling flesh with her muzzle and paws, a lesser evil in the mirror grinned back at him with a lipless, skeletal grimace. Joshua suddenly realized that something had crossed over when he opened up the Gates of Hell in Brazil six months ago. Although he had banished the demon with pins in his feline skull, something else had slipped from the puzzle cube and taken refuge in his very flesh, spared such fate as his pierced and flayed brother.

And yet this demon was not like the stoic jaguar nor the gibbering coyote from his nightmares. This demon was as silent as him, as emotionless as this gutted husk he called a body. As he stared at the bits of shriveled meat clinging to its bloody canid skull, Joshua reached out to the reflection with a quivering paw, and called to it using his inner voice.

Help me ...

Do you not yearn for such sensations?

She's hurting me.

Pain is for the living. You are dead inside. I am Death. Therefore, we are one and the same.

Joshua had felt true pain before, from his father, but that was different. This was an deeper, inward pain that threatened to tear his sanity, his soul apart. He didn't want her to touch him anymore, but she wasn't listening.

Make her stop.

Give your surging blood and fleeting flesh willingly, and together we will reveal to her true beauty the likes of which few mortals have seen.

Is that all I have to do?

Yes.

This demon didn't try to trick him with seductive, double worded promises. This cenobite spoke only what was necessary. His words were the inevitable, lacking the failings of emotion, nor the fallacies inherently contained within. Joshua had suspected that something from Hell had slipped inside of him six months ago, perhaps it was already too late to turn back. It had certainly been too late for Phillipe's brother and Father Anthony.

As he gave himself willing to the darkness within, he watched in distant fascination as the demented grin of the skull faded, an inky blackness spreading from his constricted shell shocked pupils to the whites of his eyes. The possessed fox snarled, spittle flying from his black muzzle lips, and the closet door flew open. Laura tore her muzzle lips from the snarling vulpine, and looked up to the shreds of silk shooting from the closet to wrap around her wrists and ankles. With a startled bark of delayed horror, necklaces from the jewelry box hooked into the ceiling, before the binds around her extremities looped through them, and tightened.

Laura screamed as the silk restraints hauled her lupine form up from the mattress, her arms and legs spaying wide open in a mockery of spread eagle. As the wolf thrashed above her, Joshua / Xolotl got up from the mattress, and with eyes black as pitch, reached out to either side of them with an upturned paw to the mirrors besides them. As their flesh withered on their paws, revealing the dark red bones within them, the mirrors cracked and exploded outward in a shower of deadly shards, slicing up the fox and wolf alike.

The rain of glass twirled about the fox, the flesh along his muzzle receding, the long bones and canid teeth of his muzzle now exposed. Above the mirrored tempest, Laura shrieked at the cadaverous fox, who turned up to stare at her. With black pits resting dead center in its bloody eye sockets, Xototl stuck out a arm into the swirl of serrated silicon around him, and the shards slashed away what little flesh reminded on the crimson bones.

As the Aztecan cenobite of Death pointed up to the bound, suspended lupine, jagged, miniature mirrors spun out of the maelstrom and tore past Laura, shattering her cameras in the process. The nude wolf howled as hundreds of razor edged filaments tore through her in precise lines, just barely grazing the glistening muscle underneath.

The damage was cosmetic. The ragged agony that flared through her sliced nerves was not.

Sections of pelt slid off of her like a paper birch shedding its bark during a Northland winter twilight. The skinned female's howls were heard all around the apartment complex, but it took half an hour for the police to arrive and break down her door. Her suffering was great, but the price had been fair. The first officers on scene puked. The homicide detective assigned to the scene went home later that morning and put the barrel of her service piece in her muzzle.

Their simple minds, hopeless souls, and nowhere hearts simply could not appreciate true inner beauty ...

Florida, 1984

Joshua sat cross legged on his blood and brain splattered mattress, holding the thrumming Lament Configuration in is scarred paws. A single claw lightly scraped out the small chunks of splintered cranium and gray matter out of the fractal etched lines. He didn't know how long it had been since he had come home to find his cousin Adrien masturbating in his bed, nor did he know how much time had passed since the night he had taken Refore's pride apart, bit by yowling bit.

All he knew was that Adrien was dead. More than likely his uncle as well.

He closed his green eyes and perked his ears, his ears intent for any sound in the house. Aside from the howl of arctic wind blowing throw the attic hallway from the storage room next door, the rest of the house stood silent like an desolate, empty tomb. He drew the red twinged leather varsity jersey closer to his slender shoulders, and thought about all the blood that had been spilled so far.

But it didn't matter. Raymond was almost his.

Joshua slid off the gore spattered mattress, the football jacket doing little to hide the black fox's naked body. He knelt by a loose floorboard and pried it up, revealing Laura's little lock box. As his slender paws plucked it out of its little hiding place, Joshua opened up the steel lid to the unsure look of an attractive white wolf pup. He delicately ran a claw over the lupine Adonis, the tip of his canid sex already spilling out of its protective sheath After a few moments of cradling his obsession, he dropped the picture back into the box, next to his deceased father's Brazilian passports.

Inside the passport pocket, hundreds of dollars in Franc's had lay untouched for a decade, waiting for the fateful day when Joshua would need them. The achromatic vulpine placed the lock box in his book bag, then shoved the Lament Configuration inside, leaving to go take a shower and get dressed. He was going to go to school today, the last day that he ever planned on attending.

He had waited long enough for Raymond. It was time ...

* * * * *

At the same moment Joshua went to take his shower, Jessica was just finishing up from hers. The female coyote scowled as she patted her matted, dripping fur dry, not even bothering to fluff out her tail. Why she had decided to take her Phys Ed so early in the morning was beyond her. Her amber eyes were still bloodshot from screaming innumerable obscenities at her bedroom wall all night long, underneath the cover of her boom box's blasted rendition of Twisted Sister's 'Burn in Hell'. A few stragglers with towels wrapped around them shuffled by the naked, once popular yote, the small beau monde of female cheerleaders growing dead silent as they passed her. Once out of sight around a bend in a row of lockers, their cruel howls of laughter and jeers echoed about the humid hot air of the mildew scented locker room.

Word had obviously gotten around school of Jessica's little make out session with the school's only gay fox.

Jessica listened to to the jeers and hung her head, paws tightening into fists around the towel she held. As her eyes sealed shut, her fangs gnashing together in her gritted muzzle, she thought back to the phone call Ray had made to her late last night. Her enraged growl was low, too low to be heard over the rush of shower spray, but the rumble in her chest was so deep it shook a few drops of water out of her fur bangs. A sudden giggle made Jessica's eyes pop open, and she caught the hint of a familiar bushy red furred with black tipped tail disappear behind a row of lockers.

"L ... Lisa?" the slim, shapely yote stammered. She dropped the towel in her paws and jogged after the vixen, the only witness to her misunderstood intentions with that little queer. Jessica rounded corner after corner, each time only capturing a shadowy glimpse of her fellow cheerleader in the dim light of the misty locker room. Once Jessica talked to her this whole mess would get sorta out.

Entering a rarely used shower room, Jessica stopped in her tracks to the sight of Lisa's slight, nude vulpine body undulate slightly underneath the curtain of hot spray. Jessica's muzzle parted a bit as she watched her squad mates paws smooth out the water soaked red fur covering her supple 'b' cup breasts. The yote had seen her best friend shower a couple of times over the past few years, but the way the naked flesh and fur of her feminine body pitched and rolled underneath the shower head, the way Lisa's paw worked down her taught stomach to gently clean the soft folds of her sex, Jessica felt a sudden pang of voyeuristic guilt.

As the yote took a couple of hesitant steps closer to the vixen, the coyote's large ears flickered back and forth when they picked up a rather perky whistle coming from the other girl. Paced in clipped, repetitive rhythm, it almost sounded like her friend was whistling to the tune of an insane drummer. Something didn't seem right with her friend, but maybe this was just another social prank. When Jessica stepped underneath the spray and caught the madness in the dark eyes of Lisa, she gave a slight gasp of fear, and scrambled backwards into the locker room wall.

"!Aaah-aH yawA eM ekaT oT gnimoC er'yehT" the vixen shrieked suddenly, a hideous laughter booming off the hard, mildew encrusted concrete walls. Lisa gave a empty shark's grin and strode up to her, using her wet naked body to pin her coyote classmate in place. Jessica's naked backside pressed harder against the wall, per paws pads gripping the flat, bumpy surface for support as Lisa muzzle wrestled with her own, jockeying for position. Jessica's eyes widened in shock as Lisa forced her canid tongue into the moist, velvety confines of her muzzle.

As Lisa's breasts slipped against her own, Jessica gave a short, clipped bark as a fox's paw slipped down between their wet bodies to clamp down hard on the mound of flesh and fur between her slick thighs. Jessica gave a stifled cry of feigned disgust and shoved her friend away.

"What the FUCK is wrong with you Lisa?" Jessica sputtered, trying to deny just how nice her friend's lips had tasted.

"What's wrong bitch? Don't like the taste of your own medicine?" Lisa shot back, the fox licking her lips in lewd gesture. The coyote narrowed her eyes and got in the shorter canid's face.

"Is that what this about? That little black cock jockey?" The yote growled, her muzzle inches away from Lisa's own. "He had it coming to him, besides, its not what you think. And when did you turn Fem-Dyke on me anyway?" The vixen gave a wicked smile, her feminine features morphing into masculine ones. Her fur shifted from prestigious red and black to a mongrel's coat of mismatched hues.

"Since I first saw you." Ueuecoyotl barked back, the coyote giving her a raunchy grin.

A hot trickle suddenly ran down the wet, matted fur of Jessica's leg.

"But don't worry," the trickster said, his outline shifting back into a fox, his fur now black pitch. The mask of Joshua snarled back at her, "I promise I'll take read good care of Ray for you ..."

"You wouldn't ..." Jessica growled weakly, still shaking.

"Why? What are you going to do about it ... Cunt ..." Joshua's doppleganger sneered, and shoved the female yote back hard against the concrete wall. As her head slammed into it with a hollow thunk, Ueuecoyotl smirked and stepped back into the deepening shadows. Seconds after the furious coyote managed to clear the stars from her vision, she lunged into the darkness, fists flying. Her claws raked thinning shadow, but nothing more.

She growled low, the fur on her hackles and spine spiking despite the wetness, and she shot off to throw on her clothes. If thats how the little faggot was going to play, so be it. Enough of his quiet ruse and petty tricks. She was going to get him.

Even if it was the last thing she did.

* * * * *

As Joshua stood by his closed locker, his neck cranked around to watch the gaggle of girls flock around the school's star running back, chattering up a storm, a cold brick of lead seemed to settle in the pit of his stomach. His paws clutched at the eldritch puzzle cube hidden in his book bag, the steady hum inaudible over the screech and yammering of incessant questions.

"Are you serious? She did what?"

"Does this mean your single then?"

"Hey Ray ... want to go with me to the Homecoming Dance after the big game tonight?"

"Ladies! Please!" Raymond growled out, his white lupine fur bristling, more than slightly annoyed. "I really don't know more than that. If you want to gossip, go find Lisa. She'll be more than happy to tell you everything I'm sure. Heaven knows why she called me first."

Rayond pulled out his uniform, pads, and helmet, then simply slammed his locker door shut and pushed his way out of the stunned onlookers in the crowded hallway. To Joshua's mild surprise, the athletic lupine caught his gaze and gave an apologetic smile, before walking through the dispersing throng to his locker. Raymond stopped in front of Joshua and stood there for an awkward moment, before taking a short inhale, not quite sure where to begin.

"Hey ... Josh ... I um ... heard what Jessica did to you yesterday after practice." There was another moment of silence as the lupine's cobalt eyes stared down into the vulpine's green set, waiting for Joshua to finally speak. When the fox's stoic facade did nothing but blink behind the horn rimmed glasses, the football player continued.

"I called her as soon I found out from Lisa." Raymond's brow furrowed in light concern for his classmate when the fox's expression never changed. The wolf tried not to think back to his first set of foster parents, and realized that his classmate might still be in shock. He never saw Joshua with anyone else, and the selfless wolf wondered if he should spend more time with the loner fox, should he want company.

"Hey ... Josh ... you wanna ... hang out after the game? Maybe talk? I'm supposed to show up at the dance afterwards if we win, because there is rumor that this years homecoming King and Queen ballot's been rigged. I'm now sure thats going to work out, since Jessica and I aren't going out anymore." The fox's ears twitched a bit, and for a moment, Raymond wondered if he saw a dark blue light flash behind Joshua's eyes. "You ... wanna come to the homecoming dance and hook up with me?"

Joshua's perked vulpine ears had never heard such splendid words, but tragically failed to comprehend the three most important ones.

And. Hook. Up.

Even as Joshua's muzzle split in a unhinged, broken line of sharp teeth rather than a sincere gleam of healthy happiness, Raymond just smiled back and placed a strong, supportive paw on his admirer's left shoulder. He suspected the gay fox had a crush on him, but what could it hurt to spend a night out with him?

Crushes were harmless after all.

"I'll see you at the dance then." Raymond said, before taking his paw away and heading down the now empty, dirty hallway. As the star running back's hind paw kicked a pop can, he wondered why the school's janitor wasn't out waxing the floors now that school had just let out. His thoughts now occupied, Raymond never turned back to the see the swirling mass that was the black fox's shadow.

On the opposite end of the hallway, a certain fuming coyote growled and slammed her clenched paws back into the wall behind her, eavesdropping on Raymond's little one sided conversation. As her muzzle lips curled in a cruel snarl, her nose could almost catch the scent of the little bitch's heat. She skulked down an adjacent hallway, her eyes narrowed, the malevolent fire in them blazing with a vengeful plan.

Meanwhile Joshua watched the white wolf tromp down the hallway to the boys locker room, and get set for tonights game. Despite the sense of delirious elation that threatened to make him collapse, Joshua opened his locker door and pulled out Raymond's jersey, throwing it on his shoulders. His heart, once so quiet, wouldn't stop thundering against his ribs. The fox wasn't sure he knew what the squirrelly feeling that knifed up from the depths of his stomach, as if something with fluttery wings were attempting to take flight inside him. Joshua had never experienced this feeling before, and could not stop it from taking over. As he walked away from his locker, down the empty hallways, each hind paw step echoing its passage, Joshua looked down to his scarred paws.

He couldn't stop them from shaking.

Joshusa was so absorbed in these feelings, in his body's response, that he never saw the pipe wrench swing from out of no where from around the next corner. The force of the impact sent the teenage fox's head snapping back, and the ambushed vulpine's body flopped backwards like a boneless fish, his hind paws leaving the dirty, un-waxed floor. Before Joshua's back even hit the floor, Jessica dropped the two handed hold she had on the mammoth object, the wrench cracking the titled floor with a dull thunk, and snatched his ankles.

As she dragged the body to a maintenance elevator, taking them straight down into the school's hellish bowels, a huge gash in Joshua' scalp left a smeared streak of dark crimson on the tiled floor behind them ...

* * * * *

Joshua's blood encrusted eyelids cracked open to world of wavering shadow and molten brimstone. He attempted to move, but his arms were pinned behind his back. As the dazed fox struggled, shrieks and groans fell to his limp ears from above, as if tormented souls from the upper layers of Hell screamed his eternal damnation down to him. His head fell forward suddenly from vicious vertigo, but something kept him somewhat upright, his slack muzzle dripping a thin line of drool down to his chained hind feet.

As the double focus of his damnation congealed, the fox saw that steel grating comprised this particular layer of the Inferno. As his blurry sight snatched around, occasional glimpses of red steel pipe and conduit jutted, poked out from the blanket of thick shadows and billowing steam. More struggles of his constrained body brought rusty squeals of pulleys and groans of iron chain from his makeshift bonds.

A thick segment of chain tightened around his neck, and the fox choked a bit, his body fully upright now, no longer slumping forward in limp posture. Thick pools of sweat matted down his exposed fur, Raymond's jacket holding in the baking inferno from the blast furnace feeding the school's boiler system just a few meters away. Joshua's book bag lay near him, the deep, electric thrum of the Lament Configuration making the vulpine's ears twitch.

"So what do you think, Fox?" Joshua shook the chains around his neck and glanced toward a mobile shadow that seemed to separate itself out of the steam filled, hissing darkness. Jessica stepped out, holding a iron poker in one paw, beating the pointed tip into her other. "I thought you might want some privacy after what you pulled in the girls locker room earlier today. And here I thought you wanted Raymond all to your self. I had no clue you wanted to work that little prick inside me as well ..."

Joshua's eyes narrowed and focused on her, but before he could snarl, she whacked the side of the iron porker hard against his ribs. The bound fox gave a sharp bark as something inside his chest broke. A vicious right hook send his head snapping back, his neck screaming in whiplash. Jessica shook out the pain in her paw and grimaced, her face shadowed in deep maliciousness.

"I knew you wouldn't get it through your thick skull who was in charge. But don't worry, once I get done with you, you wont ever want to use this ..." The female yote grabbed his junk again, this time her paw lingering a bit. " ... and if you live through it, I have a nice, jeweled black leather color that would look nice on you, princess."

Jessica smirked and dropped the tip of the poker into the coal furnace next to her, before turning back around. Joshua swayed back and forth a bit as she knelt down before him. Joshua gave a weak growl as her paw worked down his fly, before unbuttoning his pants and shoving them down to his ankles. She grinned at the way the humiliated slender fox squirmed in having his sheath exposed like that, and got up, grabbing a hold of her ex-boyfriend's jersey.

"I knew it was you who broke into Ray's locker, you little shit," Jessica growled, slapping the fox around a bit, "You followed your little prick instead of using your head." The coyote punched him again, the sound of glass cracking from the impact. Joshua's broken and cracked horn rims slid off his muzzle, before the lenses shattered on the steel grated floor. His head slumped forward, his unfocused eyes now shut. "So its time to take care of that worrisome little thing between your legs."

Jessica pulled out the poker from the coals gingerly, the handle almost blistering her paw pads. She brought the white hot tip right to the entrance to Joshua's sheath, letting the proximity of the searing tip singe the fur there. Her muzzle lips split in a wicked display of vicious, sharp teeth, and she angled the tip in preparation to shove the white hot metal tip deep inside. Just as her arm drew back, Joshua's eyes snapped open, and the sable vupline snarled.

To Jessica, his eyes had disappeared into entire pools of empty shadow, the whites now gone.

"Knnoooo ...." the possessed fox snarled, and a tendril of thickening darkness shot out and wrapped itself around Jessica's wrist. Without warning, the arm of shadow yanked back, and the white hot tip plunged deep into the coyote's left eye. A sudden gut wrenching howl filled the steamy boiler room, before Jessica fell to the ground writhing in agony, clutching the ruined torment of her left eye.

Joshua bowed his head, and without so much as a flinch, the iron chains holding the bound snapped and fell useless to the ground. As he stepped out of his pants and pealed off the jacket and shirt, the book bag by his hind feet started to shift and unzip. The demonic box of intolerable delights zipped out and stopped just above Joshua's outstretched and upturned paw. The deep red hues of the blast furnace brimstone danced around the spinning puzzle cube, now locked in its second configuration.

The demoniac vulpine strode naked over to the writhing, yowling coyote, and raised his other paw at her. Invisible marionette strings of unholy shadow yanked Jessica's pitching form up into the air as though it weighed nothing more than a mere feather. Jessica stared down in horror to her nemesis, the flesh of his very muzzle lips seeming to wither from his skull before her. Just behind him, a taller canid, or something that once resembled one, stepped out of nothingness, the furnace's fiery glow glistening off the exposed musculature and fat of her breasts.

Jessica bayed at the gruesome, skinned lupine standing before her, her lip less grin mimicking the shorter fox's. Strings of diamonds weaved through her exposed flesh, void now of any of her once vain fur. Shreds of her pelt fanned out behind her skinless head like a peacock's tail, held out with bands of etched silver. Laura's eyes, once able to steal the breaths of many stolen glances, had been gouged, hacked out. Now in the empty orbits, jagged shards of her vanity mirrors glinted back the dim, flickering light.

You should learn to play with my boy Joshua Laura said with a flat lisp, her velvety siren voice whispering to the coyote's fear frozen mind. The skinned lupine warped her arms around the corpse like truck of Xototl, her paw sneaking down to grope what was left of his sheath. Would you like to be my little girl? My beautiful little boy and my handsome little girl, playing together. I wont even need a camera this time. I can watch you two for all eternity, your cries of play and pain the songs of little angels in my ears.

Jessica screamed as slivered hooks of bone appeared out of nowhere and shot through her flesh, anchored by strands of tough sinew that seemed to disappear in the abysmal gloom. As the strands tightened, the hooks began to peal Jessica's flesh from her very bones, oh so carefully, and oh so slowly. If suffering was an art, Joshua was a tormented Picasso.

His canvas's sheiks of innumerable suffering sought the boundaries of her own personal hell, caught somewhere between reality and fantasy.

Ohhhh yessss ...._Laura hissed to the screeching, crimson butterfly before her, watching her stunning metamorphosis with eyeless awe. _Beauty is only Skin deep, but true Vanity goes straight to the Bone ...

As an insane puppeteer jerked the skeletal marionette around on shadow strings, Jessica's wide, white eyes projected the all her abject horror that her missing lungs could not. Joshua, now revealing his true inner self, levitated up to his female doppleganger.

Together, flying intertwined, the two crimson skeletons twirled about, fucked, in erotic dance macabre ...

~ Fin Part V ~

The End Draws Nigh. Now no one lies between the black fox and his white wolf. Will this be a happy ending, one that you can lull hushed little babes to sleep with, so they they too will dream of monsters and princes? Or will the guiltless white damsel reject his deadly black prince?

Two more chapters. One grim, inevitable conclusion. All the sensual vices, lack of penance, one could yearn for ... and more ...