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Chapter Twenty-five

Saturday September 5, 2009

2:53pm

WELCOME TO OHIO

The greeting went by as a flash of green and white, and Bella tried to recall when she had last left the state of Indiana. Her parents had never been world travelers, and for as much as she cruised her Grand Cherokee, this was the first time she had taken it over state lines. It came to her a few mile markers later: Christmas 2002--a week at her paternal grandparents' house in California.

But now, for the least likely of reasons, Bella whipped along the eastbound lanes of I-60, intently dodging through slower-moving traffic which swelled and further slowed, and as she pressed further into new territory, her eyes frequented a newly-installed, overhead-mounted TomTom GPS, an advance birthday gift from her father which displayed her route, speed, and, of utmost importance, the estimated arrival to an address in Hendrix, Ohio--too damn long, for most of the trip. Bella couldn't believe that she was resenting the distance her mother had put between them, and she figured that after that weekend she wouldn't regret it again.

She was sixty miles into Ohio when the TomTom directed her to an exit ramp, 'round one curling exit of a cloverleaf interchange before she cued behind a half-dozen cars at an endless red light. When the GPS announced that she had arrived to her destination, Bella eyed a large suburban apartment complex with orange-brick-and-beige-sided walls and a brown, gambrel crown. Big, bright balconies jutted from its second and third floors, over a yellow-green lawn which was naked but for a pair of evergreen shrubs shouldering a forest-green door. It looked a decent place, but Bella still smiled in seeing her mother reduced to apartment living. She parked in a narrow lot which extended the length of the complex and then sent her mother a short text.

Here we fucking go, she thought, slipping through the heavy front door into a small, stale entryway with a locked door and a call box. Aside the call box was posted a list of residents, their unit number and a small, white call button corresponding with each.

"Wagner"

Bella punched the button beside her mother's maiden name and smiled to herself.

Her smile faded as she hiked four flights of stairs in four-inch heels and found an expressionless face framed by the doorway of apartment #302.

"I never imagined this day would come," said the black shepherd, studying her daughter's silvered ears and peach heels and remarking in a drab, entirely unflattering tone, "You're looking good."

"So are you," Bella replied, repressing the glare which wished to 'cross her brow. She looked down at her mother, at the black, shining tresses which rested 'gainst a shoulder of her slate-colored tunic, at the tight jeans asserting her figure.

Still trying to look like you're twenty, thought Bella.

Her mother welcomed her into the apartment with a mortician's grace, guiding her by a dining hall and kitchen and into a neat and sleekly-furnished living room. Chemical cleaners and perfume bit at Bella's nose as she inspected the dark, modern décor and a sizable entertainment setup, then the black sectional sofa which her mother presented as her bed for the night.

"You're new job must pay pretty good," said Bella, setting her bags upon the sofa.

"Enough," smiled Patricia.

The mother shepherd gripped her upper arms, and her smile sharpened.

"Can we cut the bullshit, dear?"

"What are you talking about?"

"A birthday visit?" Her mother laughed. "Please."

"I'm more worried about the money than seeing you," said Bella, giving an unfriendly grin of her own. "I shouldn't have to say it."

"I could have mailed a check to save you a drive and a weekend."

Bella shrugged.

"I can't imagine your father is holding out on you."

"He won't give me shit," grunted Bella, and she stroked a paw over one ear. "Not since I got these."

"Is that what I'm funding? To turn that pretty face I gave you into a pincushion?"

Bella expelled a helping of her mother's perfume from her nostrils and rolled her eyes. "You're sounding like Dad."

"Alright, that's it."

Bella half-frowned. "What?"

"We're leaving," said her mother, vanishing down a short, dark hallway behind the sofa.

"For what?" called Bella.

No response but rustling and a pair of short grunts. Then her mother reappeared, smiling down at her from brown-leather sandals on five-inch heels.

"Just come with me."

_ 9 Lives Paintings & Piercings _

The words appeared in tight knots of cursive, red and black lettering over one of the dozen storefronts which lined a gaping corridor. Footfalls and chatty voices resounded along epoxy-coated floors, pockets of verdure and the constant skylights of the Rockwell Shopping Center, one of the largest malls in the region, but at the front of the 9 Lives studio there was only a young couple tucked into a corner near the counter where Bella and her mother stopped, plus the boyish yapping of pop punk playing through a PA.

"What's this about?" asked Bella.

Her gaze wandered over large portraits of pierced subjects posted on the walls, each piece featured in tall, rectangular frames with lights projecting from their base--a severe-eyed Siberian stud, his ears riddled with cone spikes, a sex-eyed vixen shoving a studded tongue from a symmetrically-studded muzzle.

"I thought you wanted more piercings," said Patricia, frowning at countertop spinner displays which glistened with all manner of jewelry.

"You're getting me one?"

"If you don't mind looking more ridiculous."

Bella smirked, elated, and her mind rushed towards a decision. She had to wait to get her tongue pierced with Lexi. Maybe she could go for an eyebrow or get some more of the extra work she wanted on her ears. Her face was contorted in thought when a hefty, soft-spotted feline appeared 'round the dividing wall behind the counter.

"How can I help you girls?" he asked.

Bella considered for a final second.

"Can you do septum piercings?"

"We can. You want it done today?"

Bella glanced at her mother and quickly nodded.

"I'll need to see some ID."

"How old does she have to be?" asked Patricia.

"Eighteen or signature of parental consent for anything off the ears."

"I'll sign."

"You are?"

"Her mother, unfortunately."

The bobcat wrinkled his brow at the word mother, reappraising the shepherd who had spoken it. "Let me get the form," he said, and Bella scowled at her mother who turned a proud and quiet face.

But her mother was back to her priggish attitude whilst she signed the waiver form. She pointed to the couple sat across the storefront from them, singling out the girl, a canine drooping with jewelry and a miserable expression. "Is that how you want to end up?"

"She's just ugly to start with," Bella grunted, observing the girl's unattractively-round head and the protrusion of her glaring eyes. "I can't even tell what she's supposed to be? Like, is she terrier or spaniel or what?"

"That's why you don't breed outside your breed, Bell," said her mother, and both shepherds laughed until Bella was called to the back of the shop.

* * *

9:08pm

"--and is punishable by up to 500 years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000."

The Federal Bureau of Investigation warning stained the living room carpet a warm blue, turned the glass of red wine in Bella's paw purple and highlighted the silver hoops and studs in Bella's ears. The light also tickled another piece of silver, a circled looped through the dark shepherd's swollen septum and out each nostril ("like a bull," in her mother's description). Bella loved it. Thought it looked sexy and mean and above all different. She couldn't wait to show her friends and classmates or to see how her father would react. But first she would have to last the a night with her mother, and to that, Bella took a hard swig, halving her glass.

"Slow down," said her mother, nodding her own glass of wine across the sectional. "This shit's not cheap."

"Doesn't taste very good."

"Dear, you wouldn't know good taste if it bit you on the ass." Patricia dropped a splash of wine upon her tongue, smirked and turned back to the television where scenes of social unrest played into a walking, silhouetted figure. "I doubt you can even taste with that _thing_jammed through your face."

Bella rolled her eyes and took down the last of what would be her first glass of the night.

* * *

A black void. Terrifyingly black. Claws gripping her. The black claws and the all too real things of a nightmare. Scared. She was scared. She was scared, and so she screamed. She screamed, "Mom!" and she screamed it again. "Mom, help me!" She screamed through the night's dark, and just when she thought it was helpless, that the claws would drag her back into that awful nightmare, a light appeared and scattered the dark of her bedroom, and in the center of the light stood her mother, dark as the night itself, raking claws down an exhausted grimace.

"Shut up!" her mother screamed. "Shut the hell up, and go to sleep!"

And, quietly, left alone to the nightmare's lingering claws and her mother's parting stomps, Bella rolled into her blankets and continued to cry.

* * *

Sunday September 6, 2009

11:44am

Sunday brought the long aftertaste of red wine and perfume. Lying across the sectional in her mother's living room, Bella listened to the low, continuous murmur of highway traffic coming from outside and slowly spun the new silver wheel through her septum. She was sore, but it was no worse than any other hangover, and as she blinked herself to life, it was another, more precise ache which ailed her--a pinch somewhere in the back of her head, a small sliver of discontent as though she was forgetting something. Something important. Something related to why she was waking up here at all.

Dragging herself from the sofa, Bella reviewed her newest piercing at the bathroom mirror and squinted fiercely. It was on the tip her tongue. Whatever it was that she had been meaning to do. Whatever it was that she was forgetting. It was important. But in all the fun of the previous night--

Bella spat at the sink in disgust.

Fun?

Shopping with her mother, sharing wine and mean-spirited conversation--

It _had_been fun, like a night with a friend.

But the more Bella thought about it, the angrier she became. She turned from the glaring and glowering shepherd in the mirror, trying to rein in her thoughts as she left the bathroom. If she could only nip that annoying pinch. She was sat back on the sectional, groping for the elusive idea when her ears perked at the whisper of door hinges. She turned, looking over the sectional as the way into the apartment opened and in stepped--

What Bella had been forgetting came back to her with a snarl.

What the fuck?

Her brother, slipping nonchalantly in from the hall, acknowledged her with a blank look, dipped a key ring onto a set of hooks beside the door and doffed his sneakers wordlessly.

A key. He had a key to the apartment. Bella looked more closely at the lanyard her brother had hung--a brown-leather thong with a bronze swivel clip and a cluster of gold and silver keys.

Her tail longed for an agitated lash.

"Not you again," she said.

Tyson said nothing, drifted towards the sectional and lowered himself to its vacant half. He moved in a slow and heavy manner, and his eyes patiently settled on the wall near the balcony door.

"Why are you here?" asked Bella.

"Visiting."

"You always just show up like this?"

"I guess."

"Great."

A thick silence took the apartment.

* * *

"Morning," yawned Patricia, spreading the pastel-blue sleeves of her night-robe for a morning stretch. Noon had passed half an hour ago. The mother shepherd saw the pointed, stoic profile of her son, his sharp eyes leading his handsome muzzle in her direction. She smiled. "How was your drive?"

"Fine," said Tyson.

"I didn't think you would be here so early," said Patricia.

She wafted along the back of the couch, stopping over her son's back and gazing over him, appreciating his build for a further few moments and playfully, almost motherly, whirled her claws through the short, dark fur between his ears.

"Barf. Get a room."

Her second child, hunching over her cellphone.

Patricia sighed.

* * *

They brunched at a busy little bistro, a dimly-lit place with small tables and small dishes served on little, plain-white plates, and they talked a lot about nothing, except for Tyson, who talked nothing of nothing and made the whole meal uncomfortable and unbearable. Bella picked at snippets of crab which were arranged tidily before her, but what she really wanted sat back-lit on shelves behind the bar. Oh, how good a drink was sounding.

* * *

1:45pm

Bella dawdled near the door as her mother and brother emptied their shoes. She kept her own feet wrapped in the faux suede of her sneakers and went to the bags she had left packed before the meal.

"Leaving already?" asked Patricia, who had just loosened a purse from her shoulder. The bag dangled, turned on a black-furred finger--a half-twist to the right, a half-twist to the left. A lazy rhythm.

"Yeah," Bella blurted.

"You don't want the rest of your gift?"

"Rest?"

Pausing, one sneaker playing semiquavers a step from the door, Bella watched an envelope appear from her mother's purse: a red-paper envelope with, she flipped it in her paws to see, her name inked in her mother's sharp hand. Tearing the envelope open revealed an unsigned card and two tumbling hundred-dollar bills which were swooped upon as an eagle upon a salmon. A genuine gratitude practically tumbled from Bella's mouth, but she restrained herself and gave a grumbled, amicable by the standards between her mother and herself, "Thanks."

Her mother waved the thanks aside, and her brother nodded in parting. No hugs. No little ruffles of her hair. No safe travels or come again soons.

And so, Bella burst back into the daylight beyond the apartment, passing the evergreen shrubs, heading straight across the bare grass, upon her a giddy smile, a fresh piece of silver, two hundred dollars, and--one jingling to either paw--two sets of keys.

* * *

Back inside of apartment #302, Tyson cranked the deadbolt knob and turned. "Seems like you two are getting along," he said, starting towards the black shepherd.

Her slender shoulders shrugged the comment aside, then tightened beneath his touch.

For Tyson, the week had been busy and long. 300-level PSY lectures. Checking fluids and filling tanks at the auto dealership he had started working at. More 300-level courses. More tedious, mind-numbing inspections. A bit of sleep between more studying and more classes and more work. Such was the life of full-time classes and a part-time job. Tyson pushed the black shepherd to the nearest wall of the apartment, brought his fangs to the muscles of her neck. He was in no mood to wait.

* * *

She had not made the mistake of forgetting for a second time.

For as bleak as brunching with her brother had been, as unhappy as she had been to see him, Bella realized that Tyson's arrival had been a godsend, and she sat in her Jeep, which now idled around the other side of her mother's apartment building, smiling at the strip of brown leather and the metallic glow of keys in her paw.

* * *

Patricia felt herself plunging into soft blankets and bedsheets and bliss, the roll of clothes 'way from herself, herself laden with hard, pulsing canine cock. Other wondrous sensations--a bright pain which flicked across her muzzle once, then again so that it left behind a shivering glow, the daggering of strong jaws upon various appendages and, the plat du jour, the crushing force of paws 'round her throat. Trance washed over her like an evening tide, everything going cold and dark underneath dancing light. Patricia basked in the shivering depths, pressure building in her head 'til she thought it could take no more--the lights pulsed thick and desperate over the darkness. She was sure she couldn't take it anymore. That she was spilling over an edge that she wouldn't return from.

This. This was what she had left her old life behind for.

Thoughtless, breathless sounds left Patricia.

Then a dizzying rush of oxygen, pain and pleasure.

And through the reports of little firecrackers in her ears, a pallid voice.

"What the fuck?"

The shimmering color