FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

---

I am going to come inside.

There was nothing else to the letter. No return address, no stamps or postage. Hugo had examined both the letter and its envelope from every conceivable angle, and yet he could find no further messages, nor any clues as to what the cryptic note might have been alluding to. The letter had been delivered to his doorstep in a plain, unmarked envelope alongside his other mail, as usual. Besides its disturbing contents, there was nothing at all remarkable about it.

"Someone is having a laugh at my expense," Hugo said darkly, neatly folding the offensive letter up into tight squares before discarding it into the recycling bin. With the letter now safely out of his sight, he then proceeded to wash his hands, cleaning, rinsing, drying, and sanitizing before moving on to his other mail. At last he returned to some measure of routine: there were the expected bills in their neatly ordered columns, letters from acquaintances and colleagues regarding the upcoming fall season showings, and of course, the latest issues of Madame Figaro, Vogue, and Journal de Luxe.

A grin swept across the hyena's rough features as his paws worked over the smooth, glossy surfaces of the magazines. On their covers, extraordinarily beautiful models swirled in colorful outfits across backdrops of falling leaves. On some of their slender limbs, or draped around their thin necks, he saw his work. In that moment, he desired nothing more than to delve deeper into the pages, to take a look at the new fashions concealed within, and to compare his work against that of his peers. It was _so_tempting.

His lip suddenly twitched, an abrupt, jarring motion which caused his teeth to flash briefly.

It would have to wait. Time for magazines was allotted for the 'afternoon reading' hour at 3:00 PM. It would be wildly out of sorts to indulge himself before then. Setting the magazines down with great care upon the gleaming, newly sanitized counter, and tucking them into a perfectly organized stack, he then left the kitchen and proceeded down the hall.

The walls of his home were swathed in artfully arranged frames. Most held the covers of magazines, much like the ones currently occupying his counter. Others held pictures of models that he'd worked with over the years, art pieces from the brilliant young graduates of École des Beaux-Arts, or paintings of the countryside that he'd made when he himself was a young university student. Back then, fashion was just a dream for him. Now, he was fashion.

Arriving at his workout room, he stepped inside and threw open the curtains. The early morning sun had just risen over the shores of western France, and the coastline stretched across his window, careening south out of sight into the hills and valleys of Bordeaux. He'd taken care to purchase all of the land that separated his home from the coast, and so there was nothing there to impede his view. More importantly, there was no one on the shore to look back at him. Standing in his window, completely nude, with the sun shining upon his splotchy fur, Hugo felt himself a master of his own world.

His lip twitched urgently, and he recalled himself to his schedule.

Turning from the window, he set his sights upon his workout equipment. Hugo kept his body in pristine condition, and he worked out three times a day with a strict regimen. First was a twenty-minute routine of stretches, done in the warm light of the rising sun. Like most hyenas, his body was naturally compact, brawny, and corded with thick, rigid muscles. He knew each and every muscle by name, and took great care to stretch and warm up every one, sighing gustily as he extended one limb, and then another.

Cardio came next. He wiped down his treadmill thoroughly before use, and while running, he listened to the news. Politics, economics, pop culture. To design fashion, one needed to be attuned to the pulse of the world in all its grotesqueries. Following this, the treadmill was wiped down once again with a sanitizing solution before the real workout began. Leg presses, squats, barbells, the deadlifts, shoulder presses, curls, and then the old standards with crunches, pushups, pullups.

Hugo mindlessly worked his muscles until they ached. Pain was something that he could understand. It came at expected times, and it was a consequence of his own actions. It was predictable, and for that reason, acceptable.

Wrapping up his routine at 11 AM, he made one final wipe down of his machines, closed the curtains, and showered. Showering was a laborious process. It required several rotations of soaps, fur conditioners, fragrances, and body washes, each from a luxury brand that would have made the models in his magazine blush. He was acutely aware of the reputation that hyenas had in some parts of the world. Many considered his species to be brutes, crude in their manners, and worst of all... smelly. He had no intention of ever living up to that stereotype, and so he meticulously cleaned himself. An extra rinse, and another cycle of cleaning were in order today.

Stepping out of the shower, he took a moment to regard himself in the foggy glass of the bathroom mirror. His dark, baggy eyes roamed over the shaggy lines of his own muscular form, over the damp, coarse fur of his coat, and the hideously-tacky arrangements of his stripes and spots. Such unappealing colors. His body was not ideal for the world that he'd chosen for himself. It was why he had taken such great pains to make sure that he was never seen.

His lip twitched, and in his reflection, Hugo saw himself as a rabid beast. It was only for a moment.

Following the shower, Hugo dressed himself and prepared for the one moment of the day when he felt vulnerable: the opening of the front door. Steeling himself, he undid the locks and turned the knob, pulling the door aside. There upon the front porch was his laundry in its neatly folded packages, and his groceries for the day. He snatched them up before quickly returning inside. One by one the locks slid back into place. All twelve of them.

Nearly all of his needs were addressed in this fashion, requiring no face-to-face communication. Laundry, mail, groceries, utilities, electricity, water... they were all managed via pre-paid, online services. He cut his own hair. His home was wired with a state-of-the-art security system, which he checked every three hours, on the hour. He would allow no one to see him. He knew that he was ugly, although he'd never been told as much.

His routine continued on its usual, exacting pace. Lunch was next: a healthy collection of raw meat cutlets and bones, supplemented by a small parcel containing various nutritional pills. The meat was for flavor, but it was the bones that he adored the most. They crunched in his jaws with a delightful amount of resistance. Hyenas had some of the strongest bite forces in the known world, and despite his loathing for his own species, he enjoyed being able to so easily crack into the bones to greedily suck down the juicy marrow within.

After lunch came the maintenance of his teeth. He had 34 teeth, each spotlessly white and in excellent condition. He knew this because he had regular dental examinations with a professional in Belgium, whom he always met under an assumed identity, and who he paid in cash. He paid meticulous attention to his fangs and premolars while he brushed, since they were the lovely teeth responsible for crushing his favorite snacks. For twenty minutes he carefully brushed, flossed, rinsed, and polished each tooth, only leaving after a grueling examination. Satisfied, he stared at himself in the mirror only long enough to confirm that he was still a hyena, before moving on.

House cleaning, dusting, and decontamination at 12 PM. Responding to emails and correspondence until 1 PM. Another round of stretches and light cardio until 1:30 PM, followed by another shower and teeth cleaning. With the sun hitting just the right spot in his lounge, he'd then sit in the light and read from 3 PM onwards, finally enjoying his magazines. It was one of the few pleasures he allowed himself. Then work at 4 PM, pulling out his computer and tablet to draft new fashions while he was still breathless and inspired from his readings. Study began at 6 PM, reading the works of Christian Dior, Hubert de Givenchy, and Madame Chanel until dinner at 8 PM, which was exactly the same as his lunch, but with an extra dessert of raw liver.

Following dinner was another light workout to burn off the calories, another shower, another cleaning of his teeth, and then a warm glass of milk before his final check of the security cameras. This was one of his favorite parts of the day. He loved to rewind the footage and watch himself move around the house; it was a private show that he put on only for himself. After reassuring himself that there were no disturbances in either his home or the surrounding bluffs, he would then head to bed. Hugo would always, without fail, find himself in his newly cleaned sheets - courtesy of the laundry service that he employed - by 9 PM.

He had no need for an alarm. He'd wake up precisely when he needed to, so that his schedule would begin again at the correct time. His day was one of order, fulfillment, and healthy productivity. His night would surely be the same.

That night, he dreamt of savage jaws tearing open flesh.

---

I am going to come inside.

Another letter, identical in every way to the first, only with one new, horrifying addition. A small photograph - roughly 15x15 centimeters- had been included in the envelope. The photo was a grainy close-up of what appeared to be a set of teeth, only... they were horribly disfigured. It was a disturbing amalgamation of extended fangs, tusks, molars, and jutting hunks of pale bone, with most of the lot covered in yellow discoloration.

Hugo stared at the photo for a moment longer than usual before discarding both it and the letter into the trash. Pranks were one thing, but this joke was getting out of hand. The hyena's lip twitched feverishly for a moment, almost as if he were snarling.

Far too out of hand.

He'd received no less than five such letters in just as many days, although this was the first to have a picture sent along with it. Were it not for the security system he had on his home, which allowed him to monitor all activity in and around the property at every hour of the day, he might have felt some sense of paranoia regarding the letters and their ominous threat. But as it was, the things had only given him a few moments of unease.

He had no time to give such nonsense further thought. He was Hugo Toussaint, and he had work to do.

Setting aside his newest batch of magazines in their usual, orderly stack upon the pristine surfaces of his countertop, he set out to work off the nervous energy that he'd suddenly acquired. He took his time as he made his way down the hall, admiring his artwork in their perfectly-arranged frames. Their alignments were measured down to the centimeter. Reaching out with a manicured paw, he gently traced the edges of their gilded borders, noting with satisfaction the complete absence of dust.

Alighting into the workout room, he threw open the curtains, withholding a smile at the brilliant dawn of a new day. Come inside indeed, he thought, looking out over the sunlit coasts.

Perish the thought.

The rigor of Hugo's daily regime quickly drove such errant worries from his mind. Despite the anxiety that he'd suffered earlier, his movements on the bench were smooth and measured. His rigid muscles flexed easily under his short, bristly fur, and he breathed out in calm, deep gusts as he stretched, lifted, and pushed his muscles into form.

He dearly loved exercising. There was something comforting about the act of commanding one's own body, of mastering exhaustion and pain, and transforming them into something worthwhile over a slow and laborious process. As much as he despised his own body - he never once looked down at his muscular form in anything remotely related to approval - he had at least acknowledged that it was one others would admire. His workout routine flew by that day, and then came the showers.

The stench of his body was washed away with that aromatic concoction of soaps, fur conditioners, fragrances, and body washes, but as he reached for his favorite - a special conditioner made particularly for those with rough fur - he paused. His eyes narrowed as he looked at the bottle. For a moment, he even picked it up to look at it from other angles.

Hugo was, if nothing else, an individual with a remarkable aptitude for balance and precision. He knew at once that something was wrong. The bottle was emptier than it should have been... perhaps only by a few milliliters, but it was short all the same.

Impossible, he thought. I've used the exact same amount every day, for years.

A dozen explanations jumped to the front of his mind. Perhaps the company had a fault in their distribution machines. Maybe they'd changed the exact amounts which they'd put into the bottle... or far more likely... the last few days had stressed him to such a degree that he'd made an error.

A frown creased the hyena's blunt muzzle, and his lip twitched madly for a moment. He continued his shower, suppressing any further thoughts. When he stepped out to dry himself, he tried not to look at his face in the mirror; he knew that the scowl had remained, and that a hyena's beastly, furious grimace would be staring back at him if he turned.

He dressed himself more quickly than usual, and in doing so, nearly missed a detail so horrifying that it almost caused him to throw the shirt from his body. Perched upon the smooth, unwrinkled fabric of his shirt was a hair... and it wasn't his. Hugo's dark eyes widened in fear for the briefest of moments as he saw the thing in the corner of his vision, the shirt halfway over his head. He didn't panic. Instead, he slowly took the shirt off, carefully bringing it to the kitchen where he could dispose of it safely. He took a measured look at the hair before discarding it.

It was a long, black bristle, coarse and wiry. Surely it must have belonged to someone in the laundry service which regularly washed and ironed his clothes. With a barely restrained snarl, he tossed the clothes into the bin. It was a terrible waste; he'd need to give the service a call and remind them why he paid them as much as he did. It was an unacceptable breach of their professional relationship. They'd been doing his laundry for years.

Hopefully, lunch would be a balm for his disappointment. After retrieving his groceries and his new laundry from outside - taking a bit longer than usual to see through the eyehole, watchful for anything out of sorts - he gratefully unpacked his regular meal and ate it with relish. The crunch of bones, the sweet, rich nectar of marrow, and the juicy delight of the cutlets was just what he needed to turn his day around. He took his time enjoying the tastes, listening happily as his premolars ground the bones into lovely, damp shards. He didn't even notice the warmth until his third bone.

It began in his face: a sensation of flustering heat around his whiskers that left him feeling hot and uncomfortable. Perhaps he was still overheated from his earlier shower? He wet a rag from the sink, drawing it over his forehead. It helped a bit, but then the heat went lower. Down his wide neck, spreading across his muscular chest, settling in a fluttering mess along his belly. Then lower still.

A look of disbelief suddenly crossed Hugo's bloodied muzzle, and he gingerly set the bone back upon the counter. Ordinarily, contaminating the spotless surface of the countertop with a bloody bone would have horrified him, but what was happening within his body in that moment was immeasurably worse. He was feeling...

No, he thought, quickly discarding the remainder of his lunch before throwing the rest of the groceries into the bin. No, not that. His lip began to twitch, and he snapped a paw up to grasp his jaws. He was trembling.

What is happening, he thought. It was just a bone... there was nothing unusual about it. I've been eating the same thing every day. Why is my body behaving this way?

There was no denying the warmth that'd spread thoroughly throughout his body by that point, settling into a dark, feverish heat directly between his legs. His knees quivered as he felt himself becoming erect. Painfully erect. A sudden urge swept through him, and he bit his paw to keep from touching himself. He hadn't masturbated since he was a teenager, back before he'd learned how to control himself and master his disgusting nature. In fact, he hadn't felt even the slightest, most remote urge to do anything of the sort in over a decade.

Where did this sudden warmth come from? Some additive in the food?

"I'll have to... have a call with the grocer," he said, panting. Between his thighs, his cock throbbed once, twice. It was an urgent sort of motion, but the hyena could spare no more time for the matter. It was early for him to leave his lunch, but he'd make an exception and forward the extra time into his cleaning. Hugo forced himself into the restroom, pulling out his toothbrush and its accessories with trembling paws. He opened his jaws.

I'm going to come inside.

His teeth were nothing like the ones in the photo. They were beautiful, orderly, in perfect shape and condition. He brushed and cleaned, flossed and polished, repeating to himself over and over again that nothing was wrong. Between his thighs, his painfully-turgid shaft pulsed in an angry, irregular rhythm, refusing to be ignored. His underwear was beginning to become damp. He brushed and scrubbed, and barely even registered when he began to bleed from the furious strokes of his cleaning. There was no time to consider it. He was already almost late for his other chores.

Order, cleanliness, and structure were the only things that separated him... from whatever it was in that photo.

---

It was 9:01 PM when Hugo finally slumped back into his bedroom, exhausted and bleary-eyed from a day full of discrepancies. Even though hours had already passed, his teeth and gums were still sore from their earlier mistreatment. The pain had made it difficult to get anything done during his allotted time for work, and to make matters worse, his genitals still ached abominably from whatever it was that he'd eaten earlier. He'd been forced to change his underwear no less than three times that day, and the soiled pairs were currently in the garbage where they belonged.

He was still hard.

"That damned letter," he murmured to himself. "I'll have to make calls to the postman's office tomorrow to arrange for some sort of screening... this just isn't working."

Hugo made his way over to his personal computer, where a wide bank of monitors displayed the feeds from nearly three dozen cameras. Situated as they were around his house and the property outside, they provided him with a lordly view of his entire estate; there was nothing that he couldn't see, and he had the privilege of remaining unseen himself in the process. In many ways, he saw the neatly-arranged screens in the same manner that he saw the art lining his walls. They were manifestations of the order which he required in his life, evidence of the control he had over his own world. Amidst all of the nonsense that he'd needed to deal with over the last few hours, they were the one... the one...

His lip twitched.

Camera number nine - on the upper left corner of his screen - had frozen. Camera nine was the one which monitored the front door of his home, the only way in or out of his house other than the second-story windows. The recording time had stopped at 8:55:56 PM. No... it hadn't frozen. It'd been paused, although such a thing was impossible. The only way to do that would have been to toggle it from the computer here in his room, or if the security company who'd installed it had-

A low, soft pop echoed from somewhere further within the house, and suddenly his computer screen went dark. Across the house, the lights that he'd left on snapped off. Even his AC unit slowly wound down to silence. The power had just gone out. Another impossibility to add to the list. Hugo had installed no less than three backup generators, provided by the same company which had set up his security system.

Ignoring the sudden, twisting movement of his lip - which turned his frown into a terrible snarl - the hyena silently rose from his chair and padded over to the phone by his bed. His heart thudded loudly in his chest, but he still maintained his protocols; picking up a tissue, he used it to grasp the handle and dial in the line for the police. A droning noise met his ears as he brought the phone to his head.

The phone line wasn't operational. Of course. The power had gone out. Land lines wouldn't function.

"Inconvenient," he said quietly. Gently, he set the phone back down on its hook. He wasn't one to panic, but all the same, the night was shaping up to be far outside of his expected routine. He reached down below the phone, opening his dresser and reaching within to pull out the 1911 pistol he kept within.

It'd been years since he'd acquired the thing, and he'd never once fired it. All the same, he'd spent hundreds of hours cleaning it like every other object in his house, and he knew through research how it was to be operated, despite the fact that he owned it illegally and had never acquired a license for it. He calmly released the manual safety, racked the slide with a quick movement, and turned his eyes towards the door. As a hyena, he had excellent vision in the darkness, to say nothing of his acute senses of smell and hearing.

There were far too many inconveniences occurring lately. He was already behind schedule for sleep. He wouldn't take long.

"The jokester has made full on his promise," he said softly, standing. "Come inside... indeed."

Doing his best to breathe calmly and easily, he quietly made his way to the door of his bedroom. Peeking outside, he made a quick check up and down the hall. The frames which held his artwork were still perched neatly and orderly upon the walls. There was no sign of any changes.

If the power had been cut as he expected, such a thing would have been done in the garage. He hated the garage; the generators were noisy and difficult to clean, and the place had cold, unattractive cement floors. Even so, he carefully made his way down the hall towards it, keeping his pistol gripped lightly. Passing by the workout room, he gave its contents a brief look. A shine on the seat of his workout bench caught his eye, and he lingered by the door. It was wet.

I must have forgotten to wipe it down, he thought. A ridiculous error. Stepping inside, he crouched by the bench to look closer. His nose twitched as he sniffed. Then a horrified expression briefly crossed his muzzle, and he hurriedly stepped back.

There was no mistaking it. The whole bench... it was covered in a slick, glistening sheen of saliva. It was practically drenched in it. His eyes flicked to the door and then back, and his hand tightened on his gun. Someone had been here, someone other than himself, and they'd licked the bench up and down. His lip twitched nervously, and a nervous, yipping laugh started to boil out of his throat. He clamped down on his jaws to restrain it.

Someone has tasted me.

Turning away from the disgusting scene of the room, he returned to the hallway. A part of him was already considering what he'd have to do when this was over: he'd need to throw out the bench, buy a new one and have it shipped to him, decontaminate the room, and install a new carpet before he assembled the next bench. Such a disaster.

He went down the hall, stopping only to check the bathroom before proceeding into the kitchen. His toothbrush had suffered much the same fate as the workout bench, only to a worse degree. It'd been chewed, and the whole head of the brush was absolutely soaked in a thick, viscous coating of saliva. It stunk. A nervous, yipping laugh burst from his throat at the sight of it, and he slammed the door shut, closing off the view. The sound of his laugh had echoed around the house. The jokester, wherever they were, had no doubt heard it.

It was often thought that hyenas laughed as a means of expressing joy at a humorous situation... but in reality, it was quite the opposite. The laugh was a sound of anxiety. He despised it more than anything.

Keeping a paw to his lips, his chest still heaving as he tried to hold back that hideous, nervous laughter, Hugo entered the kitchen. He wasn't terribly surprised to see that the trash he'd discarded earlier was scattered about the floor. Bloody bits of his uneaten meal stained the tiled floor, the soiled remains of the clothing he'd thrown away sat in damp heaps... more surprising than all of that however, was the front door.

It was wide open. Camera nine must have been paused by the jokester before it'd opened. Somehow.

"Unforgivable," he said, withholding a ripple of nervous laughter. "I'll kill you. If you're still here, I'll kill-"

The massive weight that struck him from behind knocked the words from his mouth. He'd hit the ground before he even knew what it was that'd tackled him, and a panicked yelp flew from his throat as he thrashed, trying to throw the weight off of his back. It was futile. Whoever it was that'd brought him to the floor was at least twice his size, and far heavier. He threw his elbow back into the attacker's midriff; it was like striking a wall covered in stiff, dark hair.

The gun, he suddenly thought, even as the weight began to pin him against the sullied tile of the floor. He brought it around his back, aiming...

Crack!

Pulling his hand back, he fired off a round into the heavy, writhing thing atop his back. He heard a rough grunt, smelled blood. Crack! Another round. The sharp sound of the gun made his ears ring painfully. Suddenly a massive paw reached onto the back of his head, grabbed him by the fur of his scalp, pulled him up-

Crack!

The paw pushed forward, slamming his muzzle into the smooth floor of the kitchen. Even with his ears ringing from the gunfire, he could still hear the wet crunch that his tender snout made as it smashed into the unforgiving surface. He saw stars, tasted blood, and only just registered that he was being pulled back again.

Once, twice... three times, the last harder than the others. By the time the paw released the back of his head, Hugo was certain that he must have lost at least a few teeth, to say nothing of his broken nose. His head had been transformed into a bloody, throbbing mass, pounding with an irregular heartbeat of its own, singing to him in pain. Had he suffered a concussion?

Moaning softly, he was barely able to struggle as that massive paw came down, wrenching the gun out of his hand. He felt himself flipped onto his back.

So strong, he thought. Turning me over with one hand... who...

The answer to that last, unformed question was made apparent to him in the darkness of his ruined kitchen, surrounded by his trash and lying in a pool of his own blood. Looking up, the first thing he noticed was the gun, his gun, pointed back at his face. Behind that, the teeth.

It was the same crooked, horrid set of teeth from the picture. The teeth that had haunted him all day, ruining his carefully constructed schedule. The jokester's teeth.

"Nooooo," he moaned, turning to look away. That massive paw snatched his fractured jaw and snapped his head back into place, forcing him to look upon that awful face.

It was... no, she was... a spotted hyena, just like him. She had the same tawny, spotted fur, the same dark, haunting eyes. Her body was packed with thick, densely-woven cords of muscle, only so much larger than his own. He knew that the females of his species were bigger, stronger, fiercer, and he'd always feared them. Even his own mother.

"Did you... hah-heh... lose any?" the female growled, her voice occasionally breaking as that hideous, yeenish laugh rolled out from the vast span of her heaving chest. Two bleeding holes sat in her muscular midriff, quivering as she spoke. He'd shot her twice.

"What?" he managed to respond. It was difficult to speak after what she'd done to him. The word bubbled out of his mouth, tasting like blood.

"Teeth," she snarled back. God in his heaven... it was horrible just looking at her. A part of Hugo wondered how she could even form a coherent word with so many-

The female lurched down suddenly, faster than he could even scream, chomping down upon his muzzle with horrific force. A terrified yelp was ripped from his throat as she bit onto his mouth, muffled and swallowed before her wide, wet tongue slid down his throat to silence him. His arms beat helplessly at her burly chest, useless, manicured claws scratching against her thick hide.

"Mhmm! Hrhmmm!"

She's kissing me, he realized. He could feel it all. The way that she hunched over his weaker body, the way that her malformed teeth locked against his broken jaw, cutting into his gums. He could feel the way her tongue - so much bigger than his own - lapped up every drop of blood, searching around his mouth for-

" Yes!"

She roared down his throat before suddenly wrenching away from him. Hugo was left gasping, spluttering onto the floor as she pulled back. In her jaws, she held the thing that she'd been looking for. One damp, bloody tooth. His tooth. One of his canines, broken when she'd smashed his face into the floor. Wearing a look of terrible triumph, she met his eyes, rolled the tooth into her mouth with her long tongue, and started chewing. The wet, crunching sound wormed its way into his ears, a god-awful noise. He rolled his head around, eyes squeezed shut, trying not to listen. It was impossible to tune it out.

"Nooooo," he moaned. "Stop. Stop!"

The beast continued until his tooth had been mashed down into nothing; he was grimly reminded of the bones that he ate every day for lunch. The slick sound of her swallowing was, in a way, even worse than the crunching, and when it was done, she leaned down close to his face. Her breath was awful.

"What do you want?" he whimpered up to her. He'd never felt so powerless. Her tongue reached out, sliding across his broken nose. He cringed away, but could only move so far back into the tile, pinned as he was beneath her. The revulsion shuddered along his body in a visible wave.

"Hugo... Toussaint," she said, the words spat out as though she struggled to pronounce his name.

"Always hiding... hiding from the world... hiding from me... hiding from yourself."

Reaching down, she stroked a long claw across his chest, slicing open the hide just enough to draw a pained gasp from Hugo's throat. The claw curved upwards, and she placed her wide palm upon his pectoral.

"When I saw you... hiding... I wanted you. Now, I have you."

The smaller hyena stared up into the face of the beast, his ears pinned back against his bloodied skull. A nervous, yipping laugh slipped from his mouth. He was beyond the point of hiding his fear.

"Hah-ehah... w-what do you want? Are you going to kill me?"

The beast looked almost surprised at that.

"Kill you? No... not after all of this... work."

"Breaking into my home? I g-gave you two bullets for that."

She smiled, if the display of all those teeth could be called anything other than a grimace. "Three." She brought a claw up to her right breast, bare and exposed as it was, to show him the hole there. He'd tried his hardest not to look at her, but it was impossible now. She wanted him to see her nudity, wanted him to see her bare fur against his own.

"Worth the pain," she growled. "I've suffered worse pain... for being what I am. But now I have you... after all this time."

She lowered herself against him. He could feel how hot her hide was, as though she'd just finished a long sprint. Her paw reached down, and with a long claw, she slowly began slicing through the material of his pants. A look of shock flashed across Hugo's muzzle.

"What are you doing?"

"Hiding Hugo... never shows his face... has others do laundry, get food, get mail... who do you think does these things?"

Hugo's lip twitched.

"No. Noooo, no... that's absurd."

In his paranoia, he'd never met the individuals responsible for the purchasing and delivery of his groceries, or the ones who did his laundry, or the postman - or postwoman - who delivered his mail... or even the one who'd set up his home security system and his generators. He valued anonymity too much to ever meet them face-to-face... the thought had never occurred to him that they could have all been done by the same person.

"You," he whispered, just as she lowered her mouth to his once again.

It'd been her. She had, over the years, maneuvered herself to be in every facet of his life. She'd secured a position in the postal system of this exact locale just to deliver his mail, likely reading everything herself first. She'd been the one who purchased his food, and a fresh, new terror lurched in his gut as he realized that she must have also been the one who'd done something to his lunch. She had even been the one who'd set up his security systems years earlier, while he'd locked himself away in the bathroom, waiting for the job to be done... she'd been in his house before. She'd had him for years now, and he'd never known.

Tonight was just the night she would take the final piece of him.

"Now," the beast growled, tightening her grip on his throat. "You're going... to come... inside."

Accompanied by the long, ripping sound of torn fabric, her claw finally sliced through his pants, sending his aching erection jutting straight up into the air, pointed squarly between her bent legs. Whatever it was that she'd put into his lunch hadn't worn off; he was still just as hard, even after so many hours had passed. His eagerness drooled from his tip in a long, wet line, pooling at the base of his balls. A snarl burst from his lips as she raised her hips over his - an ugly, animal sound that he hated almost as much as the reason for it - but she only snapped back at him, baring those hideous fangs over his throat with a rumbling growl that reverberated throughout every bone in his body.

" Mine!"

Then, with finality, she grasped his manhood in her paw, angled it upwards, and sank down onto it. The grotesque sounds they made as her hips met the root of his crotch rang out against the hollow, metal surfaces of the kitchen: the beastly, wet sigh of her pleasure, and the pained, broken laugh of a hyena who had been taken far beyond his precious schedule.

She hunched over him like an animal as she mated him, snorting, snarling, laughing in that awful way that only a female of his species could. Her hips thudded into his own again and again, the wet sound of their union echoing out across the quiet halls. A camera blipped silently overhead, recording it all.

"You know," she growled, clenching down upon him like a vice. It was almost audible. "What will happen in a moment... what will happen to me?"

Reaching down, she snatched up one of the pre-soaked garments that he'd disposed of in the trash earlier, greedily huffing into it as she rode him. Her muscular core - barely disguised by the short, coarse fur of her belly - rippled in sickening waves as she bucked atop him. He felt himself throb inside of her.

She's devouring me, he realized. This awful vision of his own species, this monster, was devouring him. I have to stop it. I have to regain control of the situation.

Even as he thought the words, he knew that his body was being taken in a direction that he had no control over. As much as he'd denied himself over the years, there were biological necessities which screamed for release, and the stimulation he was receiving was more than he'd allowed himself in over a decade. A soft sound slipped from between his broken fangs; he felt himself pulse inside of her. Hard. His heavy balls, unattended for so many years, jerked upwards in their tawny sack, even as her body milked him, drawing his seed upwards where she wanted it.

The beast felt it too. How could she not? Leaning forward, she snatched his face in her paws and forced him to look at her as he came. It was everything that he despised, exactly as he remembered it from so many years ago: the feeling of helplessness, of giving in to that ugly, animal part of his psyche, and the horrid idea - no, the certainty - that the result of this particular release would only serve to create more awful things like himself... like her. The animal part of him knew that she would conceive from him. Her eyes rolled back in her skull, drool slipping from her disfigured fangs in a messy rivulet. She was undoubtedly in the middle of a powerful orgasm.

His lip twitched, and suddenly he let himself go. Snarling savagely, he lunged upwards, taking the female's exposed neck in his jaws and biting.

The crunch of bones was, if anything, even more satisfying than it had been during lunch.

---

The workout that following morning had been brutal. A punishing series of lunges, squats, and presses had left him feeling numb from the waist down, which was of course exactly what he wanted. The loss of his bench had forced him to improvise a bit with his usual routine, but improvisation was half of art, after all. He'd order a new machine while he dealt with his emails later that day.

He was grateful to shower after such a workout, even after the cleaning he'd done the night before, which had certainly been the most rigorous of his life. Having already disposed of _that_particular bottle of conditioner, he brought out a new one from the closet. He kept no less than a dozen bottles of each of his soaps, conditioners, and shampoos, just in case anything might have happened to them.

He gave himself his usual, cursory examination in the mirror after he was done. He still appeared to be a hyena; no amount of self-control could change his nature, although he was at least now a clean specimen. Departing from the bathroom while he slipped a clean shirt over his brawny shoulders, he almost made his way to the front door, catching himself at the last moment. His lip twitched, revealing bloodied gums.

"There won't be any deliveries today," he thought. Hugo allowed himself the briefest of smiles, somewhat gap-toothed after the unfortunate incident the night before. "No need to even open the door".

It was an unusual - but welcome - break from his normal schedule. He skipped straight to lunch. The absence of his usual groceries necessitated a bit of further improvisation on his part. He wasn't terribly worried. Pulling out some pans, a skillet, bottles of butter and oil, and some seasonings, he set about preparing his meal. The food was still laid out on the floor from where he'd left her last night; he couldn't possibly have fit her in the fridge. All the same... sans a few bones... perhaps she could fit in neat, plastic boxes, to be orderly arranged inside his freezer.

For all that Hugo could try, he could not avoid his own nature. Hyenas are, after all, scavengers, and the most egregious kind of cannibals.