FSE

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In the voice of Timothy Whiskers

Things were a lot of fun around the house over the next few days. We would all wake up to see Keith off to work in the morning and just as quickly fall back asleep. I'd meet up with Jerry again around noon to watch him eat. Luckily for him, Keith let him have more than just dry dog food, but he insisted on eating his meals out of the bowl on the floor. Said he wanted the practice. When he had to shit, he'd bring the litter box out into the living room so I could watch. Stinky bastard was a real showoff all right. Then he'd chase me around a little and we'd do something sexy -- he'd pin me down with his nose and lick me until I came, or scoop me up and lay on the couch and suck on me, or I would try to masturbate him. Dirty, dirty fun. When we got tired of that, we'd split up and pursue individual interests. I kept up with my chat rooms. He soaked up some daytime TV.

Evening would come, and Keith would return home. He'd make dinner and direct some sort of wholesome group activity. Wednesday was hot tub night. Nothing dirty or anything, beyond the nudity; we just got together in Keith's whirlpool to chat and soak for a bit over iced tea. The water was a little too deep for me, of course, but he had a sort of side-hanging dealie for me to sit in. It was like a little box that sat in the water, with slits for the water to filter in and out. It was the perfect size that I was about chest-deep in the water when I sat in it.

Thursday night was movie night. Keith made popcorn, and we each got to pick out a movie from his extensive DVD collection. Jerry zeroed in on a cute kids fairy tale movie. Typical lost child, magic dragons sort of story, but it was decidedly charming -- beautiful animation, beautiful music, and above average acting. Me, I listened to my heart and picked a brain-dead comedy about a pair of stoners who start their own pirate TV station, and how they manage to make it the number one station on Earth while eluding the cops. Jerry groaned and grumbled the whole way through it -- a little rude after I went through a whole cartoon without a single complaint -- but I caught him laughing three times, so that made up for it.

And Friday night, as per the habit Keith upheld, was karaoke night. He'd gone every Friday night like clockwork since I'd moved in. Sometimes he went with Jerry, sometimes alone. I'd never tagged along. But this week, he insisted that all three of us go, with the promise that he wouldn't mandate it ever again except in the case of national emergency. So I went, mostly to appease him.

This week's venue turned out to be the same bar that I met him in. Jerry was all keyed up, of course, being his first time naked in a public gathering. Showoff. He got a few looks and a few hoots, but even being a naked wolf, he was hardly the most unusual sight in the bar. The place had a pretty damned open-minded atmosphere. There were guys in collars or leather. One gagged skunk. One muzzled beagle. No one was rowdy or anything. Beyond what they wore, they were all just guys coming out to let loose and unwind for the night.

We caught a table near the stage and Keith passed us each a stapled bundle of papers. "What's this?" I asked.

"Song list," he beamed. "Go ahead, pick out what you want to sing."

"Nnnno, thanks anyway," I said. "This isn't my thing. I don't sing."

"And that," Keith said, like he was a lawyer who had just turned his trial upside down, "Is why you're the perfect candidate for the forbidden art that is karaoke."

"You'd better do it," Jerry advised, not even glancing up from his list.

I rolled my eyes and started poring through it, looking for something that wasn't stupid and overplayed. There really wasn't much that I liked. Pop songs, pop songs, pop songs...

"So here's the three of us at last," Keith sighed, glowing like a pregnant vixen. "My own private food chain."

"To the food chain!" I cried, lifting my glass in toast. I was met with a polite clattering of glasses.

"So," Keith began again, swirling a finger around the rim of his glass, "Next week is Thanksgiving. In seven short days, my life will become a relentless hell as the Christmas shopping season well and truly begins. I won't have a moment's peace for the next month or so, and I can expect to be on call even during the weekends. And so this weekend marks our last, best chance to get out and do something fun, all of us together."

Jerry nodded. "Yeah, I remember last year," he agreed. "So what did you have in mind?"

"I have made plans to take us all on a grand and luxurious honeymoon," Keith grinned.

I blinked. "Honeymoon?"

"Well, we're all together a legal family unit now," Keith explained with a sly grin. "I think that's a reason enough for a celebration. Take a couple days to get away from it all. Engage in a little reckless, unabashed sexual exploration while we all still find it appealing."

Oooooo. "Where are we going?"

He grinned. "It's a little place I know," he explained. "It's a lodge with an integral roleplaying theme. Animals go there to indulge in socially questionable behavior in the safety of a controlled environment. It's actually quite a bit of fun."

"I guess I don't have any other plans for the weekend," Jerry agreed.

"Me neither."

"Then the matter is settled," Keith announced. "We depart tomorrow morning. Now pick a song or I'll pick one for you."

Hmmmph. I turned back to the song list again, trying to find something that would get me out of having to sing YMCA.

---

We travelled light. Keith had two suitcases packed for himself and Jerry, and I just brought my entire shoebox. It was a long, long trip, hours of freeway driving time, with only one stop for some egg sandwiches at the drive-thru. I spent most of the ride on the dashboard, laying on my stomach, head propped up in my paws, bored. The landscape was downright depressing -- fields and fields of bare trees and brown grass, that magical time of year when everything has died off, but it hasn't yet had the decency to put on a lovely coat of snow.

The car snuck through a rather non-descript looking exit, and we were plunged rather suddenly into a very deep forest. I felt compelled to sit up straight, my fur starting to rise in panic just looking at it. These weren't any friendly, tamed trees -- they'd grown in sick and twisted shapes in their competition for sunlight, and without any leaves, they looked positively pissed off. My teeth started chattering in primal terror.

See, I've talked a lot about how mice get shafted in the city, but I was well aware that I didn't have anything to complain about. I know that it's a much better deal than... this. This kind of forest... this is where mice went to die. Where every day was a struggle against a thousand unseen deaths, where mice fuck like mad because it's the only way to give the species as a whole a fighting chance. No, I didn't care for this. Not one bit.

I gave a nervous glance over my shoulder. Fox and wolf were really digging on this, I could tell. Wolf in particular. His fur was all puffed up, and he was looking out the window with his nostrils all dialated, like he was trying to drink the whole thing in.

I faced forward again, taking deep breaths, reassuring myself over and over that this would all be okay, everything was going to be fine, we're just driving through the woods, not spending the night in them. Where did Keith say we were going, a hotel or something? Hotels are fun. And safe.

Keith picked his way through a maze of unmarked dirt roads like a salmon returning to its spawning grounds. It was a long, slow procession, like the car wanted to be careful of bumping into unseen predators. And then, all at once, the trees vanished, leaving behind a clearing the size of a football stadium.

My eyes went wide. Jerry's jaw dropped. Keith smirked.

"Gentlemen," he stated, "I give you Castle Fnarog."

It was a castle. Not some cheap, fakey amusement park approximation of a castle, a real god damned castle! It wasn't especially big. I've seen, for example, bigger office buildings. But the difference was immediately appreciable -- most office buildings that I've seen don't look like they've been through war. There was a rough moat around the whole thing, a heavy drawbridge, little defense thingies around the top or whatever -- the whole deal!

There wasn't exactly a parking lot, but there were a number of cars lined up in the field beside the castle. I had a sinking feeling as our car slipped in next to them and came to a stop, complete with that weird, final silence you get when you've been hearing the same motor run for multiple hours and then, suddenly, there isn't a single noise that suggests civilization for miles.

"We're staying here?" I squeaked.

"Yep!" Keith declared brightly. "Everybody out!"

Jerry took both suitcases. Keith carried my shoebox under one arm and led Jerry on his leash with his free paw. I sat up on Jerry's shoulder, snuggled up as close to his neck as I could get without triggering his tickle reflex. I had a sudden, inexplicable desire to be as close as possible to something that could rip the guts out of any predator who tried to touch me, and Jerry, bless his heart, fit the bill perfectly.

"This castle," Keith explained during the walk, "Was once owned by one of my ancestors, several hundred years ago. On my mother's side."

I was stunned. "You're kidding!"

"Nope!" Keith beamed. "Legend has it that he converted it into a hunting lodge for creatures with exotic sexual tastes and dubious morals. It came to possess a cursed reputation and became a den of dark magic." His voice trailed off as his nose started tipping toward the sky, like he was looking for a UFO or something. "Of course, several hundred years later, not much has changed..."

"So, so, wait, does that make you a king or something?" I asked.

"No, of course not," Keith assured me. "It was never a place for royalty; built strictly as a military outpost. To be honest, I'm not sure how it came into my family's possession. Today, it's nothing more than an especially atmospheric BDSM dungeon. Animals who stay here are given a full suite of amenities suited to some rather... extreme domination and sadism play. Either on their own or with the aid of some of the castle's professional slaves and masters." He turned to give me a charming grin. "Naturally, this is where I learned to top."

"what do you mean by that?"

"For a time, I was the master of this place," he explained, tail swishing smugly. "Being the last male in my family line and all. Luckily for me, I found someone else willing to take it up, so now I can focus my attention on my father's family trade."

I shook my head. The world had made sense this morning, I was sure of it. "So is... is any of this legal?"

"Decidedly not," he said curtly.

Hmmmmm. I turned to Jerry. He seemed to be taking all of this news quite well. "Is he being serious?" I whispered.

He shrugged. "I can never really tell."

Huh. "Interesting guy, isn't he?"

Jerry grinned. "He takes some getting used to, yeah."

On the other side of the drawbridge, we entered a wooden structure, clearly of modern origin, but built with rustic sensibilities. It looked for all the world like the lobby of any other hotel I'd ever been to, only... dark. Grim. With a strange sense of forboding in the air. The floor was bare boards, with beautiful rugs set in prominent places. The room was lit by well-positioned oil lamps and heated by a wide fireplace on the side of the room. A single sumptuous armchair faced the fire, with a tall, imposing figure seated in it.

He was a horse with jet-black fur. Larger than even Jerry, certainly, and very, very dense -- thick with muscle. He was dressed in some sort of gaudy period outfit -- looked like he belonged in a Rennaissance festival or something. He didn't look up as we entered, didn't even twitch an ear, just stared into the fire with a strange intensity that made me wonder if he was even really alive. Legs crossed, hooves propped up on a footstool, warming them over the fire. There were thick horseshoes stuck to the bottom of his hooves, and I thought I could see them giving off a dull glow. His face was contorted into a pensive glower. Clearly something was boiling away just under the surface, and I had an uncomfortable feeling that we were going to find out what. Even Keith stopped short when he saw him.

"Keith Owens." His voice was deep and heavy. Didn't even look up.

"Zeke Thunderclutch," Keith returned, sounding rather amused about something.

The horse's eye turned our way. And THUMP. His hooves hit the ground with a low sizzle, and he crossed the floor to meet us, leaving behind ugly black U-shaped hoofprints and a faint smell of burned wood. He largely ignored Jerry and me, giving Keith a look like he was sizing him up for a fight. I could feel Jerry tensing up beneath me, and I got ready to hold on for dear life if a fight broke out.

Instead, the horse simply drawled, "To what do we owe the pleasure of your company this evening?"

"Oh, I'm just on my honeymoon," Keith said breezily. "They got theirs, now I'm going to get mine, that sort of thing."

The horse turned at last to look at Jerry and me, sizing us up with a rather bored look on his face. "Indeed."

"Quite an honor to be greeted at the door by The Master himself," Keith mused. "Dungeon's so slow that you have time to hang out in the lobby now?"

"The return of Keith Owens to our halls is quite a special event," the horse said evenly.

"Oh, you know you didn't have to roll out the red carpet just for little old me," Keith said dismissively. "I'm just another guest tonight. Can't wait to see what you've done with the place in my absence. Ever put in that sushi bar like I was talking about?"

The horse snorted. "Don't think I've forgotten you, Keith Owens. I won you. And I will have you back."

"Yes, yes, I know, you're scary and intimidating," Keith sighed. "Did we get a room near the baths like I asked?"

Wow. He had some balls all right. The horse just narrowed his eyes, gave Keith a disgusted sneer, and turned toward a door. As he passed, he pulled a chain that was dangling from the ceiling. "Someone will be here shortly to show you to your room," he growled, not even turning back to face us.

"And it's by the baths, right?" Keith persisted. He was answered with a slamming door. He cocked his head quizzically and frowned. "I don't think we're going to be near the baths at all," he said, clearly dismayed.

"What was that all about?" I asked. All of my fur was standing on end. "Old boyfriend?"

"Guess you could say that," Keith grinned. "That was Zeke Thunderclutch -- current Master of Castle Fnarog. Old pupil of mine. Nice to see how well he's done for himself."

"He didn't seem too happy to see you," Jerry noted.

"He's just cranky because I won my soul back from him," Keith said dismissively. "Incidentally, nobody sign anything while we're here, okay?"

I blinked. "Wait, what? Your soul?"

Keith nodded earnestly. "He's an evil wizard."

Jerry seemed unmoved by the news, so I decided my only real choice was to go along with it. "Huh," I said thoughtfully. "Well, looking like that, I guess he would have to be evil, huh?"

Keith shook his head and rolled his eyes. "That's not his natural color."

Before I could think of how to reply to that -- which admittedly doesn't tell you very much, I mean hell, it's been a couple weeks and I still don't know what I could have said -- we were greeted by a fox in a loin cloth. Really, it was barely more than a drape to go over the front of his crotch. He was slight of stature and a little bit timid-looking. He took the suitcases from Jerry and gestured for us to follow him. He led us down a long stone hallway with thick wooden doors. As we passed by all of the other rooms, there were low muffled sounds seeping through the cracks. It was hard to tell what was going on on the other side, but the way our guide hurried his pace and tucked his ears, I got the feeling that there was something... unsavory going on.

He brought us at last to our room. I had the overwhelming impression that it looked like the castle dungeon in just about any movie I'd ever seen. Stone walls with dangling chains, barred windows, straw mattress, the whole deal. Ugh. Not exactly the luxurious "honeymoon getaway" that I'd been hoping for.

"This will do," Keith said brightly, paws on his hips as he surveyed the room, tail whisking optimistically. "Now then. It has been a long and tiring adventure for my companions and me. Lunch will be a priority for us. Have a box of feeder rodents brought to us at once."

"Yes sir," the guide fox murmurred with a polite nod.

"Oh!" Keith grinned. "And one more thing."

I never saw his paw coming. He plucked me from Jerry's shoulder before I could even squeak, and the next thing I knew, I was sat in the guide fox's paw.

"This is one we brought from home," Keith grinned. "See to it that he's prepared and brought in with the rest."

I didn't even have time to blink. Suddenly, the door to the room closed, and I was on the side with the guide fox walking away, by virtue of the fact that he had me in the clutch of his paw.

"Hey!" I cried out, more out of surprise than because I expected Keith or Jerry to hear my tiny little voice from the other side of the heavy door. "HEY!" The door was rapidly vanishing out of sight; clearly a different tactic was called for here. "Hey, what's all this about?" I asked, turning up to my captor. "What does he mean by 'feeder rodents'?"

No answer. I noticed that my fox was starting to frown slightly as he stared straight ahead. And I got a sinking feeling that this would all come to no good end.

We made a sudden turn down a stone staircase, into a dark path that was lit only by the torches hanging from the walls, barely enough light to see the shadows of my captor's face. He opened a door that was hidden in the shadows, and I was given a sight that made my skin crawl.

It was a large room -- about the size of Keith's entire apartment, as a matter of fact -- filled with rows of thick wooden shelves. And on the shelves were small wire cages. And in the cages were various small rodents. Rats, mice, gerbils, hamsters, chipmunks, squirrels, all squeaking and chittering and mumbling to each other. It smelled like their cages doubled as their toilets. Some of them were clearly intelligent, some of them were clearly wild. Many of them, it was hard to tell.

A second serving fox was in the back, near a sink. He didn't even look up as we entered and approached.

"We need a box of feeders sent up to West 17 right away," my captor said timidly.

The fox at the sink worked a pawheld water nozzle with one paw and waved us away with the other. "I'll get to it."

I was offered up to this new fox. "They... wanted to use this one," my captor murmured.

The new fox finally looked up from what he was doing and gave me a look of disgust. Oh, like this was my fault. "Don't these perverts think we have anything better to do?" he huffed.

"It's for Keith Owens," my captor said softly.

The new fox's eyes popped open, and then he frowned. "Fine," he said, holding a paw out for me, resigned. "If it was anyone else, I'd eat him myself."

I shook as I changed paws. I sort of had the feeling that's what was going on here, but actually hearing him say it made me feel like I'd just taken a punch to the gut. I was too stunned to react as my clothes were peeled off and I was set in the sink. Now I could see what was happening. I was in a giant metal collander, like the kind they use to strain the water out of a pot of spaghetti. There were already over a dozen assorted rodents in here, dripping wet. They didn't pay much attention to me or me to them. Can't say I blame them.

"West 17," the fox repeated as he loomed over us, looking down at us with a vaguely antagonistic sneer. Clearly something was up his butt, and he was more than ready to take it out on us. "I'll send the next box out to them." And then he pointed the nozzle down at us and sprayed. There was a brief sensation like being hit with a waterfall, and then it moved on to the next hapless mouse. He picked up a drenched squirrel, gave her a squirt on the stomach with an odd blue gel, scrubbed her around in his paws, rinsed her with the nozzle, and set her out of sight on the other side of the sink partition. My stomach turned.

He was cleaning us.

One by one the other rodents were transferred to the other side of the sink. However, after rinsing off one of the gerbils, he paused, looking him over thoughtfully. The gerbil squeaked in protest as he saw what was going on, and then he vanished in a flash of vulpine gullet, smug lips closed around him.

GLORP. He licked his nose off with a thin red tongue.

I felt a little ill, realizing it was my fault. Now that I was here, he was over the count that he needed. Certainly no one would mind if there was one less gerbil, right?

My turn came to get soaped and rinsed and dropped unceremoniously on the other side. No special treatment just because I was a special request. In fact, I suddenly realized that he had no reason to even remember what I looked like. I was secretly glad that he remembered that I wasn't a gerbil at least. Provided, of course, that he did remember.

I spent a moment gagging on soap and rubbing my eyes clean before I got a good look at where I'd ended up. Another collander, filled with decidedly cleaner rodents in varying states of disarray. They were all kind of quiet -- not nearly as terrified as I expected a pile of rodents to be if they realized, as they must, that their carnivorous end was fast approaching. None of them wanted to make eye contact, but I needed more information here. I padded over to the squirrel who'd been cleaned first and tapped her on the shoulder to get her attention. "Hey," I said, "What's --"

BOOM. The collander suddenly shook, and a disgruntled vulpine face glared down at us. "Hey," he warned. "No fraternizing."

Several of the other rodents shot me a dirty look, so I sighed and kept my questions to myself.

Finally the cleaning was done, and my knees dropped out from under me as the fox lifted the collander up and carried us all across the room. We were positioned under a giant fan that suddenly roared to life, blasting us with hot air.

"Yeowch!"

Everyone started dancing as the metal collander began warming up and toasting our toes. It felt like it kept running for an hour. At least our fur got nice and poofy in the process. It was something of a relief, then, when we found ourselves tumbling into a large cardboard box. The flaps folded closed over our heads, and then there was a screech of duct tape being pulled followed by the scratch of magic marker against cardboard. It wasn't pitch black, exactly, but it was certainly pretty grim in there. There was a sensation of momentum, followed by a long, long slide, like we'd been dropped down a chute. There was a loud, confused cacaphony of squeaks as we came to an abrupt stop and landed in a pile of furry little bodies.

And then, momentum again. We'd been picked up, and we were on the move again. I squirmed and jostled to get out of the way of everyone I landed on, and then just... layed where I ended up, shaking my head into the darkness. Trying to figure out how everything had gone mad like this.

"Are you okay?"

The voice was low and feminine. I turned with a start and saw a vague shadow that just might have been the squirrel I had tried to talk to before.

"I don't know," I said. "I think there must have been a mistake. I... I don't understand what's happening."

"We're going to be eaten by one of the guests," she explained, trying to allay my worries.

"Yeah, I sort of figured that much out," I told her, "But... why?!"

"That's what we agreed to," she said, sounding concerned. "Didn't... you agree to it?"

"No!" I said.

"Oh." She sounded disappointed. "I'm sorry."

It took me a minute to figure out that was all I was going to get out of her. "Are you telling me everyone else in here agreed to this?" I asked.

"Well... yes," she said. She made it sound like it should be obvious. "That was the only way they would take us."

I waited to hear a voice of dissent. Surely everyone else had heard what she was talking about? Surely someone would speak up if it wasn't true? After all the things I'd been through since I'd gotten here, hearing that was still just a little bit jarring. I wanted to ask her why she would agree to that, who in their right mind would want to be eaten alive, but then...

But then I thought back just a few weeks ago. When I was sitting on Keith's tongue in a stall in the bathroom of a gay bar, and I was totally ready to go. Not that I was suicidal -- not exactly -- so much as it seemed like the bottom of a fox's stomach was about the most interesting thing that was going to happen with my life.

And it gave me a strange, chilling feeling. How different was I from these other animals gathered around me, ready to fling themselves headlong into death for the sake of the cheap thrill? If I had known about this place before I met Keith, wouldn't I have signed up? Wouldn't I have dove, cackling with glee, into my own self-induced oblivion, just so someone could say that I did it?

It was a real moment of clarity for me. All at once, I sort of lost my appetite for this sort of sport. And I started to feel this awful sort of despair drill its way into my stomach, this sick suspicion that maybe everything had been an act, that they'd only kept me around for their perverted amusement, that they'd planned all along to be rid of me in the end, and now that they were on their honeymoon, they were going to celebrate by finishing me off.

I started to believe that they were really going to eat me. And I wondered which one it would be.

The box came to a rest at last, and with the ugly crackling of peeling duct tape, the flaps opened up again. Keith's face loomed down at us from behind a leather mask, a bemused smirk on his muzzle. He scanned the contents until our eyes met, and then his smile drew just a little bit wider.

I could feel my heart turning to ice.

"Ah," he drawled, "That boxed lunch I ordered." The box tipped, and as we slid, a paw guided us in a mad rush over the edge of the cardboard box and into...

Jerry's supper dish. He'd brought it from home. The dozen or so of us fit in rather snugly, and the rim was too high up to climb. I started hyperventilating. I wanted to say something to him, something, anything. I could see him completely now, looking strangely playful in his leather gear, looming over us with a grin.

"Now then," he announced brightly, "Let me show you all where you'll be staying. Jerry?" He gave a whistle, and Jerry came tromping in on all fours. Slowly. Methodically. Never taking his eyes off of the dish.

"Sit," Keith commanded. "Stay." The wolf sat in front of his dish, calm and placid, with a very intense look in his eyes.

"This, ladies and gentlemen, is the American gray wolf." Oh he was loving this. Stood behind Jerry, one paw wrapped around the front, rubbing his belly. "Today you will be introduced to his considerable appetite on a journey that will extinguish your miserable little fuzzy lives. For the next six hours, you will be playing the role of dog kibble as you experience, first hand, the awesome power of the canine digestive tract." He smacked Jerry's gut teasingly. "Not that the old boy needs any more, eh? You're not even going to make a dent."

My fur was standing on end, and I wasn't the only one. Several of the rodents all around me were swooning, completely taken up in Keith's spell. And I began to wonder if he wasn't really a magician after all.

He gave Jerry a pat on the cheek. "Say 'Ahhhh'."

Jerry obliguingly opened his mouth. Guy could swallow a guinea pig, never mind some damned mice and squirrels.

"All right, bend down so they can see it," he grinned.

There was a low snarl in his throat as he bent over, showing off a gape that nearly spanned the entire length of the bowl we sat in. I squeezed back a tear as the moist dog breath panted over us. I felt like I was looking into the future -- a future where I had nothing to look forward to but a trip through the colon of one of my boyfriends.

"Well guys," Keith taunted, "It was lovely to meet you, have a wonderful stay, I'll see you when he wipes you off his hairy ass. Now!"

The world shook. He dove in like a starving animal, he ate like we were kibble, live bodies disappearing in great, big, slobbery bites, two at a time, three at a time, grabbing the next one before he even swallowed the last. At first I fled. I pushed my way away from the others, I squeaked and screamed for dear life. And then...

A flash as his teeth closed around the squirrel I'd spoken to. And then her bushy tail simply slipped between his lips. And she was gone.

My mind went through a strange disconnect with reality. My legs buckled, and I fell on my back, simply staring straight up in the middle of the melee. I didn't know if he'd saved me for last intentionally, or if it was just my luck, but soon I was the last one in the dish. The rest of them....

They were gone. All gone. Just like that. Tucked away in the bottom of a wolf's belly.

He licked his chops in satisfaction as he looked down at me. I'd told him, hadn't I? If it was going to be anyone, I wanted it to be him. As I looked into his eyes, we both knew. I'd already seen what lay ahead of me. And I wasn't scared. He lunged for me --

-- And stopped short. Pulled back by his leash.

"Stay! Stay!" Keith commanded crossly. "That's enough."

The fox peeked into the dish with a secret smile.

"This one's mine."

He picked me up and brought me to his nose. "Timothy Whiskers."

I mustered the nerve to give him a weak smile. "Hi."

"You haven't answered my question yet," Keith said admonishingly.

What?! "Question?" I squeaked.

"Do you remember when we met?" he asked coyly. "I told you that I had eaten vorarephiles before. Little critters just like you. As you may have come to realize..." He waved grandly around the dungeon room where we found ourselves. "... This was the venue. But then I asked you a question. And now I need an answer."

Oh god. I remembered that now.

"So, Timothy Whiskers," he said, his voice suddenly very soft. "How badly do you have your heart set on living to see tomorrow?"

I took deep breaths, my head swimming, trying to focus. Everything was so... dreamlike all of a sudden.

"I..." It was a struggle just to use my voice. "I... very badly want to live to see tomorrow."

He raised me to his lips. I squeaked helplessly, put my paws up...

... And he kissed me.

"All right," he said lightly. "I think we're about done here then. Jerry, you can go check out the baths if you want to. Go ahead and have your way with one of the serving foxes while you're at it, they'll probably get a kick out of you."

"Sure thing," Jerry sang out, climbing up on two legs again and heading out the door.

Keith whisked me away to the straw mattress, stretched out on his back, and sat me on his chest, looking down at me expectantly.

I looked back at him for a long moment, dazed.

Finally, it occurred to me that if anything was going to be said, I'd have to be the one to say it.

"So... that's it?"

"Yep," he said brightly.

"Huh."

It took a minute for the conversation to get going again.

"So... Just for the record... All those rodents Jerry just ate, are they really...?"

"Enjoying a gruesome demise, yeah," Keith confirmed, nodding.

"Okay, good."

This time, Keith broke the silence himself. "So, how about if we ring for some room service?"

"Yeah, that sounds good."

Dinner turned out to be an entire roasted chicken with wild rice stuffing, complete with potatoes, carrots, and fresh bread. Keith carved and served with practiced form and flair.

"So... What was that all about then?" I asked.

"Basically it was all just a ploy to try and turn you on," Keith grinned, cutting up a small piece of breast meat for me. "So how did you enjoy it?"

I stared off into space, trying to sort through the events of the last half hour. They'd really, really had me going. And honestly, I felt it was a little careless on their part. One little mixup, and I would've found myself facing another sick bastard entirely, one who wouldn't value my tiny little life any more than any of the rest of them. Or maybe he had more control of the situation than I gave him credit for. I don't know.

I thought about the view that I got from the bottom of the bowl, Keith's taunts, and the way Jerry... looked as he wolfed them all down, hungry and merciless...

"Well," I smiled weakly, "It left an impression, I'll tell you that much."

Keith slid a mouse-sized portion to my side of his plate. "I suppose everyone has to see it at least once," he mumbled thoughtfully.

I snickered. "What, a wolf eating a bowl of rodents alive?"

He turned to me with a soft smile. "Well yes, that too. But mostly I was thinking that everyone needs to see what their fantasies really look like. Sometimes the only way to kill curiosity is to give in to it."

"So is that why you brought us here?" I asked. "Just to show me that?"

"Well, that was one reason, yes. There were any number of others. Jerry has a passion for bathing, so I wanted him to experience the baths here at least once. I rather missed this wild rice stuffing." He took a large bite, whiskers twitching as he chewed. "And I suppose I wanted to say goodbye to this place."

"Did you miss it here?"

He smiled dreamily, staring through the wall in the back of the room. "I miss certain aspects, yes," he confided. "I suppose it was nice to be the Master. The dominant fox. I could break anyone, you know. I began studying domination technique when I was sixteen. When I was eighteen, I inherited the title of Master, and I made it a point to subjugate all of the other tops who worked here. It was a perfect conquest; not a single creature could stand up to my will. It's a very powerful feeling, having bears begging at your feet. I didn't do much topping for our guests, of course. Strictly special occassions, VIPs, that sort of thing. Had my choice of the serving foxes every night."

He sighed. "But I suppose I lost my taste for it in the end. Two years later, I met Zeke. And that was the beginning of the end of my family's dynasty."

I blinked. "What happened?"

"I suppose I lost my taste for this whole business," he said, waving a paw at the castle as if he could just brush it away. "Zeke was the first creature to bend me. The first animal to make me his bitch. He had me spellbound. I gave him my title because I didn't think I would need it any longer. And I stayed on as a serving fox for another year." He grinned. "A plaything for our more aggressive guests."

"What, you?" I asked, taken aback. "Seriously?"

He nodded earnestly. "Not that I minded. I was intoxicated. All I wanted was to lose myself to someone else's power. And, of course, I was Zeke's favorite. The fallen Master. He kept me as a trophy, a testament to his sexual prowess."

"So how did you escape?"

Keith shrugged. "I just left one day."

I blinked. "What, just like that?"

Keith grinned. "The locks and chains that keep us here are given to us by our own consent. No one can be kept here against their will. Many leave, but many arrive to take their place. Zeke tried to keep me here through emotional force. He wanted to smash my will so that I would never try to escape. And that was his downfall, because that was exactly the reason I wanted to leave to begin with."

"What do you mean by that?"

"He never loved me," Keith said with a hollow smile. "But I would have loved him."

I could see his eyes misting over. I stayed quiet.

"So I left," he continued. "My father took me back and gave me a job at his candy store. A year later, I was the manager. Four years later, I met Jerry. This year, I met you."

He sighed again. "And now I find that I've fallen in love with the two of you. And I feel..." He stabbed a piece of potato and spun it around, watching it thoughtfully. "... I feel like maybe I should be settling down. Like I don't need all of this... decadence to make me feel complete." Nom. Whiskers twitching. "So I brought you both here for one last hurrah. So I could say goodbye. And so you could see just what kind of fox you're getting yourselves into. I suppose you have the right to know."

It was a quiet dinner after that. I finished what I could of my portion -- the amount of food these two offered me, I had to wonder if they weren't fattening me up after all -- and lay on the table, staring up at the ceiling meditatively. Jerry returned, looking more pleased with himself than I'd ever seen him, definate lingering scent of horny wolf musk on him. I took a moment to secretly envy the lucky serving fox he must have met. Not content with the dozen or so rodents he'd had, he also put away the chicken dinner leftovers for us, and we spent a little warm, cuddly time doting on him. Wolf loved his tummy rubs, that was for sure.

"Well, gentlemen," Keith said at last, "There's one more thing I want to attend to while we're here, so if you're capable of entertaining yourselves for a few minutes, I'll be back shortly."

Jerry nodded. "Sure thing."

Keith jabbed a claw in his chest. "Seriously," he said admonishingly, "I want him alive when I get back."

Jerry just smirked. "One of these days you'll forget to say that," he teased.

"And what a tragic day it will be," Keith agreed. "See ya!"

And then it was the two of us, stretched out on the straw mattress.

"So," I grinned, "How are they doing in there?"

Jerry patted his tum, serene smile on his face. "Making progress."

Mmmmmmmm. "Okay," I said at last, climbing to my feet and marching up his chest. "I'm going to need a favor."

"Oh?" he grinned. "What might that be?"

"I think you know." I got to his nose and gestured. "Open up."

YAAAAWWWWN. It looked so... calm like this. Warm. Soft. Friendly, even. Aside from a few stray hairs stuck in his gums, you'd never think that this was the scene of a brutal devouring. His tongue hung limp and placid, and a soft pant pant pant wafted up from his sucking gullet. Sated beast. I spent a long moment sprawled over the edge of his front teeth, hands on my paws, tail whisking, feeling the humidity of his dog breath settle over me like a smelly blanket. Gullet gazing.

At last, I stepped up on his tongue and crawled around on all fours. I found a spot in the corner of his mouth and stretched out on my stomach. "Okay, bring 'er down," I told him. "Slowly."

I adjusted myself for comfort as he brought his jaws together again. It was the most complete embrace I could have ever imagined. His molars were a gentle vice around my rib cage, his soft fuzzy lips sealed around my neck, nothing but my head poking out for air. My arms were draped into the little spot between lips and gums, and the rest of my body was squeezed by a soft and curious tongue. It's funny how a place as dangerous as a wolf's mouth can feel so... warm and snug and safe. Bastard knew how to wind me up, too. Just a little probe here and there, a little tap with the tip of his tongue, until I had a big dopey smile that I didn't know how to get rid of.

"So," I mused, "What would you have done if Keith hadn't pulled you back?"

SHLURP. My head popped through his lips, and everything went black. I squeaked out in panic as he playfully squeezed me between his molars, rolled me back to the middle, made a loud swallowing sound, and then pushed his tongue out past his lips, giving himself a loud lick on the nose.

Heh. Sexy answer. I basically came on his tongue.

When I was satiated, he spit me out again, ploop, through his lips like a wringer, landing on my back on his soft chest. "Dirty bastard," I mumbled, beaming.

"I think we've got one more matter of business to attend to," he noted with a nasty grin. And then he picked me up and took me to the opposite wall. There was a deep drawer of some sort set into the wall, very close to the floor. He twisted the handle with a loud "click" and pulled it out. I drew a sharp breath when I saw it.

It was full of gravel. It pulled out from the wall completely, about seven feet square, large enough to be a bed.

A bed-sized litter box.

Jerry dropped me in the middle of it, dropped to all fours, and stepped inside with a smug swagger. I prudently retreated several inches away when his butt suddenly loomed over me. Hunched over in a classic "shitting dog" pose, tail lifted, anus dilating...

He'd done a number on them, all right. They hit the gravel in one thick, soft coil. Not a trace was left of a single one of them. They'd been pulverized, annihilated by the power of a canine stomach. When he was done, he reached back and grabbed me. I stared wide-eyed at his lifting tail.

This litter box hadn't come equipped with toilet paper.

He wiped me up his ass -- back-first, thank god -- and dropped me on his pile of shit. Then he turned around, lifted his leg, and pissed on me.

"There," he said, kicking gravel in my face. "Think about that." And then he stepped out of the box and slid it shut. There was an ominous click, and then darkness and silence. And the stink of ripe dog shit.

I did think about it. I had a lot of time alone in there. I got myself as clean as I could by rolling around in the gravel, then found a spot in the back of the box where I could lay back, stare into the silent darkness, and try to work things out in my head.

It's kind of an interesting puzzle, falling in love with an active predator. Sure, it helped that I was an incurable pervert, and I'd be getting off over getting pissed and shit on if I hadn't spent myself over the idea of being eaten alive. But still, I had some rather incongruous ideas to try and get my head around. One was that I was in love with an animal who was sweet, gentle, kind, and sensitive. The other idea was that this very same animal very much enjoyed turning fuzzy little animals just like me into poop. And as much as he might intellectually appreciate having me around alive, there had to be a part of him that was still tempted to have me for lunch.

I guess life and death are funny things if you're someone like me. I love life. I love being alive. Even on the coldest, wettest, hungriest, most miserable days of my life, I've never really wanted it to end. You never know what's going to get thrown at you next, and if you're down one day, you're up the next. Being dead limits your options. It just doesn't seem like it'd be much fun. But at the same time, god do I ever look forward to the day when Jerry smacks his chops, rubs his gut, and has one last belch to remember good old Timothy Whiskers. I guess what it comes down to is that I want more than anything to be enjoyed. Because in the end, we all have to go sometime; wouldn't it be comforting to know that you did it to make someone you love happy?

I thought about all those rodents I'd met. Especially the squirrel. Something about that still bugged me. No, I decided, that wasn't the right answer either. You're not supposed to decide that you're going to die. You can anticipate it, you can prepare yourself for it, but you shouldn't try and force it. I know, I know, maybe I'm kidding myself, maybe I'm really more like them than I'm willing to admit. But it still seems like there's a difference to me.

Not that it mattered now, of course. They got what they wanted. I was certain of that, if nothing else; I can't imagine that a single one of them died in sadness or disappointment. And that was sort of an encouraging thought. Life would go on.

I spent the night in that litter box. Keith woke me up the next morning as if nothing had happened. Luckily, there was enough time for a bath before we left. The place had a beautiful public bathhouse -- there were maybe twenty tubs to satisfy the entire population, yet there was very little waiting. One of the serving foxes took us to a tub, offered suggestions for herbal salts, the whole deal. It was a two-occupant tub, so naturally we had no problem sharing it together. Keith washed me himself, admonishing Jerry for "mistreating his toys" the entire time he was picking little bits of wolf crap out of my fur.

We left without having breakfast, but we stopped halfway home at this campy little hamburger shack for lunch. They had these tiny little hamburgers, barely bigger than me, that they were selling for twenty five cents apiece. We got twenty of them in a great big box and spread them out all over the table. They were hilariously awful -- the meat was so thin and of such poor quality that it was more like tiny dinner rolls with meat paste stuck between them. Jerry took the entire ordeal as a personal insult, not that it stopped him from knocking back a dozen of them and a bag of fries.

And then we were home at last. It had been a surprisingly exhausting trip. We silently agreed to adjourn to our separate corners of the apartment to spend the evening recovering. I could have sworn that there was just a hint of sweet melancholy in the air. The honeymoon was over. It was the beginning of a new life together for the three of us. And I don't know if any of us had spent any time thinking about what that life would be like after we'd had all of the nasty kinky thrills that we'd ever wanted.

I know I hadn't.

Thanksgiving came swiftly and mercilessly. Dinner was just the three of us. Jerry had rolled up his sleeves and gone crazy putting together a beautiful turkey dinner for all of us. Turkey, dressing, dumplings, green bean casserole, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, pies -- he was ready to feed an army even though it was just the three of us, and goodness knows I wasn't going to make a dent. He stayed up late prepping everything on Wednesday, then got up early to start cooking Thursday morning. I woke up to the smell of rosemary and a sample of sausage and celery stuffing.

Keith ate everything with great relish. "The last moment of quiet civility before the year's end," he lamented, buttering a hot bun and raising it in a toast. "Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow it begins. If the gods are not on my side, then may I see you all again in Valhalla." After dinner, as Keith assured us was his tradition, we had a moment of silent prayer for "our brothers in the retail toy stores" to petition the gods for mercy and salvation upon their pure souls.

Jerry volunteered to do the cleaning as Keith and I basked in the warm glow of the fireplace over a game of 3D Tic Tac Toe on the Atari. Fascinating game, really; the extra dimension opened up a lot of surprising opportunities for sudden, unseen victory. We switched over to Warlords when Jerry came to join us, and I won the best three of seven matches. There were a few trips to the kitchen for some leftovers -- Jerry introduced me to a concoction of his own invention, a tortilla stuffed with turkey, stuffing, and cranberry sauce, deliciously peculiar -- and Keith decreed that there would be a viewing of A Christmas Story before bed. I usually preferred to sleep alone in my bed under the couch, but that night I slept on Keith's pillow. Three warm, sated animals, sleeping off an early winter's gorge. There's no better feeling in the world.

Unfortunately, Keith was already gone by the time we woke up. The malls opened early for Black Friday, and Keith was eager to make sure his beloved store was properly fortified. His place made good chocolates, I had to say; no doubt it was going to be a real grind for them to fulfill the demand for gift boxes.

The next couple of days were bland and dreary. The overcast weather and the endless turkey leftovers were bad enough, but it was really sad to see how Keith was taking things. The holiday rush was clearly taking a toll on him, mentally and physically. There was a certain strain to his normal easy cheerfulness, as if he was just keeping up appearances for us. I spent a lot of time buried in my chat rooms and video games.

One afternoon, I was surprised to find Jerry in the kitchen, all done up in his house dress, diligently chopping up vegetables. There was an unmistakable smell of freshly chopped onions in the air, and a just a hint of thyme.

"Hey gorgeous," I grinned. "What's cooking?"

He looked up, startled, and gave me a sheepish grin. "Ratatouille. I figured everyone was getting tired of leftovers; I thought I'd whip out the cookbook and find something a little different for dinner."

"Ratatouille huh?" I mused. I casually caught the edge of his dress and swung myself up, scampered up to sit on his shoulder. "With real rats?"

He gave me a sideways glance, then dumped a large pile of what looked like cucumbers into a stewing pot. "It's a vegetable stew. French recipe. I've had it once or twice. It's pretty good, and it turns out it's easy to make." I rode along as he washed a large purple eggplant in the sink and brought it back to the cutting board. "It's just tomatoes, onions, green pepper, garlic, zuccini, eggplant, a little olive oil, and a little seasoning. Just stick it all in the pot and let it stew."

I leaned over a little to get a good sniff of it. Zesty. I would have thought it was Italian, but I'm no gourmand. "Nice. I'm surprised you're so eager to start cooking again after that big dinner last week."

He smiled bashfully. "Well, I do love to cook. I've been thinking about what Keith told me a while back. About how he won the lottery, and once he had all of the money he needed, he took the job at the candy store for free, because that was what he loved to do."

I blinked. "That's a new one on me," I told him.

He grinned. "Well. Now that we're all here together, I've gotten to thinking about what I'd like to do with my life." The eggplant hit the brew, and he folded it in with a large wooden spoon. "And I've been thinking that I'd like to learn more about how to cook and clean. As long as I'm going to be here all day, I'd like to make myself useful somehow. There's a certain charm to the idea of being a housewife. Doing the cooking and the cleaning for someone else, all that."

I cocked my head. "Really. I thought that restaurant was driving you crazy though."

"Certain aspects drove me crazy," he admitted. "I loved the job. But some of the customers..." He shook his head. "I was just so sick of being treated like that. Just harassed and belittled and... shit on by unappreciative and disrespectful animals." He glowered into the stew as he stirred it. "It's different with you guys. I know you appreciate me. I guess it's the difference between doing something out of obligation and doing something out of love."

I nodded. "Yeah, fair enough," I agreed.

He picked a long, floppy onion slice out of the soup and munched it thoughtfully. "Hmmmmmmmm, that'll be fine, I think, just have to let it cook down." He dipped a spoon in, pulled out a bit of rich red broth, blew on it gently, and held it up to me. "Here, have a taste."

I took a couple laps. Surprisingly nice stuff. Like tomato soup, but with a decidedly fresh, clean taste to it. "Not bad," I said, impressed. "Tomatoey."

"Yeah, that's what I like about it. This'll be served over rice. I'm thinking it'll be good with a fresh baguette. I'm going to work on that while this simmers. Just a little more all spice." He shook some orange seasoning into the pot and stirred it in, staring into the soup meditatively.

"So," he said carefully, "Are we still friends?"

That one caught me by surprise. "Of course we are," I said. "Why wouldn't we be?"

"Oh." His ears folded sheepishly, and he had an embarassed smile on his muzzle. "No reason. I guess. I was just kind of worried because it didn't seem like you were following me around the way you used to. Ever since... Well, I mean, you don't have to follow me around, I'm not saying that at all, I was just... worried."

Hmmmm. "Worried?"

"That I'd offended you," he murmurred. "That... you know, I'd gone too far. At the castle. When I... ate those other animals and then..." His voice trailed off delicately.

I chuckled. "Oh come on," I grinned. "It'd take more than that to put me off."

He looked at me, concerned. "Are you sure?" he asked. He made it sound like it was the most important thing in the world.

"Sure I'm sure," I said dismissively. "That was the hottest night of my life."

He still didn't seem very happy. "I've... I guess I've started to feel bad about that," he admitted. "I mean... I've eaten wild mice before. I guess that's kind of different just because... y'know, they don't talk or anything. And I ate that mouse who came into the restaurant, but he was being a dick, he had it coming. But... those guys, they'd never done anything to me. I just..." He frowned. "Do you think I'm a terrible animal?"

"Oh, you already know the answer to that," I smirked. "Jerry. Those guys were perverts. Just like me. They knew what they were getting into. I can tell you conclusively, one hundred percent, you knocked their socks off. They had the time of their lives. Do you...?" I trailed off, taking a moment to look him over critically. "Do you even realize how sexy you look to a guy like me? Fat wolf, wide jaws... You're a gorgeous beast, Jerry. Gorgeous. Stop beating yourself up."

He had a thin smile as he looked down into his soup. "I know how you feel, Tim," he said quietly. "But I don't think I'm going to try something like that again anytime soon."

I nodded. "Sure thing." I guess there was only so much I could do for him. He'd just have to figure out the rest of it himself. So I went to find something else to do.

As I padded back into the living room, trying to decide whether I wanted to get some Video Olympics or some Pressure Cooker going, an odd, uncomfortable thought crossed my mind. It was what Jerry had said about wanting to learn how to cook and how he'd wanted to make himself useful. Until this point, my life had always been... well, pretty unstable. Never mind trying to be useful to anyone else, until now it had always been a challenge just to stay alive from sun up to sun down.

And now I'd won the lottery, hadn't I? I was in with two animals who seemed to love the hell out of me. I had a pretty good idea where my meals would be coming from for the forseeable future. And it was increasingly clear that nobody was going to eat me without my permission. So now that living was easy, what would be the best thing to do with it?

I mean, obviously Jerry was better equipped than I was for household chores. Physically, my playing field was limited. Did that mean I had a free pass to spend the rest of my life playing video games and jacking off? Why had I dropped out of school -- because I didn't think I had a future? Now that I did have one, well... felt like kind of a silly excuse to go on goofing off.

The thought stopped me cold. I spent a long moment standing under the couch, staring at the stack of Atari cartridges I had hoarded there. And the funny thing was, I noticed something there that I hadn't before. On the Oystron cartridge, there was a little note on the label: "Game contents Copyright 2003 Piero Cavina".

Huh.

Dinner was excellent. Keith seemed to come back to life when he came home to find that the place had been vaccuumed and dusted, top to bottom, and a little sandalwood oil was warming in the air for dinner. Business had calmed down from Black Friday, he explained as he ate, but it was still tough filling demand, especially with two new hires who had come on as temporary help for the holidays and didn't seem especially interested in learning to do the job well. Jerry cleaned up the kitchen after dinner, and I offered to give his aching paws a good rub on the couch, much to our mutual satisfaction.

I was digging my shoulder into the inside of his left paw when I remembered the subject of the game label. I was surprised to hear his explanation.

"Oh yes," he agreed. "I've picked up a lot of new titles from homebrew authors over the years."

"Homebrew authors?"

He nodded. "Hobbyists. They design new Atari games in their spare time. Some of them even get to make real cartridges out of them."

I blinked. "You can really do that?"

"Oh sure. It takes a lot of effort, but it can be done. There's a lot of information about it online. I looked into it for a while once. Dabbled in it for a bit, but it never really caught my interest."

The next free moment I had, I looked into it. Sure enough, there was an entire community centered around making new Atari games. All of the software was free -- compilers, emulators, even games. I had to graduate up to Keith's laptop in order to get the most out of it, and it was a hell of a time trying to figure out the tutorials. The general consensus seemed to be that it was a terrible choice for a beginning programmer, but I had a number of factors on my side. For one, everyone in the message boards was very friendly and helpful to a newbie like me, at least once I demonstrated that I was ready to put some effort into it. For another thing, I had a level of dogged persistence that was not to be trifled with. And most importantly, I literally had nothing better to do.

It was painful for a couple weeks. But the day finally came when I could compile a program with no errors, and when I ran it through the emulator, it came up exactly as I expected. It was just a blank background and a little gray mouse (or at least a halfway reasonable construction thereof). And when I moved the arrow keys, it slid around, smoothly and beautifully, like an ice skater.

I stepped back from the keyboard and gazed up at my work, taking slow breaths. Such a simple thing it was, really, and yet I was exhilerated. This was power quite unlike anything I'd ever had before.

This was the beginning. Only the beginning. This, I decided, was going to be my life's work.

It was so nice to finally have it figured out.