# The Dogs: Litany - The World Enslaved In An Unlimited Moment

Author: Aux Chiens
Tags: Anal, Character Development, FAMILY, Gay Relationships, Human, Kissing, M/M, Male, Male Pregnancy, Oral, Plot Development, Secrets, Story Progression, Transformation, comfort, smoking

            Stephen's eyes fluttered open, he lurched
forward - on the edge of a couch, cloth, against his skin, and the pinching of
a bunched up shirt underneath him, where
the fuck was he, how the fuck did he
get here?
            His head seemed to almost
try to detach itself from his body - he threw a hand to his temple, then one to
his chest, feeling his heart palpitate, making his sternum near-vibrate, an
uncomfortable pulsing knell that signified he drank too much, familiar with,
but never used to. His bladder, swollen, screamed at him, the full trifecta of
waking up with a hangover.
            He sucked in a breath, and
sat there, in the darkness, the edge of the couch - whose couch? 
            His eyes darted - living
room, small, not much on the walls, wait, a big television, Wii underneath it,
DVR, 1:18 in neon-blue digital
numbers.
            Then he remembered.
            There was a sweeping blur
of memories - reaching the apartment after getting wasted in the hot tub,
hearing Bligh and his brother argue, words that he had been too far gone to
register cogently. And then Dakota - no, Cody, that was what he wanted to be called - there
was Cody, holding him, being firm and patient as he propped him up on the couch
as he got sleepy, so sleepy...
            He must have passed out. 
            "O-oh fuck - n-no, not like this..." he
murmured, rising, stumbling, near-falling, righting himself just at the precise
moment to avoid faceplanting onto the carpet. He felt a rush of pain to his
head, and he buried it, again, in a free hand. "Aww f-fuck--" 
            "So yer finally
up."
            Stephen jerked with a start
at the source of the words - behind him, draped in shadow in the open
sliding-door of the patio, was Bligh, a purplish ghost framed against the
yellow-orange lights of the parking lot beyond him.
            His hat was on, his long
hair a cascade of crow's feathers down his neck, liquid in the half-darkness -
the only illumination in his face was the ember of the cherry of his cigarette,
stuck in the corner of his mouth.
            "H-hey! Jesus Bligh,
you sca--"
            "Keep yer voice
down."
            Stephen sighed.
"S-sorry--"
            "Been waitin fer ya ta
wake up - ya were out cold, Drew n'Cody's gone ta bed."
            He wanted to say something
in response, but found a new, gripping shortness of breath - and an unwelcome
queasiness in his stomach. 
            "Uh - uh--"
            He saw Bligh's arm come up,
pointing. "Bathroom's right yonder. Dun ya dare wake em if ya gotta throw
up."
            The last words were distant
in Stephen's ears as he paced quickly to the bedroom door, opening it with as
much carefulness as he could muster before actually panicking...he slipped
inside, a few steps later he was in the bathroom, Dakota - Cody - and his brother, as Bligh had said they would be, sound
asleep, spooning together in the bed, somewhere behind him. 
            On his knees Stephen went,
gripping the toilet, to await the awful moment when his stomach would revolt
against him, the price he paid, awful and exacting, for what he was sure
everyone else would call addiction -
he never thought about it too much or too hard, he was only eighteen, he hadn't
learned things like how to take back words and labels and be himself, no, he
just drank too much because it felt good and it made him forget the
meat-puppetry of living the life he had been cursed with.
            The bathroom tile chilled
his skin despite the pleasant ambient temperature outside - chilled the skin of
his shins and feet and knees, the porcelain, too, chilled his arms.
            Well, fuck all this - he
was probably an alcoholic. Drewseph
was probably right to shepherd him into his house...to let him vomit in his
toilet... 
            ...but he didn't. Nothing
came.
            The urge to throw up faded
- an ebbing wave.
            It was closing in on
half-past one in the morning on a Monday, and Stephen Lightfoot's face was
slowly emerging from an open toilet seat.
            Several long, deep breaths
followed - he'd done worse, before, he'd done much worse, this was actually an improvement, this was actually
okay, if he could drink like he usually did and not make a complete cock out of himself in front of the people who
had practically raised him and their polyamorous third. 
            He stood up, he undid the
belt his brother had given him and pulled down the shorts his brother had also
given him, and let loose a torrent of dehydrated urine that gave off the
telltale reek of acrid butter.
            Several moments went by
before his bladder was completely emptied - all the while his head pounding
unmerciful, again, not as bad as some nights, but still wretched, still
unrelenting.
            The last droplets of urine
fell into the toilet-water, and he blinked, in the darkness of the bathroom -
his hand closed around his penis with a faint frown.
            He would have to go out
there, back into his brother's room where he and Dako--Cody slept...all three of them slept, he suspected. 
            Stephen was different from
them, now - he had no tail, no doggy-ears, there was a faint nag that he didn't
belong here, this was their life, their polyamory, he was intruding, he was
just the little brother, the stunted genius little brother who drank too much
and was an asshole to people so that he could defend himself against something they could never understand...he didn't
deserve anything, especially not them.
            A deep sigh - no, fuck off with those intrusive thoughts.    Drewseph loved him, that stupid, irrational love
encoded into him because they shared DNA, even if that DNA was, now, altered,
mutated, mutating, maybe, still, as he stood there alone in the dark.
            If he could just - if he
could just stop his own regret at having hurt Bligh and having forcibly
separated them years ago, maybe...maybe he could feel normal here, maybe he could
feel welcome.
            But it never stopped - he
gave up Bligh for Drewseph, he surrendered him as he surrendered nothing else,
he always got his way, his Pa had seen to that and as soon as he was old enough
he, Stephen, had seen to that also.
            The only thing he ever lost
was Bligh. And if he could get over that, his own regret...
            His own regret - his own attraction...
            Drewseph did not know - he knew
the gist of it, the minimum, he had guessed the passion and the pain but he did
not know the abyssal depths which he and Bligh had treaded together. 
            Stephen's memories of he
and Bligh's relationship always made him flush - they were uncomfortable memories,
like an exhausting dream that lasts too long, making one more tired instead of
rested. 
            He was sixteen and Bligh was
twenty, it was probably illegal but the notion of consent was laughable - Stephen initiated it, Stephen wanted it,
and at all times Stephen knew what he was doing.
            He would ride Bligh so hard
and so often he'd spend embarrassing amounts of time on the toilet shitting out
what Bligh had given him - sucked him off so much he'd get stomachaches. And
then, playfully enough to mask the morbidity of his condition, he kept coming
back. His belly would be gummed up with Bligh's cum and Bligh would enjoy the
very notion that Stephen was addicted to it, being the bitch in the bedroom
that he never really evolved from.
            Every part of his body Bligh
annexed: mouth - stomach - anus, driven by the irresistible notion of
dependence, dominance, giving orders and having them carried out, what got
Bligh off harder than anything else. They'd be watching a movie when Stephen's
parents were out of town and he'd feel himself getting antsy, ornery for
another dose of his dick, too big for its own good.
            They were both complicit in
this carnival of horrors that lasted seven long liquid-stained months. Dirty,
sticky, filthy sex. Perverted, debauched sex. The stuff animals do - and now Bligh was an actual animal, the
irony could not have been more theatrical.
            But he, Stephen, it was he, of
all people who stopped it, who broke Bligh's heart, because he knew, as it
bothered him more and more - back then, and now here in the present - he was
intruding on something that did not belong to him.
            Bligh was Drewseph's, Drewseph
was Bligh's. Bligh deserved Drewseph - not him, not Stephen. As much as Bligh
had been nearly a father to him, he and Drewseph both raising them as a son,
almost, they could not be together as his own brother and Bligh needed to be
together.
            Stephen was Bligh's outlet for
unquenched sexuality, a balm to ease the interminable loneliness, even when he
was mere substitute for the flesh Bligh craved but could not taste. 
            It bothered Stephen - it
bothered him so much it ate at him and ate him, and at last he yielded to it,
one night when they met outside Bligh and Pappy's house and Stephen had leaned
against the grill of Bligh's truck and, the entire time, could not bear to look
him in the eye...
            As much and as delicious as
what they had was and indeed could have been, it was not to be. And things were
never the same afterward - never. 
            It was little wonder indeed
why Bligh had not wanted to see him and said he did not trust him, how he had
changed from his grandfather's funeral, when last Stephen saw him, only two
months ago...the hurt was refreshed by his presence, the memory of them together
a lethal threat to what he really wanted, really needed - Drewseph.
            But then, this, all of this
- back came the shorts, back came the belt - was because his penis was still
human, the average healthy size, circumcised, everything about him, unlike
Drewseph and Bligh and Cody too, was...
            He paused as pressed his
palm to the bathroom door. 
            "...human..." he
whispered to himself, finishing the thought outloud.
            That wasn't true - and
Stephen had to tell them, tell all three of them, the truth. He didn't want to
- the words wouldn't come to him at the hot tub like they needed to, so he
didn't tell Drewseph, not yet. 
            Maybe Bligh first - or
Cody...
            The bathroom door was
opened, slowly, gently, to keep at a minimum the requisite squeaks, and he
slipped out, just as he slipped in. 
            He did not tarry in the
room, he did not look back to his brother asleep under the covers wrapped in
that angelic wunderkind he had plucked off the street - back he went to the
living room, rounding the corner to the kitchen, stuck his head under the
spigot and let loose some cold water.
            He drank and drank until he
felt bloated with it, water, the universal solvent, he was in desperate need of
hydration and he did not care how much it took until he felt well again...at last
he stopped, turned off the water, wiped his mouth with his bare arm and took a
step to slouch back against the oven.
            His head hung with a series
of final breaths, feeling the hangover pain in his temples carry on apace - he
could still feel his heart beat too fast, but it was finally slowing down...only
to reaccelerate as he heard a familiar voice, once more:
            "Ya didn't
flush."
            Again with the upward
head-jerk - Stephen let out a hot, exasperated sigh as he saw Bligh's inky form
near him.
            "I didn't - need to,
and why the fuck do you keep sneaking
up on me?"
            Bligh made a noise, faint,
that queer little laugh. "Yer brother said that too..."
            "Then maybe - you
oughta quit doing it!" Stephen answered irritably.
            "How bout yew - come
on out ere n'join me, Stevie. Have a smoke. We can talk some."
            Stephen, well in spite of
himself, felt uneasy at the idea...the very mention put him on edge, made worse,
far worse, that he could not properly see Bligh in the dark of the living room,
like Bligh was a ghost, and this house was haunted.
            "That - gotta tell ya,
Bligh, that sounds, uh - a little ominous."
            "Do what now?"
            "It sounds bad," Stephen went on, rolling his
eyes. "Really? You don't know what ominous
means?"
            "I know what it means--" There was a
faint, gliding shift, and Stephen guessed Bligh had put his hands in his jeans,
a defensive gesture. "I jest dun get what yew meant by it."
            "I'm still--" 
            Stephen held on to the
words, kept them in his mouth, curled them back with his tongue, he wanted to
quell this anxiety, this creeping sexual jealousy, this growing existential
shockwave.
            "Are we - are we
okay?"
            "Yeah man - I'm past
it. We jest gotta - know where we're at, yanno?"
            "Yeah," Stephen
agreed, more honest than he was used to being. "Yeah - we do."
            "C'mon out,"
Bligh said again. "I got some Reds."
            "Alright," Stephen
said with a small nod. "My shoes still out there?"
            "Yup."
            "Okay."
            He watched Bligh - a
phantom gliding across the living room - pace away to the patio. He waited a
moment, trying to gather himself, trying to persuade himself that this was
fine, that Bligh's dashed-off answer was something he actually meant...
            ...he hated being sober. If
he was drunk he could attack, deflect, but now he was sober - hungover, the worst kind of sober.
            He moved, slowly, out of
the kitchen, following Bligh's path, picking up and putting on the shirt that
he had been sleeping on, cold in places where he had dried himself off at the
hot tub.
            Normally he would go
shirtless - in imitation, he knew, when he thought back on it, of seeing Bligh
do the same, year after year. But now was not the time for that - he was sober,
vulnerable, this cotton shirt would be the only armor he could afford.
            Still, he hesitated before
coming to the doorway of the patio. 
            "Why yew waitin,
boy?" came Bligh's voice into his right ear, louder now that he was
outside.
            Stephen glanced to where
the sound of the voice had come from - there was Bligh, seated, leaning back,
in one of the plastic patio chairs that were separated by a small wooden table
with an ashtray atop it. He was shirtless, one arm up so that a languid hand
draped over the bill of his Ravens cap, a fresh cigarette lit in his mouth.
            "I - I ain't, just -
little bit of a hangover still..."
            He could see him much more
clearly out here - the half-Moon high in the sky, the lights of the parking
light, they gave Bligh an outline, contours of his thin, hairy body which
Stephen knew, had merged with, more than once, when it was younger, when it was
less hairy, less like who he was now.
            He was a figure of supreme
confidence, of being at peace with himself in a way that seemed almost
enlightened - there was a pride in this casualness, beat-up jeans that
terminated in great black furry footpaws that the neighbors, all asleep or all
blinded by the hazy darkness, could not detect.
            Stephen had said to
himself, and to Bligh, a little too often, that they were over and that they
were better as a best friends - most of the time this was true.
            Most of the time. 
            But now - now was not one of
those times.
            Bligh did something he did
not expect - he smiled...no, he never really properly smiled, he more smirked,
and his fangs, which Stephen had noticed and Bligh had passed off as something
he always had when really they were the indicator of something deeply weird,
deeply beautiful, made an appearance over his lip.
            "Yew finally up,"
Bligh said with that little laugh he always made, that tittering noise.
            Stephen shrugged.
"Yeah - did you - stay up this whole time?"
            "Yep." The
cigarette moved in his mouth with the word. "Drew told me ta do it n'I did
it." The hand came down from his cap to grasp the cigarette and, puffing,
he exhaled a new plume of smoke. "He's worried about ya."
            Stephen gave a mirthless
chortle, taking a seat in the other plastic chair. "How bout that."
            "I figured yew'd be
fine - weren't I right?"
            "Mostly," Stephen
answered. "You gonna gimme one?"
            "Ya wanna?"
            "I do."
            Bligh reached into a pocket
to procure the promised pack of Reds - finding a single cigarette, he handed it
to Stephen along with his Zippo which he took from his other pocket. The pack
of Reds went on the table. Into Stephen's mouth went the cigarette, up went the
perfect wick of the Zippo's fire - he handed the lighter back to Bligh, and
nodded his thanks. 
            "How you been?"
Stephen said, trying not to be awkward.
            "Been aight,"
Bligh answered, taking his first drag. "Gotta job not far down the way
there, fixin cars."
            "Who with? A big
company?"
            Bligh shook his head,
blowing smoke. "Nah - little place. They treat me right, pay's good too -
made a couple o'friends, even."
            "That's - that's
good." Stephen tried, and failed, to relax. "So you, uh - you got
you're life set up here, then..."
            "I s'pose, yanno,
yer Grandad's money makes sure we ain't hurtin none so Drew can go ta school
still, but - I wanted ta work too, bring some money in fer us - fer the
family..." He took
another drag, exhaling slow, taking his time with the bombshell he needed to
drop: "S'weird...I, uh - really did never think I'd - be a dad."
            "I - yeah," Stephen
rejoined hesitantly. "Uh - how - how is that?"
            Bligh looked at him, the
crooked smile becoming knowing and sly.          "I dunno, man - yew
tell me how it feels ta be an uncle."
            Stephen sighed, frustrated
already with the direction the conversation was taking. "I - I haven't - I
dunno, dude."
            Bligh nodded, moving
on. "So how yew been? Since Pappy passed - last I
saw ya?"
            "Been about the
same," Stephen murmured after a short pause- he half-hissed the last word,
feeling a pang of the hangover hit him again. He leaned back in his chair, watching
the shadow-draped jungle of palms in front of them. "No boyfriend -
girlfriend, neither, um, there was a guy in Autumn Term - uh, right when school
started - that led me on I still see around campus, yanno--"
            "Dang," said Bligh
with what sounded like a sympathetic frown. "I'm sorry ta hear that."
            Stephen made another
mirthless chortle, near the same noise as before, seeing in his mind's eye the
face of the boy - bored, brunette, douchebag - he had not mentioned to Drewseph
because after three weeks of being used for sex it hardly seemed worth it. 
            "Cute kid - not - as
hot as you are and, uh - not at all in
Dako - uh - Cody's league, but..." He sighed, the cigarette burning
patiently in his fingers. "Uh - short, big dick, it was weird he was like
an inch shorter than me and still hung--"
He stopped - he glanced to Bligh who, in mid-drag, had his eyes turn worried.
"I like em big," Stephen muttered. "I like to get hurt going in
- literally--" His voice dipped yet lower. "...and figuratively."
            Bligh's eyebrows went up
after a short, dubious pause. "Ye talkin bout me?" 
            Those eyes of his, perfect
ice blue, seemed to twinkle, they seemed to have some hidden excitement in
them, but they revealed nothing.
            Stephen shrugged, trying to
be demure, trying to seem disinterested. "What - what if I was?"
            Bligh moistened his
lips, his gaze distant, away, somewhere Stephen could not see. "Damn funny
way o'startin a conversation there, Stevie."
            "Yeah, well!" Stevie
said back curtly, trying to deflect the iciness that had clenched his bowels at
Bligh's answer. "I - just telling the truth."
            Bligh said nothing for several
painful seconds - finally he shook his head, slowly. "I ain't bout that
life anymore, Stevie - I'm married, man. Ain't like it was afore n'yew - yew
should know--"
            "Yeah, yeah, I do know, that I could - turn like one of
y'all, big goddam deal...least I'd feel like less of a stranger in my own
brother's - fucking house."
            Bligh exhaled smoke through
his nostrils - his expression did not change.
            "Yew mean that?"
            "Have I ever
lied?"
            "Plenty o'times--"
            "To you."
            Bligh conceded the point
with a frown. "Aight, fine..."
            "Exactly."
            "Well, man - look
here, Stevie...I'm the wrong guy ta ask - cuz I love bein this way, every - every
fuckin bit of it, but--" The cigarette went to his lips for another drag.
"It do get little bothersome, hidin all the time...can't let nobody see, or
else..." His voice trailed off into another one of his strange little
laughs. "Well I done told ya."
            Something about the way
Bligh was speaking made Stephen feel - small.
It was as though he was dismissing him, isolating him further, closing a gate
that he thought he was still able to open.
            He held his own cigarette
up, taking a quick, rapid drag, before answering:
            "Ya told me a lotta
things, Bligh - like that I'm a mistake."
            And with that Stephen retreated
into the plastic chair - deflating. 
            He felt himself become, at
once, sicklier, weaker, he was himself again, he was not the Stephen Lightfoot
that threw his macchiato back at the Starbucks barista who made it wrong or
sent Snapchats to pretty girls whose boyfriends hated him because he was so
obnoxiously a perfect third wheel or seduced straight boys amidst pounding
dubstep beats with the scent of raspberry Smirnoff on his breath in unconscious
but crystallized imitation of how his brother used to do the same.
            No.
            He was the Stephen
Lightfoot, his father's favorite, scrawny and unhealthy and pale, always a nose
in a book, who only talked to his Beagle and cried alone in his room because
all the kids picked on him so mercilessly there was scarcely a day he didn't
come from school in tears, and all his family's wealth and power and evil, no
matter how it was deployed, only seemed to make it worse...
            ...he saw Bligh swallow back
something in his throat he evidently did not expect. 
            "Stevie," he growled
quietly, "let it the fuck go."
            "Nope!" Stephen exclaimed back, undaunted, with a headshake
that carried the rhythm of the turning of the Earth, fortified against Bligh's
command. "Nope - nope, nope -
called me a mistake in front of my own fucking brother--" 
            His eyes opened and he was
smiling - that deforming, taunting, ghastly smile that he used whenever he knew
he was right. The tears came immediately - thick, disgusting, whiskey-scented
tears that streamed down his face, twisted and mocking, with his Joker-like
smile. 
            And then just as it
appeared - it vanished. The smile collapsed, suddenly, into a downturned frown,
and the picture was complete: Little Stevie, asthmatic and lonesome and
miserable at his own life, was there, in front of Bligh, football star,
monstrous in his physical perfection.
            Bligh did not move - not an
inch of give to the instinct that Stephen knew he felt, to hug him, to hold him
like he used to.
            "Then the fuck would yew call it, Stevie? Huh? Ya won't let
it the fuck go - tell me. Fuckin tell
me."
            For the first time in a
minute, maybe two, Stephen was aware of the lit cigarette in his hand. He
stared down at it, the rising smoke that must have burnt his eyes and assailed
his nose - he let it fall to the ground, and in a single, silent action, thrust
his foot back into one of his Pumas, waiting for him by the sliding glass door,
to stomp it out.
            He looked up at Bligh -
still reclining, still regarding him with the oozing confidence of a king in
his castle, an esteem of oneself that Stephen knew he never faked. He wiped the
tears from his face on the back of his arm.
            "Something - I miss,
okay? Something I wanna happen again."
            Bligh seemed impassive, but
the twinkle - that was the only word to describe it, as stupid as it sounded
being in the eyes of such a magnificent, predatory creature - reappeared.
            "But it can't--"
            "And again,"
Stephen pressed, "and again."

            "Stevie, God
dammit..." There was a bemusement, a quaver in the two words like a laugh
about to build.
            Stephen's eyes bore into
the patio. He could not bear to look at Bligh, as he said it, even as he needed to say it, an admission of guilt,
what had been welling and had been suppressed in a ruthless regimen of quashed
emotions, now free to run as a flood - and all because Bligh had used one word,
and one word only: mistake.
            He needed to say it - at
last:
            "I wanna ride that
dick til I shit out my insides."
            He shut his eyes, he braced
himself - but he heard that same stupid laugh, that high-pitched cackle that
Pappy would make too.
            "Are yew fuckin
serious?"
            "I - yes?"
Stephen jerked his head to see Bligh, discarding a cigarette in the plastic
ashtray. "Why - why--" He gritted his teeth, feeling a new outrage
build inside him. "Don't you fucking laugh at me."
            "I ain't laughin at yew--"
            "Sure as fuck sounded
like it."
            "I ain't, though,
I--" He stopped, sighing, as though sensing the need to be serious.
"Jest came outta nowhere, Stevie, c'mon."
            Stephen yielded the point
reluctantly: "Probably."
            "I mean - why you -
why want me of all o'sudden? What happened ta - jest bein friends, like we
was?"
            Bligh enjoyed getting to
the point faster than most - it could, and did, often grate on people more used
to being more diplomatic, more subtle, in their speech. 
            It didn't bother Stephen -
but hearing it made him smile which came out in his answer:
            "I - I just got...jealous I guess."
            He glanced to Bligh, who
nodded slightly.
            "Well, uh - Stevie, I
still dun see how ya could call what we done anythin but a--"
            "Don't say it."
            Bligh frowned. "Well
why not?"
            "Because you loved me,
Bligh," Stephen muttered - the last word, that name, sacred and profane,
cracked in his throat, overcome with a weakness that Stephen felt and Stephen
despised. "Y-you loved me and you - yeah, I wasn't the one you wanted and
I - I knew that, but--" His eyes
searched him, vainly looking for some crack, some flaw in that impregnable
façade of alpha male noblesse. "I
still made you cry - that day - because y-you still loved me..."
            Bligh seemed to ponder it -
the very idea that he had loved Stephen in a way beyond the obligation of being
the brother of his best friend. 
            Stephen's heart, its
hangover-palpitations eased at last, tightened in anticipation of what Bligh
would say - so very much in spite of Stephen himself, usually in the cloud of
an alcoholic buzz that draped his emotions with an aloofness that was almost
sociopathic in its encompassing majesty.
            But Bligh did not answer -
not directly:
            "So - ya still love
me? Even though I - n'Drew too, uh, dun think y'ever met the Pu--uh, Cody afore now but--"
            Stephen stopped him, the
clingy desire for acceptance warped immediately into annoyance. "Why the
fuck both of you gotta act like
this..."
            Bligh leaned forward some.
"Wazzat now?" 
            "Drewseph - he pulled that shit too, he - didn't
actually come right out and say it but he didn't, like, he didn't need to - he just acted like it..."
            "Acted like
what?" Bligh, perhaps agitated at another turn the conversation had taken,
reached for another cigarette from the soft pack.
            "Like--" 
            The cigarette was lit, the
flame illuming Bligh's face, briefly, the rugged handsomeness draped in the
coal chincurtain.             He saw, in the instant it
took for the fire from the Zippo to appear and then be snuffed, what he had
missed, what he had loved, what he had craved and kept silent about it for the
distant hope, now come to full fruition, that Drewseph would take the prize
that, once, belonged solely to him. 
            Once again Stephen felt the
need to be as honest - cuttingly honest, to
himself.
            "Like anything y'all -
my brother, my brother or - you,
fucking you, Bligh, could ever - do,
be, say - big werewolf, weredog whatever--"
He exhaled, harshly, his frustration fresh. "Like anything - anything - could make me stop loving
y'all, or that - you couldn't trust me, with - with what you really are,
whether gay or - dog...people..."
            "Man, Stevie, would ya
think bout it, though? I's jest so fuckin scared
that--"
            "I know what you're
gonna say," Stephen interrupted. "I know, I fucking know."
            Bligh seemed offended.
"Do ya now?"
            "You were scared that anything weird - how are you now, or me
and you, or you and Duke - and Drewseph would just toss you the fuck out--"
Stephen threw up his arms to demonstrate. "Outta here. Because fuck everybody else but when it comes to him--" He chortled unkindly.
"You lose your damn mind!" 
            Bligh took the accusation -
damning, accurate - with a stoicism Stephen thought rather unlike him.
            "What - whattya want
me ta say, man?"
            Stephen knew at once what
he meant - the inarticulate gulf that lay between them, a rawness, a
vulnerability that Bligh dared share with no one else.
            "Y'all were..." He
cleared his throat, taking a deep breath. "Y'all were arguing about
something when I was passing out--"
            "Yeah, bout whether we
was gonna let yew stay or not."
            A coldness burst through
Stephen that quickly forged into a defiance - he sneered.
            "Cuz I'm a mistake,
right?"
            Bligh shook his head.
"Ya weren't no - it wudn't no mistake--"
            "Damn right it wasn't, you stupid dog."
            Stephen was answered with
one of those cackles whose sound and texture was sufficient unto itself to
belong to the Lynch phenotype - Drewseph had taught him that word - and Stephen
had realized his intended insult had easily backfired.
            "Whatever..." he
groaned.
            Again Bligh shook his head.
"Nah - nah, Stevie, ya gotta understand." He was being serious, and
Stephen shot him a wary glance. "Ya showed up just outta fuckin nowhere, I
mean I dun think--"
            "And I'm sorry for
that." Stephen almost shuddered - even now, sober, defenseless, it was
still anathema for him to admit wrong, to do the unthinkable and actually
apologize.
            "Well - thank
ya."
            "No problem," Stephen
answered, near to under his breath.
            "Usually--" Bligh
snickered softly to himself. "Usually he jest g'long with what I wanna
do--"
            Stephen rolled his eyes.
"Oh Jesus, yeah, for how fucking
long has he done that? Won't listen to anybody else - but soon as you say something--"
            "Man, dun--"
            "Since I was
little," Stephen pressed. "Definitely
since I was old enough to realise--"
            "Aight, aight."
            "Like that time
you wanted him to spelunk in that old church where you found Duke and he kept
saying no until you convinced him and then when you did he ended up stepping on
that rusty nail and Pappy yelled at you--"
            "Stevie." Bligh's
eyebrows were furrowed - there was a quiver in his lips like he wanted to smile
at the memory, but was fighting it.
            And Stephen rolled his
eyes for the second time. "Just
saying..."
            Bligh shook his head.
"Well, tonight - tonight, man,
he weren't gonna listen ta me fer nuthin..." His expression was, for a
moment, enigmatic, impenetrable - he seemed at a peculiar crossroads between
annoyed, bemused, and proud. "Yew were gonna stay the night with us n'that
was the end of it..."
            Stephen's mouth went agape.
"He - he did that - f-for me?" 
            "Well, Cody too - but
it was Drew, man, it was - yer brother, yeah."
            "What..."
            Stephen was stunned - he
wanted to say more, to justify it in his head, the guilt of being so selfish
and such an aberrant asshole in the house of someone who would give him the house to sleep in...but
before he could, Bligh went on:
            "But - still, Stevie,
man - it was so fuckin sudden, y'understand? I weren't ready, and we - us three
needed time, man, we needed time ta tell ya--"
            "That y'all
were--" He gestured from Bligh's canid feet to his hidden ears. "Like
- like that?"
            Bligh nodded. "Yeah,
man."
            Stephen sneered again,
his flushed gratitude for his brother forgotten in the moment. "I kinda doubt you
were ever gonna tell me."
            "Now that ain't
true--"
            "Oh yeah?"
Stephen sniffed. "Anything that'd fuck up you and--"
            "That ain't true." Bligh leaned in over the
side of his chair. "Dun call me a liar--"
            "Anything," Stephen finished forcefully, "that would fuck
up my brother and you." He
sighed, feeling a weight lift off of him with the words. "Even at my
expense."
            Bligh retreated back to his
chair - a rare sight, and a Pyrrhic victory, as he had been beaten. 
            Stephen regretted it almost
at once, he had not meant to hurt Bligh, merely to defend himself - and at this
Stephen suppressed his own guilt.
            "Guess, uh--"
Bligh cleared his throat. "Guess I'd be the one who should be apologizin,
then..."
            Stephen looked away with
his hollow satisfaction, which dissipated into nothing as he realized that
Bligh was not breaking the abrupt silence that fell before them, the
never-ending crickets the only accompaniment to their tension.
            "What..." Stephen
looked back to Bligh, his arms behind his head, pensively off somewhere - he
came back to meet Stephen's gaze. "What am I to you?' 
            "Yer..." Bligh
seemed to think a minute before giving that crooked smile he always made.
"Yer my husband's brother - my brother-in-law - yer - yer family,
man."
            A feeling of warm security
should have cued, should have spread over Stephen and negated the omnipresent
anxiety, even in the midst of his hangover - but it did not.
            "You promise?"
            Bligh's crooked smile grew.
"Yeah - Stevie. I'm sorry, I - I said what I said, did I did, aight?"
The smile faded. "Why yew worried though?"
            Stephen swallowed hard -
this was it, this was the moment. 
            He had to tell Bligh - first. Then his brother, and Cody too.
They'd understand, they'd understand completely.
            "Gimme - uh, gimme a
cig, and um - lemme light it myself."
            "Uh--" Bligh
seemed dubious. "Aight - y'okay there?"
            "I dunno,"
Stephen murmured without commitment as he procured his heretofore phone, still
in his pocket from where his brother had retrieved it for him from his locked
car.
            With his phone in his lap,
he took Bligh's offered cigarette and put it to his lips - up came the Zippo,
with a lighting fire. He took a deep, solitary drag, trying to steady himself.
            Handing the lighter back to
Bligh, who was eyeing him with what looked like a mixture of suspicion and
concern, he pressed the button on his phone, his arm down so that the sudden
flush of light was focused on one particular area of skin.
            He exhaled a cloud of smoke
- and, cigarette in his fingers, jammed it into his flesh.
            The pain was immediate, it
drowned out Bligh's horrified reaction that Stephen could only barely
registered - it was a hornet with a fiery sting shoving its weapon into him, it
was bright and furious and his lips pressed together to stifle what should have
been an animal cry of pain.
            But he did not close his
eyes - he watched it, he watched it and he knew Bligh did too, the ghostly
screen of the phone showing what Stephen had dreaded revealing to anyone,
anyone at all, even the ones who knew him best:
            Where there was an angry,
messily cauterized, marred circle of burnt skin, in mere few seconds, moved,
merged, and vanished - healed, completely, as though nothing had ever happened.
            Stephen had expected
some universe of quiet to pass, some epiphany between the two of them -
something, anything, other than what actually happened: Bligh, and his stupid
little laugh.
            "Well ain't that
sumthin!" 
            The remark seemed
altogether too casual for a back-and-forth of something so shattering, and it
took Stephen a moment to realize the gravity of what had just been said - he
stared at him. 
            "What the fuck is wrong with you?" He felt crushed by
a instant hopelessness, sliding his phone into his pocket. "Don't - don't
you know what this - fucking - means?
I heal - I heal, I'm not - I'm not human."
            Bligh nodded.
"Well that's the thing man, I do know whatcha mean - lemme show ya--" 
            The Zippo clinked open and
a flame appeared to reignite it.
            The cigarette went to his
mouth to take a quick puff - then down, down to his upturned arm to be pressed
into the smooth skin. 
            He winced - "Shit that smart!" - and, as Stephen
had done to him, held up his arm.
            Stephen acted as though on
autopilot - out came his phone from his pocket once again, and with a click of
a button he could see the nasty blister that the flame had made. 
            But in the time it took for
Bligh to put out the cigarette in the ashtray - it dissolved into nothing,
replaced, second by passing second, with new skin, so that it looked like
nothing had been there at all.
            Bligh's arm stayed there,
pale and clammy-looking in the light of his phone's screen - Stephen stared at
it, all the noise in his head to a cosmic silence.
            "Oh - my fu--"
            Bligh must have detected
the mass of emotions that quivered inside Stephen's words - his arm withdrew
back to its place on the arm of the chair and he nodded at him in concern.
            "Hey - y'aight?"
            "I--" Stephen had
no immediate words, no direct parallel, in his vocabulary, for how deeply
bewildered he was. He could only say what he immediately thought: "I wanna
- I wanna freak out right now."
            "Well why? Y'ain't no
freak--" That little laugh again, and then: "Not if I ain't one."
            "That's--" Stephen
swallowed hard, his words bursting out of him unfiltered, his phone going into
his pocket for a final time: "T-that - that's why I wanna freak out. I told - yanno, I told Drewseph that, I - I
said I really wanna freak out, seeing y'all like - how you are..." Bligh's
gaze never left his - there was a strength in it, there always was, that lent
itself to him, that made Stephen feel he could continue. "Think - think
about it, Bligh, think - think about I must feel, knowing - knowing there's
people like me out there."
            "Me n'yew - n'Drew -
Cody..." Bligh winced, an action that looked abortive and malformed, like he
had tried not to do it but couldn't resist. "Dan..."
            It was barely a word at all
- but Stephen grasped its meaning at once.
            He smiled, his panic
subsiding - he could not help it, even when he was sober, the idea of a secret
revealed, of the truth triumphant, was too delicious not to celebrate.
            "Dan?" he
repeated. "Little Bear?"
            And Bligh nodded back,
quickly, like he wanted to move on - but Stephen could not. He pressed:
            "So you two--?"
            "Yeah."
            "And then he changed -
like Drewseph and--"
            "Yeah," Bligh
said again - he fidgeted reaching for another cigarette, which brought to his
fingers to twiddle in his discomfort.       "Yeah, he -
yeah."
            Stephen's eyes darted to
the wooden railing, trying to fit together the chronology of the years that his
brother had been absent in Tempest - with each passing half-second was a new
revelation, how it all finally made sense, why Bligh seemed furtive and distant
even after they had supposedly reconciled, why his hat never came off, not even
at the funeral...and Dan Dorsey's suicide...
            Was he - he, Stephen - the
cause of all of this? Had he just enjoyed being with Bligh, had he not, for the first and probably only
time in his life, listened to his conscience and broke it off with him - would
Bligh not have finally been sexual with his dog, who turned him into what he
was now? 
            Could he - he, Stephen -
who thought himself so insignificant, stunted, in his private life, have
actually caused a major change in the world? Had he served a purpose beyond
even himself in the universe?
            The occultation - Bligh's
new species as eclipse to the insights that Stephen thought he had into his life - was at last revealed. The tearing of
the curtain had started with Drewseph taking off his hat - but there was an
inner narrative in it, beneath it, that roiled putrescent underneath the quaint
little mountain-valley town they all called home, once.
            "Is that why..." he
murmured, his eyes coming back to Bligh."Is that why he killed
himse--"
            "Can ya not?"
Bligh growled, quietly.
            Stephen was not about to be
bested: "I'll do what I want."
            Bligh snickered.
"Y'always did, why quit now?" The cigarette between his fingers went
to his mouth.
            "Because I can't die,
and I don't give a fuck."
            "Can't - die," Bligh said back. "W-wait
- holy fuck." The new cigarette
was limp in his mouth, and it fell as the last syllable escaped him, caught,
luckily, against his hairy chest, one-handed. "That - s'why yew - s'why
when ya wrecked--"
            "I shoulda died," Stephen finished for
him. "I shoulda died - um - yeah."
            "Stevie..." Bligh
leaned forward. "Stevie - man--"
            "Hold on,"
Stephen murmured - he shut his eyes. "Hold on. You know - all I
remember--" He stopped. "No. No, that's not right - I remember every -
every little fucking thing..." 
            The memories flew to him -
he swam in them, as he had swam in the drink that night, the nihilism, in
retrospect it should have been a lifechanger, that rockbottom to bounce...but it
wasn't, Stephen knew it wasn't, it just made things worse.
            "You know what I did,
Bligh?" He chuckled, a laugh that got away from him and vibrated unsteady
into the night air, amused by his own the way he could vocalize this. "I
laughed."
            "Ya - ya did?"
            "Yeah - yeah I did. I
laughed - and laughed - and laughed..." The last word disappeared into a
whisper so faint even Stephen could barely hear it. "I...I was alive..."
He paused, trying to remember the ebullient flashes in his brain that night,
trying to make the same sense of them now that he had then. "I was alive. Alive - and - I could feel myself heal.
I could--" He clapped a hand to his side, which had gained a creeping ache
below his ribcage in psychosomatic sympathy. "There was - a huge, huge gash right here - uh - I was -
launched outta the windshield and it sliced me open on the way out but, I...I
don't really remember that..." He stopped. "I just remember - feeling
it seal, yanno, even when it hurt
like nothing - else I've ever felt
before and there was all this blood on me but--" He shook his head, finding
he could not believe his own words. "There was...other cuts and bruises, I
just - hurt all over, and my fucking neck,
and I couldn't feel my legs - then I could
feel my legs..."
            At last Stephen could speak
no more about it - all he could see in his mind's eye was not the
streetlamp-illumed parking lot or the looming blackness of the jungle
beyond...all he saw was the mangled wreckage of his Pa's Mercedes, in front of
him, piled into the tree, and him, sticky with blood, in agony but ambulatory,
laughing, laughing so hard his lungs started to ache in tandem with everything
else...
            Bligh jerked him from his
triggered illusion:
            "Ya coulda called
me," he said, a whisper, an offer, an apology. "Even though we - we
was done, yanno, ya coulda--"
            "No," Stephen
answered, the same. "I think...on some subconscious level - I needed
it."
            "Dun say shit like
that--"
            "Everybody needs to
die--" He glanced to Bligh, his eyes like plucked gems, sad, so sad, so
perfect. "I - I said I shoulda
died?" He shook his head. "Nah - nah. I actually did. And it was my
time to die - yanno? My time to drop the fuck out of this world, and - realize
shit wasn't normal."
            "But yew - why yew
sayin yew died though? When ya
didn't--?"
            "Didn't Duke kill you, in a way?"
            "Wha--?" But then
Bligh seemed to know precisely the line of logic Stephen had followed, and for
it, had no rebuttal: "Oh - uh..."
            "Yeah."
            "I - yeah."
            "Mmmhmm."
            A silence lapsed, and the
tension rose between them - Stephen stared off into the night, hands between
his legs, listless. 
            He heard Bligh sigh through
his nose: "Well - I'm-a tell yew what, I'm glad he did."
            "What?"
            "Duke - killin me, like ya say."
            Stephen shot Bligh another
glance with an amused little chortle. "You've said that."
            "I stand by it,"
Bligh declared - he sat up, leaning in some, looking at Stephen with new
intent. "I told yer brother that, uh - when he had ta see me the first
time."
            "How'd that go?"
It was nonchalant, as nonchalant as Stephen could manage.
            And Bligh gave another
little laugh - mirthless as it was.   "He, uh - he took it a
lot worse n'yew did."
            It was Stephen's turn to
laugh. "I figured - I really figured. Dr. Drewseph can't explain
something? I can't--" He laughed again. "I can't even fathom."
            "But that's - that's
why ya were okay with it, though cuz yew--" Bligh smiled, crookedly, that smirk like his grandfather used to do. "Ya
were already weird yerself."
            A warm feeling, the first
thaw in the iciness of still feeling as though he were an outside in this
place, Stephen could feel, slowly, moving all over his body. 
            "Uh--" he managed
with a sheepish smile. "Uh - y-yeah..."
            "Lemme ask ya
sumthin," Bligh seemed to press, "how ya think this all happened? I
mean, yanno yew - yew bein like y'are?"
            Stephen stared at Bligh for
several seconds before shaking his head, slowly. "I - dude, I - I don't
fucking know."
            Bligh nodded - he spat over
the railing and sighed, uncomfortable, through his nostrils, once again. "Dang,
Stevie..." came the mutter, noncommittal but worried.
            Stephen leaned back some -
his head up at the roof of the patio. "Yeah - yeah, pretty fucking much.
What's life, then, Bligh? What the fuck are we? If we can't die - never get
sick - always heal?"
            Bligh snickered, a
mocking sound from the corner of his mouth. "Son, I ain't high enough--"
            "Neither am I, and I
think that's why I'm askin..."
            "I ain't got answers
like that," said Bligh, relaxing back into his chair. "I used ta -
yanno, back when I'd listen ta Pappy n'believe every word."
            "You did believe every word," Stephen
rejoined. "Just not - any o'that God-and-Jesus stuff - after a bit."
            "Any God ain't gonna
let Duke into Heaven ain't a God I wanna know."
            That was Bligh's answer -
he looked sad again, sadder than before, and out of a respect Stephen was at
times only ambiently aware he actually possessed, he remained silent so that
Bligh could, he guessed, reflect, on the dead grandfather who raised him.
            Stephen allowed a space of
silence - to elapse before he heard Bligh spit again, and then continued:
            "Walker too,
right?"
            Bligh nodded. "Yeah,
man - Walker too."
            "Sorry he hated
you."
            "Well--" Bligh
looked as though he was forcing a small grin. "I think he was just
protective of ya, yanno." He seemed to think a moment. "They ever -
talk t'each other?"
            "Who - Duke and
Walker?"
            "Yeah."
            Stephen sighed. "Some
-Walker was - I guess kinda fearful of Duke, he--"
            "Afeared?" Bligh
cut in. "Afeared o'Duke?"
            "Not - that's not the
right word," Stephen said. "It's more - he thought Duke was more
important than he was." He nodded to himself. "That's the idea I
got."
            "Important...how?"
            Stephen shrugged. "He
wouldn't tell me - just that Duke was important, and - uh - a leader, pretty much." 
Bligh scratched his chest, shaking his head slow. "Shit jest keeps getting
weirder..."
            "Bout that--"
Stephen began, dredging up as he said it a full month of speculation, a
preponderance of a strange childhood as microcosm of a stranger life. "I
have a theory."
            Bligh was waiting for him
to finish, his hand still in mid-scratch. "Yeah?"
            "Um - yeah. I called, uh
- no, Drewseph called me last month
and - pretty sure he told you everything--"
            "Bout the weird people
who used ta live in Dog's Creek, yeah, I remember."
            "Right, yeah, but he
did tell you about Papa Sandoro?"
            Bligh shifted his footpaws.
"Saying Walker gonna - protect yew or sumthin? He weren't all that clear
bout it, honestly."
            "Sorta - uh, he said -
Papa Sandoro said, or I guess I should say I heard him say one time, that Walker would give
me all the protection I..." 
            The final word faded to
nothing as the memory came back to him: standing at the head of the stairs,
tracing his fingers along the ornate carving of the solid oak banister, and in
the dim light of the downstairs hearing Papa Sandoro's crisp words in his
gravelly voice, which Stephen would have never pay attention to had not heard
the name Walker - who was curled and
asleep waiting for him in his bed.
            His hand, an involuntary
gesture, went to the necklace, wrapping around Walker's tooth, what he carried
with him always, having never once taken it off...his head jerked to see Bligh
was watching him, waiting for him to finish.
            "If I - spent all my
time around him like I did - they - what if they got me that dog - to protect
me from - what Duke did to you?"
            He saw Bligh's eyebrows
raise, then furrow, before a grin, slow but inexorable, crossed his face. In
his throat quavered one of his odd little laughs.
            "So what yer sayin
is..."
            "We're the same - but
we're different." Stephen swallowed, hard - he had to choose his words
carefully. "Me and you - both spent all that time around dogs and - the
dogs made us something...different." He paused. "I never - liked Walker
the way you liked Duke...though..."
            Bligh shrugged.
"Yep," he said, matter-of-factly. 
            "Nothing wrong with
that," Stephen added, surprising himself how steady he was, how willing he
was to accept something so abhorrent. "But - it was a one-time thing,
right? That made you change?"
            "Mmmhmm," Bligh
intoned. "Only took but the one..."
            "So - one time - and
Walker being near me - over a period of...however long it was..." Stephen
looked into the crawling shadows of the trees beyond them. "Made us - the
same, just - different, too." 
            Bligh seemed to consider
the idea for a minute - a flick in his eyebrow and a quick nod suggested he was
concluded in his thinking.
            "Yeah - yeah I s'pose
that'd be bout right - everythin I heard about the dogs in Tempest ain't bein -
normal."
            "Well they ain't - and
I could talk to them, too - that - that sure as fuck ain't normal..."
            Bligh reached for the pack
of cigarettes next to the ashtray and, procuring one afresh, held it to
Stephen, first, to offer - Stephen shook his head to decline, so that the
cigarette went in Bligh's mouth instead. A sudden flame from the Zippo, and it
was lit - a single puff prefaced Bligh's continuation:
            "So why didn't Pappy
do that fer me? Why didn't yer daddy do that fer Drew?" 
            "No fucking
clue," Stephen answered - honestly. "Maybe Gus just...didn't wanna
believe any of it, even if he knew about the rumors he was still - Christian and all - and maybe Pa knew
about it and knew was something was -
really fucked up with our town...and only wanted to protect me. Drewseph would know about how that shit works, but - maybe - I
was the variable, he was the control..."
            Bligh's cigarette hung, the
cherry bright, as his eyes, glimmering and gorgeous, narrowed. "What are
yew sayin?"
            "What I just
said," Stephen pressed quietly. "Gus didn't believe it - nobody who
had a dog was suspe - susp - dammit what's that word?"
            "Susceptible?" 
            "That - yeah, actually."
Stephen couldn't help but chortle. "Yeah, thank you!"
            "G'on with it,"
Bligh muttered, unamused.
            "Y-yeah - so nobody
who had a dog nearby, I guess, a slow buildup of immunity, yanno, like getting
vaccinated, was - susceptible - to
uh...to being like y'all are." Stephen paused so that the words would sink
in. "Think about Gus, think about the man he was, he wouldn't believe no
town legend bullshit - not unless he saw it firsthand--"
            "That time we ate
dinner with y'all..." Bligh murmured in a cloud of smoke. "Tellin yew
Walker was special--"
            "My theory," Stephen repeated, holding
up his hand to make the point. "Pa told him. Pa got hold of him, so that
when you found Duke, Gus - he...probably thought it was time..." Stephen felt
himself frowning, a strange, alien guilt overtaking him. "But just in case
- me and Drewseph were the - experiment - to test and see that it was real, if
having a dog from the county - yanno, made you...immune."
            Bligh nodded, seeming
to follow along. "Drew
called it a sickness afore--"
            "It fits, don't
it?"
            Stephen moved to the edge
of the chair to look down at the floor again, his mind ablaze with broken
memories, waxing melancholic as he realized all of them, to a one, involved he,
and Bligh, and Drewseph...and Walker, and Duke. The silence was sudden, it was as
though there should have been more to the thought, and yet there wasn't, it was
all that there was, floating in dark, nameless spaces.
            Bligh nodded, again, slower
this time, more grave, more serious. 
            "I can - I can see
that now." 
            "Yeah."
            "Well why - why our
town?" Bligh held the cigarette in his fingers, pointing at Stephen.
"Why our dogs gotta be - all
weird n'carryin some kinda - disease ta make people turn--" He pointed to
his feet. "Like this?"
            "Uh--"
            Bligh took a drag - the
exhale came out his nose, his most useless talent.
            "What, cuz y'all
granddads' granddad killed a buncha weird people way back in the day? Some
kinda - curse?" He threw a
skepticism on the final word that he was not known to have, and it jarred Stephen
somewhat to hear it.
            "Probably," said
Stephen. "But that sounds stupid and mundane and there's probably, like,
something--" He paused, trying not to laugh at this crucial juncture.
"S-something way, way more fucked up than that." He smiled. "You're
the one who watches all those werewolf movies - you're the expert."
            Bligh allowed himself a
slight curve in his mouth that looked like bemusement as he puffed on the
cigarette. "Well, that bein the case, then - I reckon yew right, we are
the same - kinda." The bemused look turned into one of his smiles -
crooked, on his face, a smirk. "Y'ain't gotta tail or nuthin..."
            "Could I get
one?"
            Stephen was surprised he
had said it aloud, and Bligh's face reflected his own surprise for probably the
same reason.
            "Uh - huh. I mean -
shit, man, yew want one?"
            Stephen hesitated - once,
then once again. In the midst of the rush - the jealousy, the alienation, the
confusion, the rejection - something, a deeper intuition perhaps, called at
him, wordless, to say that this, this precious precipice upon which tottered
he, must be retreated from.
            "N-no, I - I
shouldn't, I really shouldn't."
            Bligh took a long drag,
shrugging. "Well lemme ask ya sumthin - yew still got that weird place on
the back o'yer neck?"
            Stephen reached behind him
to the place Bligh spoke of - a patch of hair, lighter than his hair, and
softer in texture to it.
            "Y-yeah? Drewseph
called it - uh - Poliosis? He says -
he used to say it was a natural thing, but..." He shook his head.
"After everything we talked about I...I dunno." He looked to Bligh.
"It's soft - and white - like Walker's fur..."
            "Can ya smell real
good? Cuz we can--"
            "Nah, I can't smell
shit, most of the time - and I don't have sharp teeth, neither."
            "Still though - maybe
yew dun need a tail..." Bligh grinned, and Stephen could see his fangs glint
in the ambient sodium-vapor parking lot light. "Maybe yew dawg like me -
already."
            Stephen weighed the idea -
long ago his brother had told him to gather evidence, and data, and
observation, before making a conclusion. That was years ago - and in the time
intervening Stephen had never used that advice for much.
            But now he could. 
            He was not normal - this he
knew less than an hour ago. But would it also mean he was, too, not even human?

            Back his hand went to
Walker's tooth, clutching it tightly. 
            His brother had no
intuition - his world was the scientist's world, one of infinitely elegant but
harshly exacting beauty, one that only based things on proven fact, and left no
room for feelings...perhaps Stephen put too much stock on his own feelings.
            But were they ever wrong?
Knowing he could talk to Duke and Walker, knowing something unspoken and
profound was occurring between Bligh and his brother - when was he ever really
wrong when he trusted, in a cliché so nauseating he wondered if he should head
back to the bathroom, his heart?
            And what did his heart say
now?
            "Not the same but
different," he thought aloud in a low voice, "but just - the same."
            "After everythin we
talked bout - yeah, man, I'd say so!"
            Stephen stared at him,
trying to make sense of this revelation, this epiphany, what should have
occurred to him long ago, even if he had never seen what Bligh had become.
            He had no words.
            There was a joy, if it
could be classed as joy, that he was not as different from his brother, or Cody
- or Bligh - but with it a fear, the fear that Bligh had spoken of, being
caught, of being destroyed by a world that could not understand them...him, or
the other three who shared a condition that been inflicted on them by
happenstance or design.
            "Even - even if - I
am...." He swallowed hard for the third time in a brief span of time.
"And I want - I want to be. You can't
- don't - don't you dare fucking tell Drew," Stephen said - his voice had
on an admonition of absolute finality, a chill of death cooler than the evening
around him. "None of this. None of
this - I have to tell him myself."
            Bligh was silent - Stephen
could see him in the darkness staring at him, he could see him viewing him
anew, as something different, some new person that the years they had known
each other did not provide for.
            "Promise..."
Stephen heard himself whisper hoarsely. "Promise, like - like I had to
promise not to tell Drewseph you were coming--"
            "I promise,
Stevie..." Bligh murmured. "Dun worry."
            Stephen shut his eyes,
muffling his own laughter so that it sounded like a chortle again, a warm
feeling, an elation, hearing Bligh care, hearing Bligh promise him, again.
            "Oh, dude - holy shit."
            He heard Bligh cackle
softly. "Yeah - yeah man."
            Stephen opened his eyes and
rose slowly out of the chair. "I'm getting tired again, dude - uh - I
think I'm gonna go back inside if that's alright..."
            Bligh stood up the same,
stretching some. "Me too, man."
            Before Stephen turned to
the sliding-glass door, a thought, intrusive but dreadfully germane,
possessed him, and he hesitated, once, then twice, before he could speak it:
            "I...hey, listen."
            "Yeah?"
            "When - when I was at
the pool - sure he told you..."
            "Who, Drew? Yeah he
said ya snuck in--"
            "That's not--"
Stephen laughed, at himself, his eyes drifting to the patio floor. "Yeah,
okay that's not important though, see - I just wanted to tell you what I told
him."
            "About?"
            "I, um, told Drewseph
that, uh - I basically told him I was your - your silver medal."
            "Do what?"
            "Your - you only
fucked me because you couldn't fuck him."
            Bligh folded his arms
across his bare chest, leaning back, regarding Stephen askance. "Ya
believe that?"
            "Yeah, Bligh I do -
why do you think I dumped you? I knew - I knew--"
            Bligh stepped forward.
"Stevie - yeah, that's how it was when we was first doin stuff but -
man--" He grinned, his normal wolfish smile made irrationally animal with
those fangs - his hands came down, a little rough, on Stephen's shoulders.
"Yer yew. I shoulda - I shoulda
told ya this and Drew this too, man - but I loved - still love - yew - everythin yew is - short li'l,
scrawny li'l Stevie."
            "Be serious,"
Stephen hissed, even as he loved hearing Bligh say it. "You're teasing me
don't - p-please don't tease me--"
            He felt a hand, Bligh's
hand, underneath his chin, and gently, firmly, his head was raised - to meet
Bligh's lips.
            They kissed.
            Stephen was unprepared for
it, he made a sound - "Mmm!" - that vibrated against Bligh's tongue,
inside his mouth, that familiar qualia-cluster of how Bligh's mouth tasted, the
cigarettes, the ambient musk that he did not have when they were together but
that fit him, the man...the dog.
            "Still doubt me?"
he heard Bligh murmur in his ear. 
            Stephen took in a breath,
his eyes meeting Bligh's, those impossible gemstones that would unnerve some
people because of how piercing they were, how they seemed to miss nothing they
beheld. 
            "No..." he
whispered, his voice trembling, losing control of even his most basic defenses.
"N-not - not if you're here, not - if Drewseph and Cody - I--"
            "Shhh - s'okay--"
            "Why do you think I
wanted - why do y-you think I m-moved here, and n-not Tech?" Stephen knew
he was crying now, he could feel the tears - still faintly scented like the
half-bottle's worth of whiskey he had put away before - hot on his cheeks.
"N-nobody - nobody else would
understand m-me--"
            He let down his last, most
intimate defenses - he threw his arms around Bligh and buried himself in the
soft body hair. The body was warm, far warmer than it had been when they had
been lovers, best friends - that must have been another change, Stephen
thought, just fleetingly enough that it made Bligh all the more precious, all
the more lucky he, Stephen, was to know him...to be like him, even in a small
way.
            But even with that, all of
that, he was familiar with this - how this felt - many times, sexually,
sensually, but even with the memory of the kiss he felt this was platonic, this
was brotherly...fatherly.
            The tears came easy, they
moistened Bligh's stomach, the tears of vulnerability, acceptance, the
emotional earthquake of being dimidiated in between the reality Stephen thought
he knew, and the terrible, awful, plunging strangeness of the darkness that gathered
in some forgotten pocket of West Virginia, that had flung forth on the world
the four of them, alone, except for each other.
            Bligh held him the entire
time, a span that he could not measure, five minutes at most, but an eternity
enough for both of them to accept each other as old lovers, renewed friends.
            At a final length Stephen
nudged away, wiping the residual tears with his hand.
            "S-sorry -
f-fuck--"
            "S'okay Stevie..."
            "I just - I just
got--"
            "I know, man."
            "Ya still tired?"
Bligh asked gently.
            And Stephen nodded.
"Y-yeah."
            "Aight then - let's go
inside."
            "Aren't you gonna -
um, join Drewseph and--"
            "Nah." Bligh
grinned at him. "I gotta make sure yer okay."
            Stephen laughed - he
laughed heartily, he laughed genuinely. He laughed, as perhaps he had not in
years, happily.
            "Okay - okay - let's -
yeah, let's go inside."
            In they came from the patio
- Stephen resumed where Cody had put him on the couch - Bligh took up the spot
on the other side. 
            He had no way of knowing
the immense importance such a piece of furniture had - where the bonds were
forged and the past forgiven between his brother, and Bligh, and Cody. He had
no way of knowing that, now, a smaller but similar drama was being enacted -
between he, and Bligh.
            And now the two of them
regarded each other in the dark.
            Stephen shifted where he
was, getting more comfortable in the couch cushions, and he heard, faintly, one
of Bligh's strange little laughs, as he crossed his footpaws at the ankles,
settling in on his end as well. 
            Stephen smiled. "You -
you gonna sleep there?"
            He saw Bligh nod.
"Yup. Now that y'up n'aight and y'ain't dead, so - I done my duty fer the
night, yanno, like yer brother asked."
            "But--" Stephen
hesitated, realizing with a flush of mortification how emotional what he was
about to say was going to make him. "You're - you're my - my brother too."
            A space of fleeting
silence, and then a cackle, that noise of triumph and delight, from Bligh:
            "Yeah - yeah, yeah I
am."
            "S-so--" Stephen
was failing to guard his elation. "I'm - I'm really family?"
            "I said it already but
- yeah, man. Yew was always family, Stevie. I - I was jest wrong and
dumb--" Stephen saw his arms come up and his hands tuck under his head.
"Aight?"
            He had said it a different
way, probably the only affirmation Stephen should
have needed, before...but he needed to hear it again, he needed to say it,
explicit and implicit, for Stephen to feel whole, for Stephen to feel welcome.
            A surge of love, potent and
hot welled up inside him - in that moment, he wanted to cross the line as Bligh
had crossed it, but go further, he wanted to get something other than a vague
promise that he, too, could have a tail, and be equal amongst them, and begin,
again, with Bligh, what he ended years before.
            But he did not. All he said
was:
            "I love you,
Bligh."
            And with one of this little
laughs, Bligh answered: "Love ya too li'l bro. I'm-a git some shuteye now
- I'll see ya in the mornin."
            "Okay - well, night,
then."
            "Night, Stevie."
            Stephen watched him, for
how long he could not be sure - watched the faint luminosity of his eyes vanish
as they shut, and listened as the breaths grew less and less shallow until they
became the sonorous rhythm of sleep, that emerged even after that as a
comfortable snore.
            It was to this sound, and
to this sight, bleary in his nightvision, that Stephen shut his own eyes, and
found sleep too.

Source: https://sofurry.com/view/839271