Keldroch

There was a little glade at the bottom of the hill where the sun shone cheerfully and a waterfall stirred the air to keep it fresh and clear. Dense vegetation carpeted the ground, happily quaffing the omnipresent moisture with huge, billowing leaves. And it was here that the young dragons would play.

The young ones weren't particularly large -- no bigger than a grown dog. They would scrap and tussle and dash through the river. Wars would break out and truces would be called, and everything would be just as quickly forgotten. Scratched tails and sore wings didn't last forever, after all; a little rough fun had never hurt any of them. Of course, the plants would often get burned in the struggles, but it was nothing that couldn’t grow back with a little patience.

On the top of the hill, an older dragon lay watching over the little ones as they went about their games. His eyes were gold and his scales were the color of the evening sky. He was terrible, and he was beautiful. His name was Keldroch.
His roar split the air. The playful tussle ceased. Four pairs of eyes, startled and terrified, turned to fix upon that beast looming over them, standing majestically on all four legs with wings stretched out to quench the sun.

"Despair, little ones!" he thundered. "Know that I, Keldroch the Inexorable, shall be the doom of you all! To my teeth you shall succumb, and by my belly you shall perish!"

The specter swooped from his perch. It was no difficulty to snatch up the slowest of the young dragons as they fled. To a creature of his stature, full grown with jaws that could swallow a horse, the young dragon was quick work. It vanished with a yip between scaly lips and went down in one great lump.

He relished the sport of the hunt. They would hide, and his snout would go to work, trying to draw out their scent. They would flee, and he would pursue. He would catch them at last, and there was barely time to savor the victory before they would vanish unceremoniously down his gullet.

He captured the last of them. It was a little red that bucked and squirmed terribly as he held it pinned. Its cries filled the air, "Please don't eat me! Let me go! I'll do anything!" The pleas sounded vainly against the irrational hunger of the savage beast. Tooth and tongue gathered the tiny body up. A graceful ripple ran along that long throat. The cries ended forever.

A stillness was left in the wake of the young ones. The only sound was of Keldroch's tongue lashing across his teeth as four playful dragons met his cruel appetite, their innocent lives snuffed out for the sake of a meal.

He strutted regally back to his perch, letting his paunch hang down low. Truly, Keldroch was the master of his domain. Nothing opposed a dragon in the wild but another dragon, and he was determined to stay on top of the heap. He relished the act of supping upon the next generation, to dispose of them so viscerally. Without them, his rule of this place would continue forever. Never would he suffer the company of other dragons; they were conniving usurpers, all of them. Their only worth was in the pit of his stomach.

He sunned himself high on his hill and looked over his domain -- the hill and the woods beyond, and the valley where the river ran through. All of it was his. It was glorious. One talon stroked along the lump of his belly, feeling the little bodies within that had ended their struggles.

"And the mighty worm celebrates his glorious victory."

A shadow fell over him, and a chuckle rumbled up from behind. He studied the shape of the shadow quizzically and considered the voice. Another dragon? He turned to this intruder with an annoyed scowl. "Step out of my light, or I shall --"

He froze. The sight before him was not to be believed. It was a great gold dragon that addressed him, with sags of flesh and a colossal size that spoke of a long, fruitful existence. The grace and beauty had long left its body, replaced by a sturdy, enduring architecture. There was age in this creature's eyes, but also wisdom and virility. Keldroch's eyes went wide. He was positively dwarfed by this great beast. And for the first time in his life, he was awed into silence.

"And the mighty worm enjoys devouring the young of his own kind, does he?" There was a smirk on the gold's face that gave Keldroch a sinking feeling.

"I eat what I eat!" Keldroch insisted. "A dragon answers to nobody!"

A long gold tail swished behind the great dragon as it approached, thick and ponderous. "And so the strong shall rule the weak." An ominous rumble filled the air. Though Keldroch was stunned by disbelief, there was no question as to the gold's intent.

Keldroch leapt to his feet and ran, crying out in panic; there was no time to risk taking to the air. The easy gait of the gold dragon tromped along behind him, matching his run easily. It toyed and it teased, nipping at his tail whenever he slowed. "Run, mighty worm!" the pursuer bellowed. "Flee for the sake of your miserable existence!" Through field and marsh the chase wore on, and though it was clear that the gold could overtake him without trouble, it delighted in the pursuit and in wearing him down. At last, sobbing, he collapsed to the ground.

When he dared to open his eyes again, he was greeted with the final sight that would meet them -- the gold dragon's jaws unfurled and slid around his head. He was too spent to offer more than a cursory struggle as he flowed into that rich, red sea, pulsing and glistening as it slowly drew him within. And then everything became darkness.

Elegantly, efficiently, the proud blue dragon was drawn into the body of the conqueror. His beautiful wings folded in defeat and were soon a memory. His great belly, a trophy of encounters with countless unfortunate dragons, was only a brief, pleasant sensation across the gold's lips. The malehood he'd never used to father an heir vanished as though it never was. The gold's rib cage had to come unhinged to work the mass of its unusual dinner down. And soon there was nothing left; the only evidence he'd ever existed was a rather large, lumpy mass hanging from the gold dragon's belly. Keldroch would not be walking away from this encounter.

Mumbled roars of protest could still be heard from within. The gold chuckled, stroking his gut with both hands. "Yes, tell your woes to my belly, mighty worm. You shall soon know the sympathy of a dragon's stomach." It rolled out a loud, triumphant belch that proclaimed his doom to the world. It was the last the world would hear of Keldroch. With the moment's diversion spent, the gold dragon went off to pursue other business, his belly hanging so low that it nearly scraped the ground.
And so, Keldroch the Inexorable, ruler of the hill, the valley, and the woods surrounding, succumbed to a gold dragon who'd passed by his home one day on a whim. His fate was ignominious indeed -- vanquished by the passive actions of a complete stranger's digestive system. His body churned through the anonymous dragon's intestines in a matter of days and passed from it at the foot of a tree as several hundred pounds of steaming mulched dragon, nothing but a rich ordure that would soon return to the earth.

A good deal of Keldroch lived on within the gold dragon. The most noticeable change was a ton of flesh that lined the gold's belly, but indeed he'd been incorporated everywhere. He reinforced the gold's bones, he fed its flesh, he gave it blood, and he became its seed. When the gold dragon took a mate, it was Keldroch's essence that impregnated her and became their children.

And Keldroch became their hope for the future.

Work Break

My name's Jerry. I'm a wolf.

There's nothing lonelier or more pathetic than a sandwich shop in the evening. When animals go out for dinner, they tend to think sit-down restaurants or drive-through burgers. Nobody goes out to dinner just for a sandwich.

But there was an open spot in the schedule that needed filling, and hey, I can always use the extra money. So I took a closing shift. Just me and Rachel.

Rachel.

I never much liked raccoons, and Rachel rarely did anything to change my mind about them. She always struck me as sort of detached from her responsibilities. Like she couldn't see what needed to be done around the store, or else simply didn't care. I've never seen her spontaneously start up anything but the simplest of prep jobs, and even then it seemed like she just wanted to avoid being assigned a harder one.

But maybe she was just a product of her environment. After all, she worked the closing shift most days. If most days were like this one -- two hours since our last customer already! -- then how could I blame her?

What could you do if there was no one to serve? Cleaning? I managed to keep that up for an hour, finding little odd jobs hidden in the nooks and crannies, but I was already getting sick of them. How would I survive an entire week like that?

I leaned against a counter, staring off into space. You never did that during the day. "If you're leaning, you could be cleaning." Ugh. I was just about to get myself another free soda when I heard a bell jangling. A customer at last. And yet somehow, my first reaction was annoyance. There's a certain amount of inertia that you have to fight against when you get your first customer in two hours, even if it does mean the chance to have something to do.

And then I looked up. Oh!

A small orange fox with a gym bag on his shoulder stepped through the door. His eyes lit up with surprised recognition when he saw me.

"Jerry!" he beamed. "What, they have you working nights now?"

"Nah," I grinned back. "Just picking up some extra hours."

It was Keith. My boyfriend.

Boyfriend.

I rolled the word around in my mind, savored it. Boyfriend. Intimate partner. It was still such a novelty to me that my fur stood on end just thinking about it. I was still piecing together exactly how it had happened, but there was no denying it. Keith and I were a couple.

It felt damned good.

"So, can I get you a sandwich or anything?" I grinned.

Keith rolled his eyes. "It's always business with you, isn't it?" he scolded. "No 'Hi hon! How are you doing?'"

I glanced up, suddenly panicked. Okay, I liked having a boyfriend and all, but not enough that I wanted to be saying stuff like that when Rachel was right there. Luckily, she was dead focused on her cellular phone. "Okay. How are you doing?" I asked, smiling a little more nervously.

"Oh, not bad," Keith said. "Yourself?"

Huh. That one took me off guard for some reason. I'd been on mental auto pilot for so long that it took me a couple moments to remember how I was doing. "You know what? I'm bored out of my mind," I said at last. I knew it'd come to me. "I can't remember ever having a slower night doing anything in my entire life."

"Then," Keith said solemnly, giving his tail two quick whisks, "We must find a distraction for you. Why don't you show me around the back? It'll be fun."

I shot a glance over to Rachel, still plugging away with her cellular phone, punching in a text message with the patience of a painter composing a masterpiece. Whatever else I thought about her, I was sure she would be capable of handling the one or two customers who might come in in the next five minutes.

"Hey," I called to her. "I'm going in the back. I'll be back in a few minutes, okay?"

"Sure," she muttered, a weak cry from whatever distant plane of digital communication her brain was currently residing in.

I took Keith in the back, showed him around our storage areas. The bleak, bare walls and flooring stood in stark contrast to the gleaming, carefully selected color schemes from the front of the store, and yet, Keith took it all in with bubbly enthusiasm. I couldn't quite tell if he was genuinely interested, or if he was just humoring me for whatever reason.

But our whirlwind tour ended in a dry storage closet, where we had huge metal shelves filled with unrefrigerated supplies -- certain condiments, unopened pickles, big boxes of potato chips, that kind of thing.

"So this is where we keep our unrefrigerated supplies," I droned, no less bored for the distraction he'd offered. "Certain condiments, unopened pickles, big boxes --"

Click. The door closed behind me. It struck me as ominous.

I turned to face Keith, ears perked. He had his paws behind his back, and he was grinning at me mischievously. I noticed that his duffel bag was on the floor. Opened. I frowned and looked it over as carefully as I could without moving. My first instinct was that he was stealing something -- not that I didn't trust him, but I do try to keep up an unhealthy level of paranoia about myself at all times -- so I tried to see if there was anything suspicious poking out of it. I saw something, but it didn't look like anything we stocked...

"Big boxes, you say?" he grinned, encouraging me to continue.

Something was wrong here. I was certain of it. I was equally certain that I wasn't going to get out of whatever he was planning. So I resigned myself. "Okay," I said. "What do you have behind your back?"

He blinked at me, his face shocked blank. "What back?"

"Behind your back," I repeated steadily.

"Oh!" he said. "Just this."

Then he reached up and deftly slipped a latch into the D-ring on my collar. Before I knew what was happening, he pulled my head down by the attached leash and snapped! the other end onto the frame of one of the metal shelves.

It was an awkward position to be in, and it left me startled for a moment. I reached for the latch on my collar with one paw, and something slipped around my wrist and pulled it off to the side. Before I could react with my other paw, it was handcuffed as well.

I pulled, starting to panic. Pulled with all of my wolf strength, but the shelving just gave a sort of half-hearted grumble and stayed completely fixed.

"What are you doing?!" I growled, starting to work myself into a panic.

"Locking you up," he answered in his playful little singsong voice.

I thrashed around, trying to turn my head to see him. "Let me out of here!"

Something shiny and metallic suddenly dangled in front of my nose. "Do you want the key?" he sang.

"Yes!"

A paw gripped my chin and pulled my mouth open. He dropped the key on my tongue, then clamped my jaws shut, holding them closed with one paw.

And then a tight leather muzzle slipped over my nose and across my face. My eyes bugged out and I tried to scream, but I couldn't manage more than a frantic squeal as he tied the laces secure around the back of my head.

With one paw, he tipped my face up to his. And then he blew gently on my exposed nose. I winced, trying to block the irritation out of my mind, trying to resist, but then...

GLRP. I felt the key to my salvation vanish down my own throat. I could feel it sliding heavily through my chest and landing in a heavy lump in the pit of my stomach.

I was trapped. Doubled over and bound in place with only inches of slack in any direction. I wasn't leaving this closet without assistance. I couldn't even scream. God, he had me right where he wanted me.

And the pants came next. I knew, I knew it was coming. Two clever little fox paws undid my belt buckle, unbuttoned my fly, and slipped into my pants, cupping my balls gently through my briefs, oh god, that bastard. I was already rock hard, and he was stroking my cock like an obedient puppy. They were conspiring together. He was going to turn my own dick against me, that bastard, get it over on his side so I'd be powerless to resist...

Fabric slid down my ass, and then my package was flapping free. A flash of orange caught my peripheral vision, and I twisted and strained to look up. I saw him, leaned casually on one of the shelves, a playful smirk on his face.

"Safety word time," he sang. "If you desire a quick and harmless escape from your situation, simply blink rapidly, and your binding disappears back into my bag of tricks from whence it came."

I stared up at him and whined in protest. He had me all wound up, and he knew it. Already I was justifying it to myself. Rachel would be fine! It wouldn't take long! I could clean it all up! No one would ever know! I whined again. My dick was turning against me. As usual.

But I didn't blink once.

Keith swaggered forward, and I lost visual contact with him as my collar restricted how far I could turn my head. "If, on the other hand, you're ready to forfeit what little pride you still retain and allow a tiny, defenseless little fox to fuck you blind, simply drop to your knees, spread your legs, hike your tail like the bitch you are, and let me up that smelly ass of yours."

God did I ever need to pant. My eyes half-lidded, my lips peeled from my clenched teeth, and I blew thick wet breath into my muzzle.

I was a little unsteady -- my posture was straining muscles that I rarely used for balance -- but I got to my knees. Butt up. Tail lifted welcomingly.

I was a good little bitch.

"Good girl," Keith cooed approvingly, wrapping both paws around my head and digging in with his little claws, scratching until my eyes sank shut and my ears slanted back. And then, YIPE!, a long, ticklish tongue probe in my right ear. He giggled in delight at my trembling. Bastard.

And then, the cold, wet feeling of lube against anus, the slow, comfortable warming as he rubbed it in, the smell of water-based jelly mixed with horny fox musk mixed with horny wolf musk mixed with aerated wolf ass. It briefly occurred to me that it might be difficult to get the smell out of the closet, but that was hardly a deal-breaker.

One finger. Two at once. Three at once. I spread out, taking them easily. I was in that magical frame of mind, that particular cocktail of hormones and mental state, that made anal probing almost euphoric. Ohhhh yeah. I was ready to let the world up my ass. With a little more coaxing, he could have gloved his whole paw in my colon, but I think he understood the imperative to strike quickly.

One of the nice things about having a boyfriend half my size is that I don't need much stretching before I'm ready to take him. His dick doesn't look like much, but it's not bad for a fox, and when it just slips in like a glove, ohgodohgodohgod, ohhh, that's right, come aaaaaall the way in, I want you all the way up to the hilt. I swallowed him, fucking swallowed him.

One paw wrapped around the base of my tail, clutching it like a bundle of weeds. One paw lightly draped across my butt. "Stand and Deliver", his favorite pose. It suited him. I had to be on my knees to compensate for our height difference. A fox standing tall, serene, in control. A wolf groveling prostrate before him.

Yeah. No question whatsoever that it turned us both on.

The room filled with the wet, meaty "slotch, slotch, slotch" of gooey dick plumbing gooey ass and the warm, smug murring of a rutting fox. I started to feel fitful and frustrated, making what noise I could through my muzzled face. There I was, wound up tight, gloriously humiliated, taking a fucking in the dry storage closet of the place where I worked. Hardest erection of my life. But my dick was just flapping free, nothing to hump against, not even a slight breeze to tickle it. It swelled, it screamed for release, but the relief never came. I could feel my blood boiling with sexual frustration, and I loved it. I rode it. I took it to dizzying, screaming highs....

And suddenly, a click. My eyes shot open, and I went cold all over. The door!

I strained, but I couldn't see what was happening. For a long, terrifying moment, I had a mental picture of Rachel coming in and seeing me. What would she think? That I'd been overpowered by a fox? That I was being raped? Or that I had welcomed it?

A frustrated click-click-click sound, and I felt relief wash over me. Keith had locked the door. Of course -- he had always been a bit random and spontaneous, yet he had an uncanny knack for planning ahead. There was a pounding, and I heard her shouting from the other side. "Jerry? What are you doing in there?" She sounded mad.

"Goodness," Keith mused quietly, slowing to just a couple teasing strokes as he spoke, "Sounds like she's going to come in after you." He leaned over on top of me a bit and dug his claws into my back idly. "Does she have the key to this door, Jerry?"

I pictured it in my mind. The roll of keys with the little green keychain sitting in the drawer under the cash register. All she had to do was fish it out, come back to the door...

"I suppose we could stop right now," Keith teased, not the slightest hesitation in his movements. "We could get you dressed again before she got that door open. No one would ever have to find out that you like little foxes that chain you up."

Oh god, he was loving the hell out of this. And I was helpless to react. I'd be free when he got off, and not a second sooner. If I was in a clearer frame of mind, I would have been mortified, but riding the high that I was on, I just felt myself glowing with delicious embarrassment. I saw the scene play out over and over in my mind. Rachel stood in front of the door, ring of keys in her paw, enraged at my absence, forced to slowly and patiently try one key after the other, methodically, relentlessly, until the door opened, and there she'd find me, chained up and bent over. And everyone would know I was a fox's bitch.

A loud YAPYAPYAP rung in my ears, and a moment later, about a hundred and twenty pounds of exhausted, grateful fox collapsed across my back. "Goodness," he purred, "That does take the edge off."

We spent just a moment in happy afterglow, a head pillowed on my back, two arms draped around my belly. Heh. He wasn't even big enough to hug me all the way around. And then, appeased at last, he withdrew and set about cleaning up his mess, humming a cheerful song to himself as he gathered up condoms and lubricant as if it was any other domestic chore.

I hadn't yet had an anally-induced orgasm, but man, did I have a lot of pre dripping. I got a sudden, electric slurp on the cock, but that was it. My turn would simply have to come later.

The muzzle came off, and then the handcuffs. Heh. They were the sets we always used for roleplaying. They had release switches instead of locks -- the "key" I swallowed was just a prop. It was a good thing, too, because he wasn't getting it back.

I straightened out my uniform again as he sprayed the closet with an odor killer. Just about twenty minutes after we'd started, you couldn't tell that about a thousand health and safety regulations had just been broken in here.

It was the perfect crime.

"So come on over to my place after work," he said invitingly as he zipped up his bag. "I'll truss you up good and we can snuggle on the couch. Oh, and bring me a medium veggie sandwich, I'll eat it off your crotch while I'm watching TV."

I took a deep breath. He had me wound up, and he wasn't going to give me any release for at least another two hours. I loved it. "Sounds like a date."

I led him back out to the front and stared longingly out the window as he left, watching that smug little "I just got laid" swagger he used to cross the parking lot, savoring that deliciously loose feeling my ass always got right after a good fuck. It was like every nerve in my body was tied directly to my anus, and he'd just unwound them all at once.

"Hello?!"

I blinked. Rachel. "What?"

"I said, 'I could've used your help back there.'" she fumed. "I had two customers while you were gone. Like, at once."

I glanced over to the register. Well, so she had. We had recorded exactly two more dinner tickets than we had the last time I checked. "I'm sorry," I said as genuinely as I could.

"Right," she agreed. "So you watch the front, I'm going to go outside for a little bit."

Well, fair enough, I had to admit it. When I was alone, I poured myself a glass of water and watched the dining room. My thoughts drifted easily away to laying on Keith's couch, my legs wrapped around his lap, a sub sandwich nestled next to my dick (through a protective layer of paper, of course). He'd pretend he was watching whatever stupid reality show was on, and we'd get to chatting. About anything and everything.

It was going to be a long two hours.

How Foxes Got Their Tails

Once upon a time, foxes didn't have tails at all, and wolves were always doing them up the ass, and there was very little a fox could do to keep them from getting away with it.

One day, a fox named Brian took it up the ass from a particularly well-endowed wolf, and decided that enough was enough. So he journeyed to the very center of the forest to ask the help of a wise old owl who lived there.

"Mr. Owl," Brian said, "You have to help me. The wolves fuck me every chance they get, and I don't think my poor tailhole can take much more."

The owl thought about this. "Well it seems," he said at last, "That what you need is something that could cover your tailhole up."

"Like a tail?" Brian suggested.

The owl nodded. "Yes, that should just about work."

So the owl took a beautiful orange tail that he had hanging in his closet, and he sewed it to Brian's ass with a piece of thick, black thread so that it wouldn't come off. And when he saw how it looked, he saw that he was the handsomest fox in the whole world.

Unfortunately, this only made the wolves want to fuck him more than ever, and they loved holding his tail by the root and pulling it up so they could get their dicks in him. But all of the other foxes thought he looked so handsome that they decided to get tails of their own, and that's why foxes have their tails.

Help Desk

Ring. Ring.

Oh what now. Carter picked up the phone. "Help desk." He kept his voice flat, a favorite trick of his that usually kept callers from being offended by how much they annoyed him.

"Yeah, hi." A muted voice crackled on the other end. "I was having problems with the database."

So spit it out already. "What seems to be the nature of your problem, sir?" he responded robotically.

"My computer kept hanging up whenever I tried to do a search by customer ID," the voice explained. "I called before, and they said they'd send a technician down."

"Did you do everything the technician asked you to do, sir?" Carter asked, trying to muster the patience to endure this guy's voice for another minute.

"Yeah," he said. "But now everything's just gone dark."

"Your computer screen?"

"No, just... everything," the voice explained. "Dark and kind of gross and slimy. And constricting."

Carter closed his eyes and put a hand to his temples. Deep breaths, Workman. Deep breaths get us through the day. Breathe in. Breathe out. "Just a moment sir," Carter said, his voice low and ominous. "I'll be there to straighten things out for you personally."

He SLAMMED the phone down, paying little mind to the other people at the help desk who turned to stare, worry or annoyance in their eyes. Slamming feels good. Visceral release. He rose to his feet and stalked out of the room, passing people who shrank away from his fury.

It was a long walk to data processing -- nearly two minutes. He was half afraid that he'd cool down in the time it took to get there, that the rage he'd built up would work out of his system from the physical activity, that he wouldn't have the necessary energy left to properly explode.

Eyes peeked from around the cube dividers as he passed, like scared rabbits hiding from a stalking wolf. They were lucky.

They weren't his prey.

He stepped into a smallish cube without hesitation. It was mostly taken up by an enormous earth-toned python who was curled up on and around the desk and chair. There was a large bulge in his body -- roughly six feet long -- between the desk and the wall. His gaze was fixed on a game of Spider Solitaire on the computer monitor which he manipulated with the end of his tail. A telephone cord hung from his mouth like a spaghetti noodle.

"Percy!"

The snake hiccupped, startled, and the phone cord retracted, pulling the receiver out of his mouth, where it flew briefly through space and dangled over the edge of the desk. He looked up at Carter, fear in his eyes.

"That's three times," Carter said coldly.

Percy shrank back like he was afraid of being hit. "Sir, I'm sorry..." he protested meekly.

"We send you here when our employees are complaining about problems with their systems," Carter growled through clenched teeth. "When the help desk receives a call, we need to make sure it won't happen again."

Percy's coils shifted, but he was too entangled to hide himself under the desk. And he probably wouldn't have fit anyway. "I can explain everything..."

"If you eat them while they're still holding the phone then they're just going to keep calling us back!" Carter bellowed.

Percy winced. "Mr. Workman..."

"You're terminated, effective immediately," Carter hissed. "You have five minutes to leave the premises."

Slowly, numbly, the snake disentangled himself from the office furniture and slunk from the cube, pausing only to burp, disgorging a single shoe into a waste basket he passed by.

Werewolf in a Condo

We sat in Dave's living room, munching on pizza, watching TV, bouncing back and forth between little scraps of conversation. He must have realized I was a little nervous. Maybe a little embarassed. It seemed like I'd known him forever. We'd always been been best friends, able to talk about anything or nothing for hours on end.

Tonight was different. I was pretty sure he felt it too.

He'd been glancing out the window anxiously every few minutes or so. His voice had gotten a little louder, and he was grinning from ear to ear, like a little kid who knew his favorite Christmas present was coming.

At last, he casually noted, "It should be dark enough out. Are you ready?"

"Guess so," I said, heart pounding in my throat.

He stood up, unbuckled his pants, and started to strip down to nothing in front of me. I reflexively averted my eyes. I wasn't offended or anything, it was just... odd seeing him like that.

He seemed to get a kick out of my modesty. "If a little bare butt scares you off, I hate to see what you're going to do when I go wolf," he teased, piling his clothes on a nearby armchair.

"So when's it going to happen?" I asked.

"As soon as I step outside," he explained. "I have to be standing outside under the full moon to get the full exposure. Then it lasts until I go outside under the full sun."

"And if it's cloudy out or something?"

He grinned. "Well, then I have to call in sick until it clears up."

Dave hadn't told anyone that he was a werewolf, not for the three years that he'd been one. No one except for me. He'd never been the kind of person who was good at keeping a secret. He'd been a bragger and a showoff ever since high school. It must have killed him to keep this all to himself. Still, I guess the threat of imprisonment or extermination was enough to keep his lips shut.

But he had to tell me. Had to. He'd been a little nervous about it. Wasn't sure how I'd react.

Heh.

I'd told him that I had to see it for myself.

"Well, c'mon," he said impatiently. "Right this way."

He led me through the sliding glass door to his balcony, five stories up, overlooking the condominium complex. I would have felt a little self-conscious, standing naked overlooking a public place like that, but if Dave had any shame, he kept it well hidden. But I saw that he had little reason to worry. It was a beautiful night, warm enough for a barbeque and very clear, but not a soul was outside. I could see lit windows everywhere -- people staying inside and watching television or surfing the web.

Missing something amazing.

Dave grabbed the hand railing and closed his eyes, looking relaxed. The change came on slowly, excrutiatingly slowly. It was like watching paint dry or grass grow -- to stand there staring at him like I was, you couldn't tell that anything was happening, but turn away for a minute, and you could see how much had changed when you turned back.

The hair all over his body grew in thicker. At first it was all black, like on his head, but the color slowly started to shift as well -- dark gray here, white there, with little patches of brown. His fingernails lengthened, hardened, solidified into dull claws. A tail extended from his butt, swelling up puffy and soft. His face grew longer, his lips and nose faded to black. His ears slowly inched their way up to the top of his head, growing to points.

The process took twenty minutes. His physique stayed the same, but I noticed that he was slightly taller. When he opened his eyes, they had the large, green irises of a wolf. He looked at me, and his lips curled, showing off a mouthful of canine teeth.

And suddenly, I felt myself go very cold. He growled low in his throat and took a step toward me. Stalking posture. I was suddenly afraid that this had been a very, very bad idea. Without thinking, I backed up to the guard rail. Stupid! There was nowhere else to go from there except a five story drop, and now Dave was between me and the door.

I could see him hunching up, tensing to strike. With a ferocious bark, I felt his weight hit me. I threw up my arms and screamed. Powerful paws pushed my arms away from my face, his muzzle descended on me...

... And I got the puppylicking of a lifetime.

"Ack! Thhppt!" My world became drool and dog breath. I scrunched my face up tight, trying to keep the slobber out of my eyes and mouth. The only thing that saved me was when Dave started laughing uncontrollably.

"Real funny," I said indignantly.

"Oh come on," he grinned. "You expected me to just pass up a chance like that?"

"You almost gave me a heart attack!"

"Yeah," he beamed, bottomlessly pleased with himself, tail wagging. "If I'd known you would react like that, I would've shown you this years ago."

He put his nose up suddenly and turned his gaze attentively to the box of pizza we'd left open on the coffee table in his living room.

"Hey!" he suggested. "Let's go inside for a minute."

He attacked the last of the pizza with ravenous, unapologetic appetite and I watched, somewhere between fascination and horror. "The change always makes me hungry," he explained, smacking marinara sauce off his lips with a broad, floppy tongue.

"You don't ever eat people or anything though, right?" I asked, trying to make it sound like a joke and not a request to reassure my safety.

"Nah," he said. "I never eat any living things. Well... no, I take that back. The first time I changed, I ate something."

I tried not to look too worried. "Oh? What happened?"

Dave settled down into his chair. It was amazing how much he still looked like himself through the canine features. I could still see, clear as day, the light in his eyes, that look on his face whenever he starts to tell a joke or a story. As if he was turning into an actor, ready to put on a show.

"Well. It was the first full moon since I'd contracted lycanthropy. I went out on the balcony there to try and change. But you saw how long it takes. I was out for about a minute before I decided nothing was going to happen.

"So I went inside to watch TV. It's about five minutes later when I start to feel uncomfortable around my butt. I was still wearing my pants, and my tail was getting all jammed up!

"I got out of my clothes as quick as I could. Freaked out a little. I wasn't sure how much of me there would still be, if you know what I mean. I was half afraid I was just going to go completely wolf and start tearing my own place up or something.

"There were about five times when I was sure the changes had stopped, but there was still just a little bit more to it. But it was nice when it was over. I mean, I looked myself over in the mirror, I was very happy with how it looked, but it also felt pretty nice. I was a little more aggressive, maybe. Mostly I was just completely jazzed.

"I was right here when it happened." He nodded to a bookshelf against the facing wall. "My gerbil, Ralph, saw the whole thing."

I took a look at the empty gerbil enclosure. I had a sinking feeling about the direction this was taking.

"Stared straight at me the entire time," Dave said. "Didn't go hide in his cube, didn't race off into his tube trail, just sat there and stared at me the entire time.

"So I opened up his cage, reached in, and pulled him out. No real reason, just seemed like something to do. I lay down on the couch, and he curled up on my chest, and I was petting him. Just like I always did. He wasn't scared, didn't try to run or anything, just sat there looking up at me.

"And then he slowly, slowly started to crawl up my chest. I kept my hand near him, but he never tried to make a break for it or anything, just... walked right up until he was nose to nose with me."

I went wide-eyed. "No."

Dave nodded enthusiastically. He was many things, but he wasn't a liar. "Swear to God. I thought that was so awesome, this cute, little, defenseless rodent just walks right up to my mouth. So, you know, I figured I'd give him a little scare. Opened my mouth and growled at him. You know what he does?"

"What?"

Dave curled his hands up, mimicing a small rodent. "He put his tiny little paws right up on my teeth, stretched his head waaaaaaaaaay into my mouth, and started sniffing around. I swear, I could feel his quick little breaths all over my tongue."

"So you shoved him in your mouth?" I asked.

"No," he said. "I tried to grab him, and he bolted inside."

"Oh no."

"I thought he was going to run right down my throat and choke me," Dave explained. "So I closed my mouth to hold him still. He calmed right down, and I could feel him breathing, HEHhuhHEHhuhHEHhuh, against my tongue. So I opened my mouth a little bit to try and pull him out, but as soon as the pressure lets up a little, he starts crawling further in again!"

"Oh wow."

"So it was a stalemate. I sat there with Ralph in my mouth for a long time. I could feel him wiggling around in there, just moving his head around, but he never tried to claw his way out or anything. I moved him around with my tongue, tried to work him back to the front, you know? But he struggled against it every inch."

Dave grinned, "It gave me the weirdest feeling. Just kind of peaceful, sitting there with my pet gerbil in my mouth. I know it sounds crazy, but it almost felt like we were making some sort of basic connection. I mean... we had a pet/owner relationship, but I'd always sort of felt like he could take me or leave me. All of a sudden, it was like we just... fit together." He laughed. "That's not too weird, is it?"

"Of course not," I said, smiling nervously.

He nodded. "So I decided to eat him. Just a little bit at a time, I let him wriggle into the back of my throat until I was sure it wasn't going to choke me. My gullet's a lot wider as a wolf -- he just slurped right down." He grinned smugly, holding up his hands to indicate a gerbil-sized shape. "Lump this big. Swallowed him all at once."

I nodded non-committally.

"I guess I should feel bad about it," he mused. "I mean, he was my pet and all. I'd promised to care for him. He'd trusted me. Then again, maybe it was just his time. We parted as friends." He scratched his belly. "Nicer to think of him in here than buried in a shoebox in the back yard.

"But I didn't get any pets again after that. Felt like I'd crossed a line. I didn't want to go there again."

I nodded. "Never ate anything living after that then?"

"You know me," he grinned. "I'm not the hunting type."

"Do you think you would?" I asked. "If something tried to jump in your mouth again, would you want to swallow it?"

He grinned at me. "Why? Are you volunteering?"

I laughed. "No, of course not."

Not yet.