M A R A N A T H A


© Osfer, May 2005


All rights reserved.

May only be distributed for free.

May not be altered in any way.

Contains material of an erotic and homosexual nature which may be illegal to read in your country, state, province or region.

The author takes no responsibility for transgressions on the part of the reader

Comments welcome at osfer.kesh@gmail.com.

Available on paperback in 2005

Mail the author for information or join the mailing list!

~ Enjoy. ~

Chapter XVI - as told by Nicky Marlowe.

Sometimes you just got a tough day, you know? Sometimes you just gotta do stuff maybe you wouldn't like doing, if you had the choice. Sometimes you gotta learn that that stuff may be real good for you, teaches you things, so it's good to do stuff that's maybe more than a little challenging. Like now. I'm real, real challenged. I'm in what you might call a quandary, if you'll pardon my spelling.

Today didn't start so hard, though. In fact, today started pret-t-ty damn good, then it went south real fast, then got lots better, stayed that way a while and then went south again and kept right on trucking till it got to where I am. Where I am right now is an air duct, and not one like you see in the movies, where people can crawl, but an actual air duct that's so narrow I can barely fit my shoulders through and the only way I can turn corners is by squeezing through so hard I nearly pop my hip. Done it twice so far and each time I came this close to getting stuck and if that happens, man, I'm dead. Just dead. It ain't like they could bust open the air-ducts to get me out if I got stuck, it's in concrete and the building might fall down and the only way they could pull me out would be to saw me in half, which, you know, ain't really gonna help me much. I'm sweating now, too, which is making the going harder. My threads are soaked and they're dragging along the dark metal walls of the air vents. I'm gonna be so fucked, not too long from now.

I don't wanna think about this right now. I'm thinking about how this day started. Like I said, real good.

There's way worse days to wake up on than on your eighteenth birthday. Even if your dad's a good-for-nothing get-up-and-leaver like mine, even if your mom's some two-dollar whore who thinks she can run your life even better than her own, even if you wake up in a motel bed that stinks of cheese and have a buttkicking to look forward to when you drag your ass home - it's one of the better days to wake up to. Even if you don't know what day it is. You just sorta feel it. Your muscles feel bigger and looser, you find your mind working more patiently - not much, but a little - and problems... they don't look quite so big as the day before.

Now, imagine waking up like this, only with a real nice boner - you know, not the I-gotta-piss boner, but that thick, sensitive wet-dream-horny boner - tenting the burlap sheets. Only it ain't your dick that's tenting it, unless it's grown a fork at the top, it's two round ears. And when they dip down your dick's engulfed in a warmth you can only describe in colors and everything in the world feels like it can wait, and it really can.

"Fuck..." I groan and cover my face with my forearm, the other still dangling off the edge of the loud-springed motel bed as the two ears under my sheets bob slowly up and down. "Actually," I say with a chuckle, "That's an idea. Can we fuck?" I ask, but a rowl from under the sheets and a sudden, deep suction of my dick tell me that I'm expected simply to lie back and enjoy.

Aye, sahib!

Yup, there's definitely worse things to wake up to than a delicious, deep blowjob on your eighteenth birthday. I open my eyes at last and blink in the dusty yellow sunlight that drools into the room, staring up at the cracked mirror on the ceiling. What may have been intended as some kind of sexual kinky thing has since become a death trap, thee are shards missing from the mirror that probably correspond to some of the washed-away brown-red stains on the mattress and the whole thing hovers over the bed like a multifaceted sword of Euripides or Patroclus or whatever. Heh, Euripides pants, Eubyades pants! Geeky joke, I know.

Peering up at the mirror, piecing together the picture from the splintered image it presents, I take a good look at myself. It's dark outside, it's only a few hours since midnight, so the only light I've go is from the yellowed streetlamp blasting through the shutters of the motel window. The light matches the color of my fur, for the most part. Now, let's see... Mussed-up hair, spikes long gone after the night's erotic tussling...   Not bad, Nicky Marlowe, not bad at all. With no other males around to compare myself to I look pretty big in this dingy bed, broad-shouldered with a healthy yellow-and-white-with-spots pelt, although the comparative size of the rosettes on my hide show I'm not the biggest guy around even for jaguar standards. Still, I got a good, stocky build and at least somebody thinks I'm sexy and, well, he - I should say 'she', he's so pretty - is sexy enough by themselves that I feel damn good about myself.

God... I know I'm gonna get my ass whupped by mom when I come home, probably Rickie, that's my sister, is home already and so she got the jump on me, spinning a lie that absolved her of mom's rage and heaped it all on me. Whatever. I'm on seventh heaven like neither of those penny-sluts ever were, and I'm gonna make it last.

I just can't fucking believe how good it feels, those thin, warm lips squeezing so tightly around my shaft, taking me so intimately into that warm mouth... Soft tongue lapping, soft palate scraping and then - gulp, gasp - that wonderful entry into that tight, purrumbling throat. Now, I've had my dick sucked once or twice - I may not be a huge guy, but I still got it where it counts - but this is something else. This is... intimate, not just sexual. Each time he goes down on me my little guy ain't just doing his best to please me, it's a message. It's like a kiss, a secret kiss that lets my dick know how nice he tastes, and by the way my guy's slurping at me, making my big ol' toes curl, I taste real nice down there.

I wanna stay here forever, man. I wanna roll over in this stinking bed and not care about anything because my kitty thinks I'm the baddest ass in the universe. He'll roll onto his belly and I'll roll onto his back, I'll bite down on his shoulder and draw blood while I hump him and he'll whimper so cutely and whisper my name and after I'm finished I'll roll back over and he'll scoot down to suck my dick clean and scramble into my arms, purring gratefully. I'll feel big and strong, and not feel like good-for-nothing trash like my mom says, and not like a dirty faggot like my bitch of a sister says, and not like a waste of education like my school says, and not like a pathetic little upstart like all of the other guys call me. To them I'm just a wastrel and a queer and a lazybones and a small-time pickpocket, but to the guy under my sheets I'm a God.

And it ain't just that that makes me love him right back. Even if he wasn't as sweet as he is, like if he was as bitchy as Rickie, I'd still love him. He could bitch and yell at me all day and I'd do what he told me to do just on the off chance that maybe I'd do enough for him to be pleased with me, and he'd snuggle up to me in bed, and maybe give me a special birthday treat like right now and damn his mouth feels nice...

"Can I ask you something?" The words are out of my mouth before I even know it and I'm still staring at the ceiling mirror, trailing a finger over my chest. I dunno, it feels more muscled, somehow. A delicious humming around my dick and a deep, quick bob makes my toes curl and my back arch, I stretch out all the way and slowly, with some gentle help from my little friend under the sheets, I come down from the precipice of orgasm. I take the gesture he made as a yes. "My dad's in trouble. I think. I don't know him real well, cuz he left my momma after he knocked her up. But he lives in this city now, see, and since I found that out I've been wondering if I should see him, except now he's in trouble, real bad trouble and if I go see him now I'll be in even worse trouble. What do you think I should do?"

The sheets pull back and my beautiful lion raises his sweet head off my dick, licking his lips, those big eyes of his looking at me like I'm the toughest guy he ever blew - and from what I hear, he's blown some real tough ones. "My faamily sent me to this country to live with my graandparents, who abandoned me yet continue to receive support money from my parents, pretending that I still live with them, while instead I had to come to this city by my own dewices and support myseelf through whoring." He says it like he's explaining how sugar is refined and then he goes right back down on me. I look up at the mirror to watch his reflection. He looks so happy, sucking my dick, the way   a pensioner looks when he's solving a crossword puzzle or the way the gardener kid looks when you tell him what a good job he did mowing your lawn and you give him a two-buck tip.

I love his accent. The way he mixes his v's and w's up sometimes, the way he emphasizes the first syllable of most words even when he shouldn't. The way he always makes sentences that are too perfect to sound natural. Just another thing his pretty muzzle is good for.

"I see your point," I say and nod. I'm eighteen now. I'm a man . I want to tell my dad how I feel about him and I never dared before, but that was when I was a boy, so now I have to just do it, consequences be damned.

But then my sneaky lion surprises me and dives right on down, swallowing to the base like I always ask him to do and he always refuses, saving it for special treats and immediately I lose myself. I grab bunches of rough sheets and arch my back, pushing my chest upward. I squeeze his slender shoulders between my thighs and, to put it bluntly, I cum in his muzzle. He's looking at me, he always tries to make eye contact when I cum in him but this time I'm too out of it to meet his gaze, my eyes flutter open and shut and my heart swells like it's saving up a dozen beats before it goes on, and by the time the ringing in my ears fades and the paralyzing pleasure begins to seep out of my body, I amend my go-get-em philosophy with the notion that there's no harm at all in giving my lionboy a birthday bang, since we've got the motel room to ourselves until noon.

Now, not to break the mood here, but there's two pieces of backstory you really should know. One of them has to do with, for lack of a better word, the plot. About my dad, and how he's in trouble and all. The other has to do with the sex I'm having. So, which do you think is most important?

Obviously.

I've been seeing Ales, or Alice as people sometimes call my gorgeous girlyboy lion - you know, I just realized that I never call him my boyfriend? He's my boyfriend, Alice. I like the sound of that. Anyway, we've been 'dating (i.e. fucking) for a couple months now, and to start with it was a pretty good deal.

See, there's two things mom hates. Herbivores and faggots. Don't ask me why on either count, she's an old-fashioned bitch, raised in the south, but not the good south with its healthy, lively attitude, just the lame, stupid south with nothing. Now, before I dropped out of high school, something she still hasn't found out thanks to my buddy Dave who forges report cards for me, I was fooling around with some of the other guys now and again. No big deal, you know, mostly jerking off, maybe getting a blowjob from one of the subbier geeks .

You know how that goes, right? There's always a couple guys who do stuff like dance or home ec and if you pay close attention there's always one or two that don't slouch like the others. They may be little guys and they may get picked on, but they walk with their backs straight even when people call them names - those are the ones you don't want. They probably go out to the clubs after their parents are asleep and spend the whole night getting banged by older dudes and this gives 'em enough of an ego trip to feel real good about themselves. No, you want the ones with their backs hunched, who hug their lunchboxes when they eat and always look out that nobody trips them up as they walk through the cafeteria.

All it takes to get some good head from one of 'em is   couple of kind words, hanging out with them for, maybe, a week or two. Just occasionally saying hi, sitting with them during lunch break once or twice. Then inviting them over to your house for study or whatever, and then you ask 'em if they've ever done anything with another guy.

Now, it's a little mean, I'll be the first to admit. You're toying with some poor kid's emotions and if you don't do it right you're gonna end up with a smitten kitten whose heart you'll have to break. Which would be a problem if I was a softie, but I'm not, and watching the kid burst into tears when I told him it was all just a bit of fun these last weeks is a small price to pay for weeks and weeks of free, daily blowjobs, which is basically to a fifteen-year-old what living in Disneyland would be to a nine-year-old.

As for girls? Ain't met one yet I could stand, and believe me, I tried. I may be a little short, but I pack plenty of muscle and I did a couple of sports back then. I wasn't a star or anything, but I still had second-rate cheerleaders throwing themselves at me after a winning match. And sure, pussy-dipping was fun, even though I had to wear a rubber - other guys just trusted the girls on their word that they were taking the pill, but after how mom got knocked up, I didn't feel like taking any chances. And the girls gave good head, even though they were more interested in you watching them give you a blowjob than actually doing it. But every now and again, without fail, the chick would say something or do something that so reminded me of mom or my sister that my dick just went limp inside her and I bailed.

Naturally the sluts took to calling me a queer not too long after and then I started beating people up to show that I wasn't. In retrospect, yeah, I guess that wasn't the best idea I ever had, because the supply of innocent, subby boys willing to suck a dick to make friends dried up real quick when I got a rep for being a bully-basher.

So I dropped out, I think two years ago, and I've been making money doing stuff John Law don't approve up too greatly, which I'll tell you about lately. I ain't hooking, if that's what you're wondering. Jeez. Perv.

Couple months ago I hooked up with Alice, totally by accident, and I was just head over heels with him from the get-go. If you up and call me sappy, I swear to god... But between mom grounding me and my 'job' I didn't really have any opportunity to see him without it being noticed... And then something totally amazing happened.

Suzie said she had a new boyfriend and made such a fuss about not wanting to bring him home that mom got pissed and assigned me as her chaperone. And that's not all! Once we were out of the house on the night of her date and I was railing on her that I wouldn't let her out of my sight to sneak in some quick nookie, she got all serious and wanted to cut a deal with me and she was actually making a pretty convincing argument, offering to do the dishes and the laundry for two months if I gave her three hours by herself - when all of a sudden her boyfriend showed up. And he was a bull . That's why she didn't want to bring him home, mom would fucking flip if she knew her precious little girl had beef between her thighs whenever she could get it. As soon as she saw that she upped the ante to three months and covering for me twice a week when I want to get out in the evening, but I had a better plan.

Here's the scam. I said I had a buddy that I thought was a fag, who'd do anything for me. So, I'd get this kid to pretend to be Suzie's boyfriend, so he could come to the door to pick her up. I told her mom would ease up after that and no longer insist on me chaperoning her, which she bought, even though I knew better.

When Alice showed up to pick up Suzie for the next date, mom did that freaky overly-polite thing moms sometimes do. She didn't trust my prettyboy lion one bit, she thought he was being a sneaky charmer trying to take her precious daughter's virginity, which everybody else know had gone out the door the day she'd started showing breasts and shoving them in her teachers' faces. So, just as I predicted, she still demanded I chaperone, and Suzie still had to cut a deal with me to leave her alone during her dates.

Of course, that meant that, as soon as she reaches the movies or the bar or wherever she was going with her beefy boyfriend, she and Alice would part ways. And then I'd have the duration of Suzie's date to spend with my boy, and man, the fun we had... We'd talk and talk, whispering in alleys while we fucked. I can't remember having a single conversation with the kid without having my dick in him, and I can't remember a single fuck where simply hearing his voice didn't thrill me as much as the tightness under his tail did.

So that worked great for weeks and weeks until Alice and I sorta decided we were an item. I don't mean until we decided that, it's not like the sky fell down when we figured it out and started holding hands and shit like that. No, that happened when Suzie caught her beef banging some other chick in the back seat of his truck. It hit the fan powerful hard when she saw that. She trashed her room and screamed the whole tenement block down, or damn near to it, and told me she knew I was boning that boy that passed as her date, that she knew I was a faggot and that she would never lower herself to for real dating a bitchboy like that lion. She didn't really mean it, of course, she was just blowing off steam and maybe trying to blackmail me a little to get me back on the laundry and dishwashing chores. She just wanted to mess with me, she didn't really think I was queer.

I guess, in retrospect, that smacking her in the face for badmouthing Alice, just as mom came into the room to ask what the racket was about, was maybe another big mistake.

After that I got seriously grounded. Mom changed her work shifts so she could drive me to school, and I had to make arrangements so some of my colleagues were there posing as fellow students to put her mind at ease before we went to work. And work got real hard around that time, lotsa small-time guys like me all trying to get noticed, so I had to really show off. Alice and I sneaked some time in here and there. One day none of my colleagues could meet me at the schoolyard so I called Alice and he came instead, and we had a quick five-minute fuck in the broom closet before both running out without getting noticed. Another time Alice climbed up the wall of the apartment building facing the inner courtyard - real scary, because I live on the seventh floor - and he had me stand on the windowsill with him clinging to the wall outside, so he could blow me without having to come into the room... It's a good thing, too, because mom took to inspecting my room intermittently and she came in just as we were busy, so he could duck away and I could tuck my dick in and pretend like I was just doing some clearing up. We had to interrupt three times, but we managed to finish and Alice said he could sleep better now I'd given him some warm milk. He's so cute when he talks dirty.

By this time I was starting to get noticed at work, too, and it's getting harder and harder to talk about that without telling you what I do to make money, but I really ought to just finish this topic first.

Even though it feels like a really long time, Suzie only broke up with her bull last week, but it feels like way longer. Then, yesterday things just went tactical . Suzie brought her new guy home for mom's inspection, real proud she was. He was a hoofer, which would have made Mom throw a tantrum, but he was also a Suit, see? Respectable gentleman, fine upstanding citizen, all that malarkey. Mom would sure love that... Somebody respectable in the family, hoofer or no, so she could bring out the company plates, which in any normal person's house would simply be regular plates since they're just white plastic, but in our house they're the only matching set, so they're the company plates. She could also get out the company cutlery, which is the only cutlery that wasn't stolen from airlines or restaurants.

Naturally, this was rubbed in my face. I, after all, would never become a Suit. To keep things believable, my pal Dave made sure my report cards were well within the 'mediocre' range, my grades just scraping by, fictional teachers complaining about my lack of motivation. Such report cards are not stepping stones on the path to becoming a Suit, they're slippery slates on the slippery slide toward Slackerdom. Suzie has similarly shit grades, but in my mom's mind, there is no difference between a girl having a Suit for a boyfriend, and a guy actually being a Suit.

You wanna hear the punchline?

So she brings the guy home and mom makes dinner, which means something out of the oven instead of the microwave. I wasn't there for dinner (was sneaking off some time with Alice - he actually blew a dog, not a dog-species guy, but an actual four-legger, just because I said it'd be hot to see) but I knew she was cooking because I heard her cleaning the oven when I left that morning. So they're all having coffee, Suzie in her most decent jeans (they almost reach halfway down her thighs) and mom in her best dress (which almost contains her boobs), drinking out of the company mugs and I walk in feeling like a million bucks, fuck-drunk and stupid. I walk in and see the short-antlered buck sitting on the couch in a plain gray sweater and I say, "Hey, Mister Henderson."

You could have heard a pin drop in the silence, and me? Fool, I was holding the grenade.

Mom asked, "You know each other?" I wasn't firing on all cylinders. If I were, I'd have made a big to-do out of Suzie making the beast with two backs with the biology substitute from school - who, it seems, has become a school employee since I dropped out.  

"Sure, he was my biology prof," I said.

Basically I let go of the grenade's clip and the timer started and everybody started fumbling to get out of it as quickly as they could. Mom started quite quietly, asking if this was true and then immediately shouting at Suzie and the prof about how immoral it was for teachers to date students, alternately railing at Mister Henderson and Suzie, having different barrages for each. The buck didn't know what hit him, he just sat there with his coffee on his lap, shrinking farther and farther away while a busty, golden-haired leopardess alternately blasts him and his girlfriend with verbal abuse - though the girlfriend, a younger and slimmer version of mom in every respect, gave as good as she got. And then, after two minutes of fantastic shouting, both of the girls so loud they can't hear each other and don't want to, mom took a breath just as Suzie's finishing a rant and in the silence everyone heard her scream the words "-and your faggot son ain't even been to school in two years!" and at this point I kind of figure like I'm still holding the grenade.

  The storm's turned in my direction. Mom's eye lasers fixed on me and Suzie was quick to cash in, abandoning a two-year pact of secrecy. I suppose when mom's found out she's dating this guy it won't be much worse to find out she's been sleeping with teachers for years and whatever the case, I was too slow to whip up any come-back. Mom roared at the professor, asking if this is true and the pale-faced, panicked buck nodded so hard that his antlers got stuck in the plaster of the wall on the up-stroke. Suzie immediately rushed over to him, grabbing the moaning buck by the neck to try and tug his head free of the wall. Mom launched herself out of the tatty lazy-chair with a green floral pattern she thinks is the height of taste and grabs me by the collar of my coat, pushing me back against the wall with a strength that you wouldn't think she'd possess, looking at her. Leopards. Whee.

I'm a pretty tough guy. I tend to give as good as I get when I get beat on, but when mom goes to town on me it's like I'm six years old again. Best I could do is keep one arm high to protect my face and one low to protect my stomach and try to curl into a ball and walk away at the same time. I was such a wuss, always was when it came to mom. And then, after she'd shown me half the kitchen, a bruise on my cheek from where I bumped into the coffee-machine, she pushed me up against the fridge and smacked me on the back, screaming whatever at me. She had every right to be pissed off, she always did when she beat on me. She just found out her son's been lying to her for almost two years, thrown away what little bit of future he had in him and was doing God knows what during school hours, but, fuck it, my face is pushed against the calendar stuck on the fridge with magnets from the diner she worked at and I saw the date, one day before my eighteenth, and I saw my birthday wasn't marked, so mom would probably forget it as usual.

And you'd think I was used to it by now. I sure did. Lat two birthdays she missed I didn't care, I was out doing a job anyway, so who cares if that dumb bitch gets a cake or candles or whatever. I make enough money to buy the stuff I want and she doesn't know a DVD player or a games console from the ratty old tape-deck she once tossed into my room, she didn't even notice when I replaced the fifteen-inch black-and-white TV screen with a big widescreen LCD fucker. And whenever she used to do birthdays as a kid she was always drunk and when she does birthdays for Suzie it's always a moms-and-daughters gathering where they all try to show each other up about how pretty their daughter is or how much she's achieved without acting like they're bitching each other off, it's so backstabby and I can't for the life of me imagine what she'd make of a party where she couldn't make everything about her because nobody cared about her. Plus, the people I call friends these days'd probably leave the house near empty before leaving...

So I was as surprised as mom, Suzie and the buck when I spun around and gave mom a backhand punch in the mouth, sending her sprawling. She look up at me with whites in her eyes, Suzie's jaw dropped and the buck didn't even notice that one of his antlers broke off when he was finally freed from the wall.

This was my time of ascension. Years of repressed anger, pubescent frustration and genuine gripe finally given a time for expression. How miserable she made my life, how useless she made me feel, how she helped my decision to drop out of school by constantly telling me I'd still be useless even with a pathetic diploma, how I stopped bringing girls home because she always made fun of me in public, how, yeah, I actually liked guys and she's a stupid old-fashioned cunt, that I was a man and one day from now the law was gonna realize that too.

So basically I said "Sell my stuff. I'm outta here," dropped my house-keys on the table and walked out the door.

Hm.

Slam, went the door.

Hm.

WOO FUCKING HOO! Best day of my life. Stupidest, most impulsive thing I ever did and do I regret it? Hell no! Two hundred bucks and my cell-phone in my pocket, no roof over my head and I felt like the king of the world. I marched outta there, the elevator was already on my floor when I hit the button - that's never happened to me in my life - and even when I reached ground floor and walked out onto the street, I didn't regret it. I thought I would, but I didn't.

I sent Alice a text-message in case he was with a client and a few minutes later he called back. I took him out for some McFood at a stupid little Italian place, told him what happened and before I knew it, his chair was empty and I heard a zipper being pulled down under the tablecloth. I could hardly stop laughing, and even though I'd done him just a few hours ago and he'd been done by me, a dog, and who knows how many clients before or after, both of us were horny as hell after I blew my load in his mouth and he spat it out in one of those little cups that had held the butter we used on our bread...

Sneaky thing that he was, he'd taken that under the table with him and when he sat back on his chair, all throughout the meal he kept dipping s tuff in the bowl of white, creamy sauce, licking his lips at me and I had such a hard time keeping a straight face...

The hundred and eighty I still had in my pocket had to last a little while, so we decided not to go to a bar or anything and just find some quiet alley to fuck in. He likes it when I give him a reacharound during a hump, but it's pretty rare for him to get off. This time, though, he painted the alley wall and kept pushing his gorgeous, slender butt against me like he was eating my dick with his as, which ain't a real tasteful thought if you think about it, but it was a real hot fuck for all the fifteen minutes it lasted.

I thought I'd just light up a smoke an enjoy the afterglow with him, but Alice hopped forward and off my dick and spun round like a ballerina to take it in his mouth again and when he started bobbing his pretty head I knew I wanted more, just the same as him. He pulled my phone out of my pocket when it rang again and, still bobbing his head so deliciously, taking my kittycock deep down his wonderful throat, programmed that incomprehensible thing to be silent when mom or Suzie called. I wanted to pull his head off my dick, but he was quicker. He did that yowling, twisting-his-head-and-tugging-my-balls trick that always gets me off and stole another load from me, slurping it selfishly up.

Then I pulled his mouth off me and, miracle, it didn't ache like it usually does after my third or fourth round in a day. It wasn't hypersensitive, it felt perfectly fine. "Motel?" I suggested, and Alice's eyes went wide and a second later I had a happy, light-as-a-feather kittyboy throwing himself against me, arms wrapped around my neck, legs flying as I spun him around until the shorts he had around his ankles flew off him and over the fence.

Both of us stopped spinning and I set him down, naked from but for a mesh shirt, and we both thought about that little problem. I was so glad I found the solution because, well, it feels kinda nice being the man in our relationship and I think he likes it too. I took off my jacket and wrapped him up in it as I took him into my arms in a little bundle and, with his chest and groin hidden, he seriously looked like a pretty lioness maybe a few years older than him.

The streets were empty, as there's nothing really to do in this part of town other than that one biker bar, which is cool 'cuz they have live music, but there's nothing happening there this early   in the day. Bumped into this spikey-haired himbo who giggled like a girl even though he was taller than me, and I would'a snarled at him but he had a cheetah with him who had the dress sense of a cop. You know what I mean, the kind of casual a guy wears who's spent so much time in uniform he doesn't really know what casual means. So even though I felt ten feet tall and I would have totally dug getting into a fight with a cop, I looked down at the snoozing lion I was carrying, thought the better of it and didn't bother the cheetah cop or his bitch, and just went right on carrying mine.

He must have been working long days lately, because my lion had his eyes closed, snuggling against my shoulder like a kitten, those big footpaws of his dangling over my elbow. By the time we reached the motel I remembered from around here, so dingy and dark I expected 'Bates Motel'. I shouldered the door to the office open and wrinkled my nose at the smell of smoke and stale coffee. The attendant didn't even look up from the newspaper that hid his face, just said "Twenty bucks, out by noon" and when I put my foot on the countertop to rest Alice against my knee, pulled out my wallet, took two twenties out between my teeth and dropped them on the counter, he tossed a key at me and said "Twenty-two" and when I got Alice into room twenty-two and locked the door behind me he sprawled on the bed, limbs going in all directions, soft, smooth belly fully exposed.

I dove down to snuffle at it and he giggled at the coldness of my nose, grabbed my ears when I ran my raspy tongue over the smooth plane of his stomach and man, his lithe little body turned me on so hard. I grabbed those soft-curved hips, moaning deep in my chest at how pliantly they squeezed under my thumbs and I nosed my way up his chest despite his pleas for me to stop, the squirming wriggle of those warm legs on either side of me. His soft fingers mussed the spikes I'd tussled into my hair that morning in his desperation to get me to stop and finally when I licked up his chin, I did.

He was just being himself, playful and happy on his back in a big boy's bed and he didn't understand what was happening, but he took my breath away. He took my breath away. If you know what I mean, then you're a lucky guy. I ain't some romantic queen who thinks love lasts forever, but I ain't worried about breaking down and jumping off a bridge out of heartache because I know for a damn fact that no soul-sore could ever pain me as much as it hurt to love him right then. There was a lump in my throat and tears were streaming down my cheeks as I kissed him, smothering his plain, honest questions about what was wrong with me, and had he done something to upset me... He didn't even understand what he did to me. I don't think he could, after all, he's just a kid.

I still feel it now, that hurt. But it's like an ache in your leg. You get used to it after a while and you and your body make a pact not to make such a big deal out of it, because you still gotta walk. And, you know, hearing him purr slurpily under my sheets as he takes my dick down to the root and swallows my cum right up, well, that's a pretty good painkiller.

He pulls right off, knowing me well enough to know that once I've blown a load he either has to get up straight away, or hold real still till after the hypersensitivity's over. "So vhat are you going to do?" he asks, licking his chops with that soft pink tongue of his, snuggling his lightweight body next to me. He's so warm and soft, like hw as made out of curves and squeezes. His whiskers tickle mine and we both wrinkle our snouts at the same time and we kiss, and I don't taste my own cum - he swallowed it down his throat, just like I like it. Alice is the best boyfriend ever.

"I don't know, kittybuns," I say to him and pull the sheets up over the both of us, slipping my hand underneath them to trace my hand from the dimple between his shoulderblades aaaall the way down to the beautiful round swell of his rump, giving those golden-furred cheeks a squeeze each and getting a pear of squeals and wiggles in return. He snuggles closer. "I don't even know the guy. The only reason I even know he's my dad is because mom says so."

"Your mother is nuts."

"I know, babycakes." I try to make up a new stupid sappy pet name for him every time. "But she usually doesn't lie unless to make herself look good or somebody else look bad, and sayin' he's my dad when he ain't does neither. I gotta take a slash." And I really do. I roll over my boy and kiss him on his sweet black lips and slide out of bed. He reaches a lazy arm out and grabs my tail, feeding it through his fingers while I walk to the bathroom.

It doesn't even have a door, but at least the throne's just around the corner from the entrance so I'm just barely out of view. I know he's my boyfriend, I know I've dumped my fluids in his body and had him beg for more, I've humped him behind churches and schools for crying out loud, but I still have to have my privacy on the bathroom or I can't go. The toilet smells absolutely foul, the air is cold and the bare concrete floor is colder, but a full bladder held in check by an all-night hardon finally getting some relief is a sensation way more powerful than any unpleasant odor, thank you very much.

And as I stand there, dick in hand, aiming into the mucky, unwashed pot, looking at the disgusting bed in the pathetic motel room where my boyfriend's sleeping, I feel a weight of self-pity descend on me. This isn't what I want for Alice. I could live like this, no sweat, but Alice... I want him to have a nice, soft bed. Big enough for him to lie down in crosswise. I want him to have a nice big house where there's room on the walls for the cheap-ass but colorful paintings he always stops to look at whenever we're at the downtown market. I want him to have fine-grained tiles on his bathroom floor and a frosted-glass shower cabin, and I'll take the sliding doors off it so I can sneak in and watch him shower when he thinks I'm still asleep (what, you think this is a fantasy for him to live on his own, without me ?) and soft, thick carpets to warm his footpaws when he comes out. I want him to have a nice garden (now this is wishful thinking in a city like Maranatha, but maybe it's someplace else, after all it's a fantasy) with some comfortable wicker chairs and a table so he can read, and I'll check out some books on gardening and we'll make a lawn of soft grass for lying in, high hedges for privacy, and whatever flowers he thinks are pretty. Flowers are a little faggy for me, but if he likes them, he'll have them.

But right now I've got a hundred and sixty bucks in my pocket and by this time tomorrow I'll either have the baggage of knowing I didn't help my dad when he was in deep, deep trouble, even though I don't know him, or I'll a) not have a job and b) be in deep, deep trouble myself. And Alice too, maybe.

Yeah, yeah, okay, quit your whining. I'm gonna tell you about my job. I promised I would, didn't I? Jeez Louise,   get a grip.

"Oh my fucking God," I whisper and I turn so quickly that I forget to shake my dick and piss runs over my hands and I turn on the tap, but no water comes out so I just shake them out and wipe them on the sheets when I walk into the room again. Yuck.

"What's wrong?" asks Alice, sitting straight up with his ears folded, moving to look at me on all fours with nothing but helpful concern in his big, pretty eyes. It's amazing how quickly he responds to my emotions, like he sometimes figures them out even before I do. "Maarlowe," he says, doing that delicious rowling sound with the 'rl' that always makes me melt, and now makes me ruffle his head as I go through the clothes we scattered on the floor and toss my boxers to hi while I drag my pants on.

"I've gotta go back, and you've gotta come with me," I whisper to him as I tug my shirt over my head. He's already pulled the boxers on and on his light frame they look like shorts, which is pretty decent. Then again, it's mighty cold out tonight, and even the amount of running we'll do is going to leave some chill, so I toss him my coat.

"Why are you vhispering?" he asks as he slinks after me on tippytoes. I   look at him and bite my lip, and look at the bed, and at him again. I want to stay here and he knows it. I want to go to sleep with him in my arms right now and wake up when the sun comes in, the real morning of my eighteenth birthday. He smiles at me like he's a thousand years older than me, like he's seen the birth and death and rebirth of the world and lays his paw on my arm. "Let's go, Maarlowe. You lead, yes?"

"I love you."

When we get out of the motel complex, the door key safely tucked in my pants, a big clock tells me it's only half past one at night and a quick dash to the next road gets me and Alice there just in time to catch the last city bus coming through there. The driver's so unused to passengers at this hour he has to hit the breaks hard when I wave at him, smart enough not to actually step out onto the road.

The old skunk's clearly not had any coffee and growls "Zact change," at me the second I start rifling through the bills in my wallet, but then he looks up and sees too teens, shivering in the cold, looking like they'd gone out for a night on the town but somehow it didn't pan out and now they just want to go home... And he snorts and pushes my wallet away and points a thumb to the back.

I smile and Alice thanks him with a pat on his arm and the driver laughs a throaty laugh as the bus violently pulls out onto the trafficless road. The only other people on the bus are a bum hugging himself and a bottle, and a passed-out businesswolf, splayed back over his chair, head tilted back, muzzle hanging and flapping   with every loud snore, the buttons of his shirt undone an his tie loose around his neck. He must have fallen asleep on the way home. The odds of his wallet still being in his pocket are slim. Real slim. Lastly there's a creep in the back who's only showing a grin from under his hoodie, so it's your basic night-time bus-ride.

Alice falls asleep on my shoulder and I'm glad the bus-driver turned the heating on because we'd be damn well freezing by the time I nuzzle him awake and we get off the bus twenty minutes later. He yawns so kittenishly, covering his muzzle with his paw and scratching at his ears as he looks around to get his bearings. The apartments here are all in different styles, different heights of buildings all moshed together, really disorienting. We moved here when I was nine and it took me till I was thirteen before I could safely wander outta the house without getting lost, so I'll forgive my boy's confusion.

Picking my way through the labyrinthine hive of closely-packed apartment buildings, their styles so violently clashing that even my unsophisticated eyes hurt from looking at them, I pass seventies-style concrete egg-crates, depression-era luxury apartments brutally chopped up into tenements, industrial-age hellholes that still show the city's old name on their faded, graffitied dedication plates.   Normally I'd make a point of not avoiding groups of guys that hang around certain corners. It's like they say, when you're in prison, you gotta look everybody in the eye and show you're not scared. Same here. Sure, sometimes it backfires and you get a pounding, but that's life. Still, I ain't about to let anybody give my boy a pounding except me - under his tail . I'm such a comedian. Well, me and his clients. Hm.

So, we end up at my apartment building. Former apartment building. Had you figured out that was where we were going? Clever. The building's seventies-era when people thought that concrete made for some rad designs and, hey, why don't we crazy cats just build a big dirty cube with windows? That'd be far out .

"Maarlowe?" Alice asks. Oh, that 'rl' he pronounces. I pitch tent at the sound of it and am half-tempted to delay my plans just long enough for a quicky with the prettyboy that stands on the pavement, hugging his arms and rubbing one footpaw against the back of his calf. . "Why aren't we going to the front door?"

"I left home, and I ain't about to come crawling back." It's sorta the truth, right? I walk past the front of my ugly-ass building and kneel by the fence gate that bars the alley between our building and the next. The wire mesh is frayed here and there and with some tugging and biting I manage to get two pieces of metal wire of appropriate length, which I bend and begin jiggering the primitive old padlock with. Now, James Bond can do it in mere seconds but a real-world performance involving the opening of a padlock of commercial-grad complexity in under forty seconds is pretty impressive, and I can do it in thirty-two. It fails to impress Alice, who's been misinformed by James Bond. Fuck.

It's the day before Trash Day, so everybody's left bags of garbage in the alley and it's a mighty chore to wade through them and when Alice trips and nearly falls into a pretty soggy-looking blue bag I sweep him off his feet and lift him the rest of the way, hopping like that running-through-car-tires exercise they do in the army.

The gate at the other end of this little alley opens into the courtyard that sort of became its own thing when it was realized that a couple of buildings actually framed a useless little space that could be turned into a plaza to validate some rent increases, something that seems to happen a lot in a city like this, where the planning board seems to not only accept any bribe it's offered, but also spends that money on crack. Consequently, this gate doesn't have a lock and the wire-fence gate swings creakily open.

This little plaza is mostly concrete, with some pavement, untended wild-growing shrubs and dead trees and it never fails to depress anyone who comes here. Even Alice's ears immediately fold at the sight of the drab hodgepodge of city and nature, effectively an insult to both.   And now, ladies and gentlemen, I'm going to show both you and Alice what I do for a living.

Ready?

I set Alice down and tell him to wait for me by a tree under a streetlight, cloaked in shadow. I kiss him on the cheek and rub his arms to keep him warm, and when he giggles in whispered tones I can't help but kneel and rub his legs as well, my paws running the legs of the boxers he wears up high enough that they brush against those kittenish little balls of his and he puts his paws down to cover himself like a blushing girl pushing down his skirt. I yowl up at him and kiss him on the belly before I turn and sprint toward the wall of my building.

And this is what I do.

I kick off the ground an take two steps up the wall before I bend forward and grip the drainpipe that runs up the length of the building. I use the continuing momentum to make it easy for me to drag myself up until   I reach the first-floor balcony. I hear Alice suck in a breath and nearly call out my name as I jump eight feet sideways to grip the balony's rungs, pulling myself up to stand on the rim and without even waiting for balance I jump up to grab at the sill, the wooden rim that frames the hollow of this balcony.

I pull into a tight ball until I can fit my toeclaws in the ridge between the sill and the concrete walland count, one, two, before I uncurl and push up and back and stretch out and just manage to grab the rim of the next balcony, immediately pulling up, climbing onto the guardrail, leaping up, curling up, jumping up, grabbing onto the balcony platform and again, and twice more, all while keeping my eyes focused on the seventh-floor target.

You hear those guys who do extreme sports talking about how "it's an adrenaline rush, man!" and "your heart beats so fast" and "you feel so alive" with their stupid accents, but they're wrong. Doing something like this, a perfect symphony of experience and instinct, wind rushing through your hair, feeling nothing but the flawless functioning of your body... It's not the rush itself that empowers. It's the feeling of changing the world. When you're scaling walls this fast, and I'm not even extremely good at this, mind, it's like you make it so that up or down aren't absolute concepts any more. You control when gravity's valuable. God, I can't begin to describe it, I'm not going to bother.

The sixth-floor window is lit so I can't clamber over the balcony, and hang on to the rim of the balcony platform while I judge the next maneuver. And then I let go with one hand and turn, hanging loosely, facing away from the wall. Alice is standing under the tree and he looks so small, he must be so worried. I frown at this thought, that I might be scaring him. I should have told him what I do, maybe given him some warning that his boyfriend was a life-and-limb-risking daredevil, but then I see what he's doing.

He's hopping excitedly, waving up at me and clapping his paws softly, like he's a fan in an audience, and I've never felt better about myself in my life. I'm a man . Grinning like a fool, I turn again, grip the balcony with both paws, scoot sideways a little and, quick as a bird's shadow on a meadow I climb up the side of the guardrail, kick off sideways, extend my leg and brace it against the thick-ass drainpipe, let it compress as I roll into my knee and then kick off again, back to the left and against the balcony and climb up and stand on the rail's edge, wide-legged, arms spread to my audience, like a moonlit God, blowing kisses to my softly cheering love below.

With a flourish, I hop back. I never lock the door from my room to the balcony so it's easy to walk inside and look around at the place I spent the last couple of years. Faded heavy metal posters I forgot to take down and never notice any more. A narrow bed that was too small for me even before we moved here. A desk with clothes on it and an inch of dust where it's exposed, some haphazard shelves with a big-ass TV screen, a pile of multimedia devices and game consoles stacked among a nest of multicolored cables, yeah, mom's gonna make a mint if she sells this properly. Which, of course she won't.

I don't care about any of this stuff, anyway - have you figured it out yet? I'm a burglar by trade. For fuck's sake, get with the program - all I care about is hidden in the air-vent near the ceiling and as I carefully tug the white plastic grate off its hinges, I reach inside for the only possessions I truly care about. A couple of notebooks with hard black covers, rounded edges and a black elastic built in to keep them shut, my diaries. These are the chronicles of my youth, back when I was taken out of school because mom wanted to follow the junior pageant circuit where Suzie, dressed like a preteen, juvenile whore paraded up and down endless flash-lighted catwalks or when we moved to Maranatha, or when I was lying awake one night, sniffing after another fight with mom over how she always believes Suzie and never me, and I saw the lights go on in an apartment across the plaza and saw some guy, a wolf and pretty good-looking for a canine, pull the curtains, only to have them fall down before some dog guy wrapped his arms around him from behind and for the first time in my young life I saw two guys actually fuck, right in front of me, right there on the floor and realized I was queer, or when I first saw my idol running along rooftops like a black hellhound across mountains, or when I first started working for mister Sharpish or when I met Alice.

I hug them to my chest and stuff them in my backpack, about to leave when I remember I only have a small amount of money left, and I really ought to prepare for living on my own, so I find my wallet and my driver's license, my two-year-out-of-date passport, my phone's charger, a bunch of MP3 players (I'm a consumer whore, I always get the newest shit), two cameras, a handful of watches and an original eight-track tape of the White Album, still in its vacuum seal, all of which I have lying around the room as semi-inconspicuous but extremely valuable and portable wealth.

Checking that I've closed every strap and buckle and clasp on the backpack I sling it over my shoulders, adjusting the straps to let it cling tightly to my body before I go out onto the balcony, resisting the urge to break the window or kick in Suzie's door and simply hop over the guard-rail, grab the drainpipe and begin climbing down.

Limber arms wrap around my neck when I hit the ground and I'm bathed in kisses which I more than eagerly return, lifting my little guy off his paws and spinning him around while he tells me how impressed he is, and how brave I am and I set him down and look him in his happy, beautiful eyes, one glowing gold from the orange streetlight and the other blue from the moon's reflection, running my finger over his dark eyebrow, and with a smile, I make the most dangerous decision of my life, my first of true adulthood.

"Alice," I say, and kiss him on the lips. "I'm gonna go help my dad."

To be continued.

Available on paperback in 2005

Mail the author for information or join the mailing list!