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Author's Intro

It's been a while since I posted anything on here, but here's my first free short story for a while. If you prefer the format, you can also read it on Patreon, where it's a free ('public') post.

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If you're completely new and you found this from a tweet/retweet/something else: Hi! This is actually a pretty good intro to my two main characters and the sort of style I write with. You can pretty well run with who's who but here's a quick lowdown just to help:

Todd is a raccoon and Colton is a fox. Both are twenty years old, have been in a relationship for two years, go to college in New York, and are visiting Todd's family for Christmas. Todd's brother Alfie is absent because he's in hospital after an 'accident', and Colton is trying to liven things up around the place as their guest.

Todd is from a big family, and my cast of characters in the series this is set in is even larger, so here's a quick glossary to help you:

Aldrington Family

Joanne and Oran are Todd's parents.

His brothers and sisters are:

Alfie (23)

Rocco (22)

Lucy (17)

Dru (15)

Felix (12)

Beatrix (9)

Zelda (7)

Todd's nephew Freddy (5) is Alfie's son.

Hank and Mary, briefly mentioned later, are Oran's parents (who he doesn't speak to)

Others mentioned in this story

Obie - Todd and Colton's flatmate in New York (is also Colton's friend since childhood)

Chantelle - Colton's mom

Oz (short for Austin) - Todd's highschool friend

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FINALLY: an acknowledgement is due to MitchRandom, whose comic Webcanids is referenced in something Felix says in this story. I made a pledge on his Patreon this morning because I've got a really good feeling that his stuff is going to end up liked by a LOT of people out there...I've always liked this sort of humour, and foxes, and he's just got both of them nailed.

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Under the Bed - A story with Todd and Colton

I went downstairs in my dressing gown knowing I was the last up. This morning I had what I called a 'reverse hangover' - what you get when after weeks of drinking on most nights you decide to give your body a rest, you sleep like a rock, and your head is even thicker for it in the morning than usual. Being home in Phoenix for Christmas after two and a half years of college in New York, I felt like my body needed a break in more ways than just that.

What the hell kind of breakfast was cooking down here? I should have been following my nose to waffles, sausages and bacon, or at least porridge if we were on a cheap breakfast day. We were due one, but I knew two things: Colton had added money to my family's shopping budget this Christmas, and he'd gotten up already and done what I knew secretly made my mom feather-spitting jealous: got my entire family to production-line making breakfast in the kitchen with very little argument. Only this morning...

'Oh God,' I said to Dad, who was keeping away from the kitchen. 'He's teaching them to make Obie's kedgeree recipe. Bleeerrgh, I told them both I can't bear that stuff. He's been planning this since I said that.'

'I know,' Dru said. I hadn't noticed her in the living room with Freddy. 'Fish for breakfast? Barf! Didn't you say Obie was a red panda? I thought they were all vegetarian and healthy plant food and shit. I think Colton said he's making me and you bacon sandwiches.'

'Hey Uncle Todd, watch this!' Freddy said, and proceeded to catch raisins in his mouth as Dru flicked them across the room for him. At least my sister was smiling this morning.

'Drusilla, what have I told you about not encouraging him to play with food?' Mom was out of the kitchen now.

'Jeez, Mom, can I breathe in this house? Would that be okay today?'

'Let them have their fun, Joanne,' Dad said. 'His Dad's in the hospital, I don't think playing with raisins is exactly the biggest problem for him at the moment.'

Dru put her 'Eat shit' smirk on.

'I smelled what you were doing when I opened the window this morning, young lady. The day I catch you, it's no more allowance ever.'

Dru gave her the 'that all you got?' shrug. She'd be sixteen in a few months and get a job anyway, ergo losing it regardless. 'Well, you ain't gonna, coz I don't smoke, and that smell was coz the fox does.'

'Yes,' Mom said. 'Of course it was.'

Now Dru looked at Dad, and I got it: Dad had sneaked a breakfast cigarette that morning with my boyfriend before Mom was awake, Dru had been the one who caught him, and now she had the power.

It didn't matter a good goddamn, I thought. You never win an argument with your mother. Especially not if she's Joanne Aldrington. You may think you have. You may get 'Enjoy your moment, young man,' or 'young lady' look, but our mom was Vegas: the house always won.

Colton, my beautiful full-winter-coated russet-red fox was spending his Christmas in a household of ten raccoons, and put up with the usual fox jokes all through breakfast, then Felix added to the repertoire, just like I'd been waiting for since he'd told me he'd seen this on the internet:

'Hey C,' he said, copying what he'd heard Obie call Colton during a phone call. 'Foxes are from Mars. You know why? They're the same colour as the martian soil, they travel by night like UFO's, and they're fluent in Martianese.' Felix put his head back and gave the most horrendous impression of an animal-fox's bark-chatter.

'Felix,' Dru said, 'You sound like a dolphin. And do not make that noise ever again. Next time I won't stick up for you when Beatrix is messing with your OCD.'

Colton was laughing at it. Beatrix was still sulking after Dru had had a go at her this morning for moving the dishes and cutlery about on the table so Felix would keep putting them back exactly how he'd arranged them the first time. Much to Mom's delight, table setting like this had become a daily ritual to him, even though the family had to watch him circle it at least a dozen times to get it right. It seemed harmless at first, but the more Mom had watched his behaviour in general, the more she'd realised this actually was symptomatic of OCD, to go with his Asperger's. After a long consultation, Dr Comfrey had agreed on 'borderline and we'll monitor.' Beatrix didn't quite get why messing with it wasn't funny yet. Until this morning, when Mom had taken Dru's side.

I'd never seen that before, in all my life. Mom's only concession was 'You didn't have to swear at her, Dru.'

Back to the room now, and Mom was on it: 'Felix, I think we've had enough of the fox jokes. Colton is a guest in this house and we all need to remember our manners.'

'It's cool, Joanne,' Colton said. 'Raccoons are from...okay, there isn't a stripy planet, is there? Felix, what was that sci-fi film with the robot that cleans an entire planet covered in trash? That's where raccoons are from!'

'Uuuuuh,' I put my hands on my head.

'Wall-E!' Freddy yelled. 'Hey, let's watch it!' He'd watched it yesterday. And the day before.

'No more TV today, young man,' Joanne said. 'You're coming with us shopping. We're all going to the mall as a family. Apart from Todd and Colton who did their shopping yesterday.'

Dru started grinning.

'Do not, Drusilla.'

I couldn't help but laugh. Dru had read it my way too: Todd and Colton are going to stay home so they can fuck without the family here. Nice one, Mom. Except she had covered it pretty well, and probably hadn't even thought about it.

'I'm staying,' Zelda said. 'Our car makes me barf up. Colton can babysit me.' In other words, she wanted to watch Colton storm the Expert levels on Super Monkeyball again.

'You are not,' Mom said. 'You can ride in Rocco's car.'

Now the room went quiet, realising what I just had. 'Where is Rocco?'

'Oh for crying out loud,' Mom said, as much at herself as the rest of us. 'None of you told him to come in for breakfast?' She sighed. 'He's fixing the car, it wouldn't start again.'

My mechanic brother came in right on cue, his hands covered in oil. 'Mom, I keep telling you, you've got to change that carburettor and get a new fuel filter, I can't keep unclogging all the shit out of...oh. Well, great. Thanks, everybody. There anything left?'

Thankfully there was, and just as thankfully this was a laughing matter nowadays. Ever since Mom had finally relaxed her dumb rule about how you had to sit at the table for every meal even if you weren't eating, with only a sick note exempting you, half our family made a joke out of seeing who could hide, let the meal start, then walk in and do Rocco's routine. This morning, it was real.

Now though, Mom went one better: we all had to keep sitting at the table while Rocco ate. So everyone had seconds even if they didn't want to eat it, just to make it less awkward for all concerned.

I decided that just for cooking that smelly, sickly smoked haddock kedgeree recipe I hated, Colton could wash up the entire table and kitchen with me while everyone else got dressed and ready for the car. His hands covered in bubbles, he asked me maybe the oddest question I'd ever heard from him.

'Hey, are you okay if I go under your bed in a minute? There nothing under there you don't want me to find?'

'Errr...what do you wanna do that for?'

'I think my lighter went under there. Musta come out of my pocket as I was putting my jeans on your chair last night.'

'Mom keeps one in here for lighting the gas range,' I said. 'Borrow that one if you wanna go smoke.'

'So there is something under your bed you don't want me to see. Is it your collection of naked raccoon firemen or my Christmas present?'

'First, your Christmas present is wrapped already and it's under the tree already. Second, it was swimmers I used to collect pics of, not firemen. And I liked otters. And half the porn I ever had had Trick and Dolphin in it and you've seen it already because you've got it all and then some.'

'Cool,' he said, drying the last plate and putting it back in the cupboard. 'I'll go search then. I really like that lighter.'

I followed him back up the stairs. 'Nice to know you attach real sentimental value to such a wholesome keepsake, fox.'

'Whaaaat? I promised you I'd go to just the vape pen in the New Year, didn't I? And that lighter's really special to me - it was the first thing I ever stole from my mom's handbag! If you'd ever had the balls to do that you'd understand.'

'Colton. If anyone so much as looks like they're thinking of putting a hand in Mom's bag, it's no allowance for the entire house. One in, all in.'

'Just like she does if someone wedges a door handle shut with a chair?'

'The very same. Alfie stole cash from her purse once. I remember it. I seriously thought she was gonna belt him. She only didn't because Dad told her to go cool off and he'd punish Alfie. You know how Dad was brought up. He's got a berserk button for people who smack kids now he's got his own and he's never doing what his Dad did, that's why it all got so scary. Nobody stole from her bag after that. Even if they weren't alive to see that day.'

'Yeah, yeah, okay, stealing from your Mom's not cool. That's why my mom punished me too when she found I had her zippo. A year later.'

'She made you smoke your first cigarette with it and you puked?' That would be just like Chantelle, only to have her punishment guiltily backfire on her probably not long after when Colton found he liked smoking.

'Nah. She just told me how disappointed she was in me and then told me I could keep it. Just to remind me how shitty I'd been every time I looked at it.'

'Hell,' I said. 'She was good.'

'Yeah, you're telling me.' He got on all fours and started to crawl under my bed. I couldn't miss the chance. I playfully smacked his butt, and took hold of his tail right by the bone, stopping him from moving.

'Yeah yeah raccoon, you can jerk my tail till I get hard in a minute, can I get my lighter first? Just so I can light up after I'm done stuffing your butt?'

I let him go. 'It's my turn for top. And if you smoke in this house Mom will launch you the length of the street.' Just to help him out even less, I climbed onto the bed and lay there. 'The heating sure is on in this place, fox,' I said. 'I think I'm gonna take my shirt and pants off.' I did it, squirming about on the bed as much as I could so the frame creaked.

'Will you quit doing that? You're the one who said you were amazed this thing can still hold a mattress up!'

'I was kidding, it's perfectly good. It's made of cedar. My grandfather likes carpentry, he made this for me when I was a kid. He used cedar because apparently termites hate it.'

'Isn't that moths?'

'Colton, we're having a conversation while you're under my bed.'

'And?'

'You found the swimwear catalogues, didn't you?'

'You realise your Mom probably already found those when you moved out and rolled her eyes before she binned the lot? You got one of Oz in speedos anywhere?'

'Actually I do,' I said, pretending I did. Oz wasn't on the swimming team at Sekada High. 'And get this. That was our last year in Sekada and that means he was eighteen when I took it coz his birthday's in September. You can find it? Go ahead. Legal wolf pic right there.'

'Nice try, trash boy. I wanted a pic of Oz like that I shoulda got it when he was asleep on the sun lounger at my pool party that time, and we...got it! How did it bounce that far?'

'Good. Now get out of there and come let me fuck you while you pretend I'm Oz.'

'Wait a minute, what's that?' He was almost out from under the bed, apart from his head. He rolled over, then him obviously fumbling around with his phone to change where the light was aimed. 'Aaaaaahahaha! Todd, have you seen what's written right here?'

'Oh, God. Do I want to?'

Colton pulled himself out, to find me in my underpants, and that just made him grin even wider, his laughter even more silly now. 'Just get down there and look. I'll bet you anything it was Alfie who did that, and all these years you never saw.'

'Give me that.' I took his phone off him, the light still on, and poked my head under enough to see. 'Oh for Christ's sake,' I said when I read it.

It wasn't just written onto a slat of my bed's frame, ruining what my grandfather had once so lovingly crafted. Alfie had scratched it there, probably with a pen knife. I got back up, a deadpan look on my face even though I did want to smile, remembering the whole episode that had led to this, a good fifteen years later.

'Yeah, fox. Go on then, laugh. "Todd is a bin rat." Hilarious.'

Just as I'd figured, Colton hearing it spoken by my voice just intensified the whole thing. He clutched his sides laughing, probably imaging what he'd already guessed correctly: a six year old Alfie giving me jealous brotherly hate looks as Mom put all her interest into reading me a story or playing some game with me and enjoying my joyous kid laughter while Alfie stood there hating it so much, and then going up to my room and scratching this into my bed. Forever. So there.

Alfie, who had recently used all the curse words under the sun for everyone and everything while he lay on his hospital bed, recovering from the bullet his soon-to-be ex wife had given him for Christmas, had once only been able to come up with "Todd is a bin rat" for how mad he was at the entire world.

Colton kept trying to say it, unable thanks to the laughter, and when he finally got a hold of himself and saw me fake-glaring at him, a hand on my hip, he said what I'd been waiting for: 'All the things I ever called you at school back when I tried to pretend I hated you...goddamn, all along your big brother was the master! I really never thought of that one, and I am so disappointed in myself.' He shook off as he stopped laughing. Then grinned again, brushed his own tail and said 'Wanna get fucky with the fox, bin rat?' and got going again.

Enough was enough. I was going to imitate his piano teacher from New York, who actually wasn't from New York - she was a straight talking, no-nonsense British snow leopard called Vera, and if she'd been here, her disapproving look would have been far too real. 'Mr Vincent, you are a very immature fox,' I said.

'Well Mrs Telford you're a very stuffy old snepper, but who's the strength to change either of us?' He put his lighter back in the bag he'd packed, and got out what I was half hoping he'd forgotten to bring - our favourite kink toy, or rather his more than mine, just begging for someone like Felix to spot after we left it lying around and say 'What do you guys do with that?'

'Go on then,' Colton said, holding it. 'What's the story? Why's Todd a bin rat?'

Okay then. It actually was quite amusing. 'Rocco's only a year younger than Alfie, so Alfie never had any memory of what living in a house with a baby was like with him. Then he started remembering stuff, and I was born, and oh shit. The noise, the diapers, the mess, and the worst part? Mom's attention not being on him so much anymore. And it lasted past the baby stage. "Mooom, will you make him shut up? Mooom, will you get him out of my room? Moooom, why did we need another baby in the first place?" Then at last he got to "Mooom, I hate him!" and that was it. Boom, allowance gone bye-bye.'

'Always the allowance with that woman.' Colton rolled his eyes.

'Oh, and she took a bunch of his toys away and gave them to me. I got his toy cars, and when he went "That all you got?" with his arms folded, I got Mr Fluffle Bear.'

'Uh-oh.'

'Yeah, look out. He stole a magic marker from his teacher's desk and brought it home and wrote "Todd is a bin rat" on the fridge door. Now, here we go: my grandma was staying here helping Mom out at the time, and she saw it first. She was old school and she didn't care what my Dad would think, she whacked Alfie on the ass with her shoe. When he whined to Mom about it, she actually took his side, but she still made him scrub the fridge for hours with a can of white sprit from the garage until the words were gone. He threw up from the smell of it and she still made him keep going.'

'And of course that just made him want to keep writing "Todd is a bin rat" on everything.'

'Bingo. He started doing it in places that took her weeks to find. She just made him clean it off every time and said the whole thing would keep repeating until he realised what a stupid boy he was being. I've gotta give it to Mom, she knew all the ways to get magic marker out of everything. She even marched Alfie into school one morning when she realised where he'd been getting them from and made him apologise in front of his whole class for stealing from Mrs Hilderbrandt's desk.'

'Niiiiice.'

'That under there,' I pointed at the bed. 'That's Alfie when he just had to win. He figured scratching it into stuff was worse. He ruined a dining table doing it. Then he went for one last go with the magic marker. He pulled my shirt up when I was asleep and wrote it on me. On my stomach where I'm white, so it was easier to see. Plus he used a blue marker this time.'

Colton laughed again. 'Oh this has gotta be good. What did he get for that? Not like he could lose his allowance until the table was paid off.'

'Oh, Mom had the big guns already. The table? He got threatened with a whole summer at Hank and Mary's.'

Colton actually hadn't heard their first names before, but this was a golden time to do it. 'Woah, that's your Dad's parents right? The cotton farmers from Alabama?'

'Alfie stopped after that.'

'No shit.' About to take off his own shirt, and probably wondering if there was a magic marker around he could threaten me with, Colton realised I wasn't done yet. 'Wait...' he pulled his shirt back down. 'If that was what he got for the table, what the hell did she do for him drawing on his little brother? And how did she get that magic marker out when it was your fur?'

'She didn't; she had to make my stomach fur white. She brought this peroxide home from her salon, then she realised you're not supposed to use it on a toddler, so she had to keep using play fur-paint on me every day until it grew out enough for her to trim it off me. And Alfie? Man, he still thinks she can't come up with worse. That's when he gets home from school one day, and she puts on this little smile and says "I've decided you can have your allowance back. But I think the first thing you're gonna want to do is save up for some new clothes. Because I'm not buying them for you this year." '

I let Colton take this in for a moment.

'Oh! She didn't!'

'She did. She got his entire set of t-shirts and jumpers out and wrote 'Alfie is a bin rat' on all of them, in the kind of letters you can't miss. Not "I'm", she used "Alfie." There was another Alfie at the school, two years older and a golden boy who everyone loved. And until he could afford to replace his own clothes on three bucks savings a week, our Alfie was going to school wearing that on him.'

'God-damn, now I know why you never stole from your mom. I think I got off light.'

'Way light,' I said, taking our toy from him. 'And if you call me a bin rat while you're having sex with me, I'm gonna strap this muzzle on you so tight that it'll lock your fox mouth shut for a week.'

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If you liked this story, be sure to check out how it all began, with Chasing Colton's Tail, and the other books in the series.

I also have a new book I'm serialising for free, The Electric Snep, although Todd and Colton don't appear in that one, it's in a different world completely.

If you especially like what you've found here, a pledge on Patreon will get you access to my regular updates and first chapters of each book ($2), serialised versions of 2 (at this time of writing) unpublished novels, my latest W.I.P ($10) and there's even a $15 tip jar if you just can't get enough.

All support is appreciated and you will have HOURS of reading to keep you busy.