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Frustration and Revelations

For three days, Mitch had been going through the male version of "being on the rag." There was no actual pleasure in it, just an intense need to feel clean that he could alleviate for brief periods spent in bed, in the shower and in other private locations. This behavior was interrupted only by his brother's occasional attempts to destroy the entire house.

However, a strange irony of the situation was that Mitch was getting to be increasingly grateful to have something, anything that could take his mind off of Michelle. Images of her occupied him day in and day out, and the sound of her voice breathed almost constantly in his ear. He kept checking on things that didn't need to be checked on, and he had been showering himself to the point that his fur was getting worrisomely dry. Keeping his brother entertained kept him from going mad.

The strangest notion occurred to him on the fourth day, though. It happened while he was raiding his mother's make-up kit for some fur soak, so he could save his fur from all falling out due to his compulsive bathing. He knew the stuff would be some kind of thick, goopy substance that one wouldn't expect to want to apply to one's fur, and the ones in the commercials were all weird colors like lime green and bubble-gum pink. He realized just then that his brother had never received a real grooming at all. Perhaps that should change.

As the idea began to take form in his mind, his better judgment began to shut down. Mumbling strangely, he went off in search of his brother. "Zeke! Come here, Zeke!" The stairs creaked ominously as he left his parents' forbidden perch in the ancient bungalow, returning to the relative safety of the ground floor. In the living room, he found his brother chewing on a wooden teething ball their grandmother had gotten for him the previous Solstice. The feral boy was clad in a pair of khaki shorts and an orange polo that was bunched-up comically around his front. He looked up and yawned at Mitch softly by way of greeting.

"Ezekiel," Mitch said sweetly.

"Rrrrr?" the feral tom replied, recognizing his name after a heartbeat's consideration of the utterance.

"Would you like to come to play in my room, young Ezekiel?"

Zeke stood up quickly, not needing very much explanation or encouragement beyond hearing talk of "play."

Mitch led his brother down the carpeted hall, thankful of the gray slippers on his feet-a gift from a perceptive grandmother-that were presently keeping his claws from getting caught in the carpet, and he swung open the door to his room. The floor was littered with various magazines and a few books, and the only things in it that were kept in any presentable arrangement were an antique chess set he had gotten from a local rummage sale, several different types of boards hung on a special rack nailed to his wall, and a large bookcase where he kept all of his old school books. Otherwise, there was not very much of the carpet that was visible, and it was hard to tell its original color from the patches that one could actually see.

He closed and locked the door behind him, and the first thing he did was to get Zeke disrobed. Mitch folded the garments neatly on his bed, and he started getting together the materials he would need for his brother's disguise. Luckily, his older brother, Kyle, had been morbidly obese departing for college, so there would be belts of sufficient length to make a good leash. A collar could be made out of some of the smaller ones that Mitch could no longer use.

Making the collar proved to be easier than he might have thought. There was a small belt hanging in the back of his closet that was made out of woven leather, so it could simply be cut and adjusted to roughly the diameter of Zeke's neck. A couple of staples helped take care of the loose ends. He put the makeshift collar around Zeke's neck, and he stood back and admired his work.

"You still look funny naked, Zeke," he said. The feral tom's fur was soft and light-colored from never having gotten much sun, and there were places on him where his fur was rubbed thin by the fabric of his clothing. This contributed to the effect of making him look nude and exposed. Also, it didn't help matters that, like most ferals, he didn't look entirely like an ordinary animal; for his hind-legs were long and his forepaws far too dextrous. His skull was large for his body and oddly shapped, and one could get lost looking into his eyes.

The slimmest "obese" belt in Mitch's closet worked out nicely, and he used the clip from an old keyring to attach it to the collar. He tried using a few more staples to make a handle at the other end of it, but the material was far too thick. The device would be serviceable without it, though, as long as Zeke would cooperate.

A few moments later, Mitch was out the door and urging his brother along, hoping he would be on-time to catch the bus headed for downtown. The local bus-lines were feral-friendly, thanks to a city ordinance. Being out on a leash was a new experience for Zeke, though, and this delayed their progress. He insisted on stopping to sniff everything, and he would stop or slow down every few meters as if he had reached the limit of how far he could walk in one direction. His excursions into the boundless outdoors were usually very brief and involved him being forced to stand or walk awkwardly on his hind-legs for painful durations. During his rides in the car, he would be strapped sitting upright in a tight-fitting safety harness, and he would never be allowed to use his forepaws to prop himself up while sitting if there were strangers about.

Fortunately, Mitch eventually managed to get it through to Zeke that they were in a hurry, and they made it to the bus stop just as the downtown shuttle was pulling up. The model was made-up to look amusingly like an ancient Lupine stagecoach. On the side was emblazoned one of the out-moded transports it resembled and was named after; pulling it was a team of equine slaves, clad to resemble their four-legged counterparts in the decadant styles of the time period.

Ironically, the driver was an elderly stallion. "Heading for downtown, Miss?" he said in a whiny, earthy accent.

"Yes," Mitch said shortly.

"That'll be five each," said the driver.

Mitch nervously pulled out a twenty-dollar bill, handing it to the driver.

The old stallion looked at him strangly and said regretfully, "We require exact change here. Do you have any tens?"

Mitch searched around in his pockets and in his billfold. As he was patting himself down, though, he noticed the driver looking strangely at his mid-section. The motion of Mitch's paws slowed as he got caught in the stare, and looked up anxiously. "What?" he said.

The stallion's brow wrinkled, and his long face was set with a thoughtful frown. "Are you some kind of weirdo?" he asked.

The young tom was taken aback by that. "You mean the...you know?" he asked.

That got him an affirmative.

"Uhh, I dunno. Someone told me the other day I might be part-hyena or someth-"

"Nevermind, I don't want to hear it," the driver said, closing the door. "Back of the bus, breed-freak" He turned to face the street, shutting Mitch and Zeke out of his mind. Both of them had suddenly become invisible, and the bus roared along as if it too had become too engrossed in something else to pay the two any heed. Apparently, the issue of coinage had been forgotten, and they were going to be allowed to ride along without a ticket, though having been baddly gypped.

Mitch made his way down the aisle, thankful to get away from the awkward scene, and he found an unoccupied seat toward the back. Zeke settled himself down on the floor with his paws splayed out lazily, and he seemed to be just as happy to have a ride in a vehicle without having to sit up in awkward positions. He sneezed once from the unaccustomed strew of fur all over the floor, but after that he lay in contented silence.

Across the aisle, leaning against the window with his chin propped-up on his fisted paw and his legs curled up in the seat, was a rough-furred reynard who looked to be in his late twenties. Like Mitch's, his feet were digitigrade, and they were garbed with black-treaded, khaki-green paw-mitts that were laced up to the ankles. His pants, which matched his paw-mitts, were wide-legged, and they came a little less than halfway down his shins. He had on a tan pullover sweater-vest over a white, short-sleeved shirt, and tucked partly under the sweater-vest was a regimental striped tie of red, white and navy-blue. He stared off into the distance with an air that he definitely preferred the contents of his own head over his surroundings, so Mitch was a little surprised to hear the fox speaking to him.

"I guess that's your brother," he mumbled into his palm. "Cute kid. Reminds me of my grandfather."

"What?" Mitch said. He had heard what the reynard had said, but the statements baffled him.

Instead of explaining, the fox closed his eyes as if trying to find something on the backs of his eyelids. After a second, he opened his eyes again, looking up. "He was part jaguarandi and part wolf. That's where my weird fur comes from. And he was feral-born, like your bro there, which is where I get the feet."

Mitch didn't really know what to say to that, but he got a sense that the fox had more to say. Not quite knowing where else to go with the conversation, he said, "Umm...hi. Look, buddy, what should I call you? I mean, I'm Mitchell, and this is my brother Ezekiel."

The fox sighed and put his legs down on the floor, his head bent oddly to the side as he looked at Mitch thoughtfully. "Would you believe I'm not even really sure I really have any vulpine in me?" He chuckled softly. "It's just as well, really. It keeps me in a job. One thing I've learned is not to try to fight people if they try to pretend you're clean-blooded to give you a shot."

Mitch was unsure of how to react to that. "Hey, I didn't think it mattered anymore what race you breed with. I mean, my elder brother-"

The reynard laughed. "That's what we tell ourselves, isn't it? It makes us feel good, doesn't it?"

Mitch decided to try to change the subject, feeling uncomfortable with the current topic. "Well, Zeke and I were just going shopping. You can come with us if you would like. I mean, like we could stop for lunch or coffee somewhere. I mean, I'm really just trying to get Zeke here to a groomer."

The fox reached down to stroke the feral tom. "It's the first time he's been out of people clothes, isn't it?"

Mitch was taken aback by the sudden change of subject, feeling put off by how the reynard got on his paws and knees to stroke and pet on his brother, making weird goo-goo sounds. "Look, sir," Mitch said nervously, "I don't know what you're driving at here."

The feral tom laid his head in the fox's lap as their strange, new companion sat down in the aisle next to him. Zeke suddenly started making that strange purr again.

"Hey there, big fella," the fox cooed. "I'm your friend, Jacob. You make me think of my grand-daddy. Thank you for making me think of my grand-daddy, Ezekiel. Zekey. I miss my grand-daddy so much!"

"Hey, cut it out!" Mitch said, trying to pull the fox's paw away from his brother.

That just earned a nip on the paw from his younger brother.

"Hey!" Mitch yelped, jerking his paw away.

Jacob held up his paws defensively. "Hey, dude, I was just socializing, here."

Mitch glared at the weird...whatever he was. "How did you get him to purr?" he growled. "He never does that for anybody, except once for me. Not even when I pet him like that."

Jacob raised his finger. "No, the way you probably pet him is the way one would pet a dumb animal, which is something you would only do if you were entirely failing to understand his language. Ferals are a lot more sophisticated in their way than our zoomorphic relatives. My grandfather, for instance, had a lot of things to say if you knew how to listen." He laid his paw back down on the feral's shoulder. "He would be more of a place than a person, though. A beautiful place if you know how to see and hear it."

Mitch decided that he was tired of being confused, so he sat down on the floor next to this fellow named Jacob, who was both a fox and not-a-fox. He tentatively pressed his paw against his brother's flank, right behind his shoulder, and he tried bending his ear as if to listen. An odd music started playing in his head as he moved his digits over his brother's pulsating muscles, neither discordant nor following a tune. He removed his paw and looked up at Jacob, his lips tightened against his teeth and his eyes squinted as he tried to make sense of it.

"Hey!" a gravelly voice grunted from the front. "Ferals and service animals only on the floor, you weirdoes!" It was the driver.

Jacob raised his head and shouted, "Bobby, you can just blow it out your hole, you half-donkey fraud!"

The driver cranked his head to the side and eye-balled them. "Hey, I don't have to let you idiots ride on here," he said. "And kid, you missed your stop."

"That's okay," Jacob whispered to Mitch. "Look, if you stop by my place, we can get your brother cleaned-up." He gave the young tom a wink.

As Mitch and Jacob sat back up in their seats, Zeke sat up on his haunches to keep his neck close to Mitch's paw. As Mitch went back to doing the weird "listening" trick, his brother purred softly, his eyes closed to slits, and shapes and colors swirled and danced in front of their eyes.