Beware The Wolf - Pt 8 - Revelations

Steven gets bored and high and has a little romp with Brutus, and then suffers the consequences. 

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After Friday closing, Brad and Steven hung around downstairs in the bar. “Hello, gracious host,” Steven said, as he sat down at the bar.

“We’re closed,” Brad sighed.

“Exactly. You look like you need some actual companionship, instead of trying to run a bar full of bored and horny gay men with terrible taste in music.” Steven wore a fancy dress vest with no shirt beneath it, the lapels and front swirled with fine embroidery while the back was simply satin, everything charcoal and black. He wore a goth version of a dreamcatcher choker with a black feather ‘stitched’ by a fine chain that ran dubiously far down out of sight behind the front of the vest. Instead of his more industrious tall boots, he wore pointed-toe buckle-ups that looked more intended for Edward Scissorhands than rivetheads, and simple black pleather riding pants to tuck into them. He twirled a black-fingernailed fingertip around the top of a left-behind glass on the bar top.

“Are you hitting on me? I do chastity stuff,” Brad said, and his freckled face flushed hard.

Steven frowned and recoiled. “Absolutely not, at least not seriously. And ooh, who’s your keyholder?”

“Me, I just like it, and I’m kind of… I’m kind of asexual, sort of.” Brad continued turning so red that he sweated. “Man, I wasn’t expecting this kind of conversation, but then again, I wasn’t expecting you to be sitting here after we close, or your… friend upstairs. Where’s that chain go?”

“My clit,” Steven snipped, “but that’s not as important as me asking what’s in that water bottle you have there. Is that pee? It looks kind of like beer, but why would you put beer in a water bottle, or whiskey, or anything else.”

Brad pretended to hide the aforementioned bottle. Like always at the bar, he wore a bar vest over no shirt, an arm band, fingerless gloves, jeans, and harness boots. He also open-carried a pistol, a relic of not having full time bouncer help at his scrappy watering hole. “Your clit?” When Steven gave him a deadpan ‘really?’ look, he furrowed his brow and drummed his fingers on the bartop, then hunched his shoulders in a sudden wince of recognition. “Oh, oh, shit yeah I’m an idiot. I’m tired. It’s not pee, it’s GHB.”

Steven wobbled his head as if he had just been a cartoon character placed inside a large carillon bell struck with a hammer. “Did you just say it’s a whole bottle of GHB?”

“No, it’s a half bottle of GHB. I’ve been having some of my kinda friend kinda long-time patrons try it out.”

“You’ve been testing drugs on people!” Steven expanded his arms out wide and let his brassy voice fill up the empty front room. Upstairs, something went thump! And became footsteps.

“Is that a problem?” Brad looked abruptly worried. “I mean, I know it isn’t poison, I just, you know, I want to make sure it works right I guess. See if there’s interest. I wouldn’t mind a little side income, to be honest. No offense.”

“You really worry about money. I suppose it’s the business thing. It’s not like I make much money. And look at Brutus, he’s an engineer and he lost his job, couldn’t get another one, and had been leveraged out his eyeballs and now he’s a wolf monster for a living!” Steven leaned over the bar. “Can I try it?”

Brad protected the bottle. “Have you ever tried it before?”

“Of course I have! It’s basically the only drug that actually makes people horny and down to fuck without side effects. Well, there’s the coma thing, but I don’t really like alcohol except for absinthe and I’m not going to mix those two things.” Steven put his nose up as he spoke, and then looked at the ceiling. The footsteps were now receding towards the back of the back room.

Brad got out a shot glass, then poured some sour mix into it, and added the same amount of the golden liquid. “This is it. One shot. Twice as much never makes it twice as much fun. Also, there’s no such thing as a free lunch.”

“I want fucking lunch!” Brutus yelled out, as he burst the hidden back stair door open. “I want fucking dinner! I want something to eat! I’m starving! Feed me or I’ll eat you, shit you out, and eat you again!” He was wearing his one and currently only outfit, the leather-punk gay biker wolf of doom, with a distinct omission: his cock and balls flopped about through the codpiece hole in the leather pants.

“Not until you put your dick away. And no, you can’t have any of this,” Steven said, hoisted the ‘shot’, and drank it back. “Brad, shoo, put it away before he gets into it. He’ll probably just die and then undie after doing something gross while dead.”

“Did you just say die and un-die?” Brad pursed his lips, but opened the under-counter safe and slid the bottle away.

“Yeah, like the other night, when I got shot and died and then just got back up and broke the wrist of the guy who shot me. But I got my bike back! Anyway, I heard about drugs. I heard Brad’s selling GHB to faggots. This is a fucking bar, if you get drunk and do that stuff you actually die for real,” Brutus said, and paced about by the bar.

Steven regarded his lupine friend with the look of a pet owner whose pet is about to do something embarrassing. “Do you have to be so crude? And again, put your dick away. That’s also crude.

“I love my dick. Also I lost my codpiece thing so I can’t put it away.” He looked down. “You’d think walking around in leather with your dick out would be really awesome, but I dunno, maybe you’re right.”

“That is a big dick,” Brad said.

“Yeah? That’s what everyone says.”

Steven narrowed his eyes. “Who’s everyone.” He also started to sweat, and absently stroked his stomach. “Maybe I should have eaten before doing that. I can’t remember, is that important?”

Brad ignored Brutus by keeping an eye on him, while talking to Steven. “It’s probably just the sour mix. That cheap stuff is really sugary. Do you feel a little woozy?”

“I feel, hmm, a little bit drunk. But only a little. The nice kind of drunk.”

“That sounds about right.”

Brutus shoved in between Steven and the bar. “Feed me!”

“What is your problem? I’m not your owner. I’m not responsible for feeding you.”

“You said I can’t go shopping, or come down here during any time but when it’s closed, and you said I can’t go outside during the day! That sounds like you’re responsible for feeding me, mom.”

“Call me mom again and I will rip your cock off,” Steven said, and sighed. “Well, I have some leftovers from Aegyo up in my mini-fridge. I suppose if it’ll stop you from being annoying…” Steven rolled his eyes and pushed back past Brutus, then headed for the back stairs.

The effects of the drug slowly intensified, which made going up the stairs a little more fun than usual, and made Steven a little less perturbed than usual by the shambles of the unfinished second floor. He went into his studio-bedroom corner, opened the fridge, took out a plastic takeout container, and stuffed it into his dorm-sized microwave. “You should be glad my aunt gives me free food every time I go see her. At least one person in my family isn’t a terrible monster, although she’s still a witch. She’s just a witch with a shrewd sense of cuisine. Ooh, is that a good turn of phrase?”

Brutus sulked as he waited for the minute and a half of microwaving to pass. “Aren’t you gonna ask me?”

“Ask you what?” Steven said, coming back from a slight reverie. “Oh, do you like this outfit? I’m trying to get over my fear of showing my body off and I thought I’d start with my arms. They seem harmless. At least not armless.” He minced about with his arms, and curled one wrist up under his chin.

“What happened to my thing.”

“I don’t know, what happened to your thing?”

“I took it off and didn’t put it back on.”

Steven screwed his face up. “Didn’t you once say that you thought you looked like a caveman? You have about the same brain as one. Of course that’s how you lost it. You can’t lose it if it’s attached to you. It’s not your mind or your sense of decency or something.”

As soon as the microwave chimed, Brutus nearly punched the door button clear off, and snatched the food. Without even looking for utensils, he opened the lid and started devouring the contents just with his tongue and teeth.

Steven regarded the display with first his typical sense of social revulsion, then cocked his head and watched. “You know…” he said, and cocked his entire body from one hip-checked stance to the opposite, “I think this whole bestial look you have going, the whole wolf thing, you know? I think it’s actually a good look.”

Brutus stopped eating with a tubular rice cake skewered sideways on one of his fangs, dripping scarlet tteokbokki sauce. “Rrh.”

“Look at you, literally wolfing your food down, with your cock flapping about, absolutely no cares in the world except you sating your base desires.” Steven continued to sweat, and palmed his hair aside.

The wolf slurped his chops and set the now-empty takeout box aside. “Are you okay? You’ve never said anything nice about me, to me.”

Steven stepped past Brutus excessively close. “Let me see something… take that jacket off. Don’t play around, either, it’s an order.” He sashayed into the big-box-store particle board storage unit he’d purchased to hold his clothing due to the lack of closet. “Ahh! Perfect. Put this on.” He tossed a bundled object over to Brutus. “And put your gauntlets back on after you take the jacket off. Those are not negotiable.”

“What the fuck is going on? This is a cape,” Brutus said, unfurling the object. It was indeed a cape, intended to be part of a halloween-store costume from a popular fantasy television series. The mantle collar was black and faux-furred, while the rest of the cape was similarly black and cheaply veloured. The wolf shrugged and slung it around his shoulders. “Ooh, look at me. Now I have a fucking cape.”

Steven gasped and grabbed Brutus by the shoulders. “Go look at yourself, you crass oaf,” he hissed, and pushed the hulking wolf over towards the cheap and decidedly uneven dollar-store dressing mirror he’d also purchased.

Brutus mugged a few times in the mirror. “Hey, this is pretty cool. I mean, it’s not like I don’t like capes, you’ve seen the stuff I’ve dressed up as in the past for halloween and club nights and stuff.”

Steven responded by thudding down to one knee. “Please, my lord wolf, bestow your essence upon me.” He bowed his head.

The wolf snorted and laughed. “Whaaat? What fucking essence? You want me to piss all over you?”  As he spoke, Brutus started to get actually hard, not just show-off half hard. “I’m getting a boner so I’d have to try real hard. And I dunno if a simpering cunt-boy is really worth it.”

Steven looked pained, though the pained look gave way to a fierce flush. “Don’t use that word. That’s not a nice word.”

“I’m not a nice guy. I’m a wolf. What the hell’s going on with you?”

“You are, an awful person. And when you were Henry, you were also, an awful person. And for as long as I’ve known you, I always had some little thing in the back of my mind. I wasn’t going to go after you, because you’re a crude train-wreck with no verbal filter and more bad habits than I have fingers and toes. That never seemed smart. Also, you were always the only person who would actually, you know, treat me with… I’m not sure if respect is the right word, since you just called me a cunt-boy, but honesty and fairness, I guess? You can’t fuck a friend like that. It’s bad juju. And I mean it. I doubt I could have gotten through the last, I don’t know, ten, twelve years without you around.”

“Aww. That’s sweet. Why don’t you kiss my boot if you’re gonna grovel? No, no, kiss this.” He then held his gauntleted hand out and turned the knuckles up.

Steven cradled the wolf’s large hand in his much more slender ones and leaned down, then kissed both the index and middle knuckle portions of the armor. “Also, I was unprepared for how horny Brad’s little science experiment was going to make me. Whew.” He then turned his head. “You aren’t getting out of this.” He then reached over and cradled the wolf’s balls, which immediately churned and tried to lift. Brutus’ cock throbbed, and the pointed tip slid out of the foreskin slightly.  “This is… this is interesting, really, it’s mostly human, though a little… just a little more interesting.” He moved one hand up and slowly caressed the shaft. “Entirely one color. That’s exotic.” He traced a fingertip over the piss slit.

Brutus looked both confused and fangy; he rolled his shoulders forward and looked down his muzzle at Steven. “I dunno if this is a good idea. What if you don’t like me afterwards?”

“Brutus, you turned yourself into a wolf-thing, and I had to clean up after you, and I still like you. Say something mean to me.”

Brutus sniffed. “I can smell how horny you are. I can smell your fucking pussy juice even through those leather pants. I bet it’s running down your leg into your boot right now.”

Steven again looked severely rankled, turned red, and moved his mouth towards the engorged black shaft in his hand like he was being paid to do it on reality television. “I hate the stuff you say sometimes.” Then he sniffed and swallowed hard. “Oh god, you… have quite the musk.”

“I jacked off twice already today. And that was after I did it in the shower. So I guess that was three times. I bet you’ll like the taste even more.” Before Brutus could grab Steven’s head, his friend moved forward and pursed his thin lips around the head, scooting the foreskin back as he engulfed over the flesh. He pulled back and mouthed forward, using the tried and true ‘eating an ice cream cone’ technique, and Brutus growled loudly deep in his chest. “That’s right. You really like it.”

Steven pulled off and licked his lips, then continued teasing Brutus’ shaft with his slender fingers. “Can you… hmm, can you touch my face? Like pretend you’re a movie werewolf monster and you’re, I don’t know, running a claw over me like you’re salaciously evil.”

“Is this about my dick or is this about your fucking fantasies?” Brutus said, but obliged. He started to trace a claw-nail around Steven’s face, prompting the kneeling human to shudder heavily and cling to his leg. He almost said something about ‘the other guy’, but Steven’s reaction was too amusing and he didn’t feel like blowing the blowing.

Steven shifted his position so that instead of kneeling squarely in front of Brutus, he instead humped up against the wolf’s tall engineer boot. His pleather groin squeaked against the boot leather as he flexed and ground forward. Brutus responded by bending over and sending his teasing claw down Steven’s chest, and was just at the human’s belt when Steven grasped his wrist and pulled it back up. “No, I didn’t ask for that.”

“So?”

“So,” Steven said, and pinched enough that he felt Brutus twist his wrist. “If I want to be touched in front, I’ll tell you. If I don’t tell you, it just reminds me in an unpleasant way. And you don’t want to ruin this out of character moment by pissing me off, do you?”

Brutus crossed his arms and cocked that knee forward, giving Steven more boot to grind against. “Whatever. At least open your pants up so you cum all over my boot. That sounds nasty, and I could make you lick it up.”

“Do you mean you want me to squirt all over your boot?” Steven squinted.

“Whatever,” Brutus repeated.

So Steven undid his belt, opened the top button and unzipped, then scooted his pants down just enough that he could grind his sex against Brutus’ boot shaft. He wrinkled his face but squeezed tighter, then sniffed and kissed at the wolf’s now-drooling cock again. “I guess I’m more into monsters than I really thought. I mean vampires, of course, I’m a fucking goth,” he sighed, “and big burly werewolves? Who wouldn’t want a big burly werewolf?”

“The more you talk, the less you suck my dick,” Brutus growled, then grabbed Steven by the jaw and pulled him back into position, then thrust forward into his mouth.

Steven pulled back off again just long enough to say, “Fine, and I’m good at going deep, too,” before demonstrating by tilting his head to the side and holding firm at the base, then pushing down until Brutus’ cockhead tickled the back of his throat. He gagged and clenched, swallowed, and then pushed further. The groan and grunt of trying to resist retching abruptly stopped; Steven took Brutus’ hand away from his lower jaw and placed it on his throat, then started to bob deep. His lips eventually brushed at the wolf’s furry groin, and drool slathered down Brutus’ balls.

“Yeah, you’re alright,” Brutus said, mumbling through his teeth as he settled his other hand on Steven’s head. “Is that choking you?” As Steven moved his head back as if to try and speak, Brutus pushed down again. The response was harder grinding, harder bobbing and swallowing, and Steven grabbed around Brutus’ leatherclad rump. “You get off on being choked by some fucking wolf monster’s dick. You’re a pathetic cunt-boy.” Steven squeezed at the wolf’s rump hard, and Brutus smacked the hand away. “I’m not letting go of your head until I cum.”

Steven simultaneously struggled to pull away and struggled to hunch and hump and grind closer, while squeezing his eyes shut and desperately gulping around the shaft. The harder Brutus pushed forward to meet his head bobs, the more likely it was that the wolf pulled back enough, and he managed to gasp a breath or two in between throat-fucking thrusts. After nearly a minute, he yanked his head back. “Can’t breathe, gonna cum,” he croaked, and then braced for Brutus to push back inside his mouth. Instead, Brutus held him by the hair.

“I wanna see it. I wanna see you squirt all over my fucking boot,” Brutus growled, while he took over stimulating his shaft with a hard, wet foreskin-slapping jerkoff. “And open your mouth. I’m gonna shoot right in and if you don’t swallow it I’m gonna lick up the mess and spit it in there and make you swallow it like a bitch.” Then, no matter how much the wolf wanted to wait until whatever Steven was going to do, he gritted his teeth together as his cock started to erupt in white gouts of seed that splattered Steven’s lips and shot into his open mouth.

No longer grinding against the wolf’s boot, Steven reached down and fingered around at his clit; Brutus stared, somewhat surprised at how big it was, though ‘big’ meant ‘easily visible’ and not ‘actually big’. Moments later, mouth still open, Steven groaned and shuddered and several slightly milky squirts shot out against Brutus’ boot leather and ran down the shaft, over the engineer harness and onto the toe before spilling to the floor.

Brutus milked the remaining snotty spurt from his shaft into Steven’s mouth; the human then closed up and swallowed, then licked his lips.

“Well,” Steven huffed, then slapped his thighs and stood up, knees quaking as he adjusted his pants and zipped the fly back up. “Are you happy? I made a mess of your boot. And you know what squirt really is, right? It’s mostly pee and girly precum stuff.”

“Yeah? So?” Brutus balanced on one leg and pulled his boot up as if to put it on a knee, then hunched over, sniffed, and licked at it. “Nrrh. That was fun. You should do more drugs more often.”

Steven laughed and wiped at his mouth again, clearing some mess from his chin. “I doubt it. I’m not exactly a bottom. I think I just needed to get something out of my system. And hmm, I think I need to eat something, too,” he said, then turned and checked his mini-fridge. “And not takeout. Maybe Brad has something.” He then wandered away and headed for the staircase.

Brutus stomped after. “Boy, you’re just gonna fuck and run, huh?”

“I’m going to fuck and eat. You ate first, so you obviously do things in the wrong order. Besides, you rudely interrupted me and Brad having a discussion.” Steven spoke forward while returning to the bar, where Brad was still behind the bar counter and doing something on his laptop. “Brad, I’m going to raid the kitchen. Don’t you have microwave dinners you keep in there? I’ll pay you back.” Steven walked behind the bar as if he belonged there, then disappeared into the kitchen.

Brutus stood by the bar, looking spent and confused. Brad eyed his cock, then his face. “So uh, what’s with the cape?”

“I dunno, brat boy got all horny ‘cuz you drugged him, I guess,” Brutus shrugged. “And he sucked me off and bitch jizzed all over my boot. I’m gonna leave it there. I’m a nasty wolf. Next person I fuck, I’ll rub their face in it.” He narrowed his eyes at Brad.

“Don’t look at me like that, I don’t fuck.”

“Uh-huh,” the wolf leaned on the bar with a leather squeak from his gauntlet forearm.

“I’m not joking. I was just telling Steven, who I think was horny before anything happened. I… I just don’t like fucking people. I like this gear stuff, I like masturbating, I use sex machines and stuff, but I just… I just don’t like people.”

“What about furries? You like furries. Like you’re a deer. I bet you think about wolves-”

“Why are you stuck on that? I don’t like furry sex stuff, I just like furry stuff. No one ever understands asexuals.”

“Especially when they admit to masturbating,” Brutus grunted. “My dick’s still out ‘cuz I don’t have anywhere to put it. I need more clothes. Hey S-”

Steven had just started to return through the door with a small, steaming microwaveable meal. “I’m certainly not asexual, though I suppose I can empathize or sympathize or somethingize. No one understands me. ‘What if you’re just confused?’ ‘Why won’t you get a penis installed?’ It’s not a fucking spare part, it’s an invasive surgery that, if botched, well… there’s a musical about that. ‘What if you change your mind?’ Do I look like or act like a girl in any way? What mind is there to change?”

Brutus rolled his eyes and even mouthed along, as he’d heard the exact same rant multiple times before. “Whatever. I need more clothes. You’ll have to help me again. Except that boss guy’ll probably pull a gun on me. I bet Brad was about to do it, he’s packing, right? Look at that thing.”

Steven sat down and had just one mouthful of his food, which was some generic pasta. He continued to look sweaty, and unlike upstairs with his desperate flushing, instead turned more ashen. “Oh, hmm, maybe I’m not hungry after all. My stomach was gnawing, but now it’s just, nuh-uh.” He tried again, couldn’t even take a bite, then set the fork down with a sigh and pushed the package aside.

Brad twisted to the side and showed off his gun at the wolf’s prompting. “I’m no pushover. Although… maybe Steven is, I heard he had a little dick-sucking adventure just now.” When he turned to Steven, he got a ‘not funny’ tired and sweaty look. “You don’t look so good. Maybe you had too much wolf sausage on an empty stomach.”

“See? This is fun, isn’t it? You don’t have to be such a wet fart all the time,” Brutus leaned over the bar and slapped Brad on the shoulder.

“I guess it’s the most interesting thing that’s happened in a while. Sorry I bitch about stuff about this place. Running a business sounded fun and actually running a business is just… hey, you okay there?”

Steven’s facial expression had drained from irreverant to overheated to green around the gills and now his jaw had dropped slightly and he was panting as much as a human ever panted. “Nooo, I am definitely not. I am going to go and expunge whatever’s giving me a hard time. Don’t make fun of me too much while I’m gone,” he said, voice actually shaky, and he quickly hurried towards the bar’s bathroom.

Brad went back to looking out of his element. “It wasn’t the GHB, I swear. I tried it myself several times, I gave other friends a few tastes, it’s just… it’s just GHB. And he said he’s done it.”

“Relax, he’s always eating stuff from his aunt’s crazy diner place. I love that stuff but k-food is always loaded with shit like fermented raw shrimp and ‘a bunch of bean sprouts we left in a bucket with some fart water’. I had some of his leftovers. I mean, it tastes good, but maybe I’ll be a shit fountain tomorrow.” Brutus turned his ears instinctively as he heard a sound, the unpleasant retch and splash of someone throwing up in a bathroom toilet, in a closed bathroom, thirty feet away across an empty bar. “Yeah, this doesn’t bode well for me, hah.”

Brad pursed his brow, then walked out from behind the bar. “I dunno, I’m gonna go see if he’s okay. He really went downhill fast there.” Brutus tagged along behind and they went up to the bathroom door, where Steven continued to loudly and copiously throw up. “Hey, you alright in there?”

“What the fuck do you think, I’m throwing up!” Steven called out from inside. “Stop being… nose…” And then proceeded to do it again.

Brad started to look ill from the sound and swallowed while sweat beaded on his forehead and neck. “That’s gotta be norovirus or food poisoning or something. And that’s a lot of barf. You can’t just barf that much unless you’re loaded with stuff. I mean, not to be gross but I kinda deal with this all the time.”

Brutus shrugged, and felt as concerned as he looked.

Then, after another round, there was the loud bang of a stall door and a dull thud, followed by, “Fuck,” then “Fuuuuck,” then a singular gaspy-yelped, “HELP!”

Brad fished out a key and opened the door; the bathrooms were individual private rooms and locked from the inside normally. He stuck his head in and then recoiled. “Holy shit.” All remaining color drained from his face and he took his turn gagging.

“What?” Brutus took his turn and pulled the door open. Steven was on the floor, halfway between hunching over forward and sprawled on his side. It was obvious that he’d thrown up outside of the toilet all over the floor, but instead of bile or something resembling whatever food he’d eaten, there was black muck full of chunks that approximated what entrails would look like if they became outtrails. “Whoa.”

Steven made eye contact and he looked beyond ill. His eyes had horrible dark circles around them, his skin was blue ashen and waxy like a corpse’s, there was black muck around and hanging out of his mouth, and then his eyes rolled back into his head and he fell limp to the side.

Brutus pulled the door shut and stared at Brad. “Oh no.”

“Oh no? OH NO? What the hell is going on in there! There’s no way, no fucking way that has anything to do with my shit or whatever shit he ate,” Brad wheezed. “What’s that look for? You look… you look guilty. I grew up with dogs, that’s a guilty dog face!”

Brutus held onto the doorknob. “I dunno, it’s obviously some kind of really bad thing. Maybe there’s a new pandemic.”

“That’s bullshit, what kind of pandemic virus is that? E-coli-bola or something? What was all that stuff in there!? That looked like, like intestines! You can’t throw up your intestines! They’re what you throw up from!”

“Are you a doctor?”

“What the hell is wrong with you?! And why are you holding the door!” At that moment, Brad’s question was answered by what started as a pained scream from inside the bathroom and ended up as a gurgling groan. Brad kneed Brutus in the balls and yanked the door open.

Inside, Steven was no longer lying inert. He writhed and flopped around, tearing at his clothing. Then he tore at his skin, which split apart and immediately bled. His face was falling apart, jaw distorting and stretching out through the skin, flesh oozing off of the white bone, while blackness crawled over it.

“I don’t think he’s sick,” Brutus said, dumbfounded.

“What do we do? What do we do what do we do? Do we call the cops? No way we can’t call the cops, what if this is something crazy, they’ll arrest us or shut the place down or seal it up in plastic or something!” Brad started pulling at his short red hair.

Inside the bathroom, Steven was no longer pale-skinned or flayed and bloody, but nearly as black as the mess that was all over the floor. Brad turned and paced in place, making squeaking sounds as he lost the ability to speak in hyperventilating panic.

After several seconds, Brutus smacked him in the arm. “I know what’s happening. All that stuff, that mess, that’s… that’s like what happened to me. I don’t remember it, it was just pain and terror and then I passed out and woke up with my clothes ruined and all this muck all over. Like my body fell apart with me inside of it.” He pushed the door shut again. “I dunno, maybe we should, should just let him… you know, privacy.”

Brad turned away and walked straight to the bar, sat down like a patron, and dropped his head into his hands. “I said this was kinda fun. I said this was kinda fun and now it’s not fun anymore.” Every few words, a muted howl or yelp came from the bathroom, interspersed with coughing. “This is the least fun I’ve ever had in my life. Watching my grandpa drown in his own lungs from pneumonia was more fun than this!”

“Ouch, that sucks.”

“He was an asshole but I mean I didn’t have to see it happen!” Brad pleaded. “And now… whatever’s happening to Steven…”

Neither spoke for the next ten minutes. The sounds in the bathroom quickly died down to silence. Brutus felt as if his stomach had become a black hole; clearly he was to blame, though Brad didn’t seem interested in saying it out loud, and Brutus didn’t bother running his mouth for once.

A strange sound emanated from the bathroom, a sound completely and utterly inhuman. Not pain or a yell, but a barking sound. It was followed by a very human yelp, and the door flew open, startling Brutus and Brad so much that Brad fell off his barstool.

Standing in the bathroom doorway was a very humanoid but very inhuman creature. Two arms and five-fingered hands, two legs and five-toed feet, a head with the normal number of eyes. Instead of a regular mouth, a large black beak. Instead of skin, an array of disordered and wet black feathers, with each full arm and leg covered in strange textured leathery black skin, fingernails as black talons.

“I’M A FUCKING BIRD!” the creature opened its beak and the sound came out without anything resembling lip movement, though it was an extremely clear rendition of Steven’s brassy voice. Then, another one of the inhuman sounds.

“Is… is… Steven?” Brutus’s jaw chattered as he tried to speak.

“I’m a fucking bird! I’m a fucking bird! I’M A… what bird am I?”

“Isn’t there an app for that?” Brutus said, unable to stop the quip from spraying from his mouth like a spit-take.

Brad raised a trembling hand. “I think… you look like a raven. I mean, or a crow, but your, your b-beak, that’s kinda big.”

Steven’s plumage fluffed up and he shook out like a dog, then cawed. “A raven! A fucking raven!” He then made an entire sequence of noises, some generally corvine and some more akin to foley effects like a hard ball dropped onto a wood floor or a percussion clave. “I can’t believe it. I can’t believe it! That was the worst thing that ever happened to me, I thought I was going to die, and it just kept going and going, and I can’t, I can’t, I can’t…” He held his hands up and looked at them, turning them over and over. “ I’m covered in fucking FEATHERS! I have talons!”

“At least you uh, recovered fast,” Brutus said, muzzle tucked down, ears flat.

“Recovered? Do you think I’ve recovered? From what? From what? I’m a freak!” Steven then abruptly stuck both of his hands down to his groin and fingered around, then looked beyond livid. “Are you kidding me? I turn into a fucking bird, and do you think I could grow a penis at the same time? No. No, I could fucking not. I’m stuck with a cunt for the rest of my life!”

Brad timidly wobbled his hand to cut in. “Maybe it’s a… c… a cl…” and then nervously giggled and shook his head with a splattering of lips as if trying to reset himself. “A cloaca?”

“No! This is a vagina! Do you think I don’t know what a vagina is? I’ve had one ever since I was born, you quivering moron!” Steven then turned towards Brutus. “You. You came in my mouth and made me swallow it and now I’m a bird. You’re not just a one-track-minded crass jerkface. You’re evil!”

The wolf snarled. “Do you think I’d know this was gonna happen? You’re the one who wanted to suck my dick! What was I gonna do, say no?”

“YES!” Steven squeezed his eyes shut and cawed again.

“I didn’t even know that weird shit in the box was gonna make me into a wolf! I just… I just had to do it. It was like, I already told you, it was like I had to. I mean had to. Like unable to stop myself, obsessed, every second of every day until I opened it, and once we translated the instructions-”

“Wait a minute,” Brad physically stepped between the two. “What are you talking about?”

“He found some weird box at an antique store and became obsessed with learning how to pick the lock that held it closed,” Steven said, pointing his index talon, “And then inside was a ceremonial knife, a small vial of ‘wolf blood’, a scrap of wolf skin and fur, and a fucking pamphlet. In Irish. Explaining how to use the aforementioned implements to transform someone into a werewolf. So what did he do? He fucking did it! I thought he was just going to kill himself because he’d gone all pathetic, but no, he just became a filthy mongrel bastard.”

Brad furrowed his brow. “Irish? Werewolves aren’t very Irish. I think there’s some sort of thing about one that would keep bad things away from your farm and you just had to feed them pie. Or maybe it was Scottish.”

“But why did I turn into a raven?” Steven’s eyes went wild as soon as he spoke and he turned and ran back into the bathroom.

“So you… you had the stuff in the box and… what did you do?”

Brutus adjusted his cape. “I carved a pentagram onto my chest, then poured the blood on it, and stuck the wolf fur thing onto it. And I don’t know, within a few minutes, I started to feel real bad, and started throwing up.”

“Then… well, you didn’t cut him, did you?” Brad asked, and Brutus shook his head. “He gave you a blowjob. And why didn’t he turn into something else? I mean,” Brad seemed to be dealing with the situation by intellectualizing it. “He was wearing leather boots and pants, why didn’t he turn into a bull?”

Brutus splayed his ears. “I don’t fucking know! Ghosts aren’t real! Aliens didn’t visit us in Roswell! You can’t fucking turn into a werewolf! Well imagine my surprise.”

Steven ran back out clutching something in his hand. “I can hear you two idiots talking! Most of my leather stuff is fake leather! It’s real good these days and it’s cheap and I don’t exactly have money coming out my ass. And it was this! It was this!” He showed off what he was holding. Brutus stared at it; Brad seemed to just stare at the bird skin and feathers. “It was my fucking necklace! I’m a goth piece of shit and put a raven feather in this, a real fucking raven feather, I found it in the park and thought ‘that’s going to be cool, all the bitchy twats love these folky appropriation things’ and it was touching me.”

Brutus continued to stare.

“Oh would you stop playing dumb!”

“I’m gonna go lie down.”

“No! I’m not done ye-”

Brutus snapped and snarled in Steven’s face and the raven snapped his beak shut with a clack. The wolf then turned with perfect yet unintentional cape flourish and went upstairs.

Several minutes later, Steven went up and went straight into their own bathroom and ran a shower. Washing himself off was both easy - the mess didn’t seem to stick to his feathers very much - and incredibly difficult as he couldn’t stop fluffing and ruffling himself. He came out and found Brutus sitting on his bed, leaning forward with his elbows on his thighs and staring at a spot on the floor. “Well, I hope you’re happy. You’re not special anymore.”

“I have a problem.” Brutus looked up with the most serious frowning dog face possible on a wolf.

“You have a problem! I’m the one who has a job that can pay our rent! I can’t go to work as a bird!”

“Why not?”

“Why not! Because…” Steven held his beak open. “Because!”

“I didn’t know it was gonna happen.”

“Didn’t know!” Steven held his arms up in a posture that was less his bratty self and more the way an actual raven would hold its wings up to seem larger. “How does a werewolf turn someone into a werewolf? They bite them. How does a real wolf give you rabies? It bites you. What’s the deal there? Precious bodily fluids, full of diseases. What’s semen? A fucking bodily fluid! Fine. What’s your problem?”

“You’re gonna get mad if I tell you,” Brutus said, all of his machismo drained away, voice as close to a wolf growl-whimper as possible while still forming human words.

Steven cocked his head several different times and ways. “You’re actually upset.”

“Last night, when I went out to go for a ride around town, this guy surprised me. He was hiding behind the dumpster. He was bitchy and pushy, so kinda like you, but less asian. I guess he’d heard there was a ‘weirdo who dresses like a wolf’ who lived here, and figured he’d come and see if that weirdo would rail him like a twink. So I put him on the back of my bike, took him to this nature area place, and fucked him. Then I just rode off. I left him there. I mean, he was a brat, so I figured he deserved it.”

Steven repeated the head gesture. “You. Fucked him. And. Just left him?”

Brutus shrugged. “I can’t fucking explain how I feel or think. It’s worse now like this. I used to act out on purpose because I hated being inhibited. Now I can’t help it.”

“YOU FUCKED A COMPLETE STRANGER AND LEFT HIM IN THE WOODS!?”

Brutus winced and covered his ears. It hardly muffled Steven’s outburst. “I used a condom!” Brutus did not use a condom.

“I ought to peck your eyes out!”