Chapter 18: Dog House
The smell had settled into the walls. It was the first thing Barnaby noticed upon waking—a permanent, low note of musk, sweat, and something earthy and foul beneath the citrus-scented cleaner Sunny had used, unsuccessfully, to scrub the floor. The apartment no longer smelled of old paper and dust. It smelled of pack.
He was on the floor, a thin blanket tangled around his hips. A heavy, furred leg was thrown over his, the paw pads rough against his calf. Ram snored behind him, her breath hot on the back of his neck. Greta was a warm mound on the couch. Sunny, in a display of canine efficiency, was curled on a pile of his discarded sweaters in the corner.
His body was a catalogue of hurts. A deep ache throbbed in his pelvis. Bruises bloomed on his hips and thighs in the shape of fingertips. His jaw felt unhinged. Yet, as he lay there in the grey dawn light, a terrifying clarity emerged. The frantic horror of the previous night had burned itself out, leaving a hollow, ashy calm. This was his life now. The thought was no longer a shard of panic, but a simple, grim fact.
A loud, gurgling rumble erupted from Ram’s stomach, vibrating through his back. She grunted, shifted, and her arm tightened around his chest in a possessive squeeze. He could feel the immense, soft weight of her breasts against his spine.
“Mmf. You’re awake,” she mumbled, her voice gravelly with sleep. “I can smell you thinkin’. It’s annoying.”
She released him and sat up, stretching her arms wide. Her spine cracked like a string of firecrackers. She scratched idly at her belly, her claws rasping through fur. “Gotta piss like a racehorse. And I’m hungry. You got eggs?”
Before he could answer, she heaved herself up and stomped naked toward the bathroom. The door didn’t latch. He heard the thunderous splash of her urine hitting the water, followed by a sigh of relief.
Greta stirred on the couch, one ear twitching. “If she’s up, I’m up.” She sat up, sniffing the air. “Sunny. Kitchen. Find the eggs.”
Sunny uncurled instantly, a blur of cheerful obedience. She trotted to the tiny kitchenette and began opening cabinets, her tail wagging, knocking a stack of cookbooks to the floor with a crash.
Barnaby slowly pulled himself upright, wincing. He found his glasses, miraculously unbroken, on a shelf under a sketch of a fox. The world snapped into focus, cruelly clear. The apartment was a disaster. Stains on the floor. Furniture askew. His clothes, his precious, tidy clothes, were scattered and torn. A beer can gleamed in the dust beneath his reading chair.
Ram emerged from the bathroom, not bothering to flush. She surveyed the room, hands on her hips. “Place is a shithole.”
“It… it wasn’t,” Barnaby whispered, the words dry and brittle in his throat.
“It is now,” she said, matter-of-fact. She walked to the fridge, her nakedness utterly unselfconscious, and pulled out the carton of eggs Sunny had located. “Needs more than a librarian’s salary to keep up with us, I bet. Food. Beer. Soap. We’re going through your shit fast, twig.”
Greta padded over, leaning against the counter. “My last boss still hasn’t mailed my final check. Asshole.”
“My crew’s between jobs,” Ram said, cracking eggs one-handed into a pan Sunny had found. The sizzle was loud. “So we got a problem. But I been thinkin’.” She pointed the empty eggshell at Barnaby. “You. You’re a niche.”
He blinked. “A… niche?”
“On the internet,” Greta said, a sly grin spreading on her muzzle. “We were talkin’ last night after you passed out. Hot bitches love watching a scrawny dork like you get some big fat mutt ass. It’s a thing. A fetish.”
Barnaby’s face flushed hot. “You can’t be serious.”
“Dead serious,” Ram said, flipping the eggs with a jerk of her wrist. “We set up a camera. We do what we do anyway. People pay to watch. It’s easy money. You got the look—all nervous and breakable.” She looked him up and down. “And you’re already broken in.”
The proposal hung in the air, more violating than anything physical they’d done. This was a transaction. A commodification of his humiliation. He opened his mouth to refuse, to plead, to find some shred of the man who valued privacy and dignity.
Sunny, leaning against Ram’s leg, looked up with wide, adoring eyes. “Will we be movie stars? I’ll be the best cleaner ever for the camera!”
Ram shoved a plate of sloppily fried eggs into Barnaby’s hands. “Eat. You’ll need your strength.” Her green eyes pinned him, not with anger, but with absolute, unshakeable certainty. “It’s this or we eat you out of house and home in a month. Your choice. But it ain’t really a choice, is it?”
He looked at the eggs, at the greasy, congealing yolks. He looked at the wreckage of his home. At the three massive, uncouth, demanding creatures who now occupied it. They were a force of nature. Saying no was like a twig saying no to a flood.
He took a bite. The egg was cold at the edges, oversalted.
“Good boy,” Ram said, and the condescension in her voice sent a shameful, electric jolt straight to his groin. “We’ll start tonight. Keep it simple. Greta, you still got that phone tripod?”
“Somewhere in my bag,” Greta said, her tail giving a slow, interested swish. “I think the viewers will like a ‘welcome home’ scene. You know, me on his face while you ride him. Classic power dynamic.”
“Sunny can be the cleanup crew in the background,” Ram decided, lighting a cigarette and blowing the smoke toward the ceiling. “Adds authenticity.”
Barnaby ate in silence, the food like ash in his mouth. His mind, the part that still cherished quiet and stories, recoiled. But another part, a newer, colder part born on the floorboards, was already calculating. It would keep a roof over their heads. It would give their chaotic energy a purpose. It would, in a twisted way, make him useful.
He finished the plate.
“Alright,” he said, his voice quiet but clear. “What do I need to do?”
Ram’s grin was wide, full of sharp teeth. “Nothing you haven’t done before, bookworm. Just do it with a little more… feeling.” She crushed her cigarette into the empty egg plate. “And maybe try not to look like you’re gonna cry the whole time. Some folks are into that, but we wanna cast a wide net.”
The day passed in a strange, domestic parody. Sunny, with relentless, misguided energy, tried to clean, only managing to redistribute the mess. Greta spent hours on her phone, researching video platforms and tags like “anthro domination” and “size difference.” Ram went out and returned with a case of cheap beer and a bag of groceries bought with the last of Barnaby’s cash.
As evening fell, a new tension threaded the air. It wasn’t the wild, spontaneous energy of before. It was performative. Intentional.
Greta set up her phone on the tripod in the corner of the living room, framing the worn space before the couch. She checked the angle, her tongue poking out in concentration. “Lighting’s shit, but it adds grit. Feels more real.”
Ram pushed the coffee table aside with her foot. “Alright. Positions. Barnaby, on the floor here. On your back.”
He obeyed, the wood cool against his bare skin. He’d been told to strip an hour ago.
“Greta, you’re on his face first. I want the camera to see him disappear. Sunny, you wait by his legs. Look eager, you dumb thing. Look like you want a taste.”
Sunny crouched, quivering with excitement, her eyes fixed on Barnaby’s exposed body.
Ram stood over him, a towering silhouette against the lamplight. She reached down and gave his cock a few rough, practiced strokes. It hardened in her grasp, a traitorous response he could no longer control. “See? He’s ready. He knows his place.” She was speaking to the camera now, her tone a low, confident rumble. “This is what happens when a weak little man finds a real pack. He gets used.”
She nodded to Greta.
The wolf-woman lowered herself onto his face, her weight deliberate, smothering. The camera’s tiny red light glowed in the corner like a malevolent eye. Barnaby’s world narrowed to dark fur and oppressive heat and the salt-bitter taste of her. His hands fluttered at his sides, then clenched into fists.
“Sound on,” Greta mumbled, her voice muffled by her own position. “Let ‘em hear him struggle.”
Then Ram knelt, positioned herself, and sank down onto him. The fullness was brutal, exquisite, a familiar torture. The camera was watching. Strangers would see this. They would see her massive, furry hips pistoning, see his thin legs trembling, see the way his stomach jumped with each of her deep, claiming thrusts.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
“That’s it,” Ram grunted, her performance blending seamlessly with her genuine pleasure. “Take it, twig. Show ‘em how a bitch breaks in her toy.”
Schlap. Schlap. Slurp.
Sunny, unable to wait, began licking at the place where Ram and Barnaby joined, her tongue lapping at the sticky, leaking evidence. The sound was wet, obscene, perfectly clear for the microphone.
Barnaby drowned. In sensation. In shame. In the terrifying new reality that his life, his very body, was no longer his own. It was content. It was product. The red light bore witness, and with each grinding impact, a piece of the man he had been shattered and was swept away, leaving only the desperate, compliant creature beneath.
Ram’s pace increased, her breath coming in harsh pants. “Yeah. Gonna mark him inside. Make sure everyone knows who he belongs to.”
She did, with a final, shuddering grind that forced a choked sound from Barnaby’s trapped throat. The red light kept glowing. The performance, he realized dimly, was only just beginning. This was their job now. And he was the primary prop.