Chapter 21: Bar
The bar was called The Howler’s Den. The sign, a chipped painting of a wolf baying at a neon moon, flickered erratically. The noise hit Barnaby first—a wall of laughing, shouting, the thump of music with a heavy, pulsing bass. Then the smell: stale beer, hot fur, cheap perfume, the pungent ghost of a thousand smoked cigars.
Ram led the way, pushing the heavy oak door open without hesitation. The pack flowed in behind her: Greta a solid, looming presence at his back, Sunny practically skipping, Frost and Drift flanking him like eager escorts. All eyes turned. Canine eyes, feline, a few reptilian slits. Mostly female. The establishment was, for tonight at least, a bitches’ night haven.
A huge cheer went up from a corner table. “Ram! You made it!”
“Brought the main attraction!” Ram yelled back, her voice cutting through the din. She shoved Barnaby forward, a presenter displaying the prize.
The place was a cavern of shadow and lurid light. Bodies pressed close, all fur and scales and leather. Barnaby’s heart hammered against his ribs, a frantic bird in a bone cage. He was painfully aware of his own soft, hairless skin, his mundane human scent being drowned under a tidal wave of animal musk.
A massive bovine anthro with brass rings in her nose shoved a frothing mug into his hands. “For the stud! Gotta keep his engine running!” The crowd roared with laughter.
He stood there, holding the beer, a prop in his own nightmare. Greta took it from him and drained it in three long gulps, foam coating her muzzle. “He doesn’t need liquid,” she grunted. “He needs exposure.”
The statement was a starting pistol.
They descended on him not as individuals, but as a single, multi-limbed entity of need. Hands pulled at his shirt, claws snagging the fabric. A sleek fox with a russet coat pinched his cheek. “He’s so skinny! Can he handle it?”
“He handles fine,” Ram said, her voice a boom of ownership. She was holding court from a barstool, a queen holding a leash that was now purely metaphorical. “He’s been training. Had a double session with the huskies here just yesterday.”
Frost and Drift yipped with pride.
Barnaby was backed against a support beam, the wood rough and sticky against his palms. A tiger-striped cat with amber eyes was first. She didn’t speak, just knelt before him, unzipped his pants with a precise claw, and took him into her mouth. The sudden, wet heat made him gasp. Her tongue was rough, sandpapery, a relentless, efficient abrasion. Schlorp. Schlorp. Schlick. The bar’s noise seemed to fade, replaced by the wet sounds of her work and the low, approving murmurs of the circle closing in.
She sucked him to a painful hardness, then stood, wiping her mouth. “Works,” she announced flatly, and melted back into the crowd.
A badger, broad and strong, took her place. She turned him around, bent him over a nearby barrel used as a table, sending empty mugs clattering to the floor. No preparation, no grace. She spat once, roughly, and pushed inside. Rrrrrip. He cried out, the sound lost in the music. She hammered into him with short, powerful thrusts, her dense belly slapping against his ass. Thud-thud-thud-thud. The barrel scooted across the floor with each impact. She grunted, a low, porcine sound, finished with a sharp squeal, and pulled out, leaving him empty and aching.
He was pulled upright, spun around. Drinks were poured over his head—cold beer, sticky sweet liqueur—the liquids mixing with the sweat on his skin. A pair of raccoons, giggling, licked it off his chest. Their clever, nimble fingers pinched and prodded.
“C’mon, let’s see the famous bitch boy ride!” someone shouted.
A stool was brought. He was pushed onto it. A towering moose anthro, her antlers nearly brushing the low ceiling, straddled him. Her weight was immense, crushing. He couldn’t breathe. She rode him slowly, a grinding, tectonic motion that made the stool’s legs creak in protest. Creeeak. Thump. Creeeak. She moaned, a deep, resonant sound like wind through a hollow tree, and when she came, she locked her powerful legs around him and squeezed, forcing a weak, spent shudder from his body.
He lost count. He lost sense of time. A hyena’s braying laugh echoed in his ear as she rubbed herself against his leg, staining his trousers. A sleek greyhound used his mouth, her hips pistoning fast and shallow, her keening whines piercing his skull. Uh-uh-uh-uh-uh!
Through a bleary, tear-streaked gaze, he saw his pack. They weren’t participating now; they were managing. Greta stood with her arms crossed, a bouncer ensuring the line kept moving. Sunny collected tips in a large glass jar, beaming. Frost and Drift were giving interviews, gesturing animatedly about their experience. Ram sat at the bar, holding a whispered conference with the massive grizzly bartender, likely negotiating a cut of the night’s increased take.
He was a utility. A faucet. They turned him on, drew what they needed, and turned him off.
The culmination was a group of three—a boar, a wolverine, and a feral-looking domestic dog. They were drunk, rowdy. They pushed him to his hands and knees on the filthy floor. Sawdust and spilled drink stuck to his skin.
“All at once!” the boar slurred.
The wolverine claimed his mouth, shoving herself deep into his throat until he gagged. The dog mounted him from behind, her entry a sharp, burning stretch. The boar, with a grotesque, grunting chuckle, positioned herself over his head.
He heard the strain, the low grunt. He felt the first warm, soft, heavy plop on the back of his neck. Then another. A cascading, suffocating weight. A foul, organic stench, thick as clay, enveloped him. The boar sighed in profound relief as she emptied herself onto him.
The bar erupted in its loudest cheer yet. It was the ultimate debasement, a comedy to them. The signal that all pretense was gone.
Barnaby shut down. The sounds, the smells, the sensations—they hit a pane of thick, silent glass in his mind and slid away. He was a thing on the floor, being used, being soiled. Nothing more.
When they finally pulled him up, he was a mess of fluids and filth. The crowd patted him on the back, squeezed his numb shoulders. “Good sport!” “Hell of a guy!”
Ram sauntered over. She looked at him, then at the jar of cash Sunny was clutching. She nodded, satisfied. “Told you. Buzz creates demand.”
Greta threw a rag at him. It was coarse and smelled of bleach. “Clean up. You stink.”
He wiped his face mechanically. The pack formed around him, a familiar perimeter. They were leaving. Their work was done.
As they stumbled out into the cool, silent night air, the bar’s noise fading behind them, Barnaby took a shuddering breath. The clean air felt like a knife in his lungs. He looked down at his trembling, sticky hands.
The hollow in his chest wasn’t empty anymore. It was filling with something cold and heavy, a liquid lead of absolute understanding. This was his life now. This was what he was. The library, the books, the quiet garden—those were the dream. This stinking, sticky reality was all that remained.
He walked with them, not pulled, but because there was simply nowhere else to go. The leash was inside him now, threaded through the new, cold thing growing in his soul. He belonged to the pack. He was the den.