"…There's a part I can't tell, about the dark I know well…" 
	-Duncan Sheik/Steven Sater, 'Spring Awakening'
"ごめんね ごめんね 私きっとダメな子だから
許して 許して かわいそうな私を
ごめんね おいしい？ それは温かいハートの味
ごめんね いたいけど 満たされた心臓を"
	-Kikuo feat. Hatsune Miku, 'Gomenne Gomenne'
"You raped, I feel dirty
It hurt, as a child
Tied down, "That's a good boy"
And fuck, your own child
I scream, no one hears me
It hurt, I'm not a liar
My God, saw you watch
Mommy why your own child?"
	-Jonathan Davis/Korn, 'Daddy'
"My lamb and martyr, this will be over soon
you look so precious, you look so precious…"
	-Maynard James Keenan/Tool, 'Prison Sex'

* READER DISCRETION STRONGLY ADVISED! *
Under no circumstances should rape be condoned or glorified in a positive light. One simply cannot deem rape as normal behavior because it isn't - the act of statutory rape against others (especially much younger individuals IE. children, infants, etc.) is terrible, harrowing, unforgivable and utterly devastating to all affected parties, including but not limited to victimized abuse survivors as well as their families and friends. This story spares no expense towards rapists, pedophiles, MAPs and those possessing ill-willed intent towards harmless innocent children. 
This literary exploit is littered with graphic content of a harrowing sexual nature containing strong themes of rape, exploitation of children, strong violence and cruel misconduct. As such, this should be read with an open mind and humility spared towards those who were or are still directly affected in their lifetime by rampant sexual abuse.  The author does not personally condone any behavior included in this work of fiction. Any likeness to any living persons or entities alive or dead are strictly coincidental.
Rock Hard, Live Harder.
-M. (5/19/2022 ~ 11/11/2022)

	"Dog walk with Sammy? Random, but fair enough. Have fun!"
	"Yup! We'll be back shortly. Maxwell, could you be a dear and record any messages while I'm out, please? I'm anticipating a call from Tobias later today, can't afford to miss that!" Maile's voice cracked a tiny bit upon saying Toby's name out loud, for she felt utterly infatuated with the large rugged wolf. Max rolled his eyes at the mere mention of his shepgirl lover Cassidy's friend.
	"Oooh! So you and Toby are still going out? Makes sense, I guess. Speaking of which, I need to contact Cassidy for another sleepover. I miss seeing her, uh... face! Such a pretty German shepherd girl's face she has, y'know. And that lavish lush blond hair! Holy hell, I'm sold." Max fanned himself.
	"Yeah, her face. Sure, ya perv. Face and boobs and ass and all that. Yup, sounds about right!" Maile said with absolute sarcasm while licking her lips.
	"Hey, I'm a shepcoon of standards!"
	"Oh please, don't even start!"
	"I only express good intent, always."
	"Famous last words, buddy."
	Maxwell laughed and Maile snickered in response, holding Sammy's leash by her side. Max adjusted himself in Maile's gaming chair to gain a small positional advantage since Maile loved to sit extra-crooked nine times out of ten, which irritated the shepcoon to high holy heaven.
	"So let me get this straight." Max said, counting with his finger-paws. "Bradley and Calli have gone surfing out near the Brookings coast, Gus is in town getting supplies for the house - whatever that freaking means - and now you'll be out dog-walking with Sammy?" Max asked Maile, pointing at her with a thumb-paw.
	Maile nodded and Sammy, sat prone upon his haunches beside her leg, seemed to nod along with her. Max scoffed and clapped his shepcoon hand-paws together briskly.
	"Wow! Awesome! I finally got Gus's house all to myself, for a change. At last, it felt like forever! I can streak and run free in the nude without you mangy whining puds yelling at me to find freaking pants, it'll be marvelous and liberating and SO freeing! Excellent choice, Mai-Sama!" Maxwell exclaimed, pumping a balled fist into the air while clutching hold of a Playstation 5 controller. His raccoon-ringed tail wagged in celebratory fashion before falling limp by his thigh. Maile snickered and Sammy yapped aloud with high-pitched dog barks before being brought back to heel.
	"Um, yeah, about that…" Maile said in a hushed tone. Max cocked his head at a funny angle and noticed a smaller presence hidden near Maile's robust red panda-demoness thighs. Silently, Max's heart sank into his belly, realizing that he wouldn't be completely alone after all.
	"Waaaiiit a minute, who's that weird-looking little dog-girl standing behind you?" Maxwell asked Maile as he casually flicked his thumbs against cushioned silicone joysticks, turning his attention away for a brief moment from the purple-haired young loli-cub girl stood just behind Maile. The youth's bushy canine tail brushed softly against Maile's hoof and ankle. 
	"You're way weirder-looking by far!" The cute dog-girl exclaimed as she curled her canine snout in a comical sneer, shaking a balled fist towards Max; she briefly reminded Max of Popeye the Sailorman assuming a true fighting stance, replete with her mutt-inspired charm.
	"Pffft! In your wildest dreams, little doggo." Max replied.
	Ruff immediately gazed upward at Maile, seeking out validation of any kind, relaxing her brows and curling her upper lip in a smirk. Maile rolled her bright green panda-girl eyes and scoffed, nodding towards the cub-girl with a small shoulder pat, reassuring her into a replenished reassured grin of adoration. Maile clacked her hoof against a corner of her computer chair which Maxwell sat on, interrupting his gaming flow with a loud abrupt wooden slap. Max paused the game and glared at Maile like an unruly teen disobeying his mother when asked to tend to his homework now, not later.
	"Shepcoon, for once, would you kindly please pull your dread-headed head out of your gilded hybrid ass??! This is Ruff, dude!!" Maile gave the girl a small companionable high-five, causing Ruff to smile with a wide gap-toothed grin, fluffy tail wagging excitedly and teal-green eyes open wide, observant of everything around her. A bright, chipper doggo-gal. Maile smirked at Max.
	"Well? Go on, Maxwell. Introduce yourself! Ruff, meet Max, our bassist and shepcoon gamer-nerd at large. Max, meet Ruff. Legend says she's also a renowned gamer-girl extraordinaire, simply unmatched in the ways of thumb-pressing and joystick-flicking. Perhaps she can teach you a new thing or two on that game of yours?" 
	"Coolio, brosky. Your storytelling is unrivaled by far." Max replied in a snarky manner. Ruff scoffed and gave Maxwell a very cute stink-eyed glare, yanking an eyelid taut while sticking her tongue out at him. The ultimate Baka dismissal.
	"She'll also be hanging out here with you while I take Sammy on a walk, agreed?" Maile said. Ruff waved and smiled at him, unabashedly cute as a pink button mixed in with a bowl of bright blue ones. Max rolled his eyes and scoffed impatiently. Maile reached out and rustled Max's dreadlocks, always so irritating. Sammy yapped and ran over to Max's legs, pressing his canine head between Mr. Shepcoon's denim jean-covered thighs, begging for attention of his very own. Max giggled and rubbed Samson's German shepherd head, focusing on the tiny crease between his skull and behind his ears. Ruff watched on in awe and resplendent curious wonder as Maile knelt down gently beside Max, resting her bosom upon his back.
	"If you didn't know already, genius, this is the girl we're meant to 'sit' for a while. At least while her family is out for a bit. Okay? She'll be hanging out, playing games and having big fun! That is, if you'll allow her to play and not be a greedy dick about it. Sound about right?" Maile asked Max, stood behind him, cool and casual.
	"Yeah, sure thing. Whatever you insist, Mai-Mai. I'll play nice, I promise." Maxwell said, dismissive intent in his stride. He felt Maile's glaring eyes upon him and cleared his throat amicably. 
	"Ruff, will you be a good girl for a while and stay here with Max while I take Sammy on a nature walk? I promise I won't be gone for very long. Gus should be home very soon, he's our human. Older bald-headed man, Australian accent, nicest man you'll ever meet. If anything happens, there's a landline phone in the kitchen you can use to dial-"
	"-L-landline?? What's that?!" Ruff asked Maile with abrupt curiosity. Maxwell curled a brow as he listened on with shock and intrigue, suddenly feeling far older than he had ever hoped to realize. 
	"My dear, in an age of cellular phones, it beguiles me to know you haven't a clue about what I'm speaking of. Here, I'll show you what I mean. Would you care to join me briefly?" Maile asked Ruff, turning her attention to the dog-girl. Ruff gave an exaggerated nod of agreement, rocking her body back and forth like a sunflower blowing in a cool gentle summer breeze, hips swaying to and fro. Maile snickered and nodded back in the affirmative.
	"Very good, follow me." Maile said, proceeding towards a hallway leading from the living room directly into the kitchen, a nice crafty little hideaway corridor lined with numerous photos of Max, Darrel, Brad and Calli, Maile and Sammy and of course, good ol' Gus Stevenson, the ringleader and only human among the Enim-Noinu pack, homeowner and furry band manager at large. Ruff skipped along jovially behind Maile, glancing upon the scattered family photos with stark avidity and a resolute hint of curiosity intact. Sammy trotted fast to catch up with them both, yapping his finest opinions aloud in feral high-pitched barks, fading away into obscurity within the kitchen's hollow dank halls.
	Max embraced the return of abrupt silence, save for a tiny cooling fan running in the PS5 console unit and the deafening sound of his own heartbeat echoing in his ears. He didn't expect to have any company over at all, let alone a dog-girl quite as young as Ruff. Max didn't think he'd be initially prepared to handle such youthful energy without any preparation in advance. Plus he was astonished by how unbelievably adorable she was, with her petite frame and her snazzy tomboyish fashion sense and her lavish pretty purple hair. Max suspected he'd get right along with her, even if it meant hanging out for a few hours at most, an entire weekend at least. His only concern was that she'd be annoying beyond compare. However, he already took solace in her ability to offer admirable verbal retorts. Now he had to find out how qualified she was as a self-appointed gamer girl. He was prepared to unleash the ultimate test of endurance upon Ruff, handed down by the unrivaled master of-
	"Wait! Hold on, so THAT'S how you dial a number on this thing?! WHAAAAT?!! Oh, how pogging weird!!" Ruff suddenly hollered out loud from the kitchen, startling Max enough to flinch and jump an inch or two from Maile's wood-trimmed computer chair. His tail ruffled into a Christmas-tree-shaped thicket of ringed nappy wired raccoon fur as he re-adjusted himself in the seat, trembling with sustained panic, a very brief alarmed state come and gone in a flash.
	"Yup, that's the traditional rotary dialing method. Interesting, huh?" Maile said, faint but growing louder in volume. Her voice echoed through the hallway, coming closer to Max's position until she finally revealed herself again, wearing sunshades and toting a water bottle clipped onto a belt loop with a single carabiner securing it in place dangling from her right hip. Her long luxurious brown hair had been tied up and pulled back into a ponytail, exposing her curled ram horns right down to their stubby fur-thickened foundations upon her skull. Ruff followed closely behind Maile, skinny petite tomboy at large shuffling her cute dog-girl feet along light beige carpets, producing small dust motes that twirled aimlessly in the wide-open void of the living room.
	"Kinda lame if you ask me." Ruff replied to Maile, causing the red panda-girl to giggle-snort. "I mean, what if you miss a number in the very beginning, or towards the very end?"
	"Then you'd have to start all over, but only after lifting the receiver and hanging it up again."
	Ruff shook her head and endured a tiny spastic burst of pure adrenaline. "No way! That's all way too complicated!! There's no speed-dial, even! How do you remember all those numbers? Write 'em down on a list?! Keep 'em in a big book??!"
	Max paused his game for a moment to address both the lovely ladies directly. "With practice, dear one. Lots of memorization and practice. Maybe even an address book or two, like you said. For real, that actually helps. The phone company used to print huge books, listing residences and addresses with numbers to be called. Not anymore, though." Ruff nodded in response as Max continued back to his game without missing a single beat. Ruff's purple hair shimmered among swirling dust motes, illuminated by the bright-shining rays of a setting sun from outside. The final traces of the day's vermillion sunlight cast forth into the living room with a warm resplendence, illuminated in a soft melancholy twilit glow. Maile bent down and planted a quick kiss upon Ruff's partially-exposed forehead, causing the girl to giggle and blush vibrantly upon her fluffy cheeks.
	"Perhaps the rotary phone is a bit behind in your generation, little one. Perhaps so. Right! In any case, I'll be walking Sammy to either Schroeder or Riverside, unless you know something about Reinhart Park that I don't already, Max?"
	"Oh yeah! Last I heard, they might have a dog park, or they might not. Lots of good ganja growers peddle their wares near that area. Maybe you'll meet a nice man or a potential suitor there, too. Maybe, not too sure though. I certainly hope that helps!" Max said with a big dumb grin pasted upon his lips, causing Maile to glare scornfully at his pithy shepcoon face, albeit from the side. With her green eyes lit up and glowing electric with jade green, she clicked her panda-girl tongue and retrieved the PS5 controller in a flash, tugging it free from Maxwell's grip by rudimentary telekinetic force. Maile spun the complex chunk of hard plastic, thick rubber, sutured circuitry, haptic-feedback magnetic components and fine Asian metals on her finger-paw like a basketball, effortless and smooth as ice. 
	"Not funny." Max growled. Maile snickered and knelt down besides Max. She gently blew on the controller with her hand-paws raised and sent it sailing through the air in a spiraling rotation back to Maxwell's hand-paws after proving her point with no words said. Sammy glanced wide-eyed at the device as it floated deftly through a twilight realm within the living room, landing softly in Max's grip. Ruff quietly observed all of this with great profound fascination, jaw agape and arms dangling to her sides, dumbfounded by the ease of Maile's telekinetic abilities.
	"Seriously, Max. Just... kindly please let her play this game for a bit! You can jam on my computer if you want, I'll let you borrow browsing time as an exception to her being here, but only for now. Would you be cool with that? I think she'd really enjoy playing on your, uh… your Playstation… thingy. Don't you?"
	"It's a five, Maile. Fifth in the series, ya ol' jealousy-bird, and as long as she washes her paws beforehand, I have no problem wit-"
	"-Also we won't neglect or ignore her, will we? We'll keep tabs on her well-being, make sure she's feeling okay, keep her laughing and healthy, well-fed and nourished, properly hydrated, spoken for with bathroom trips, the whole nine. Got it, shepcoon?"
	"Holy hell, MOTHER, of course! You act as if I've never tended to a child's care before or something, sheesh! Have you forgotten about Amanda Scratch already? Or Sydney Padfoot? What about Sarana Steelfist?"
	"I doubt Boris would look up your number to re-hire you for any work again anytime soon, bud."
	"With all due respect, Maile, back way the hell off, little drummer girl. We'll be fine. Right, kiddo?!" Max asked Ruff directly. She nodded and wagged her tail, albeit nervously, for the girl was slightly intimidated by Maxwell's very forward and brash verbal delivery. 
	Max chuckled low and resumed playing, turning his attention away from the small petite skinny mutt-girl stood beside Maile. Ruff's excitement sizzled into nervous awkwardness as she fidgeted at her fingers with her thin shoulders slouched, purple locks of short hair dangling down around her head. She felt a shred of silent disinterest and rejection stem forth from Max, along with a brief pang of guilt and neglect, all very short-lived. Ruff wore a pair of baggy denim jeans and a large black T-shirt with a Playstation logo printed in front, Nintendo 3DS XL secured firmly in place within her obnoxiously baggy rear jean pocket, saved for any emergency boring streaks or unsavory circumstances that begged for a quick video-gaming escape.
	Before Maile could step in to intervene and knock some sense and politeness into her shepcoon bassist, Ruff burst forth from Maile's side and ran full-on kamikaze-style, dive-bombing into Max's belly, nearly knocking the shepcoon out of his seat. The collision of young head to old gut caused Max to gasp deep and hard, knocking the wind clear out of him. The Playstation 5 controller fell into a gap between two sofa cushions beside the computer chair as Ruff continued to physically accost Maxwell for such profound negligence shown towards her. 
	"YEEEAH! Take that, ya big bully! How dare you act so lame! Nobody ignores this girl forever!" Ruff laughed obnoxiously loud, finding Max's mortified reaction to her massive head-butt to be the absolute funniest thing of all. Maile snickered with a callused drummer's hand-paw placed upon her snout as Max stared at Maile with great contempt, struggling to unearth his PS5 controller even while Ruff squirmed and tumbled uncontrollably on his lap. More than once, a knee or elbow came dangerously close to impaling his crotch. He had great difficult retrieving the controller under such pressure and eventually gave up trying, choosing instead to slouch back into his seat and let the cute mutt-girl go haywire all she wanted.
	"Gah! Woah there, lit'lun!" Max exclaimed after nearly receiving another knee-full of nut-busting pain. The shepcoon's left eye socket glowed slightly, shedding a dim light that protruded from behind his orange nylon-cloth eye-patch, shining with a blend of stark red and toxic lime-green, anger and irritation incarnate. He also held a low croupy snarl in his throat as he talked to Maile without even really speaking, hoping Ruff wouldn't notice his heat-simmering socket or integral growling immediately. He counted himself extremely lucky to have such profound patience. Last thing he wanted was to scare the poor dog-girl out of her wits with his own unique abilities, even though she seemed mesmerized by Maile's sudden display of strictly-moderated mental manipulation from earlier. Max cursed Maile's fancy telekinetic whimsy silently.
	Is it me, Mai-Mai, or can I literally hear you laughing out loud from within? Not cool, panda girl.
	Aww, c'mon, you can't deny how amazing that was! Such an epic tackle! Ruff is a bit of a tomboy though, so I can relate somewhat. She head-butted me earlier as well, it's almost like her official greeting. Some girls curtsey and some girls give shy handshakes. This one is a head-butter type. Also you were a real dick to her just now, Maxwell. Please, for me and her sake both, give her a bit more time and attention!
	Pfft, yes Mom. 
	"Hahaha, you're a real wild one, mister!! Do you prefer Max or Maxwell?" Ruff asked, flinging Max's scruffy ringed canine tail up and down as if she were cracking a large fur-infused whip. Maxwell exhumed a deep sigh and rolled his one good eye towards Maile.
	Gods help me. So there's lots of tomboyish demons from hell, then? Dang it, hang on.
	"-Um, call me Maxwell, that's fine. Easy on the tail, please, dear."
	An astronomical ton, shepcoon. Way more than you could ever imagine. You know, if you want her to stop, you could just ask her to put your tail down. She's surprisingly responsive when asked to do certain things, which is pretty dang sweet. She never seems to want to put up a fight over anything, not really. She's a good girl. Mindful and respectful. Rare quality trait in girls her age, so that is.
	No worries, she's fine, unless she decides to try ripping my ringed tail off to see if it fits any better on her than it does on me. Also Maile, that's crazy and bitterly ironic in so many ways, I can't even fucking comprehend. Tomboyish demons from hell running rampant in our humble little coastal town? Goodness, you can't even make that shit up, let alone write about it in any primordial sense. You wouldn't happen to be related to any of them, would you?
	You'd damn well better believe it, mortal. I have cousins running all over the place, you just can't perceive them in this plane of universal existence. Hell ain't easy livin' by a long-shot, get my drift? Ouch!
	"-Woah now, honey! Easy, Ruff! Dear, let's please try to play with older dogs a bit more relaxed. Remember what we talked about before? Sammy isn't getting any younger, dear."
	Maxwell frowned in the midst of a dire temperamental shepcoon-sized pout.
	Maile, tell me this mutt of a girl won't be staying with us for very long, please. 
	Maybe a few hours at least, could even be for the rest of the weekend, depending on what her parents say. I'm sure she'll have a lot of fun in the keeping of our company, no matter how long she gets to stay over.
	"Fuck!" Maxwell said aloud, startling Ruff slightly. Max noticed her stern young doggo's eyes glaring fortuitously at him and came up with an excuse on the spot, nothing CIA interrogation-worthy but he hoped it'd make due.
	"Oh, sorry! This enemy is a hard one, the little punk-ass." Max reached down for the controller, fished it free from sofa cushion prison at last and held it up like a hot potato. He'd hoped she'd buy into his excuse - and she did, surprisingly enough. He inhaled deep and exerted an annoyed sigh, dropping the charade from his mind and the controller back down onto the sofa with a dull hollow thud. Ruff reclaimed the controller and resumed Maxwell's paused video game effortlessly, much to Max's chagrin. She un-paused his game and defeated the mini-boss in record time, mere seconds flat. Maxwell scoffed and chuckled, shaking his head in disbelief. Maile curled her brow and glared upon Max, identifying his reaction as one of bitter envy. Maile inhaled deep and blew a gust of hot breath at Max's face, causing his dreadlocked bangs to fling upward from his muzzle. 
	Oh just relax, shepcoon! What, does she throw off your precious gamer vibes? She's a big-time gamer too, you know. Practically lives and breathes the stuff. Wouldn't stop talking about Zelda and Pokemon and Mario and Nintendo the entire time I brought her over here. Majora's Mask is her favorite Zelda game out of the series, same as you. 
	Nah, that's not it, no vibes tampered with. I dunno, she's just… a bit more energetic than I was expecting. I almost feel intimidated by her energy. Like she's too much for me to handle. And my favorite was always Ocarina of Time, not Majora's Mas- 
	Ruff climbed onto Max's shoulders and giggled, laughing aloud like an undersized evil deviant villain. She tugged and twirled his dreadlocks into shaggy strips of spangled dirty-blonde strips, perfectly nonchalant and unaware of anything else within her surroundings, as if she'd crawled upon one dog-sitter's shoulders too many in her lifetime. Ruff scaled Maxwell like a mountain climber upon Mt. Fiji as Maile and Max exchanged a mental conversation. Max kept the girl's balance gridlocked upon his back for fear of losing her grip and causing Ruff to take a rumble-tumble to the ground. Max's game remained paused, left idle in the wake of their silent exchange, save for Ruff's insistent revival upon apprehending the PS5 controller yet again after her initial shepcoon climb's final descent.
	~	
	"Text or call me if anything weird or questionable happens! Though I'm sure you'll be fine. Gus should be back any time now, he'll probably arrive before me and Sam-Sam. Right, boy?" Sammy barked and yelped in response to Maile, tail wagging with his walking harness fit snug around his broad feral dog's shoulders. Maxwell nodded and Ruff waved to Maile as she proceeded to exit Gus's house from the kitchen through a rear-entry door. She headed towards a carved-out clearing in the backyard, at the edge of the property's orange-hued perimeter markers, pending a full-on fence installation. Maile and Sammy eventually found and trotted along a vast nature trail nestled deep within a copse of pine, eucalyptus and cedar trees hidden away just past Gus's backyard. Maile led Sammy out to a big hollowed redwood stump for a quick leg-lift. She stole a single glance back at the house, looking in through a large front room windowpane. She saw Maxwell walk around with Ruff on his shoulders, giving her a piggyback ride. Maile smiled and winked once, heart awash with pride, reassuring herself that they'd be fine, which they would be. Maile had plenty of faith in her fellow shepcoon bassist and brother-from-another-mother. What he lacked in quality fatherhood, he made up for in cool uncle-hood. 
	Maile diverted her attention from the house and proceeded to lead Sammy down the nature trail, abiding by the soft unyielding orange glow of a vast Pacific Northwestern sunset.
	~
	"So you're a big Zelda fan then, huh?" Max asked Ruff, nodding in response without breaking a sweat. "Right on, that's cool. I love the Zelda games as well. Metroid, Super Mario - anything Nintendo is basically my jam. How long have you been playing video games for, kiddo?" Max asked Ruff while he browsed his Twitter page, refreshing his troll-bashing newsfeed frequently.
	"Longer than you might expect, mister!" Ruff said, inquisitive and curious to know so much more. She paused her game and tilted her head back at a wonky angle to gaze directly at Maxwell. "So, exactly how old are you, great sir Maximus?"
	"Isn't that a personal question, young lady Ruffian?"
	Ruff snickered aloud. "Pffft! Only to nervous girls, maybe!"
	"Fair point. Okay then, I'm thirty-six as of this year, Twenty-Twenty-Three." Max heard an audible gasp from her general direction.
	"Woah!! So old!"
	"Thanks, darling." Max said with a precedent exhausted sigh.
	"So you had to have been into Nintendo for about twenty, maybe twenty-five years or so, right? I mean because they came out in the eighties and you were born then, so that means you're as old as Nintendo. You're a classic as well! Cool!!" Ruff said, giggling aloud while wagging her tail against an arm-rest on the sofa she now sat in half-way, dominating Max's PS5 like she practically owned it herself.
	"Kid, I'm a bit old but not THAT ancient. Besides, the best Nintendo games will always surpass me in terms of coolness. Hey, speaking of which, you wanna see a cool fun little trick on that game you're playing?"
	"Oh, you mean this?" Ruff said, eyes glued to the TV screen. She conducted a strange swaying movement while playing, fully focused and involved. Max saw her on-screen persona (his, technically) hover in mid-air and approach a group of masked assailants, in-game enemies he'd had trouble dealing with for many months, so much that he eventually gave up interest and put the game down. Something compelled him to pick it back up again and resume playing, though he couldn't exactly comprehend why. Now he realized it was to allow this random mutt of a dog-girl to advance his position better than he could ever afford to do so. Had he known he'd be expecting company so soon, he would've probably chosen another game entirely. Yet he sat, cool and content, watching in dead silence while frozen on Maile's desk chair, hand-paw clasped over a Logitech wireless mouse, as Ruff obliterated the bad guys with an almost frightening methodical approach. The girl clearly knew her stuff. Maxwell applauded when she finally advanced to the next level, dog-padded palms slightly sweaty from such vigorous intense playing. Ruff snickered as she hopped and skipped towards Max, handing him back his controller. She held a polite grace about her demeanor that caused Max's heart to race with warmth and adoration of her lady-like maturity, despite her altogether petite stature and youthful strides.
	"Yeah, that's the stuff! Damn, you really are skilled! Thanks for getting me past that freaking level, I had become very upset with the game developers after trying to beat that shit. I was convinced there wouldn't be a future for me with this game. Jeez, you even nabbed me a trophy! Kudos!!" Max said in reaction to a small chime emanating from the television speaker and a tiny sustained on-screen message.
	"Pffft, no problem. Easy-breezy! Give me a harder challenge, Boyo!"  Ruff said, snickering aloud.
	Max froze in place, glaring at a nearby wall before forcing his eye to meet hers. His mouth hung agape. He cleared his throat and came back to his senses. Ruff gave him a confused glance, head cocked at an angle. 
	"What's wrong, mister? Did I say something funny, or wrong?" Ruff asked, genuinely concerned for him and worried for herself. He smiled and nodded at her with reassurance. 
	"Nothing, I'm okay. It's just that… well, I haven't been called that in a long time. 'Boyo', I mean. That's all. I think it sounds way too cute for a girl like you to say it, though. That's for older Scottish barkeeps and scruffy Irish police sergeants to call others out."
	Ruff tittered and Max saw her cheeks turning red from blushing, even as she covered her face with her hand-paw embarrassingly to conceal her nervous squeaks of affection.
	"Pffft, it isn't that cute! But, um… thanks anyways, kind sir. I heard it in an Irish movie once. I thought it sounded really funny, so I kept saying it. 'Ya lookin' fer a fight, boyo?' - that voice, it hypnotized me and actually still does."
	"Sometimes Irish accents have that effect! I dunno. For some reason, it suits you well. Have you tried saying other Irish phrases? Maybe you've checked out some of Sean Connery's earliest movies? Maybe even tried learning an Irish fighting song or two?"
	Ruff nodded her head back and forth while twirling a lollipop between her canine lips, nabbed from a nearby candy dish upon entering the home and headquarters of Enim-Noinu. She pulled the bulb of rock-hard sugar free from her mouth with an audible pop and crossed her legs, sat in a relaxed position upon Gus's living room sofa.
	"I don't know anything about that stuff. Apparently, I am part Irish already, though I don't really sound like it. No accent to be heard. I just sound like all those other moron girls at school when I laugh or cry or sing. Boooo-riiiing! Though there's one girl in another class who's older than me, she talks with an Irish accent very well. I think she might be part Irish. She's a very kind Blanford's fox. All the other fox-girls are rude and impatient with me but not her. I love her. I think her name is Elly, but I'm not sure."
	"Elly sounds like a vixen who knows a thing or two about being Irish and expressing genuine patience. But I beg to differ, you actually sound really good. Crisp and concise, not weak and droning like some younger girls I know. Even I sound like a drunken baseball announcer when I try to talk with an Irish accent."
	"Really?! Do it! I wanna hear! C'mon, talk with an accent!" Ruff exclaimed, leaping up from her seated position and bolting towards Max with thorough haste.
	"What in the actual magical heck has gotten into you all of a sudden? I can't jus- Woah, hang on!" Max yelped as Ruff's hand-paw clenched hold of his snout, squeezing his lips upward, revealing two rows of ivory-white shepcoon teeth with one stray silver glinting mandible incisor. She giggled aloud as Ruff made another attempt to climb up Maxwell's back, even while he was still sat down in Maile's chair. She managed to scale her way onto his shoulders and rest her thighs casually in place, balanced precariously upon his back like a girl getting a better view at a rock concert, suspended and hoisted upright. She clenched hold of his dirty-blonde dreadlocks and treated them like a horse's reins, attempting to wrangle control over her newest capture. He grunted like a fed-up German shepherd on edge and murr-chirred in his own unique special raccoon tone all at once.
	"Kid, I have no idea what you're trying to prove by doing this, but I'm not a freaking mountain to be scaled. Do you enjoy doing this on your spare time, climbing on older adult anthros?"
	"Uh-huh! Especially if they're big strong guys who can take it!" Ruff said with unparalleled excitement in her eyes, grinning maniacally wide. Ruff's tail brushed against the smallest fur-follicles on Max's bicep as she swayed her head and bopped her toes together in front of his chest. 
	"I figured as much. Here's an idea! How about we go see the rest of the house? Maybe we can even go catch the last bit of sunset outside from the back porch?"
	Ruff hugged Maxwell's head gently. Her voice suddenly became soft-spoken, a far cry from her usual brash silly-girl tone. "I'd much rather just stay here, in this room, if that's alright? How soon can we watch TikTok videos?"
	"Sure thing, dear one. And yes, that's right! I'll place you down and we can get started with that. Are you sure you wouldn't prefer Youtube instead?"
	"Nah, I don't like the videos Youtube plays. They aren't nearly as funny as the TikTok ones!
	As Maxwell silently cursed the dog-girl's TikTok-viewing generation, he reached up to grab hold of Ruff's arms to lift her over his head gently. Ruff positioned her hand-paws onto his wrist and held on tight while his hand-paws nestled in the crooks of her arms. This momentary lapse of direct physical touch provoked a sudden vision from within Maxwell's mind, a mere brush of exposed skin was all it took and his entire vision exploded with escalating visions, flashing raw glimpses of
-blood so much blood pain my nose hurts it got cut ouch why did he have to be so mean to me what did I ever do to him was it something I said maybe he just feels jealous or lonely I must make sense of his mind but it hurts to do so it hurts so much down below he puts himself in me and I say no but he refuses to listen and he punches me and bites my neck and chokes me very hard if I say no or don't do what he asks me and I am forced into another night spent with him another long evening of aggressive hatred in the bedroom he hates me and yet he says he loves me how can he love me when he makes me bleed from my girly parts every night so violently even when he shoves his finger deep inside of me and twirls so aggressively he likes to pluck hairs from my groin with his teeth while he tastes me even if my heat is extreme he doesn't care he still likes to put his warm white gel in my body mixed with my blood and he pulls out and sprays himself on my face and mixes in with all my blood oh God so much blood and he's laughing the entire time as he strokes himself off and asks me how it feels to be such a good little cunt of a filthy fucking daddy's whore feverish hot fucking creamy little bitch of a tramp a filthy lay a cheap dime store hooker I'm his good girl his fucktoy that's what he says all the time when nobody else is around and he is alone with me and he punches my face over and over after putting his firm slippery warm squirting limb in my mouth he calls me his filthy little fucktoy whore oh why is he pushing his tongue against my throat sucking my blood from my lips like a vampire I scream and sob and beg him to stop please stop stop right it hurts too much please stop now but he doesn't listen just pokes at me so deep choking me and growling as I feel my body flex and succumb to his strength but is he helping or hurting me who knows fuck I want to scream and cry and sob and die so much but not really I only want to kill him dead and kill everyone else who refuses to help as he breaks my body he just keeps stretching me out so very hard that he deserves to be hung to be shot to be trampled to be mutilated to be arrested and punished and burned alive under tires for raping a poor helpless cub girl like me how dare he pin me down in his bedroom and rape me where he once made love to my mommy leave me for dead like another one of his cute twinkling kinky little playthings another gorgeous tomboyish cum receptacle to be kicked and pissed on and humiliated like a degenerate leper no love only pain please love me now kill me please daddy kill-
	"-Max! Are you okay? What'd you do, get a head-rush from standing up too fast? I'm not that heavy, dude." Ruff said with a sweet playful smile, hoping to lighten the mood. 
	Max just stared into space, pasty-faced and wide-eyed. "N-Not that heavy. No... Oh God, no." He whispered in a hushed tone. He felt light-headed as the world around him swayed, high contrasts embellishing his vision with microscopic parasites and sharp edges bent askew. Everything looked and felt so very wrong all at once, as if he had awoken into a harsh brutal reality-state, polarizing and infinitesimal.
	"Feeling okay, buddy?" Ruff asked Max, waving her hand-paw in front of his face, head cocked with curiosity ingrained into her expression. "Jeez, you probably overdid it with the computer or something. Gaming burnout happens, you know. Just stay sat down and wait a minute, it helps for me sometimes. Can I bring you a glass of water, maybe?" Ruff asked, cute petite tail wagging excitedly.
	Max took a very deep breath or two in hopes of collecting himself before continuing, hoping he wouldn't stammer into a tailspin. "No, that's okay, I just-"
	"O-or some fruit, like a banana? A shoulder rub, even? I've been told by friends that I give really good shoulder massages! Something to do with strong thumbs from playing lots of video games." Ruff held her canine thumb-paws up in front of her snout and twirled them rapidly in circular motions to demonstrate her thumb strength. "Hand-eye coordination and all that craziness. So what do ya say?"
	"Nah, don't worry. I won't force you to rub my shoulders, though I think some fruit might be tasty to snack on right now. Something sweet to fuel and nourish us. I'll tell you what: you stay put and I'll go get us a bowl of goodies I saw earlier in the kitchen, okay?"
	Ruff's face scrunched up into a scowl, then slowly recovered into discontent. "Fine."
	"Don't worry, kiddo! Just hang tight and, um… I-I'll return shortly." Max felt himself swaying a little upon standing upright, hoping not to faint in front of Ruff. Luckily, he held his composure.
	Ruff squirmed with reluctance, feeling doubt creep in. "You promise you're okay, Max? I swear, you acted as if you'd seen a ghost or something just now." She proceeded to move to Max's seat, placing her cute pudgy thighs down gently in the sunk-in space of his shepcoon bottom's previous tenure.
	"Cross my heart and hope to get punched by an Irishman." Max said, rubbing a curled fist against his fluffy shepcoon cheek, imitating a Tyson-style knockout, flailing limbs and all. This gesture, paired with just the right amount of earnest commitment, helped provoke Ruff in the right direction as she laughed out loud, filling the room with rich healthy giggling. A magnificent sound of life incarnate. She rubbed tears of goofball joy from her eyelids and nodded with reassurance.
	"Got it! Hey! Maybe later after you're finished, can we still watch funny TikTok videos on Maile's computer before she comes home?"
	"I don't see why not." Max said with a companionable grin and a twinkle in his one good eye, orange patch fitted snug over his left socket. He brushed a small lock of bangs free from Ruff's forehead and kissed her cheek, a quick little peck. She tittered in response with a small high-pitched little giggle-snort. "I need to go use the bathroom first, though. Nature calls. I'll return shortly, I promise."
	"'Kay! Don't forget the fruit and don't be gone for too long or I'll begin to worry about you!" Ruff said in response, quickly resuming the game with lavish excitement, bobbing up and down on the sofa's cushions while waiting for the next level to load in a flash of mere seconds.
	"Of course! I'll be back very soon, you won't even miss a thing." Max said as he caught one last glimpse of Ruff hopping like a kernel of adorable doggo-girl popcorn in a frying pan on the living room sofa. He proceeded to walk to the single solitary bathroom on the first floor of Gus' home, normally reserved for Gus himself while two other bathrooms upstairs held credence for Enim-Noinu's founding band members, Maile and Bradley.
	~
	Walking at a brisk pace down a main hallway towards Gus's downstairs bathroom, Max caught a single glimpse of an old family photo hung on a nearby wall. The picture was black & white but still maintained quality, hardly faded or damaged, shielded in a wooden-framed enclosure. He froze in place and stopped in front of the picture. Arms dangling to his sides and tail tucked between his legs, Maxwell Blackburnadeaux stared into the face and deeply-nestled gorgeous eyes of Suzanne, his raccoon mother. Max immediately recognized a small yet visible mark on her lip he'd never noticed before. A potential injury from her loving husband and his father, he presumed.
	His staring gaze trailed down towards himself at a very young impressionable age, hair straight and narrow, both eyes intact, completely unaware of what his future may hold in store for him. In the picture, Max was playing with his younger brother, Jordan. Even with Down-syndrome, Jordan never lost his infectious ability to woo adults. Teased and tormented for his slowness, Maxwell often defended Jordan from ignorant bullies and public ridicule, little did he know his biggest threat would be in the form of their very own father. Max stared at Jordan's face, eyes welling up with tears which he swiped away with a thumb-paw. Max allowed his blurred vision to shift upward, staring directly into the very deadpan hollowed-out eyes of his father. Silently, Max condemned the German shepherd anthro for his actions bestowed upon the Blackburnadeaux family many years prior.
	"You always used to call me kiddo, didn't you? Boyo, too. You were always good with nicknames and cutesy-ass half-titles. Probably too drunk or high to remember your son's true names. I bet you never even bothered to learn my name at all, did you? Fucking goddam bastard asshole rapist pig-cunt, you fucking fucker. Even when you cried aloud every night, begging for your precious younger son to return, you abandoned all hope for me, the eldest brother. Your surviving son. Didn't you, fucker?" Max whispered with a snarl brooding beneath his voice. He could see a tiny reflection of red light in the glass of the photo's surface, nestled snug behind his cloth eye-patch.
	He poked his finger-paw against the pane of glass covering the photo so hard, he may have cracked the surface. Using an unsharpened edge of his nail, he carved a tiny hairline-fractured mark right down the center of Harper Blackburnadeaux's stern face. Max stepped back from the hung picture and felt a weird sense of relief, a queer victory to behold, much better than nothing. He wondered how long it would take Gus or anyone else to realize the picture had been tampered with, then realized he could care less. His eye socket settled down, becoming less intensified, red glow subsiding gradually.
	"Not like he didn't have it coming. That girl deserves so much better, though. Poor Ruff." Max said to the dust motes floating all around him. "She doesn't deserve to be treated like that. Who the fuck would ever want to hurt that sweet little goofball, anyways? I want to find the identity of the one who raped her as severely as they did and turn 'em inside fucking out. So goddam fucking bad." Max said to himself, fighting back tears of unabashed degradation.
	He struggled to keep his composure intact, harboring his incessant rage just long enough to make it to the bathroom intact. He closed the door behind him, choosing not to lock it in case Ruff had some crazy-ass emergency that needed to be addressed directly. Hopefully not, he thought. He didn't want to embarrass the poor girl at all by exposing himself, should she enter unexpectedly with his pants down, yet he also didn't want to feel out of reach to anyone, like a tomboy in distress or a ringing phone, maybe even a knocking door, a house-fire or a hostile alien takeover. One could never be too certain.
	~
	Max flipped a light switch on and a single fluorescent white bulb flickered to life, casting forth a luminous glow that touched most of the bathroom's lime-green-tiled surfaces, refusing to illuminate a blind corner behind a colorful paisley-adorned shower curtain. He walked over to a tall clean porcelain urinal seat, lifted a plastic lid and toilet seat cover and with his pants unzipped and his penis removed, proceeded to urinate freely. He whistled a familiar tune from a song in which he and his bandmates had written and had been rehearsing for weeks prior. He twirled the urine stream in a spiral-shape, splashing the basin vigorously, as natural tap water blended together with his own rejected yellow liquid, reeking of vinegar and milled oats. Overwhelming relief settled in from within his bladder and he felt content.
	Before he could shake his pink cock tip dry, the shower curtain slid back on its own, revealing a presence stood behind him. Max snickered and turned to tousle Ruff's purple hair playfully, guiding his hand-paw towards her gamer-girl noggin'. Instead, he got a handful of matted damp oil-slicked fur, very similar to that of a wet dog. Max's heart began to race again but with panic, not adoration. His one good shepcoon eye averted up towards a pitch-black figure hunkered over him like a mad-hungry vulture in search of fresh carrion. Twirling his finger-paws in a jungle of robust hair follicles, he realized he'd shoved his hand into a thicket of pubic hair and retracted it immediately. A pair of blood-red eyes glinted in the hovering darkness, roughly a foot above Maxwell's six-foot-tall height, condemning the anthro hybrid to his grave. Beneath the reddened eyes, a row of glinting ivory-pearled teeth had been revealed in a wide canine snarl. A large muscular dog's paw reached out and wrapped sturdy finger-paws around Max's neck, proceeding to choke the shepcoon. He grappled with the choking arm until he got a fighting chance at leverage, biting down hard on a knuckle which granted him temporary freedom. A firm grunt protruded from the large hulking figure upon being bitten, drawing an immediate stream of blood that flowed down his wrist.
	Max flinched back and ran towards the door to escape, knowing damn-well he'd left it unlocked but it was closed and locked from the inside. He struggled with the knob, tugging and yanking, hoping it would give under enough applied pressure, which it didn't. When that option had immediately been forfeit, he tried kicking the door open, even considered shoulder-checking it before he was pulled very hard backwards, stumbling over his heels, nearly tripping over a rug mat and losing his balance fortuitously. Max expected to fall into the tub and bang his head against a guard-rail for Gus to take showers easily without the fear of slipping but was instead guided into a vast darkness that seemed to span onward for miles. He fell and fell, deft and aimless, no end in sight, no more bathroom, no more house. All around his peripheral vision, Max looked for any landmarks to identify or something to grab hold of, yet to no avail. Pitch black darkness from all angles. He was falling into a void well beyond the mere capacity of his own dimension, traveling to a place beyond comprehension or logic or reason. A place at the end of all other places.
	Max was spiraling into himself and his abusive father led the way by blunt excessive force.
	~
	When he landed, Max expected to hit a concrete slab and explode upon impact, causing a very ugly gory scene for anyone to clean up after. A small part of him might have preferred that to where he ended up landing instead - right on top of his mother's favorite hand-quilted spreadsheet on his parent's queen-sized bed in his old childhood home in Brookings, Oregon. He recognized the stench of burnt sage and incense which his mother often utilized in her religious endeavors, something his father always personally despised and beat her on several occasions over. Max lay still on top of the quilt, strewn from multiple shirts owned by Suzanne's mother, assembled after the raccoon woman's passing. He wanted to move and stand up, to investigate and figure out where he was, but Max was no fool. He knew all too well about his dysfunctional upbringing space, his abusive haven, his sanctuary of doom and gloom. He also knew what had happened to him in the very same room which he now lay in. Max remembered what Harper, his father, had done to him in his youth, shortly after Jordan's untimely demise, a shocking blow to the family and an incredible bout of childhood trauma to add to Maxwell's long list of excessively and equally traumatic exploits. 
	"I refuse to acknowledge those memories. I'm not where I am right now, I slipped and fell into the bathtub in Gus' goddam master bathroom and knocked myself out cold. This is all just a very vivid lucid dream, nothing more. Get yourself together, shepcoon! Fuck!" Max said to himself. He could faintly hear boyish giggling from somewhere outside. The sound was rich and crystal-clear, potent and luminous in its vivacity. Max fought to hold back tears of sorrow and grief as he approached a nearby sliding-glass window to sneak a peek outside. Sure enough, Maxwell saw both himself and his kid brother Jordan during happier times. 
	"Hey, kiddos!" Another familiar voice that rang insurmountably loud within Maxwell's head and heart. "Y'all wanna come over 'ere and ride daddy for a bit? Mama ain't home yet, so y'all can take turns, one at a time. What'd'ya say, kiddos?"
	"Okay, daddy!" Jordan replied innocently enough. Max peered through open blind shades at his brother, young and vibrant, proceeded to walk towards Harper. Max banged on the trailer's bedroom window hard and fast, attempting to get Jordan's attention but he knew better, he knew what he was witnessing first-hand. Jordan's very first molestation, something no older brother can ever hope to forget.
	"LEAVE HIM ALONE, YOU BABY-RAPING FUCKER!!!" Max screamed at the top of his shepcoon lungs, warm breath adorning the window with condensation. He punched a flimsy wall very hard in an attempt to break free from the family trailer and rescue his kid brother from his rapist father. Instead, Max watched himself at a young age guide Jordan to his dad, hand-paws held companionably by sworn blood brothers. Max snarled and grit his teeth, tears welling up in his eyes.
	"LEAVE HIM ALOOONE!!!" Max screamed as he helplessly watched Harper pull Jordan's T-shirt free from his back and rub his belly, pinching his nipples and tickling his navel with perverted insistence. Max's face scrunched up in agony and warm tears began to flow down his cheeks as he witnessed himself at a young age take a seat upon his dad's thigh. Harper loosened a tiny Spider-Man belt buckle and unzipped Max's jean-shorts, slowly and cautiously exposing the young cub's virile uninitiated sheathed dog-penis. He watched his younger self flinch and cower from his dad before being drawn back in again for more, embraced with tender caresses by his dear ol' dad.
	"FUUUUCK I'LL FUCKING KILL YOU, MOTHERFUCKER! YOU DESERVE TO DIE ALL OVER AGAIN, YOU RAPIST BASTARD! FUCKING DIE, DAMMIT!!!"
	A warm, wet sensation touched down upon Maxwell's back-side, freezing him in place and shutting him up immediately. A low, croupy voice boomed from behind, startling the shepcoon into silent submission. 
	"Isn't it funny, to see this happen all over again? I bet you missed it, didn't you? I know you did. Face the music, honey. You can't stop the inevitable. You can't go back in time and fix the things that were done to you, no matter how wrong or disgusting they may have been." A warm, soothing voice whispered into his ear, a voice rich like mellow golden honey molasses poured upon velvet cake slices. A familiar voice he hadn't heard in nearly three decades.
	"Why are you showing all this to me?" Max whispered aloud, eyelid trembling with iridescent rage. His eye-patch was aglow with a stark red emanating sunlight from within, producing tiny heat shimmers that threatened to catch the trailer's interior curtains on fire, let alone his dreadlocked bangs.
	"I can never forgive my husband for the actions he committed against you, my darling. My dear hybrid, my raccoon shepherd boy. I was not there for you when I needed to be. That's my biggest regret in life. To know I neglected you when you needed me the most. You and Jordan both. Please forgive me, sweet child, for I have failed you and you have made a formidable history of failing others in return. Haven't you, boyo??"
	"Bullshit."
	"Your gut impulses might suggest otherwise, child." A salacious giggle from behind caused Max's hairs to raise up on end with a shiver cast down his spine. 
	"Fuck you, whoever the hell you are. My mother is dead, I know better than to listen to the likes of you. I don't want to be here anymore, I don't want to see any more of this. Please take me away right now." Maxwell said. 
	Outside, Harper had stripped Maxwell and Jordan both down to their T-shirts only, as he kept busy masturbating two very confused young furs, stroking off their knotted erections. Jordan was the first to climax, trembling with blank confusion while Harper kept a firm grip on the boy's waist, pinning him down in place upon the older German shepherd man's lap, also visibly erect. Jordan shrieked and gasped while Harper licked Maxwell's cheek and slid his middle finger-paw into Max's shepcoon tailhole, prodding mercilessly at the sensitive spongy region of his son's prostate. Max's youthful face twisted into a rictus of confusion and heartache as he remained perfectly still, arms fixated to his sides, taking his father's molestation in by stride, carefully watching his brother's shifting facial expressions and feeling nothing short of revolting. Max felt helpless and worthless, yearning for a quick death to stifle the embarrassment and shame of having his own dad fuck him indirectly out in the wide open, in front of the general public. Luckily, they lived in a rural copse of forest so exposure never posed a major issue… but still. Max's shame was unrivaled far and wide. He felt this even as an adult, witnessing the act unfold all over again with such vivid clarity.
	Max watched his younger self begin to weep pitifully as he hugged his younger brother Jordan quickly, even while he too also reached his state of orgasm, enduring his very first ejaculation at the greedy corrupted hand-paws of his perverted maniacal rapist father. Harper opened his maw and caught some of Jordan's sperm ropes on his tongue, moaning with satisfaction while Max's first ejaculated load landed on his dad's thigh. Harper was impressed at how virile a cub with Down syndrome could be after being shown proper guidance beforehand over many restless sweltering rape-fueled nights.
	"There's a good little daddy's slutty fucking whore-straggling bitch. Okay kiddos, let's keep this a secret from everyone else or I'll fucking destroy you and your brother, are we understood? I have no problem with burying you both in cement or feeding your mangy mutt-bred asses to rabid cannibalistic humans. Don't be a fucking loudmouth, either one of ya. If you get your daddy in trouble for this by running yer goddamned mouths off to the wrong-ass people, I'll kill y'all both and eat yer corpses my fucking self. Understood? Not a word spoken of this. It'll be our own little secret, got it?"
	"Yes, Daddy." Max and Jordan simultaneously agreed, both nodding their heads, even while using the small hand-towel provided by their dad to wipe themselves clean of any excess blood and semen. Max could almost feel his younger self's heart racing with uncanny speed. He also felt close to vomiting as he experienced his very first parental raping all over again, clear as crystal and twice as loud. 
	Max blinked his eye and in that very tiny flickering span of time, he went from his parent's trailer in a cozy Brookings coastal forest to a random unfamiliar dressing room, mostly unattended. Drum kit gear and string instruments lay strewn in a heap in one corner. Maxwell was sat upon one end of a large cozy leather sofa, much like the one he and Ruff-
(Wake up, Max! Wake up!)
	-Maxwell realized he wasn't alone in the room after all. On the other end of the sofa, Maxwell Blackburnadeaux the shepcoon grunge rocker and notorious bounty hunter watched a creepy reflective glimpse of himself at a much younger age grope and molest an equally preadolescent lynx-girl, naked except for a fancy lacy corset adorning her midriff. Her green eyes were trembling, looking aimlessly in all directions and dampened with frightened tears, as the lynx-girl attempted to make sense of her awkward predicament, wondering why she was being penetrated so hard and deep by the nice shepcoon boy she thought she could trust backstage after his wild and impressive rock show. So much for playing to charity, she thought as the pain grew even more swollen and his thrusting progressed into feral speeds, far past any means of ideal comfort.
	"Hurry up or we'll be caught! Is that what you want, Max?" She exclaimed. Max watched himself at a younger and far more impressionable age pin the youthful feline girl down upon the sofa's arm-rest, hand-paw firmly gripping her muzzle shut tight and legs wrapped around his waist with rigorous force as he thrust himself repeatedly into her spread-wide vagina, fondling at her rigid clitoris, knot swelling within her vagina, stretching her out to vast lengths as his growling and panting aloud in between breaths of superior bliss echoed throughout the dressing room, producing a small inchoate echo.
	"Not unless you learn how to shut the fuck up, little lynx-bitch." Max growled. 
	"I killed those other bastards who wanted to have at it with you for a reason, now lay still and learn to enjoy the satisfaction I'll grant unto you shortly." Max snarled. All at once, the shepcoon immediately recognized the tone and cadence of the girl's wavering quivering feline voice and his heart leaped atrociously at the sight of Amanda Scratch, actively being raped by his former younger self like a groupie throwaway slut to be forgotten about long after the night is over. In the end, he was no different from the bastard ruffians he chased away to protect her in the parking lot. 
	Max felt another tiny brushing sensation upon his shoulder, damp yet sustained.
	"Like father, like son, darling. You know as well as anyone that your father planted a seed of yearning within your heart. Why else would you have gone to such great lengths to seek out pleasure from others? Non-conformity is rich in your blood, shepcoon. The sooner you come to terms with it, the easier life will be for you when dealing with staunch rejection and even worse, retaliatory blame. On one hand, you did save that poor lynx girl's life. Yet on the other? She fell prey to your affectations. A viable prey to consume and regurgitate considerably."
	Max's mother dragged a slimy finger-paw down his shoulder and he shivered at the mere sensation of it, even as he watched himself wrap his hand-paws around Amanda's neck and choke the cub-girl out in the midst of fucking her senseless. She wept bitter aggregate tears of rough pleasure and he licked them clean while pinning her slender lynx-girl wrists against the leather sofa and hoisting her butt into the air, plowing himself into her pussy with reckless abandon in a sloppy missionary pose. She groaned painfully and yelped aloud multiple times, begging for help, to catch a breath, yet to no avail. When Max reached his explosive aggressive climax, Amanda bit down hard on his neck, drawing beads of blood. He reacted by slapping her hard in her face, then licking the point of impact, feeling his finger-prints swelling upon her cheek, forming a resolute bruise. Her pain produced pleasure from within as he ejaculated feverishly inside Amanda's snare-tight vaginal orifice, swollen and red from forced foreplay. He gnawed on her neck passionately as he bricked a sizable load deep within her underage womb. He rubbed her muzzle and fingered her anus to milk the girl of every last bit of forced statutory satisfaction he could muster, ignoring her weeping pleas of help and sanctity. Max's rapist-youth alter-ego craned his head at a crooked angle to get a good look at Maxwell and as he did, small beady glowing eyes opened upon his forehead, beckoning to Max to pay attention and give into the predominant destiny laid out by his abusive father. The creature disguised as Maxwell shivered and whistled aloud as it licked Amanda's cheek mockingly and continued its raw sexual assault, staring and winking, not holding back for a moment, even as a low sinister bellowing cried out from its croupy guttural depths.
	Max was on the verge of fainting once more. He closed his eyes shut tight and when he opened them again, he was no longer sat on a long sofa in a stuffy dressing room. He immediately felt the chill from a dark Oregon evening intrude upon his senses before he could even catch sight of anything. As he did sneak a peek, Max was stood near a large elaborate castle-shaped playground structure nestled in a huge sand-pit, early in the morning. He heard a bellowing cry from within and noticed a small Minnie Mouse backpack lay strewn in a heap at the base of the castle play-fortress, mostly school books. Max approached the fortress to get a closer look, despite the awful sounds of a struggle emanating from within. When he got close enough to peer through a wide opaque plastic dome, he saw a young German shepherd girl's face pressed firmly against the surface of the dome from the other side. Her tongue was propped out and her eyes rolled back in her head. Max took a moment to recognize exactly who he was looking at but once it clicked, his heart sweltered and skipped a few beats. Familiar voices echoed out from within the play-structure in-between grunts and moans of intermingled pain and pleasure.
	"Yeah, little girl, take it! Your dad loves fucking you like this, doesn't he?" A whimpering whine answered his question, followed by a quivering young shepgirl's voice.
	"Yes sir, Mister Max, he does! My daddy Teliver does this to me every day! He calls it a workout and I call it playtime because it feels so good!"
	"Feels good, eh? Try this one on for size, Milly! Don't worry about catching the bus for school either, I'll take you later but only after you've taken my big fucking knot in your tight young pussy." Max snarled and bit down on the girl's neck, speeding up significantly with his thrusting. She gasped and wailed aloud from within the playground structure as Maxwell witnessed another derogatory flashback. The climate went from chilly to lukewarm in record time as his penis shriveled into a flaccid state, witnessing the sexual abuse he may have once fantasized upon a helpless innocent German shepherd man's daughter. He had once lavished in the fantasy of having her become his own adopted child to fuck for days on end non-stop. Over time, opinions and interests changed within Maxwell. What he had once regarded as a very arousing state of affairs, he had now felt disgusted and challenged by every moment of. There were far too many parallels to his own personal upbringing. He saw his father in himself and his youthful spirit reflected in Milly and it horrified Maxwell to no end, coming to terms with the dawning realization that even he could be capable of obliterating a little girl's entire foundation of trust and affection, shoving her soul deep into an inescapable void of sexual victimization. He was over such protestations, so he thought. Impulses had harbored in his mind and his heart, yet he never allowed them to unfurl and ruin his reputation, only brushed such perverted deviant fantasies of predatory non-consensual fornication away to pull through with his duties at hand, whether that meant driving a cute lynx-girl home after a concert or saving a shepgirl's future from any potential misery and heartache by keeping her company while her father worked overtime on most night. Max's intentions had always stood for a good, noble cause, despite his father's actions nearly catapulting him into a stratosphere of pedophilic tendencies. 
	"Why the fuck are you showing me these things, mother?" Max whispered to nobody in particular, yearning for a reply. The shrill dampness of a tongue dragging against his earlobe was more than enough of a response to him.
	"To help you come to terms with yourself, child. I'm trying to save you from committing an ultimate sin against the girl who now resides in your keeping. You know of whom I speak."
	"Ruff." Maxwell thought of her bright shiny teal-green eyes and cute whimsical comebacks, her video-gaming prowess and sufficient ability to climb onto his shoulders with ease. Precious little doggo-mutt child. Max saw her face light up with pride and joy when she saw him and he didn't wish for that reaction to become forfeit, no matter how badly his father may have insisted otherwise. He didn't want to tarnish or betray any trust she felt towards him.
	"What the fuck do you want with her, exactly?!" Max asked.
	"The question you should be asking yourself is not what I want with her, dear child, but what YOU want with her. What do you desire, dear shepcoon? Shall you carry on your father's legacy and dominate the young mutt-girl with extreme prejudice, or shall you admit to your wrongdoings and confess your true feelings to those who would see fit to hear you out accordingly? Maybe your demon hell-spawn drummer, for instance. She's nearly back home now, along with the others, the Saluki girl and her lover, fellow guitarist brother-in-arms. Shall they bear witness to your savage predatory confession?"
	Max blinked and instead of opening his eyes to glance upon Milly getting raped in her favorite playground castle by the shepcoon bastard babysitter she trusted to tend to her care, he stared back at his reflection in Gus's standalone bathroom mirror, illuminated by a single fluorescent tube glowing obnoxiously bright from the ceiling above. His one good eye took a moment to adjust to the crisp aura of stark brightness. When his vision began to return with gradual ease, he noticed that he'd scorched a large ashen hole through his eye-patch. The aggressive rage from attempting to thwart his rapist father had ignited Max's eye socket from within like a burst of jet-fuel lit aflame and sprayed upon his face. He removed the eye-patch cloth and regarded his ocular prosthesis, a glass eye that gave an unsettling vibe, amazed by the object's sheer fireproof durability. The air was hazy with smoke which had been ventilated through an open window and a blowing fan near the bathroom door, yet not strong enough to set any smoke alarms off. Thank goodness for small favors.
	"You won't make me do it, dad. I refuse to give in." Maxwell said to the empty bathroom. No response. He shook his head and flung the ruined eye-patch directly into a small waste-bin placed beneath the bathroom sink. He inhaled a deep breath and left the bathroom, flicking the switch off before closing the door to return back to Maile's gaming chair, back to the living room, back to Ruff.
	~
	When he entered back into the living room without his usual orange head-piece, he saw Ruff propped in place upon the large living room sofa, still gaming away with profound diligence and concentration. She had removed her baggy jeans for comfort sake. Her small petite legs were fully exposed with a small pair of bright green undergarments worn instead. She glanced his way and waved with a smile, then did a shocked double-take at his lack of patch-work cloth and sudden visible fake eye. 
	"There you are! I figured you probably needed to go number two or something, since you were gone for so long. Uh, where'd your face-covering go?"
	"No worries. Scoot over. Is this a two-player game?" Max asked Ruff. She nodded her head and crossed her legs in a meditative sitting pose in an attempt to get comfortable, despite having been thrown off by the appearance of an un-patched Maxwell. Her effort were short-lived as Max pried the controller from her grip and paused the game, placing it gently down on a nearby table. He slid closer to the dog-girl and fondled at her green panties. Ruff squirmed and moaned softly, uncertain how to react and what to do in response to his ongoing physical advances. She tried to shove Max off but he resisted, instead inching ever-closer to the dog-girl. 
	"Max, what are you do-"
	"Never mind. I don't care about this stupid fucking video game. They all mean shit. You, however, do not." Maxwell said with a pang of declamatory aggression. He pressed Ruff down by her shoulders forcefully onto the sofa and yanked her panties free, tugging at her ankles as he attempted to remove them and catch a quick whiff of her bright green undergarments. When she resisted his advances, he balled up his fist and threatened to punch Ruff's face. She flinched from Max severely.
	"I'll smash the ever-loving fuck out of your goddamn face if you don't stop struggling."
	Ruff reluctantly went limp, forfeiting any further attempts to reject his voracious predatory sexual advances.
	"What I say goes, you got it? The others won't be home for a while so we have a lot of time to ourselves. Isn't that a good thing? I'm happy about that, how do you feel about it?"
	"Max, please stop, you're hurting me." Ruff tried to say through whimpering tears.
	"As to be expected, little cunt. Lay still or I'll fucking choke you to death."
	"M-m-Max? W-what are you talking about?" She could hardly form a sentence through her hitched breaths.
	"I said LAY STILL. BE FUCKING QUIET." Max growled, shoving his face into hers. Their eyes met and locked on, even while he maneuvered his erection into place. Ruff's eyes never inched away from his own, fearing what he'd do if they broke eye contact. Ruff quickly realized she was staring at a fake eye and flinched again. Max dragged his tongue against her snout and Ruff began to cry bitter heaving tears of fear and distrust while Maxwell violently thrust himself forward, burying his knotted penis deep inside Ruff's virgin vagina, tearing through her hymen and drawing a gush of blood that squirted upon her green panties and part of the table on which she now lay. He grabbed hold of her wrist when she attempted to reach down and pull his dick away from inside her frail little mutt-girl's body. She cried and wailed aloud as Maxwell threatened her once again with a balled fist propped up against her chin, threatening to punch the ever-fucking life out of her if she didn't do exactly what in the hell he wanted. The world came to a vivacious stand-still and Maxwell's grinding thrusts were echoed in full by Ruff's terrified screaming, two sounds playing off each other in a terrible subdued harmony. Ruff's tears flowed constantly as Max's huge knotted dick bulged thick and firm from within her vaginal orifice, leaving a faint impression on her youthful abdomen. He thrust into her pussy as violently as a feral dog mating with a bitch in robust heat, snarling and gazing with tender love and affection at his latest victim, lapping away excess tears from her cheeks as he snarled and moaned at how tight she felt.
	"Who's good at playing games now, fucking little whore?" Max groaned, nibbling at her nipple.
	"Please stop, no more, please, please stop, you're hurting me, no more, God please, STOP!"
	"SHUT THE FUCK UP AND LET ME FINISH, GOD DAMN IT!!!" Max screamed aloud.
	When he at last reached a quick thorough orgasm, Ruff attempted to push him free and maintain her no-no-no mantra, even while drool exploded from his lips and he grunted and yelped aloud. Ruff grit her teeth and wept uncontrollably as Max's knotted dick finally penetrated her vagina all the way. He thrust himself into her balls-deep and felt his knot expand from within, feeling a brisk snapping sensation like a balloon popping or a bone snapping. A small trail of blood leaked from beneath Ruff's violated clitoris, permeating Max's shaft with slick red-tinted estrus. Globs of warm sticky cum leaked down her thighs and stained the surface of the table she had been raped on as Max continued to ejaculate deep within her womb, refusing to pull out for anyone or anything, fucked hard with reckless abandon so she had been. Once he found the will and strength to remove his dick from her violated underage mutt-girl's cunt, he gave her cheek a final hungry licking lap from chin to temple then retired to the downstairs bathroom in absolute silence, not even realizing Ruff's gradual exit as she slipped out through the back patio door where Maile had left with Sammy previously. 
	"Go home, little bitch. Say anything to anyone about this and I'll rape you five times more, that's a fact." Max said to nobody at all, for Ruff had already escaped from the vile shepcoon's clutches but at what cost and at what rate to her own health and satisfaction? As Max stared deep into the creases of his aged, decaying hybrid face, attempting to come to terms with what he'd just done, he almost thought he could see Ruff as she stumbled aimlessly, half-naked into a secluded Grants Pass alleyway to attempt to hide from crooked-eyed Maxwell, in case he should find a reason to pursue Ruff for another round of violent bloody hate-sex. She never noticed the presence of onlookers nearby, mocking the girl's erstwhile attempt at a fast exit, plotting their own intrusive little rape-laden ensemble behind her back. Ruff maintained a fight-or-flight approach, choosing to fly quietly back to a familiar place she could call home. She didn't want to look at anyone else, for fear of dire shame and embarrassment in explaining to others what had just happened to her, why she looked like a murder victim. Ruff would just laugh aloud and say she had been murdered inside and would never be the same girl, ever again.
	Max stared into the bathroom mirror for a brief moment longer before opening a medicine cabinet door beneath the mirror and removing a small scalpel blade from a plastic housing kit. He regarded his reflection in the mirror one last time with a gracious smile before plunging the blade-end of the scalpel into his neck, cutting through runnels of flesh and fur and skin. He hit a snag of dense thick muscles and growled, struggling to carve through the thicket and be fucking done with the regret already. He could see the faces of the girls he'd violated all staring back at him in the mirror, stood behind him, regarding the shepcoon with asinine pity and shameful indulgence. So many faces all blending and shifting into one individual entity. A great maw opened from within the center of the shifting mass and Maxwell's father shoved his head through the thicket of trembling faces and gelatinous wide-eyed victims, staring with relentless hatred at his son. Harper's mouth opened wide and his jaw became unhinged as a single meaty arm protruded from within, pointing directly at Max with judgmental intensity. When Max had finally carved all the way through his neck, ignoring the mocking spirit of his sexually-abusive father and the helpless victims left behind in his terrible wake, Max rammed the scalpel with ease into his glowing eye socket and helped stifle the pain by smashing his face violently into the bathroom mirror, peppering his brow and cheeks with tiny slivers of fine glass that bore into his nostrils and eyelids, feeling Gus's fancy scalpel rupturing his brain even deeper and ultimately-
	"HEY, RINGTAIL!! DID YOU DIE IN THERE OR SOMETHING??!" Ruff's youthful voice hollered.
	Maxwell awakened from a very vivid, fucked-up daydream. He rubbed his neck and only felt warm, fluffy raccoon fur pelts. He looked down into the white wash-basin of the sink and didn't see any blood or cum at all, only fresh water droplets from when he'd just washed his hand-paws after using the restroom. He glanced over at the shower curtain and it was drawn shut, nobody else in sight. He didn't realize Harper's phantom was standing just out of sight behind him. Max never even noticed when his dad's ghost evaporated from the room with resolute silence, leaving behind just Maxwell and the air in which he breathed. He sullied up enough strength from within to offer an audible reply to Ruff, hoping his words wouldn't seem far too awkward for comfort.
	"Hell no! There isn't a bathroom in existence that could kill my shepcoon ass!" Max said aloud, wondering if she didn't mind the obscenities or if she would even get the joke. Her rich whimsical laughter in response was more than enough of an indicator to him that she didn't mind one bit. He left the restroom and returned back to the living room to help Ruff set up Maile's computer on the living room's big-screen ultra hi-definition television to watch an endless string of hilarious TikTok videos. They drained the battery on Maile's laptop, failing to ensure the device remain plugged into a power outlet. This carried out as the sun touched down beyond the distant horizon, finally relieving the day of its ethereal orange glow, reverting to the crisp cool blue nighttime slumber.
	~
	When Gus returned home, he was met by Bradley and Calli, who had also managed to return back home to Enim-Noinu HQ wearing nothing but swimsuits and toting large surfboards above their heads while sharing a lit doobie. Maile and Sammy met up with the group as she came home through the backyard where she had initially left from earlier, small pocket flashlight in hand. Gus, Brad, Calli, Maile and Sammy all greeted each other and snuck into the home quietly so as not to disturb Max and Ruff, who were both fast asleep on the sofa. Ruff's head was relaxed, laying calm and content on Max's lap and Max's hand-paw rest graciously on Ruff's thin, bony shoulder. They both had PlayStation 5 controllers in their possession and yet, both had fallen asleep while playing. The sight was adorable at best, as the returning group made small intricate steps through the house, so as not to disturb the resting video-gamers. Sammy eventually forfeit the quiet stealth approach by walking up to Ruff and poking his wet dog nose against her forehead playfully. The dog-girl snickered and rubbed Sammy's head with love while Maxwell stayed fast asleep, nearly snoring in the depths of his endless slumber, devoid of all traces of his despicable father.
	Max heard his mother's calm chuckling laughter in another lifetime and a small grin formed upon his face through his loosened sleep, reminding him of more innocent times in his youth. At least the sound of his dear late procyonid mother's laughter wasn't long-since forgotten. He reflected in his mother's invaluable love and support as Maxwell planted a very quick paternal kiss upon Ruff's forehead.

-END-