The anthro reformatory gates opened and a hybrid canine walked into a mysterious unknown freedom that he'd thought had all but abandoned him. 

~
Ome Francis, a young male raccoon anthro with green eyes glistening from behind a long black strand of bangs flowing down his stout procyonid muzzle, travels along Interstate Five in a large white clunker of a van that his job had purchased from a stockyard auction in West Sacramento. She backfires and chugs often but ol' Bessie still manages to commute reasonably well, considering the fifteen-per-gallon she drains, a transmission apt to blow soon and a severe lack of air conditioning, among other things. Ome sighs and honks the horn at absolutely nobody in particular, a tactic to help stifle boredom and exhaustion on the lonely stretch of farmland interstate. Semi-trucks loaded with hay bales, cattle trailers, lumber stacks, more hay bales and depleted oxygen tanks surrounded Ome from all sides, on both routes of the interstate. He felt strangely miniscule in comparison with the lumbering beasts on eighteen wheels, blowing diesel fumes and roaring high-octane.
This route sucked: so very few trees to be seen, other than an occasional patch of cypress stalks spread around a wellspring. To his right, a range of Sierra Nevada's finest mountain splendor, nestled atop the beloved Sierra Foothills, a mining paradise and grey-zone between valley and forest. A perfect grow-site. Past the dogwood-fancy extra-thickened guardrail barricades to Ome's left, marshes and industrial processing plants that lead a trail to the dockyards, the bay, Berkeley campus, Oakland, then the heart of California itself, home of the rich and famous and faaaabulously fabulous… 
Ugh, I wouldn't mind moving there one day, perhaps. Gotta find the right mate… or pet, first. There's somebody out there. Certainly, there always is. Right, Ome? That's right. San Francisco isn't too far out of reach. He… or she, is out there. Just-
A motorcycle speeds past the van and a young woman riding coach (or "bitch" as most bikers prefer, jokingly sometimes.) decides that she's finished with her Neapolitan milkshake after all. Seeing as there isn't a trash receptacle in sight, she settles for the next best thing - a trash panda, in a dumpster on wheels. She hurls the shake with stifling accuracy dead-center right at the work-van's windshield, exploding it against the reflective surface, omitting a mushroom-cloud-shaped tri-colored creamy miasma, swirling and flickering from ample amounts of wind velocity hurled against the glass windshield.
"HOLY FUCK!!!" Ome screams. He flicks on the van's windshield wipers and witnesses the woman smiling at him. He watches her twirl her torso around to face him, licking her teeth flirtatiously. He is practically ready to be flashed by her, perhaps a bit of solid encouragement to help keep him awake and make the trip intact with limited error. 
Instead of a great pair of budding sexy youthful B-cup breasts, he watches her give him the universally-recognized "UP YOURS" sign. Ome's jaw drops, practically off its damn hinges. He watches as the green-haired punk-rocker woman taps her biker-husband's shoulder, cueing him to speed off. She flips him off and screams out loud, "Welcome to NORCAL, ya FUCKIN' FAAAAG!!! HAHAHAHAAA!!" 
By now she's laughing in hysterics, even as the motorbike and its two uncannily bigoted pilots shrink away gradually, growing smaller until they're well out of eyesight and earshot, no more growling noisy engine. Ome sighs and rubs at his temples with one hand-paw, the other grasping the wheel far tighter than necessary.
Fuck my life. This isn't even anywhere NEAR Nor-Cal, those unbelievable retards. Holy fucking Trump voter liquidation, can this day get any worse?
Before he even got a chance to settle from the hate-induced greeting with a milkshake-pelting thrown in for good freaking measure, Ome the poor bewildered raccoon presses his footpaw down upon the van's gas petal, accelerating from a whiny crawl to a growling sprint. He passes an elderly woman, an anthro of heavy weasel distinction. He waves and grins with bitter disdain as the van veers around her outlandish Ferrari. She sneers at him, brow furrowing and teeth exposed, slapping at her horn while yelling random muffled obscenities and Ome just laughs. He can't help it, by Golly!
Sweet Lord, how did my life boil down to this? I'm passing up old bitches in hot-rods, in a fucking clunker of a van, loaded with God-knows-what in the rear cabin… as if I don't really need to guess too hard. Oooh mylanta, please give me the strength to get through this shit-storm of a delivery today.
The delightfully gothy-punkish raccoon lad named Ome Francis looks down at the van's ugly outdated radio (a tape deck? Seriously?!), then flicks it on, tuning the dial to ninety-eight-point-five. An ideal hard rock station for the Pacific brethren. Ome summed up his job title in a nutshell: A private courier for some dinge-hole third-rate layman's bartering company. Who would've ever thought he'd be involved in this style of… delivery processing?
Sure, more like drug smuggling. Fuck. That's gotta be weed, I'm sure of it. Big blocks of goddam ganja, delivered by yours truly. Ay caramba.
This job was not the most suitable position for a raccoon of his particular distinction, but Ome took whatever was offered to him, no doubts given. He rarely ever felt any exception to the rule… until now. He tuned the radio into another nearby heavy metal station after commercial ads interfered with the power of Layne Staley and the Rooster and instead rolled with Pantera and the 'Bath, keeping a keen watch on his time and distance traveled for compensatory purposes later on. If he made it intact, that is.

~
Maxwell Blackburnadeaux squinted his German shepherd/raccoon hybrid eyes; almond-crescent sockets, lids teeming with fine fibrous furs, doused in elegant shades of onyx and silver, raccoon fur-hued patterns. He rubbed them against the mid-day sunshine, so impeccably bright and practically forgotten about. Max blinked and pulled free a stray lash from his left eye, hazel-hued and rather fetching in heterochromia-laden conjunction with his brown right. He walked across a large fairly-unkempt asphalt driveway, nearly tripping over a parking curb while adjusting his vision to the surprising ruthlessness of natural sunlight, something he'd been neglected for months too long, far too often.
The delightful committee of boozers and potheads who ran "The Ridge" had a profound tendency of keeping their most favored pupils locked down like the dogs they were. (most of the students-slash-underage-prisoners-in-tow were some form of a canine - wolf, fox, dingo, shepherd, bulldog, pitbull, even a Chihuahua - all canines in attendance; excluding a salamander, a couple bluejays, a crow, a cow and a Chinese-crested dragon, a majority of the students were doggo-influenced.) The attendees of Tucker Ridge confined in lucratively dim if not entirely darkened living conditions. Not far too grueling… for some. 
Max grunted while adjusting his stride to keep from tripping, swinging his ringed raccoon's tail in a wide circle around his slender hybrid-canine head. Upon resuming a stable posture, he carried on to a nearby stretch of backwoods country road, freshly paved and painted; black as the depths of space-time with piercing white and yellow hatch-mark lines aplenty, freshly painted just mere hours ago… probably. Max hoisted his duffel bag from hand-paw to shoulder, grunting softly. If thumb-pawing for a ride would be the ideal method of swift transportation to wherever he wound up, he wasn't complaining any. 
Whistling a tune and hooking an extended thumb-paw out for weary vehicular travelers to gawk at and ignore all too often, Maxwell Horacio Blackburnadeaux, former inmate of Tucker Ridge Anthro & Cub Correctional Institute (known also as furry jail or The Ridge, according to Max himself), hoped to land smoothly upon his feet and take off running sooner than later, now that he'd come of age to exit The Ridge, to cut loose from their goddam premises and move on with his own disoriented and jumbled life, all criminal charges pardoned indefinitely with a few terms and conditions to abide by under heavy jurisdiction and with a swift sense of willpower and loyalty. He reminded himself of his terrible crime: murder under self-defensive circumstances - yet nevertheless a killing; Maxwell, the sole aggressor, the culprit, the accidental gunslinger and shotgun surgeon who put down his despicable drunkard drug-addicted perverted cub-molesting father, Harper, by way of twelve-gauge round through the shepherd man's gut, a clean-cut blast that made it all the way through his father's backside.
A nice image to fall asleep to, all those long and miserable seven years.
This horribly traumatic experience, coupled with his last seven gruesome years spent under the heavily-secured tenancy of FURRY JAIL, has altogether rendered Maxwell into a disheartened and estranged anthro youth. Shunned by many, molested and raped by most and beaten to a bloody pulp by the rest, Max let his thoughts wander relentlessly as he carried on down the dense copse-enshrouded pit of forest road, a marvel of natural beauty to behold from all angles and all directions. Redwoods, pines, dogwoods, cypress, white fir and oak trees offered significant shade along the road, a glaring relic of blacktop nestled amongst a Pacific Northwestern sanctuary of rich flora and fauna. He never wanted to leave this place, though he certainly wished to be free of the fucking Ridge for good, may the Creator serve him well.
Maxwell walked on, another relic of a loner-borne nation, a myriad collection of misunderstood and rejected hybrid beasts of burden, cast aside and forgotten about by commonplace society; the human race, those oh-so-fun-loving considerate degenerates. Lone bastard survivor of two drug-ravaged overdoses, one involving a fatal firearm discharge and vehicular manslaughter (or cubslaughter, in his brother's case), Max only hoped to reinvent himself… somehow. He wanted to escape his past, to bury the demons that have haunted him for years; to smite the awful traumatic memories of communal shower rape and late-night bunk-bed domination. Max had always been put into so many unfair advantages. Fucked without even a moment of remorse or a shred of dignity. No kindness. No patience. No passion. Just an asshole bully timberwolf's fat knotted dick rammed unknowingly up a young shep-coon's tight unlubricated virgin tailhole while his legs are held spread wide apart forcefully by the asshole timberwolf's two coyote friends, those damn ignorant McMallory twins, problem cubs at best. The timberwolf's ugly threat of slitting Max's throat with a large freshly-sharpened machete of a switchblade dug into his neck, drawing the slightest hint of blood that smears a tiny stain on an otherwise clean pillowcase… another reason for the warden to yell at Max come the break of dawn, during rise and shine commencing. Saliva leaking down upon Max's muzzle, the twins laughing like Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum, the rough excessive forceful pushing sensation of his insides being violated, molested, trampled upon and impaled with reckless abandon. He held back his tears and his vomit as the fucking asshole timberwolf jizzed hard inside the shep-coon, nearly choked to death as a result, any excessive finger-paw-laden scratches, bruises or blemishes hid by a blue collar, rummaged for out of a dumpster.
And for what? Who knew? Pleasure. Shits and giggles. A dare. A stupid goddam schoolyard mockery. A wrong choice, replete with resoundingly crucial retaliation of a juvenile nature. A bum-rush idea that seemed better in thought beforehand. Maxwell refused to let any of that toxic sludge derail his plans to be free from the proximity of the absolute shithole he deemed home for one year too many, albeit most mistakenly.

~
Ome shifts position in his seat, thinking about all those awful hemorrhoid stories he'd heard from veteran truck drivers and technical consultants who made a living sitting down in tiny little cubicles for hours, days… even weeks at a time. He recalls the pictures and live surgical videos he'd stumbled upon online out of benign curiosity; recalls how hideously identical anal polyps are to cauliflower heads, how completely and freakishly similar they both look alike. Ome feels a small ivy-strand of panic creep slowly up his spine, grabbing a robust hold of his lungs and drill a burdening nausea into his stomach.
The world around him is graying out, drifting into a blurry intaglio of memory and mystery. Before he could feel himself thrust into exile from a fully conscious state, Ome swiftly pulls the van over to the side of a barren road nestled among tons of greenery and parks old Bessie with rapid succession. He spins both the passenger and his driver side window crank levers clockwise, lifts his seat lever, lays back and rests a spell, pardoning any excess drowsiness. Upon further inspection, Ome Francis realizes that he'd been driving for far longer and faster than he originally imagined he would. He fished a cellular phone out of his pocket and clicked it on, bringing up the GPS app to check his location. 
"Crescent City?! Holy crap, that puts me really close to Brookings… way closer than I imagined. Excellent! This'll be a cinch after all… holy crap, I need a breather, I need to-"
The raccoon hyperventilates for a swift moment, allowing the sweet scents of nature to perturb his senses. After catching a breath or several, Ome Francis leans forward and reaches for the primary key, stuck in the van's ignition. He twists the dial counterclockwise, shuts the sputtering old blocky-shaped bitch's engine off, pulls the key free from the ignition slot and applies the emergency brake before nodding off completely, sliding the keys into his jean pocket for safekeeping. No other sounds can be heard, besides his labored breathing… and a distant swallow chirping aloud. 
Surprising lack of nature out here, Ome thinks as he locks the doors and rolls the windows back up, leaving them opened by a smidge to maintain precious exposure to fresh crisp forest air. He feels oddly guilty locking himself in so aggressively but as he found out the hard way on more than one occasion in his own youth, one can never truly know for sure when some random dick-wad will walk along and arrive promptly, accidentally changing the entire equation to one's perfectly boring-as-fuck life… and steal some belongings in the process.

~
A blue Expedition slowed down beside Maxwell as he was resting upon a large tree stump. The stump jutted out over the road, save for a chunk of roadside shoulder space. A window rolled down on the passenger side of the SUV and a wolf-woman stuck her head out. Her eyes were a solid green and her fur was brown and course. She had a rugged elegance about her that Max noticed immediately. These furs had to have come from back east somewhere, perhaps Pennsylvania or Maryland. She glanced upon Maxwell carefully with a gaze that suggested paranoia and uncertainty. He waved and nodded, admiring her caution.
"Hello, young man! Are you waiting for a ride?" She asked the shep-coon. 
So much for caution… Max thought as he just shook his head and peered back down to his paw-padded feet, hoping the vehicle would drive off, that they'd take the hint and leave him be. He needed to remind himself to pick up shoes eventually, maybe even a pair or two of socks.
"See? I told you. Every time, I swear…" the driver, a male skunk with brown and black streaks coursing along his muzzle and a tiny beige tuft of fur planted squarely upon the top of his slim-shaped head, mumbled aloud, low and rumbling yet still audible. Max snickered at the anthro mephitidae's fine display of impatience, nor did he blame the gentlefur one bit. Nobody could ever be entirely certain of who they pick up off the side of the road, especially during such ruggedly harsh times for anthros nationwide. Any form of hitchhiking was deemed to be a guaranteed hit-or-miss gamble, every time. Max felt a sense of relief for this small group, this family dynamic, as they proceeded to roll along without coming any further to a full-fledged stop. They were far better off not giving him a ride, insofar as he was concerned. He wasn't in the habit of butchering entire families, after all… not anymore. Not since his own.
As the vehicle gained speed and began to drive off, he caught a brief glimpse into the back seat, where two small cubs were buckled snugly into separate child-seats. One was a wolf cub, a pretty brown-furred girl with long chestnut hair and big fetching green eyes wearing a long-sleeved green turtleneck sweater, staring curiously at Max. The other was a fairly older skunk cub, a stout-faced young anthro-boy wearing a baseball cap backwards upon his fuzzy skunk-striped head and a tarnished Pokemon T-shirt, evidently his favorite tee-shirt. The skunk boy pressed his thumb-paw against his chin and wiggled his slender paw-padded fingers in front of his pudgy face, sticking his bristly skunk tongue out at Max. The adult wolf-woman passenger caught sight of the young skunk-boy's persuasive act from the corner of her wandering eye and scolded him out loud. 
"Ether, be nice! He's just a harmless raccoon-fur taking a break from walking! Gosh, sometimes I wish you could be as sweet as Karla."
The vehicle sped off and Max remained sat upon the large petrified stump, chuckling to himself. Ether and Karla, huh? Cute names. I wonder if I'll run into them again sometime in the future? He wondered to himself, along with the pondering curiosity of whether or not they were even siblings... maybe half? Max was reminded of his own brother and a dire streak of pain echoed through his chest. He thought it was the feeling of one's heart breaking substantially. He pushed back all those disgusting memories and hopped off the stump, brushing his butt clean of excess bark and dirt, then continued on his way once more, counting steps in numerical intervals, unsure of where his nose would guide him to… or to whom.

~
Out of nowhere, Ome got a stiffy.
He woke up with a brandishing case of tent-pole bulge in his pants. He wondered if he'd had a pretty fulfilling wet dream, to be so damn erect upon awakening. Silently and without any hesitation, he unzipped his blackened jean pants, opened the flaps wide, reached under his boxer-briefs, removed his slightly knotted penis and started to stroke himself off. Slow at first, merely gliding his hand-paw along the length of his meaty shaft, pinching at the small hint of knotted bulge formed upon the base of his cock, flicking at the tip playfully with his thumb-paw and panting with avid joy. He fantasized about numerous crushes and sexy skinny twink-bois he'd sucked and fucked while growing up in the Riverside area, down south of Los Angeles.
Ome Francis grew more aggressive with his strokes. He nibbled at his lower lip, flicked his tongue against his teeth, hunched his shoulders against his neck and spread his legs a bit wider, difficult to do while sitting in the van's driver-side cockpit. He leaned his seat back further by pulling on the rigid plastic lever that always refused to give upon the first few pulls, rusty and aged as it was. Once it did give, his seat flung back rapidly. Ome banged his head against the floor of the van's cabin hard. He groaned, rubbed at the back of his head and returned to his previous engagement with Mary St. Thumb and her four knuckle-headed daughters.
The sudden cranial blow from his sudden back-fling provoked a double-heated orgasm, as he squirted creamy pearlescent jizz-droplets upon his chest and face. Ome's body relaxed instantaneously and any further tension he'd felt before dissipated as smooth as the flowing ropes of warm cum that ran down his chest, slow and croupy, scented of saltwater taffy. He took a deep breath, raised his arms above his head and stretched it out. When the cum-drunkenness had dissipated, Ome leaned over towards the passenger seat. He reached into the van's glovebox and pulled a tissue free from a box within, nestled between his wallet and the envelope describing his destination and cargo. He wiped his own cum off his face and chest, taking a tiny taste of one large glob purely out of curiosity. 
Satisfaction arose in his heart and his tail wagged excitedly. Ome crumpled up the tissue, chucked it out the window and drifted back into a thick sleep. Not a single sound of a vehicle's engine could be heard arriving from either direction of the road he'd parked beside. This was just fine by him. Privacy and seclusion was always a welcome commodity after enduring a spontaneously sexual climax.

~
Maxwell didn't even acknowledge the second pair of footsteps coming up behind him until he heard the hissing. When he did, a sound of air escaping from an overfilled balloon pinched slightly shut, he twirled around and raised his fists, bracing himself for a bout of ass-kicking. He'd received plenty of practice in fisticuffs during his time spent in the home, no way in hell would they-
He stopped immediately and lowered his arms, unfurling his fists and cocking his head to one side. A wolf-anthro stood tall and steady in front of him. This wolf was unique though, for he also possessed a body of scales interspersed with course, shaggy fur. Max gazed upon him with shock and awe. The wolf giggled and hissed simultaneously, utterly adorable.

"Wow, am I really that intimidating?" He said. Max shook his head free of dazed incomprehension and smacked his forehead, shaking his head and grinning ear to ear. He lowered his hand-paw and portrayed sincerity, bowing his head, tucking his tail between his legs.
"Terribly sorry, you just… threw me off, didn't expect to meet up with anyone else out here."
"Ah! Sure thing, no worries! Yeah, these woods are often barren but once in a while a potential buddy or two pops out to make an appearance." He said, smiling wide. Max looked at his razor-sharp fangs and was reminded of a cobra. That broke the ice for him - a Wolf-Cobra hybrid. Maxwell had officially met another hybrid anthropomorphic creature, a fellow furry mix… and he couldn't have been more ecstatic. Max ran up to him and held out his hand-paw, gesturing a shake of good faith, which the wolf-cobra caught onto immediately. They exchanged a warm, leathery greeting along with their names.
"I'm Maxwell Blackburnadeaux, but you can call me Max. Pleasure to meet you!" Max said with a grin.
"The pleasure is all mine! I'm Nelizar Fey Zukira, but you can call me 'Neli if you'd like. I'm fine with whatever you settle on, really!"
"So you'd be cool if I called you fuck-ass?"
Nelizar scoffed and curled his brow, chuckling softly. "Um, hold your horses there, Padre. Anything but that."
"Sorry, I just had to… couldn't be helped." Max said, keeping a bout of braying laughter abated.
"I see." Nelizar said, curling his thick wolf-cobra brow. "I imagine walking this stretch of road all alone can get pretty boring at times, huh?" Nelizar asked Max with sincere interest. They started to walk together, heading towards an unmentionable civilization located far beyond sight or sound. 
"Isn't too bad, actually. I like the peacefulness and the seclusion. Helps me think clearly." Max said, kicking a pebble in his path, causing it to bounce rapidly along the element-ruined tarmac surface before landing into a nearby stream with a sparkling spash.
"That's definitely a solid point well made! This place… there's sheer magic to be found here. One just has to bear in mind where to look and how often!" Nelizar said, winking an eye and clicking his serpent-forked tongue. Max chuckled beneath his breath.
"Magic in the form of constant rainfall and overzealous coffee-binging prudes? No thanks, I'll pass." Max said, running and twirling into a cartwheel at random along the abandoned stretch of road. His tail flipped and flummoxed with agile perkiness. The soles of his paw-padded feet slapped down hard upon the blacktop and he stumbled a bit, re-adjusting his balance with his furry slender shep-coon arms held up high to his sides, forming a large V. Nelizar applauded the shep-coon's energetic antics. Max bowed and nodded his head, smiling wide, gazing back up into Nelizar's eyes.
"Can you believe I learned that shit from a guy who used to bully me mercilessly back at The Ridge? Fucking unreal, man. I'm tellin' ya." Max said, catching his breath. 
"Is that so? How'd that come to pass?" Nelizar asked, folding his arms across his chest, scale-plated legs long and robust, fur-adorned feet keeping pace over the wolf-cobra's extended gait.
Max cleared his throat and reached into his jean pocket, whipping out an Altoids tin. He opened the small canister and removed a tarnished Bic lighter and a rolled-up joint, freshly packed with the finest Pacific Northwestern ganja money could afford to buy. He plopped the joint against a corner of his lips, holding it in place. He glanced at Nelizar and held the lighter up. "You care for a toke or two?"
Nelizar held his hand-paw up to Max, shaking his fuzzy canine head. "No thank you, I don't partake."
"You ain't missing much then, believe me." Max chuckled. He flicked his lighter to emanate a small flame and touched it to the tip of the ganja-fag. He inhaled and inhaled again, toking deep, illuminating the tip of the joint with glowing orange embers and crumbling ashen debris, paper and bud remnants, shifting into dirt-strewn dust. Max held the smoke in for a duration and exhaled through his nostrils, stifling a cough. He breathed in deep through his raccoon-shepherd nostrils, exhaled through his mouth and coughed hard, croupy and deep. 
Nelizar's snout scrunched up into a litany of disgust as he gagged silently at the sound of Max's sinuses being disrupted by the intrusive marijuana smoke. Max looked over and hawked up a luger, spitting it into a nearby ditch. He craned his head to crack his neck a bit, then walked towards a nearby tree stump, the final proof of a tree's prolonged existence, severed by greed and human consumption. "Come on over, take a spell, relax a bit. I'll tell you all about it." Max said, toking another hit from his ganja cigarette and plopping down comfortably upon a cedar stump.

~
Ome was awakened by a rapping noise on the van's driver-side window.
He glanced over abruptly, rising from his bliss-fueled daze. A lanky female bluejay stood outside his window, dressed in officer duds. A patrol unit was parked behind the clunker van with its lights engaged, strobing blue and red and white flashes in sporadic patterns. Ome's heart skipped a couple beats, recalling what he'd been doing prior to dozing off. He reached down and felt a wave of relief flush over him when he realized that he'd already put his penis back home, zipped up tight and snug. He nodded to the bird officer and attempted to roll his window down, realizing in dawning panic that he was turning the lever the wrong way. He cursed at himself silently and switched directions, causing the window to creep down in bounding intervals.
"Good afternoon, young raccoon."
"Uh, h-hello, officer." A goddam deer in headlights. Ome felt as if he may piss himself.
"Having car troubles, sir?" The dashing avian asked, brow cocking as she glimpsed the van once over.
Ome looked ahead past the horizon of the road, veering into another blind canopy of forest, wondering if anyone else may drive by. Luckily he and the bluejay cop had the area to themselves.
"No, ma'am, actually I was hoping to get a little bit of rest before driving to my primary destination."
"Oh, and where would that be?"
"Bremerton, Washington. I was asked to make a quick deliver from Brookings to Eugene in mid-transit."
"That far up north? Where'd you come from?"
"Riverside, California."
"Wow, holy shit. You're a SoCal raccoon then, huh? Well party on, man."
Ome chuckled, shrugging. What could he say? SoCal had its outlandish perks. 
"So you're driving this vehicle all the way from Southern California to Northern Washington?"
"Correct." Ome said with a friendly grin and a nod. The bluejay scoffed and cocked her feathery brows, face pinched tight in a tone of disregard. She must've thought him absolutely bonkers… or heavily determined.
"While I do respect your will to pull over and get some rest, as opposed to trying to drive while tired and nodding out, I'll have to ask you to relocate elsewhere, since this is a…" The officer inhaled and sighed deep, exhausted from having to repeat herself constantly to others. "…a 'habituated nesting' ground." She rolled her eyes and propped her winged arms to the sides of her hips, quoting herself with her feathered fingers.
"Sweet Jesus, you've gotta be kidding me." Ome said, voice staunch with sarcasm. She chuckled and rolled her eyes, bending her beak into the faintest hint of a smile - a bird smirk.
"Wish I were! But you know how these crazy northerners take their forests…" She shrugged her shoulders. Ome nodded in reaction, readjusting his seatbelt, still attached.
"Very seriously."
"Amen."
Ome shook his head and nodded with affirming insistence. He thought for sure that he'd be getting a citation for driving a nearly-inoperable vehicle not fit for highway travel. Or public indecency. She merely let him off with a warning, insisted that the vehicle be smog-checked sooner than later… even gave him helpful directions out of state, if push came to shove. Ome breathed a deep sigh of relief when she gave him back his driver's license and proof of vehicular registration, both tattered nearly beyond recognition. 
The bluejay officer got back into her patrol unit and dimmed the flashing emergency lights. As if on cue, the forest's natural aura of resolute light settled back harmoniously, casting a fertile and peaceful glow upon the many plants and rocks and brushes, surrounding the fertile patch of land where the stretch of tarmac now lie, jagged blacktop road, housing a raccoon anthro in a beat-up shitmobile. 
Ome started the van and it kicked right into gear, spewing a fat noxious cloud of billowing engine fumes from its exhaust pipe. Either some asswipe stole the vehicle's catalytic converter while Ome was sleeping, or the old Bessie simply had precious seconds to spare before meeting its sputtering, rod-thrown end. Good riddance, Ome thought, as he held in the clutch, turned the gearshift into first and depressed, pushing down upon the gas pedal, keeping the transition of manual shifting as smooth, intact and fairly cluster-fucked-free as possible.

~
"Holy crimony, coonshep! I just… well, I can't believe they never did or, s-sssssaid anything in your defense!" Nelizar exclaimed. His eyes were opened wide and his tail dragged against his heels as he sat on a patch of dried mossy bark, listening to Max's outrageous cartwheel story, hardly inspired. When the asshole timberwolf threatens to cut the shep-coon's nuts off with a pair of forceps if he doesn't perform cartwheels naked through the boy's locker room during physical education change-over, the goddam shep-coon is gonna go crazy and do cartwheels bare-assed for long stretches of minutes in front of the same rat bastards (at least one of them, anyways.) who raped and defiled him on a regular nightly basis, Lord save his soul.
"Didn't need to - the cuts and bruises always kinda spoke for themselves. So did the bedsheets, especially towards the end." Max said, extinguishing his marijuana cigarette into a gnarled knob of tree branch jutting out from the center of the stump which Max sat on, shaped like a gaudy bicycle seat. He looked down at the wolf-cobra and regarded his attractive demeanor, his cuteness inspired and reaffirmed Maxwell's patience and reassurance in the resilience and nurturing good graces of fellow hybrids. He smiled wide and hopped off the cedar stump, footpaws landing in soft soil. 
"So you've been released from furry hell. Tell me something, Maxwell." Nelizar said. He stood up and marched over to where Max stood, grabbing hold of the squished-down roach and pocketed it. Then he leaned forward and pressed his wolf-cobra snout up against Max's, locking eyes in a dead-gaze stare. He clenched himself up against Max's body, caressing the shep-coon's slender shoulders with a sudden lavish affection. "Did this place have hybrids like you and I? Very many, anyways?"
"Not at all. That's why I always got the worst of their shit - because I was so thoroughly different." Max murmured, slurring his words a bit, entranced by Nelizar's sudden profound coming-on.
"I see. Stands to reason." Nelizar said, parting ways with Max's snout. He tapped at his scaly chin with his index finger-paw and Max kissed Nelizar's nose with a weary passion, short-lived and spent freely.
"Thank you for being an ear to cobble to. I'm sorry you had to hear me vent but… I feel better now, having gotten the worst of that off my chest." Max whimpered and hugged Nelizar tight, feeling a close warming sense of longing being fulfilled. "You, uh… you're invited to tag along with me if you'd like? I'm gonna walk out west, head towards my old stomping grounds. Up to you." Max said, rubbing his hand-paws against Nelizar's back and cobra's hood.
"That's very sweet of you to offer, but I'm on my own path. I'll stay solo." The wolf-cobra hissed, urging Max to loosen his tight grip held upon his body. Max sniffed and stood upright, letting go of the wolf-cobra. He nodded and smirked, winking at Nelizar companionably. 
"That's fine, mi amigo. I'm just glad you happened to happen along. I feel loads better now, honest to the Creator, I do." Max said.
Nelizar curled his brow. "The 'Creator'?"
"Native traditional beliefs. No God or Devil, only a Creator. Mother creator."
Ome nodded. "Uh huh."
"Well, there's a heaven and a hell too, I'm certain. Hell actually has multiple stages, y'know? Dante Aligheri had the right idea in mind. You ever read The Divine Comedy? If not, check it out some time. You might be fascinated."
"I might do just that. Take it eassssssy out there! Ya got it, coon-dog?" Nelizar asked, striking a dainty pose, looking cute as ever before, forked tongue sliding out, tickling at Max's whiskers. Max scoffed and nodded his head. He parted ways with Nelizar and continued onward, seeing what appeared to be some sort of van or SUV parked off a shoulder patch. He opted to keep a wide berth as he passed it on by, wondering what kind of weird creepy pedo-freak drove a heap like that for a living.
Maybe somebody with a secret to be shared…
Maxwell's inner-raccoon instincts prevailed as he soon realized that he was tiptoeing naturally towards the large white van with California plates and no fancy security system to blare off excessively at the shep-coon's mere presence.

~
Objects in side-view mirrors were always bound to be closer than they appeared.
Ome discovered this decisive tactic of blind-corner manipulation to be a fluke at best, no way in hell could the windows be fine-tuned to provide a tunnel-viewed vision of whatever the hell THEY wanted their drivers to see. 
This is how Ome missed Maxwell's imminent intrusion by a long-shot.

~
Jesus, I can smell the freaking piss-scent all the way from here.
Maxwell scoffed and held his breath as he inched closer to the van, trying not to make any sudden brash movement. He didn't want to slip on a clump of leaves or bang his head against the doorframe, lest he be gunned down or chased off by the van's owner. 
During his time spent in The Ridge, Max had developed a hankering for thievery. He was alarmingly good at it. Sneaking into the guard's quarters to nab a jangling hoop of keys to bust out for a night and booze and smoke it up with the guys and feel like a family for a shred of a moment before the raping ensues once again, made worse under the profound influence of mind-altering substances. He didn't mind stealing his fellow peers' belongings. He was not only good at it, he was practically freaking indoctrinated. 
Not a sound… slow, molasses-like, smooth… you are not a dog, you are a raccoon and there's shinies to be had in this treasure-trove of a van…
The driver was a raccoon anthro, very gothy-punky in appearance. Max snickered, thinking about how he used to dress during the earliest weeks of his tenure in Tucker Ridge Correctional. His former self and this rumble-tumble ring-tail would've made the best of friends in another lifetime, had all the destruction not developed Maxwell into the rejected kleptomaniacal nobody he had become. He leaned into the van's open passenger-side window-space, intent on popping open the latch on the dashbox to reveal the contents inside. He might score with a little stashed-away goods, maybe a tire pressure gauge reader or if he were really lucky, the van's title documentation. 
Instead, a living raccoon's hand-paw wrapped tightly around his own shep-coon wrist and pulled him in through the open window, lifting him right off his own paw-padded feet. Max shrieked aloud as he was caught and captured red-pawed, worried outright over his parole status and whether or not he'd be treated like another scrap of garbage by this fairly same-aged raccoon anthro with large black emo-style bangs and fetching green eyes, those which stared at Max with a mixture of benevolence and curiosity, even a hint of attraction.
END OF Pt. 1.