The streets echoed with the shame of another dead cub.  The neighborhood used to be infested with them.  The playground across the street often carried the jubilant cries of play and laughter.  A dark cloud hung over the city and was a further reminder to the populace of the tragedy reported by the news.  The sun, no matter how bright, could not shine in light of the events of the past 6 months.
	It was October when a red fox kit was found mutilated under the Williams overpass.  She had been missing for two weeks.  Missing Child posters dressed every other lamp post and hung disgracefully in the neighborhood community center.  Church prayer meetings were full of beckonings to the Almighty. 
	Being sensationalists, the broadcasts claimed she had been abducted.  The elderly huffed and scoffed, claiming it was safer back in the day.  Young parents fretted over the safety of the area, but cast blameon Stelan's mother- they accused her of negligence.  Adolescents barely had time to spin an urban legend to scare the other cubs before the body was found.  Her beautiful brown eyes had been torn out, her throat sawed open.  She was missing an ear and three teeth.  Early reports suggested that she had been raped and that there were traces of semen in her scabbed-over fur.  The media withheld this information in later updates.  At least that's what adolescents whispered in the backs of school buses.
	A closed casket funeral was held.  Many came clothed in their finest all-black attire.  A bright-eyed protrait of the young vixen was surrounded by sunflowers, her favorite.  While most of the people at the wake didn't know Stelan, the brutality of her passing was cause enough for them to come out and support her grieving family.  This apparent community spirit would not be replicated the next week when the another child was found beside a dumpster in an alley off of 12th street.
	Ashewyck fidgeted in his chair as the grumpy koala across from him grumbled and flipped one page and then the next several of a stack. 
	"I just- I just want to make something that will sell," a meek mumble slid from the dalmation's muzzle.
	He looked up to see his editor glaring disapprovingly over the manuscript.
	"This won't.  It's too much.  You're trying too hard.  No one wants to read about cubs getting raped and tortured to death.  This is trash.  A waste of paper."
	"I've tried everything else.  Everything.  My children's books haven't sold well since 'Todd's Christmas Fun with Tofu'.  No one cares about my little side stories. You even told me to try more adult subject matter."
	"I didn't mean snuff fetishism."
	"Its about a Wizard," Ashewyck slammed a paw on the desk, "who brings peace to the world!  It's about the cost of everyday life and Utilitarianism.  It's about the evils of demonizing a person who isn't understood because their motives seem harmful."
	"It's also going to only get bought as masturbation material for creeps.  If you want to tell this story, go back and do it again."
	"I don't see what's wrong with any of it..."
	The koala cleared her throat and read aloud to the disgust of the unsuspecting around them, "The remaining semen from the vial dripped like bitter molasses over the lifeless panther cub as the figure forced the eyelids open, thrusting his swollen knot in and out of her torn vagina. 'This will have to do,' he kept repeating.  Thrusting a final time, he emptied his worthless seed into-"
	"That's out of context," he said, spitefully.  "Of course the antagonist is going to do despicable things. Without an antagonist no story has movement."
	"And the only movement this will cause," Shannah made a masturbatory gesture, "is for sickos."