(PART 13)

Ever wonder why it takes babies so long to learn to do the most basic tasks? Gross motor skills notwithstanding, it still shouldn’t take more than two years for someone to figure out how to operate clothing; nevermind toileting or drinking without a lid. Alby had never wondered such things, but she got the answer anyway.

Daddy went over to her dresser and took out a diaper, some wipes, and a bottle of baby powder. Walking right past Alby, he placed the wipes and powder on Alby’s night stand before unfolding the fresh diaper and laying it on the mattress left of center.

It didn’t take long, but Alby still felt awkward standing there. She was afraid to move. Afraid to talk. Afraid to think. Not because she was afraid of Daddy, but because she didn’t trust herself. She couldn’t even make it a full week without him coming to the rescue! Why should she trust any instinct of hers?

So she waited. Waited for direction. Waited for Daddy to tell her to do something.

No direction came, not verbal direction anyway. His changing area prepped, he returned to Alby and scooped her off her feet. A little squeak yipped out of the doberman’s mouth, but she reflexively clung to the big wolf.

Daddy laid her down on the bed, and in one fell swoop he yanked Alby’s pajama bottoms right off her. He’d somehow hooked his fingers into the back of her waistband and managed to whisk them off her legs in one fluid motion.

RRIIP-RRIIP-RRIIP-RRIP!

Daddy’s fingers were freed from the fleecy frillies for less than a full second before he started at the tapes. Wipes were already drawn and in hand when the diaper was fully opened. Daddy hummed tunelessly to himself while he worked.

Just when Alby was getting used to the coolness of the wipes, Daddy balled them up with the old diaper and tossed it aside. Her tail was already threaded through when her legs were lowered back down, her bum nestled comfortably in the fresh padding. Daddy kept humming while he dusted her all over and finished taping up the diaper.

All without asking Alby to do a thing.

This is why babies took so long. The whole thing had happened so fast and Alby was already so completely wrapped up in her own emotions- about the day, about the moment, about everything- that she couldn’t focus. It probably was faster for him to do all the work.

Being overwhelmed and confused by a big scary world? And a nice caregiver to deal with all the uncomfortable, yucky, and gross aspects of existence from the very beginning? It would certainly be understandable for someone to prioritize learning other skill sets.
“There we go,” Daddy grumbled as he stood up, taking the balled up soggy diaper with him. It was a grumble, but a good grumble; a tired yet content grumble. “Now where’s….?” he stopped mid sentence and rolled his head around. “Oh yeah. Bathroom.”

Alby stayed laying there while Daddy went to toss the diaper away. She sat up, grateful for the attention and the feeling of the clean diaper, but anxiety still translated to energy, even when calmed by Daddy’s unexpected presence. She scooted to the edge of the bed, hands in her lap while Daddy washed his in the sink.

“Daddy,” Alby tried, “I-”

Daddy pressed a pacifier between the princess doberman’s lips. “Hush. Just listen.” She’d had no idea if she’d left it in the bathroom, or if it was in Daddy’s pocket or if he’d picked it up off the floor at some point and didn’t care.

“Before we talk,” Daddy said, “I’m going to order us some dinner, okay?” He didn’t wait for Alby to nod, but she did. “First we’re going to eat. Then we’ll talk. Then we’ll make a plan.” He looked over his shoulder and noticed Alby’s video game still on pause. “Is that one of those games where you kill bad guys?”

That was putting it mildly, but Alby opted to keep it simple. “Yush” she slurred from behind her paci. There was something very head spacey about having a hobby that Daddy just didn’t ‘get’ all the intricacies of.

“Good,” Daddy said. “Go play that. Slay some monsters or whatever. Get your gears turning in a competitive direction. “

Alby had already been gaming as stress relief. If you had to break something, might as well make it digital. Doing it because Daddy told her to was a treat. The wolf’s ears pricked up at something and he smiled. It took Alby far longer than it should have to realize Daddy could hear Alby’s tail wagging thanks to the crinkle of the diaper.

*****************************************************************************************************
Forty-five minutes is a long time when you’re waiting for food but it’s absolute crunch time when trying to meet a deadline.

Max typed away and made edits to his presentation. He’d already blown that entire afternoon off, but he’d landed the school district anyway. No one questioned him when he said he had a surprise emergency he had to deal with and he’d already gotten the right people on board.

Every minute he hadn’t been behind the wheel he’d been contacting school boards trying to reschedule his pitch digitally. He preferred doing it in person, some part of his natural magnetism didn’t translate as well when bad wi-fi interrupted his pitch, and he couldn’t read a room via a computer monitor, but it needed to be done.
Alby came first.

The bell rang. “I’ll get it!” Max called out and closed his lap top.

Screw it. He’d just have to chug some coffee after putting Alby to bed.

The wolf turned his head and saw his little princess playing video games in her bedroom, completely absorbed in what was on the screen even though he knew for a fact she’d heard the doorbell. Max allowed himself a contented smile. There she was, lying on her stomach, propped up on her elbows in nothing but a pajama top and diaper.

Max would’ve put good money on Alby sprinting under the covers or slamming the bedroom door, afraid that the delivery guy would somehow magically see the big puppy in her padded diaper.

He took the food, tipped the driver, and set them on Alby’s kitchen table. “Dinner!”

Alby came trotting out, her diaper rustling and her bare feet clicking on the floor. He made a mental note to trim Alby’s nails soon but declined to comment. “I know this little Italian place a couple miles from here,” he explained, pointing to the white styrofoam containers.

“Pizza?”

Max took her paw and sat her down in his lap. “Not everything is pizza, baby girl.”

“Sketti?”

Max chuckled. “Not tonight. Too messy.” Watching Alby eat noodles bare handed in nothing but a diaper and a bib was on Max’s bucket list, though. He reached forward and popped open the lid. “Let’s start off with some mozzarella sticks. How about that?”

Alby’s tongue was already falling out of her mouth.

“Yeah,” he chuckled again. “Thought so.” He teased a stick in front of her mouth until she snapped out and bit a chunk off.

Max didn’t even try to yank the food out of the way. The fun part was in pulling the stick back after chomping and watching the grown puppy snap and nip at the retreating gooey string left behind. “Hurry!” He teased. “It’s getting away! Better get it! Can’t let the cheese hit the table!”

The wolf’s gentle teasing made Alby abandon any trace of dignity, biting and snapping at the strands of gooey cheese, not even thinking to use her hands. The whole thing really was cute! Max thought about how adorable she might look munching on peanut butter covered crackers one afternoon.

He put Alby’s stick down long enough to dip his own in marinara and take a quick bite. Alby’s next bite had to be ready by the time she swallowed and licked her chops.

“Daddy?” Alby asked after she’d devoured the first stick. “Why am I eating dinner in your lap?”

“Because we don’t have a highchair in here yet.” Max smirked.

“Yet?” Alby echoed, surprised.

Max reached between her legs and gave her diaper a firm pat and a squeeze. Wet already. Not nearly enough to need a change and it had only been an hour give or take, but it meant that Alby was already comfortable enough to not stay dry.

“Still bone dry,” he lied. “I know it can’t be because you’re ready for potty training. Go fill up your sippy cup with some juice. Keep yourself hydrated.”

“Yes, Daddy!” Alby hopped off and started doing as instructed.

Truth be told, Max had ulterior motives. He was lap feeding Alby to try and keep the dog calm. Emotional triage mandated that nervous breakdowns and temper tantrums took priority over schoolyard bullying. Couldn’t deal with one while dealing with the other. Same for the little white lie concerning Alby’s diaper. Alby knew she was wet, but now she thought she could wet more before somebody noticed.

It was true, though. Alby was naked from the waist down and it still would have taken an experienced kinkster, a full time professional childminder, or a stay at home parent with more than five kids. No one else was likely to know diapers so well as to recognize the difference between a pristine diaper and one that just lightly tinkled in.

“Good baby,” he praised her when she took her seat back in his lap. “Very good baby.” She giggled to herself and gulped down the juice so that Max had a chance to finish his first appetizer.

More than anything, by pretending to be ignorant to the state of Alby’s diaper, Alby felt like she had a secret again, albeit temporary and inconsequential. It didn’t matter, but now Alby could feel like she’d pulled one over on her Daddy. After the day she had, Alby needed a win.

They ate in silence for just under an hour. Besides basic table manners such as ‘please’ and ‘thank you’, as well as tiny tidbits of passing praise such as ‘good girl’ and ‘I love you’, no words of consequence were spoken.

It would have been shorter, but Max was ‘eating for two’, taking up the time to cut up and hand feed Alby in his lap in between in his own bites. Eventually, he gave up and let Alby scoot to an adjacent chair and tear into the chicken tenders and french fries he’d ordered off the kids’ menu so that he could enjoy his chicken parmesan while it was still warm.

But as soon as they were both done and the take out boxes were tossed away, Max took a seat on the couch and Alby plopped right onto his lap.

“So,” Max started. “Where do we begin?”

Alby proceeded to blabber out everything that had happened to her in Max’s absence. Her phone going ‘missing’, the pictures, everything.

Max kept his arm wrapped around Alby for the entire retelling. “You really used your birthday as a password?” he asked at the end, completely flabbergasted that someone as comparatively tech savvy as Alby had a password a child or an old person might choose. “Seriously?”

Alby hung her head in shame. “Sorry, Daddy.”

He gave her a reassuring squeeze. “It’s not your fault,” Max said. “I’m not going to blame the victim.” He gave the side of her face a couple of tender kisses to comfort her. “It was a silly thing for you to do but it doesn’t mean you deserve to get picked on. You’re just a baby.”

In the back of his mind, he made a note that when this was all over (and it would be all over) he might have to force Alby to sit and take a kid’s online and computer safety class. It might be a punishment that Alby actually didn’t enjoy. He’d ask his sister if she had any sites or worksheets to recommend, not that she’d know why he was asking.

“I do deserve this,” Alby sulked. “I’m so stupid. I should’ve known this would have happened.”

“Nah,” Max said. “Nobody could have predicted this, baby girl.” Like a hypocrite, Max was scolding himself. He should have scrubbed his online presence as soon as things started getting serious and given Alby some extra guidance on security too. But Max was allowed to be a hypocrite. He was the Daddy. It was his job to think of such things, not Alby’s.

“Figures it’d be Howard,” Alby started to sniffle. “He’s just like me.”

Max grabbed a napkin and held it to Alby’s nose. “Blow,” he said. She obeyed. The simple act of attention and comfort kept the little dog’s emotions under control and prevented her from breaking down and turning into a full fledged snot and tears machine. An ounce of prevention was worth more than a pound of cure.

“Thank you,” Alby said quietly.

Max wadded and balled the paper napkin up. He should’ve used tissues for her nose, but he didn’t know where the nearest box was. “You’re welcome.” Hopefully there wouldn’t be too many more situations like this.

“I deserve this,” Alby repeated herself. “This is karma coming back to bite me. It’s like I’m being tortured by my evil twin or my past self or whatever.”

If not for Alby’s feelings, Max would have laughed. “I don’t know about that,” he said. It was true that before the events of New Years’ Eve and all that followed, that both Howard and Alby had been filed in Max’s brain as ‘annoying people to avoid’ but the venn diagram ended there.

Alby leaned her head back so that she could better nuzzle and stare her Daddy in the eye. “Tell me why?” She very quickly added, “Please, Daddy? I need this.”

Max let out a sigh. “Fine.” He slid her over to a neighboring seat, just so he could look directly at her. “You were a brat. Howard’s a frat boy.

“That’s not very helpful,” Alby replied blankly.

A growl started in the back of Max’s throat that he restrained to keep silent. He’d gotten good at talking about so many things, but his personal unfiltered feelings were always a challenge that took conscious effort.

“You’re a little kid,” Max explained. “Deep down, whether you’re wearing a diaper or not, you’re still a little kid. You just want attention. You just learned bad ways to get that attention and developed some unhealthy coping mechanisms and a lack of discrimination between good and bad attention.”

Alby remembered the sippy cup and continued drinking from it. Max took the silence as rapt attention and absorption of his every word as gospel. That and she was peeing, but Max wasn’t going to embarrass her and point that out.

“Howard?” Max continued. “He’s the kind of guy who peaked in highschool and instead of growing up, he used college as four extra years to perfect being a stupid teenager.”

“So he didn’t grow up, either.” Alby said. “He’s just a bigger kid than me?”

“Naw, he’s just a douche.” Max recognized that Alby might be technically correct in that Howard had signs of arrested development, but he wasn’t letting that stop him from being angry. Only people he trusted enough to let into his lap got the benefit of the doubt and the armchair psychology. “Howard’s a coward and just wants to punch down at somebody so that he can feel like his boring ass life doesn’t suck as much as it does.”

Howard would never be somebody’s little because he didn’t know how to let himself be vulnerable and he’d never be somebody’s dom because he didn’t know how to give a damn about anyone outside of himself.

Alby put down the sippy cup and said, “Still sounds like you’re talking about me if I’m being honest.”

“Would Howard purposefully put himself in a humiliating situation to get what he wanted?”

“No, but neither would-”

“Baby girl, instead of asking me, your go to plan was getting caught so that I’d dress you up like a maid.”

Alby ducked her head slightly, embarrassed. “Point taken.”

Max squeezed her. “It’s something I love about you,” he promised. Finally he loosened his grip and huffed. “So there’s two basic ways we can handle this. We can handle this the normal, decent, mature way, or we can do something stupid but fun.”

The little doberman chewed on her lip thoughtfully, seriously weighing pros and cons and practicality vs. impulse. “I know we should, but I don’t wanna do the boring one,” she said.

“I don’t recall saying either one was boring.”

“Yeah, but the first one sounds boring,” Alby said.

“You don’t even know what it is.”

Alby threw her head back. “Does it involve calling Howard’s bluff because Howard loses all leverage if he blabs my secret and the picture is still blurry enough that it could probably be anybody?”

Max snorted. “Okay. Yeah. Pretty much.”

“Stupid and fun way, please!”

Max leaned back in the kitchen chair and grinned. When he was a kid, his mom would joke that she had him and his siblings so that she could be allowed to go see kids’ movies. Obviously, that wasn’t the real reason, but Max was finding a certain grain of truth in the joke. It could be fun doing childish things as long as you weren’t the one viewed as the child. Max would never admit it, but he was hoping Alby would pick option number two.

“Alright, princess. Let’s get stupid.”

************************************************************************************************************
Howard tipped back his sixth shot and set the empty glass down. “Man, that is some good shit!” He pounded his chest and let out a belch that would have set the bar on fire if only there had been candles.

It was not, in fact, good shit. Seaman Gary was unleaded gasoline mixed with grenadine and sold as cheap rum. It tasted like sophomore year of State University and/or divorce.

Howard let out a whoop. “Damn! I haven’t had Seaman since college!”

The bartender at the Lizard Lounge (who ironically was a monkey) came by. “Another shot, bud?”

Howard was formulating his sentence before the bartender had finished ‘Another’ but didn’t have the bandwidth to start speaking until the word ‘bud’. “Heck yeah! It’s not like I’m paying, right?” He elbowed Alby several times, grinning and leaning on him, throwing his arm around Alby and hugging him from the side so tight it was practically a headlock.

“Haha. Right.” Alby grimaced. “Right.” He shook his head internally, but nodded to the bartender. Max was right about one thing, Howard and Alby weren’t very much alike at their core. At his worst, Alby had been a bit of a bully, but he also kept a respectful emotional distance.

There’d been a time when Alby had wanted to be feared instead of loved, but he’d never wanted someone to fear him so much that they pretended to love him. If you’re going to be a conniving asshole, at least own it.

“And another shot of D.D. for you?” the bartender asked Alby. Again, Alby nodded, and the monkey went to pour the shots.

“Dee-Dee?” The jackass asked, his words slurring more and more. “Wussat?”

Alby thought quickly. “You know. Double Dee. I think the person who invented it had a thing for big boobs or something.”

“Oooooh,” Howard grinned. “Don’t tell your Daddy or he might get jealous!” If the joke was funny, it was only because he was drunk, and his own laughter hammered that idea home. “Woooooooo!” He paused and pricked his ears up. “I even sound like him.” The obnoxious, braying laughter came more naturally to him.

The bartender brought back two shot glasses and the two men tossed them back. What Howard didn’t know was that “D.D.” was actually short for ‘Designated Driver’. Howard had been shooting straight rum all night. Alby had been knocking back watered down cola shots.

It started as a gimmick the bar used so that sober people could still participate in “social drinking” and it had long since evolved (or devolved) into a ‘secret menu item’ so that friends could prank each other and cheat at drinking games.

Seductively, from the worst part of himself, Alby heard whispers and calming reassurances:
Just one drink won’t hurt. Howard needs to smell the booze on your breath for it to be believable.

Fears of botching this plan wouldn’t have stopped him, but imagining the look of disappointment on Max’s face did. He’d shown an incredible amount of restraint and trust in the little dog by going along with and helping with this crazy scheme.

Max had told Alby about this place, in fact. It was a smokey dive bar with an empty stage that only had live performers on it a few times a year and the rest of the time it played host to three big screen T.V.s broadcasting sports. The perfect place to meet one’s blackmailer.

Alby squirmed on his bar stool, anxiously. He didn’t tend to drink in bars. Or restaurants. Or places with other people.

Yikes!

He really did have a drinking problem, didn’t he?

Uncomfortable realizations aside, Alby shifted in his seat for physical reasons as well. He’d gone commando at the office today- no diapers, no panties- and felt strangely vulnerable because of it. Howard would be checking for signs of fear and submission, Max said, and showing up to work without any contraband undergarments would broadcast that directly.

Sure enough, Howard had noticed somehow and commented how ‘loosey goosey’ Alby was and jabbed with “Does Daddy know?”

So Alby had asked Howard to meet him here after work. Those two things had bought him enough peace so that he could get at least a little bit of work done between nervously texting Max asking if things would be okay.

In a way, Alby was glad that he wasn’t wearing any of his comfort clothes. There was a zero chance of him slipping into headspace or melting into a pathetic puddle when things got dicey. For this to work, he had to be more like the Albert Madison, Jr. of old. The brat had to beat the bully so that the princess could play.

“I hope you’re not planning on paying me off in shots?” Howard whispered. Rather, he tried to whisper, but he was actually shouting well above the required volume to be heard, even with three televisions and a jukebox that wouldn’t stop blasting out George Thoroughgood and the Destroyers.

“Nah,” Alby said, “This is on me.” Alby said in a much more reasonable tone. “But I want to talk to about that.”

“About what?” Howard asked. His voice lowered down to match Alby, but he was already starting to sway and jiggle. He was barely a conscious person by this point; more of a donkey shaped gelatin mold.

From the strictest, most Kantian viewpoint, what Alby was about to do wasn’t what one would call ‘ethical’. Legally, Alby’s plan was a gray area at best. But Alby had never read Kant, and this jackass was threatening Daddy’s job while also outing Alby to his boss and father. Fucker needed a sign to pump his brakes. So Alby cooked one up.

“Taxes,” Alby said. “Gotta think about taxes.”

“Taxes?” the donkey slurred. “ Wuh about ‘em?”

Alby smacked the donkey’s bicep with the back of his hand. “You’re an accountant, and I’m about to give you half my paycheck. How do you hide that from the IRS?”

“It’s not taxable if it’s a gift,” Howard hiccuped. “I think?”

He was almost at the perfect level of drunkenness for purposes of suggestibility. It was a state Alby was all too familiar with. He motioned for another shot. “It is if it’s that much money.” He didn’t wait for Howard to mull over alternative loopholes. “So how do we justify it? I don’t want to be paying for secrecy and then get busted because you decided to make a down payment on a new car out of the blue.”

Howard was already nodding along by the time Alby was finishing the sentence. “Okay…okay…yeah…” Then he beat Alby to the punch and provided the opening himself. “What if like…you hired me?”

This was so stupid. This was such a terrible idea. This was something straight out of some stupid masturbation story that Max liked to read online. And yet…

“Hired you?” Alby tried to hide his smile. This was going to work so much better if he let Howard do some of the talking.

“As your personal accountant or something? Have me on retainer or whatever.”

The doberman plucked the shot glasses from the bartender’s grasp without saying a word and handed the correct one over to his target. “Honestly? That’s a really good idea! But wouldn’t that require you to do some actual work? Like actually do my taxes for me and stuff?”

Howard stopped before he threw back his latest gulp of gasoline. “Oh. Yeah.”

Alby nudged him and tossed back his bit of watered down coke. “I think I got something that’ll work for both of us. Keep up.” Like a good thirty something frat boy, Howard downed his.

“Let’s get one more for the road and then call an Uber,” Alby signaled for one more round and gave the bartender an extra big tip.

*************************************************************************************************************
Howard woke up vomiting in the dark. He was drowning and vomiting while tepid rain poured down the back of his head. “It hurrrrrrrts” a voice said in the darkness. It’d take a whole five hours for him to remember this particular moment and realize that he was hearing himself.

The truth was, it did hurt, and the ‘it’ that hurt was Howard being conscious of his own existence.

Objectively speaking, he hadn’t slept in a little over 24-hours, but from Howard’s perspective, so much of what had transpired over the last eight hours had been a walking dream. His body hadn’t rested, but whatever mechanism in his brain that controlled his memory had only just now clicked on.

The last thing Howard actively remembered was having drinks with the boss’s son, calling a car and then going to some summer home of Alby’s family. At least that’s what Howard thought the dark old house in the middle of the woods was.

Alby had led Howard inside and they’d sat down in a kitchen that seemed strangely familiar to him. He was about to ask about it, but instead saw a bottle of whiskey and wanted to continue their drinking contest.

“Please,” the little dog had begged him. “Howard! I can’t keep up with you! If we do one more shot, I’ll die!”

Then, like a boss, Howard poured himself a shot, struck a horse stance like a Maori warrior getting ready for battle, slapped his chest and proclaimed, “THEN! YOU! SHALL! DIE!”

After that, it was lights off from the neck up until what Howard hoped was later that night but he suspected was actually the next morning.

“It hurrrrrrts…!”

His stomach was so still so full of garbage food that barfing felt like gargling in reverse, but the pauses necessitated by violently retching gave him moments to reflect and piece everything back together, starting with the present.

He wasn’t in some dank cave with an underground waterfall, he was showering in a very dark bathroom. Oh what a relief it was to press his muzzle up to the cool tower. How soothing even the room temperature water felt on the back of his neck.

“It hurrrrrrts…”

Howard didn’t need the mirror to know he looked like hell. If he was vomiting (and he was vomiting) it meant that every blood vessel in at least one eye had popped open, and he was foaming slightly at the mouth like he had rabies or something. Howard didn’t often get hangovers, but when he did, he looked like an extra in a zombie movie.

He grumbled to himself and turned the water off. Shit like this, he admitted to himself, is why Becky left him.

Turning off the water had been a mistake. It took about five seconds for the lukewarm water droplets to turn into tiny icicles clinging to his mane once they’d been cut off from reinforcements. The white noise of pouring water had also been the only thing preventing Howard from realizing just how much his head hurt.

He tried to get out and almost tripped out of the bathtub, and if he had he would have taken the curtain and shower head to the floor with him in the process. “Fuck,” he muttered, saying the first words that he actually recognized as his own.

His hooves clip clopped on the floor below him, but were muffled a step or two later on what Howard deduced were discarded clothes.

“Howie?” a gratingly familiar voice called from the other side of the door. “You okay, buddy?”

“Yeah,” Howard said, his throat burning. “I’m up.”

“I’m going to open the door and turn the lights on,” Alby spoke slowly and carefully, like a hostage.

Howard braced himself, leaning on the sink, and closing his eyes. “Okay.”

“One…two…three!”

The lights scalded Howard’s retinas even with his eyes closed.

“You good?” Alby’s voice called in.

“Yeah.”

“May I come in.”

Howard took a deep breath. “Yeah.”

He regretted his decision as soon as Alby opened the door. The dumb dog was entirely too chipper for Howard’s taste first thing in the morning and every syllable that came out of his mouth was like someone smashing a piano keyboard inside Howard’s skull.

“Your clothes are in the dryer and should be done by the time we’re finished with breakfast,” Alby yapped. “There’s a plastic cup if you need water, and a bottle of mouthwash I’m sure you can use. I left the bottle of aspirin open with the cap off. Help yourself if you need it. In a couple minutes you can come downstairs, we’ll tank up on pancakes and we’ll give you a ride into work.”

“Into? Work?” The words sounded alien coming out of Howard’s mouth. Holy shit what had he been thinking last night? He hadn’t gotten smashed the night before work since he was flipping burgers. He’d just gotten stupid and was going shot for shot with Alby in a final move to establish dominance over him.

“Yeah,” Alby said. “Work. You know. Where you crunch numbers and I’m a glorified secretary with a big paycheck because my father owns the place?”

The brat dissing himself took what little wind was left out of Howard’s sails, but it was showing an appropriate amount of defeat and deference at the same time. “Oh. Yeah.”

A big fluffy towel flew through the air and landed right on Howard’s head. “Here you go, bro.”

Howard grabbed the towel and started drying his hair. “Oh yeah,” he said. “Thanks.” The chills from the errant water droplets were being absorbed by the fluffy white strip of terry cloth. “I needed it.”

“Howard?” Alby said. “Cover your junk, please.”

The donkey looked down at himself. For the first time since his brain had turned back on, Howard realized that he was buck naked. It made sense considering he just stepped out of the shower, but those particular neurons hadn’t fired off until just then.

“Oh. Yeah. Thanks.” He wrapped the towel around his waist. Alby was fully dressed in business casual attire like Daddy’s good little business bitch boy, and Howard was still mostly dripping.

“Breakfast in about…seven minutes?” Alby hinted so as not to offend his new master.

“Sure.”

Alby trotted away, giving Howard his privacy back. Howard leaned forward on the bathroom counter and hung his head. Wow! He must have been drunk last night! As a matter of fact, he was still a little drunk right now. Despite all the evidence prior, he hadn’t realized that he’d been starkers when Alby had tossed him that towel.

Adrenaline was starting to kick in, helping Howard approximate sober functionality. Howard shook the aspirin out into his hand- more than he probably should have- filled up a plastic cup of water and swallowed it in one mighty gulp. The instant the cold sink water touched the back of his throat, his body cried out for more.

Howard obliged himself and downed several more cups worth. He was on serving four before the bloated feeling from his flooded stomach outweighed his thirst.

His stomach, fragile as all hell, lurched and the donkey briefly thought he might vomit it all up again. He held it down with a modicum of willpower, telling himself that if he vomited the good stuff up, he’d just have to down more right after.

He glanced down between his feet and realized that it wasn’t a bath mat muffling his steps. The bathroom floor was cluttered and littered with Alby’s ridiculous costumes. Howard didn’t touch any of them, but he was able to guess what they were just from looking closely enough. It was an obnoxiously frilly pink dress with a hula hoop sized hem with lace around every hole and then some. Discarded next to it was a pink bonnet that was big enough to have functioned as a small umbrella. Then there were those weird old-timey tights with all the ruffles down the legs. What were those called? Boomers? Bloomers? Then there were the black buckled kiddie shoes that little girls wore to church or whatever, only in adult size.

Howard pieced the ensemble together in his mind and pictured Alby dressed up like Little Bo Peep or Little Miss Muffet, the way little girls were drawn in Mother Goose books. He would have laughed if he didn’t have a feeling that the act would cause him considerable pain. The aspirin hadn’t kicked in yet and Howard’s noggin was pounding like Bo Peep was bashing his skull in with that hook of hers.

“Loser,” Howard muttered to himself, and looked at his face in the mirror. His vision had cleared up enough that he could perceive his reflection as something more than a grayish, brownish blur. Why was his mouth pink? A pinkish-reddish blotch had smeared itself smack dab on Howard’s lips.

Was that lipstick? Had Alby and he been so incredibly smashed that they’d kissed?

Howard snarled at his reflection and quickly scrubbed his face clean with such ferocity he thought that the smudge on his lips might give way to a blister. Then he took the bottle of mouthwash and took three swigs: One to swish, one to gargle, and one to swallow.

Howard wiped the last minty drops off his lips with the back of his forearm and banished the hazy pictures his imagination was coming up with away from his mind. He didn’t remember it, so it didn’t happen.

The accountant clip clopped out of Alby’s bathroom and into the hallway. He looked left and right and found the stairs easy enough, but he held onto his towel with one hand and the railing with the other, just in case.

There was something familiar about this place, like he’d been here before; but given the shock to his senses and how it felt like he’d been rocketed through time, Howard dismissed it as drunken deja vu.

Howard was an accountant by trade and by nature, and accountants could only work with the numbers on the sheet. One couldn’t just make numbers up. Additions and expenditures all came from somewhere and were accounted for.

Max was still out of town and he’d received no angry replies or threatening messages from the sales rep. Alby was being respectful and putting his best foot forward while ensuring that Howard was cared for, hence the bathroom and hangover amenities. The house looked big and old from the inside, but Maddison was loaded so of course his son would live on some old family estate.

Synapses fired around halfway down the creaky stairs about just how vulnerable Howard had been. If Alby had wanted to, Howard could have died choking on his own vomit or something. Instead of Alby’s house, the little son of a bitch could have just taken him out to the middle of a field, hit him over the head with a shovel and start digging, or leave him passed out in a garage with a car’s exhaust running.

Just like with the makeout thoughts, he banished thoughts of his own potential death from his mind. That kind of shit only went down on T.V. or in bad mystery novels. That and Alby didn’t have the spine for it.

No, all the data pointed towards Alby trying to suck up to Howard so that Howard would call off the blackmail or lower the amount of money he was asking for.

The world made sense.

Granted, if Howard were a little less confident, his vision a little sharper, or he were a little more sober, he likely would have noticed how the majority of photos on the walls had wolves in them…

On the bright side, the aspirin was starting to kick in!

Howard’s appetite had hidden itself beneath all the water he’d downed like a stubborn brat burrowing under their blankets in an attempt not to go to school. The smells and sounds of bacon sizzling in a frying pan tempted his appetite right back out again. His body wanted sweets and grease and fat like nothing else.

“That smells delicious!”

“Thanks,” a voice much deeper, much gruffer, and much more lupine than canine replied. “I try.”

“MAX?!” Howard was instantly sober. “YOU’RE HERE?!”

New data! New numbers! New facts and figures! And things weren’t adding up to a win anymore.

The wolf scraped the bacon onto a plate with a spatula and pivoted from the stove so he could set it on the breakfast table. “Really?” he asked, disapprovingly. “Again? Don’t tell me you don’t remember us having this conversation last night.”

Howard froze, fighting off instincts to run buck naked save for a towel out of the farmhouse. “I…uh..um…”

“Alby!” the wolf called, “You gotta start bringing people over who can hold their liquor!”

The dog came trotting into the kitchen. “Or maybe you should start watering your drinks down more, Daddy!” he joked. “Rum and coke isn’t supposed to be one to one!”

The wolf let out a small chuckle, but his eyes were fierce and unblinking. This was all a demonstration for Howard’s sake; a display of dominance. They were clothed. He was naked. Alby was making jokes and calling Max ‘Daddy’. Max was dressed in relaxed khaki shorts and a polo, but he’d purposefully chosen to wear an apron that was almost as frilly and pink as the stupid dress he’d spied on the bathroom floor.

They were at ease. They were comfortable, willing to show their soft underbellies because there was nothing Howard could do to them in this moment. This was their place of power, not his. Howard re-imagined being buried alive in a field and almost found it preferable to what was presently happening. Howard was fucked. He just didn’t know how fucked.

He asked, “What’s going on?”

“Sit down,” Max said. “Have some breakfast.”

“I think I’ll stay standing if that’s okay.”

Still on the stove were a batch of pancakes, almost ready to be flipped and join their brethren on another plate, their heat and weight helping to keep the ones on the bottom warm if not piping hot. Max placed the spatula down and turned his back to the stove, even though it might mean the flapjacks would burn.

“Look,” the wolf said, “personally, I wanted to ignore you and bet that you didn’t have the guts to follow through. Alby didn’t like that idea. Then I wanted to just beat the shit out of you.” He said it as casually as one might talk about going to the store for some milk. “Alby didn’t like that either. So sit down, listen, and get a refresher on what’s about to go down.”

Howard obeyed. Alby sat down next to him. Max turned his back to them and started tending to the stove again. That helped Howard relax a little.

“So,” Alby said, “Here’s what we talked about last night.” He dug into his pocket and pulled out his phone. “I can’t just give you money without it looking suspicious. But I can pay you for services rendered. It’s taxable, yeah. But the IRS won’t come banging on your door and you’re still getting one of my paychecks every month.”

Howard nodded, cautiously. “Yeah. I remember that.”

“But,” Alby said. “It’s not like I’ve got a whole company’s worth of finances and income to justify hiring you as my accountant.”

Stupidly, Howard let his guard down. “Yeah. Yeah. I remember that, too.” He crunched a piece of bacon.

“Good,” Alby said. He slid the phone over to Howard. “Do you remember this?”

The bacon turned to ash in Howard’s mouth. Staring up at Howie from the kitchen table was a picture of himself, dressed up in the Little Bo Peep outfit and winking at the camera, his lips popping with lipstick.

“Mostly Fans?” The jackass choked out. “You made a Mostly Fans page? With me on it?”

Alby’s eyes were dancing with cruel, mocking delight, but he kept his expression down to a slight smile. “Close. We made a Mostly Fans account for you! Now I can send you money, and nobody will think twice!”

Howard puzzled the pieces together faster than his mouth could articulate it. “You…you got me…you got me to dress up? And took an embarrassing picture of me?”

“I don’t think it’s embarrassing,” Max interrupted. He set down the stack of pancakes. “Some of them I think turned out really well. You make a cute little girl, Howie.”

Howard’s brain felt like an old video game cartridge that someone had just blown all the dust out of. “Some of them?!”

Alby, already logged in, clicked past the paywall and showed Howard the most cringe and humiliating art gallery he’d ever witnessed, all starring him.

The Bo Peep outfit must have been the last outfit he’d worn. He saw pictures of himself in cheerleader outfits, and princess dresses. In schoolgirl outfits with stark white tights and ballerina tutus.

“You kept saying ‘No nudes’, even though we never asked,” Max grimly chuckled.

“Yeah,” Alby said. “We wanted to keep things tasteful.”

“What is that?” Howard pointed to how bulbous and bloated his crotch looked underneath the ballet tights.

“Don’t worry about it,” Alby waved it off. “See? Now I can just give you money, and if anybody asks, I can just show them this!” His tail was wagging in his seat and he was looking at Max the way a Little Leaguer looks at their parents after hitting their first home run. “And when we run out of content in a month or two, you can just come back here and take some more.”

“More!” Howard spat. “There are more pictures?!”

Alby shrugged. “Well yeah. I can’t just give you money month after month over the same boring old pictures. Do you know how quickly kink content ages? It’s like milk.”

Max replied with, “Unless it gets forgotten and rediscovered. Then it becomes wine again.”

“I was drunk…” Howard tried to defend himself.

“So was I,” Alby said. Max cocked an eyebrow and Alby quickly clarified. “I mean I got drunk and trashed stuff the first time; not last night.”

“I’m not coming in for more pictures,” Howard said.

The wolf and the dog traded looks as if Howard had only now said something that interested them.

“You’ve got time to make up your mind,” Alby said. “If we don’t have enough new content, we’ll just share links around the office. See what they think.”

The jackass tried to sound like he wasn’t begging, but failed. “You guys can’t do this!”

Max finally sat down at the table and stuck his fork into a stack of pancakes. “You’re the one who made this personal, Howie. You put the sign on Alby’s door. You messaged us and made fun of us. We’re just playing the game you started.”

“Those pictures won’t hold up in court.”

“Neither will yours,” Max reminded him.

“I could still cost you your job!” Howard’s lips drew back into an unattractive sneer.

“We can make you famous,” Alby replied.

Howard’s face got longer than even he thought possible. Alby? He expected that kind of bravado from Max, but from the boss’s whining sniveling nepo baby? Really?

Alby took a piece of bacon and chomped on it. “It’s like you said. My father probably wouldn’t fire me, but Max is another story. But then,” he went on, “if Max gets fired, there’s nothing stopping me from dating him and moving in.” He swallowed and grabbed another piece. “So why, Howie, would I want to pay you my money when I could just use it to support my temporarily unemployed boyfriend?”

Damn it all, but how he hated being called ‘Howie’ by these two, as if he were in on their bizarre kink with them. Howard tried to figure out a comeback, some logical or emotional pain point he could punish to at least feel like this was a draw. Sadly for him, he came up empty.

“You’re the one who wanted to make this personal,” Max reminded him. “You’re the one who started taking things public.”

Alby immediately added, “We could have been adults like this, but then you started pulling this stuff and acting like a kid.” Howard had no excuse for that. It’d been funny when he figured there’d be no repercussions. “So, do you still want to play games like little girls? Or do you want to settle this like men?”

Naked save for the bath towel wrapped around him, Howard bowed his head in defeat. Somewhere in the distance, the dryer buzzed, signaling that Howard’s clothes were done, and so was he. Howard could have taken one last crazy three-point shot at the buzzer but the other team was already too far ahead. “Alright guys. You win. I’m sorry. I won’t do it again.”

“Yeah,” Max said. “We know. Glad you’re up to speed. Now eat before your breakfast gets cold and get dressed. You’re both still going to work today.”

“Yes, Daddy.” Alby said.

“This doesn’t leave this room.” Howard said, mustering what dignity he could. “Ever.”

“That’s the idea,” Max said smugly

Still bitter, Howard couldn’t leave well enough alone. “I thought wolves and dobermans were supposed to be fearsome predators or some shit. Not into…whatever this is.”

Alby got the last word in before Max. “I thought donkeys were supposed to be well hung.”

That shut the jackass up.