So yesterday was kind of a weird day and I neglected to share an excerpt from my collection as I have for the last few weeks. This one is the last one before this Thursday, when I am going to reveal the title story and launch the indiegogo (as suggested by some amazing followers), where you can donate to this project and preorder the collection. Thank you for your amazing support so far and I’m super excited and here you gooo.

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It took forever to get him to bark properly. 

She had never wished to coerce him, both because of her recognition of the necessity of willing, enthusiastic consent and the unparalleled satisfaction she felt when attaining it. And so she told him, in a way that made him cringe with its vague menace, that he would bark when he was ready.  

He had accepted the leash and collar gamely, feigned reluctance over eating from the bowl on the floor with insect-wing transparency, hesitated at first at the prospect of a tail until curiosity and subsequent pleasure got the better of him.  

“I wouldn’t even know what to sound like,” he insisted, grasping for excuses. “I mean, you don’t actually want me to bark, do you? Like, woof woof?" 

She snorted. "Go find me a puppy that says ‘woof woof’ and maybe I’ll let that fly.”

He attempted to make himself bark, but the results were halfhearted and self-conscious. “Don’t force it,” she said gently, her plump lower lip grazing his earlobe in feather-soft contrast to the seven inches of silicone prodding into his stomach. She leaned back up, grasped his hair firmly and rubbed his lips across the tip. “Why don’t you busy your mouth with something it likes to do?”

He tried again a few nights later, curled up at her feet while she watched the news. It was gruff, almost a cough. She grinned and eased one of her feet out of her espadrilles, arranging her toes over his lips as if they were a row of teeth. “That one was cute,” she murmured, applying pressure to his chin with her heel until he dipped his head back. Now eye-to-eye with her, he could see the way her features had softened in genuine admiration for his efforts. “It came close, pup, but don’t try so hard.”

It was the fact that she had wanted such an earnest bark out of him that made the act so difficult. She didn’t want to degrade him so much as to bury him so deeply into this role that he could no longer extricate an act of devotion from an involuntary reflex. He wasn’t simply to play puppy anymore, although there was always something solemn in the playfulness that indicated that it had never been merely a game to either of them.

One morning, he walked into the kitchen to find his food in a bowl on the floor, a porcelain container of water alongside it. By the still-dirty cup of the blender in the sink and the mush his food had been reduced to, he assumed that she had ground up a second set of the eggs and sausage that sat in front of her into a parody of dog food.

“You’ll eat it, won’t you?” She was sitting at the kitchen table, an unmasked look of self-doubt in her eyes. “I haven’t gone too far this time?”

He sank to his knees and studied the food once more. Sure, he had eaten off of the floor. But never quite in this capacity, never with the humanness blended right out of his meals. “I’ll eat it,” he replied and her face softened. 

Lowering his head, he extended his tongue carefully as to ensure his face would not be covered in the mess of egg and sausage. He heard her rise from her seat and caught, out of the corner of his eye, the flash of her white slippers, followed by her knees settling onto the laminate tile. “You know,” she began in a way that seemed rehearsed, trembling with the jitters of an opening night, “that’s not how puppies do it. Their tongues go down, not up, that’s why they’re messier than cats.” 

Her hand settled into his hair and she applied pressure, shoving his face into the food. He felt the thick mush cover his cheeks, his chin, even his forehead. 

And there, suddenly, he felt it, caught in his throat like a hiccup.