Unnatural Selection

Though not a direct sequel to my

Sexual Distancing

story, this does reference some of the events there.

PLEASE don't leave me feedback that tells me it wasn't clear it was narrated by a dog. Let's be clear:

it's narrated by a dog.

No humans were harmed during the writing of this story, unless they wanted to be, and all dogs in this piece are safely over the age of 18... in dog years.

Enjoy!

* * *

"Aww!" I whined. "You're going home so soon?"

"Yup." Daisy was grooming herself. "My owner gets pissed if I don't come when she calls me."

"Master, dammit!" Jesus. What was wrong with Daisy? Bitch had no self-respect. "Nobody

owns

us, Dais. We're companions, not possessions." I barked emphatically.

"Whatever," she snickered. "Look, it's been a fun date and all, but I really do need to be getting back, Boysen. Duke will be expecting me home. And I don't need you and your sleazy friends from the gas station giving me a case of the Fleas." She twisted her head down toward her shoulder, licking idly at her fur.

"Duke." I grimaced, emphasizing my contempt by shitting on the sidewalk. "Like I care what he expects."

"Well," Daisy said primly, "he

is

my husband."

"Oh, stop. Just because your master bought you the same day? That means nothing."

"Different strokes, different folks," she shrugged. "Listen, I'm off."

"Ooooh yes," I nodded. "Wouldn't do to keep Mr Dukie-poo waiting." My shit was stinky, and even I wanted to get away from it; it occurred to me that I might have overreacted. Daisy wrinkled her nose in distaste.

"So romantic." She eyed my steaming pile of poop, then wagged her tail at me. "See you around, Boysen."

"Anytime, Dais." I gave her a little lick along the chops, then we went our separate ways: she back to Duke and her owner's expensive organic chow and me back to Mrs Lansky's creepy old house with the bowl of dry shit she got on clearance down at Petco. I didn't mind, though; she was a good owner, kind to me, and she kept the house nice and warm once the snow fell.

Plus, she didn't give a shit where I went. Old Mr Lansky, back before he'd gone on that Big Off-Leash Walk In The Sky, had installed the cheapest doggie door he could find, so it was easy to get in and out. Some of my buddies had owners that imposed curfews, locking them in at night; fuck that shit. What were they worried about? Cats or something?

Nah, I had more important things to do. And I did them that night next to the rusted-out dumpster behind the gas station down on Pleasant St, the one next to the sandwich place all the humans loved. Meaning, the sandwich place that used the gas station's dumpster.

"I dunno, Clyde," I said that night as I attacked a half-eaten salmon slider. "I still say our primary purpose, as dogs, is to get our owners laid." I was, of course, cognizant that I was not useful in that area; Mrs Lansky had been notably uninterested in sex for years now, though her grandson Wayne was one horny motherfucker. But even he was useless; I'd once gotten all cute for the neighbor girl so that he could make the moves on the girl's mom, but all he'd gotten was a peepshow through the window.

"Fuck yes." Our other friend, Rasputin, was in a position to know: his owner, Mr Byrd, was the ugliest man in town. "Even Byrdie gets chicks to talk to him. Know why?" He spat out a chicken bone and cocked his head, the picture of mixed-breed cuteness like that grey dude from that one cartoon movie, with the Lady. The Disney one. Where they eat the spaghetti together. Lady and the... huh.

Never could remember that doggie's name.

But what I did know was that in that moment, with his mismatched ears and his big liquid eyes and that lolling tongue of his, my old buddy Rasp was the cutest motherfucker in town. "Aww," I nodded supportively, "see, Clyde? Nobody can resist a cute doggie."

Clyde glanced away oddly, his expression looking that strange way it got sometimes when the moon was almost full. Almost looked like his snout got shorter, somehow. "I wouldn't know," Clyde said primly. "I'm not a cute doggie."

Rasp laughed loudly. "Man, you're right about that." He grinned. "You're so ugly you could be a fucking corgi," and I could only nod; corgis have a lot of good qualities, but almost every doggie I know thinks they're primadonna pieces of shit just because a Queen owns a bunch of them.

Clyde lounged against the side of the gas station, and I had to blink; for an instant there, just for a second, the guy almost looked

human

. "Jesus." I eyed him, appalled. "Who bred you?"

"Nature." Clyde shrugged, which really just had the effect of dipping his massive neck.

"Bullshit," Rasp laughed. "We're dogs, dude, and it's the 21

st

century. None of us is bred naturally."

"Dumbass," I agreed scornfully.

"Huh?" Clyde sat back on his haunches, looking as thoughtful as he could, the fucking wolf-faced dweeb. "I don't know about you assholes," he sniffed, "but I'm pure Darwin, baby. Natural selection, and I'm at the top of the heap." He flicked his tail at Rasp, who snarled quietly. "All nature, no nurture. That's the werewolf way." He yawned. "Sheer id."

"Id?" I frowned as best I could with that irresistible mouth of mine. "The fuck is that?"

"Hey. Boysen." Rasp was smirking at me. "What was Darwin's ship called?" He began to chuckle; it was an old joke whenever the touchy issue of breeding came up, and I was in no mood to deal with it.

"Fuck off, mongrel," I scoffed. Clyde was already laughing.

"The

Beagle!

" They both howled, leaving me to paw restlessly at the trash by the dumpster. Fucking Darwin. Not for the first time, I wondered what kind of creature I'd have become if there hadn't been a million humans in my past trying to breed me to hunt fucking rabbits. Even the name of my breed was dumb. Who takes you seriously when you're called a beagle? It sounded more like a type of fart.

"Yeah," I observed, my nose in the air. "Y'all are a fucking riot."

* * *

Werewolf.

I reflected on that the next day as I led old Mrs Lansky around the neighborhood on her new cane. She'd been laid out with a bad foot? Knee? Hip? I could never keep the bipeds straight. But she'd only recently begun to walk me again, and I felt her tentativeness through the leash. I fucking hated that leash, but it made Mrs Lansky comfortable to hang onto me. She was old, and these days I smelled her worry. So I took it easy on her even though I was feeling frisky, because although I talk a big game out in back of the gas station, I really do love the old lady.

I wasn't whelped yesterday: I knew my breeds. Hounds? Check. Terriers? Check. They Who Shall Not Be Named, those shitty little nobodies that human girls keep in their purses? Check. All of them acted differently and, importantly, smelled differently. That's how I saw the world, as an endless series of smells all yarned together, blending with other smells to be teased out so that I could figure out what was going on.

And not for the first time, I realized I was troubled that I couldn't figure out Clyde. He smelled funny.

He was a relative newcomer to the Gas Station Pack, Rasp and I accepting him because Old Pete had gone into semiretirement and Bailey had had that untimely meeting with a Chevy. That had left just Rasputin and I, and don't get me wrong: I like the kid, but he and I ran out of shit to talk about maybe three minutes after we sniffed each others' butts. We needed a third.

So we'd welcomed Clyde, despite his weird smell and his membership in a breed I'd never encountered before. He fit in okay, but there were times he got a little... well, a little

off

. They usually happened when the moon was nearing its brightest, like tonight. I frowned, my mind tingling on the verge of some kind of realization, but it didn't make it the rest of the way before the smell of one of the neighbors' grills grabbed my attention.

So my frontal lobe doesn't solve problems quickly. What the hell do you expect? I'm only a dog.

I guided Mrs Lansky carefully along the sidewalk, the same route we'd done a million times. It had been a little different when her grandson had been staying here: different walks, a different pace, but it felt good getting back to normal. Even if the old lady was moving a lot slower than she used to. But you can't have it all. What's that they say? Sometimes in life you get the Milk-Bone, sometimes you get the Pupperoni.

* * *

The moon was even brighter the next night, and Clyde was acting positively weird, as though he'd just gotten sniffed by a particularly showy spaniel. I was watching him narrowly, gnawing at a package of cookies I'd just liberated from the dumpster. They tasted delicious, like my own ass.

"It was the strangest thing," Rasputin was sighing. "My owner was having email problems, and he kept whining about his 'scent items.' Like, why would a human care about that?"

"How was your day, Clyde?" I asked carefully. He hadn't been around very much until about a week ago, with the moon getting brighter. He tended to disappear on the darker nights. Now, he looked positively agitated.

"Fine." He was forcing the smile, though; his smell and his look didn't match up. "Just, you know, a long day." I had no idea how Clyde spent his days. He never seemed to have an owner, and I'd never been to his house. He smelled like an indoor doggie, though, like offices and paperwork.

Maybe he's a police dog,

I pondered, though they usually used Malinois and not... wherewolves? Ware-wolves? Whatever the fuck he called himself.

"Great." I nosed the package over toward him. "Have some Oreos."

"I know why you like Oreos," Rasputin put in, all snide. "It's because they're black and white, like your poster child."

Fucker. I knew where this was going, my teeth gritted. He looked lazily over at me knowing he could piss me off and that I'd do nothing about it; Rasputin was a street mutt, making him a tough one to challenge. And I? I'm a lover, not a fighter. So I had to play it out. "And who might that be, pray?"

He yawned. "The world's most famous beagle," he sighed. "Snoopy."

He cracked up, and even Clyde shook off his malaise and joined in. I let them laugh it up for a few seconds, then decided that was enough. "Hardy har fucking har," I glowered. "Snoopy's not a real beagle. He looks nothing like a fucking beagle."

The other two exchanged glances. "Looks aside," Clyde snickered, "I'd say he's definitely a beagle."

"You're just bitter," Rasp giggled, "because everyone expects you to be in love with a fucking canary."

"Stop that," I snapped. "Woodstock isn't necessarily a canary."

"He's a fucking canary!" Rasputin bayed, loving my anger. Clyde was grinning, and I turned plaintively toward him.

"So. Any big plans this weekend?" I asked him loudly. Mrs Lansky's grandson had taught me that, as I watched him talking to people on Pixboox Chats: when everyone around is mocking you, just change the subject by focusing on someone else's sex life. "Any hot dates coming up?"

He looked at me, and I flinched when his eyes showed a tinge of red. An odd smell drifted toward me, an earthy and vaguely menacing smell that put me on my guard. But just as I blinked and looked again, those eyes of his seemed their normal sky-blue self, the scent fading. Must have just been, like, a trick of the light. Uh, and the nose.

I'd never smelled anything like that before. It was a primal smell, deeply puzzling and disturbing, the smell of old, smoky, violent days of blood and savagery. The fuck?

And where were

those

thoughts coming from?

He slitted his eyes at me and yawned elaborately. "Yeah, I might have a little something lined up," he admitted. He sniffed the air evasively, but he wasn't fooling me; I knew he couldn't smell for shit. "She's really begging for it. Totally in heat."

"Really!" Rasputin pricked up those little fox-mates-with-puggle ears and cocked his head. "Must be one sexy bitch. Know what's really hot?" He winked knowingly. "Doing it humanstyle."

I gave him a withering glance, but I couldn't really say much. He wasn't wrong, at least not 100%. There certainly was something super-kinky about facing the bitch while doing her. Shame the physiology made it so difficult.

Clyde was smiling to himself. "Doing it all kinds of different ways," he growled, and there was something chilling in that tone.

* * *

The next night was calm and still, with clouds drifting lazily past a full moon. "Night, boys," Clyde announced, yawning for effect. "I'm off."

"I thought you had a date tonight," Rasp growled, gnawing on a rubber ducky he'd found in a dumpster. What a fucking slob. "Did she cancel?"

"Well, y'know. She changed her mind." Clyde sounded like he couldn't give a shit, but my nose was starting to tell me otherwise: I smelled a lie coming off him, and glanced over doubtfully.

"You said she was feeling randy these days," I countered. "You said she was in heat."

"Did I?" Clyde yawned again, then picked himself up and shook his fur. He was looking extra fluffy tonight. "Well. Bitches be trippin', I guess," he shrugged, then he was loping off into the fog. "See you tomorrow," he yipped over his shoulder, his powerful rump disappearing around the edge of the gas station.

I thought a moment, his lie lingering in my nostrils, then glanced doubtfully at Rasputin. He continued mindlessly gumming the fucking ducky. "Dude. Don't you smell that?"

"Smell what?" I sighed; poor thing. I was more and more certain that somewhere in Rasp's mutt ancestry, a Chihuahua must be lurking. His sense of smell sucked.

I shifted, restless, sniffing at the undertones: excitement. Confidence. Anticipation. The smell drew me like a magnet, all of it there in my nose, leaking from the trail of the departed Clyde as though someone had drawn a line on the ground. I picked myself up and gazed into the night. "I'm off, Rasp. Catch you later."

"Mm." He didn't give a shit. He was trying hard to decapitate the unfortunate duck, and I left him to it. "Take it easy, you fuckhead."

"Always." I trotted off around the gas-station corner, the lie still strong on the air; say what you liked about Clyde, but he sure gave off a strong trail. Vaguely I wondered whether other... whatchamacallit,

werewolves

smelled so strong.

It seemed odd to me that I hadn't ever encountered another one.

Even fucking Rasputin could follow this trail,

I told myself, pattering fast through the darkened streets. I sensed many more smells, other trails, all drifting along the ground like one of those loose-knit scarves Mrs Lansky wears, but the Clyde-scent was thick and powerful. I could almost taste it, underlaid now by the darkly ravenous whiff of sheer animal lust. I almost stopped short when I passed one of the local trailheads, one of the short gentle ones I'd walked often.

Walked while leashed, of course. In bondage!

This time I paused, my nose twitchy, the skunky scent of Clyde's urine washing over me in waves. He'd pissed here, at the base of the trail sign, a signal to... who? Himself? Dogs sometimes do that, especially when they're afraid they'll forget their way. Like, when all they're thinking about is getting it on with some bitch. The smell contained warnings, the kind that said

Don't fucking follow me,

but I sensed that he hadn't gone down the trail yet.

So I kept on trotting, sniffing with some far corner of my brain, seeking larger dogs on the prowl by night. Or, of course, fucking cats.

But I needn't have worried about missing Clyde's trail; self-assurance, excitement and (on top of it all) lust came flaring off the ground at me, guiding me along, growing thicker and wilder, and so it was only a matter of time before I caught sight of his silver-grey back fur glinting in the full moonlight, his big lean form crouched outside a Craftsman bungalow like some lurking monster in the night.

I paused, slipping behind a bush. I was upwind, but I was certain he wasn't going to smell me; he only had nose for the house in front of him, where a shadow was silhouetted now in the dim light shining through the front window. The shadow waited expectantly, the three of us sitting through a pause in the night that even the crickets chose not to fill.

Then Clyde howled.

The sound raised my hackles, speaking to the old-fashioned part of my brain, the part that said

DANGER,

and it was only with great difficulty that I kept myself from tearing my happy ass back up the street to the safety of Mrs Lansky's backyard, where I could cower safely under the bush in the corner. But instead I just stared out at Clyde, his head thrown back, yowling, his high wavering call falling to a dry, trailing note that left my blood frozen.

I glanced guiltily down to confirm what my nose was telling me. Yup. I'd been scared shitless.

The shadow at the window drifted away, and then the front door opened to show a compact woman in shorts and a tanktop, her long thin hair crammed into a trucker cap. "Hiya, boy!" she sang, and around that time is when I smelled her.

It came rolling across the sparse lawn like the trash-compactor walls in that space movie Mrs Lansky's grandson watched when he got high (the one with the brown furry potagonist, Chewie), slow and huge and unstoppable, an olfactory assault: the normal human smells of shampoo and deodorant and sweat and bad breath, overlaid by a strange undertone of perfume.

Perfume? She was meeting a fucking dog.

But peaking high over all of that, overwhelming in a strange and unsettling way, was the sharp hot tang of her cunt. She was in heat.

You smelled cunt a lot on walks, not really from Mrs Lansky, but from younger women? All the time, and it amazed me that the human males around them couldn't pick it up. I shook my head, blowing out through my nose, trying to clear it, but no; the scent was too strong, boiling and stirring through the air, through my nostrils, and into my brain.

It was fucking disgusting. From a bitch? Sure, I'd have popped out my boner and plundered it. But this? A human? I just about recoiled, and that's why it shocked me so much when Clyde went prowling across the grass while the woman sauntered down her porch steps with a pronounced sway to her hips. The full moon glittered on her glosst lips, and I cocked my head as I tried to guess her age.

Not even a day over two hundred. In dog years.

"Hi, Clydie." Her voice was lower now, a hushed and husky register that sounded more than a little bit odd to me, and that's when my buddy did the shocking thing: he reached her, glanced up, and shoved that long sharp snout of his straight between her thighs.

I mean fuck, man. That's where the smell was

coming from!

They both froze, holding the pose for a second, edged silver in the moonlight, and my eyes went wide. I heard the woman sigh. "Fuck."

Clyde just growled, and even I couldn't hear any words in there. But, from the look in the woman's eyes, I didn't need to. She took a deep, shaky breath as he backed away from her crotch, and then Clyde turned back toward me.

His eyes had gone red.

And he wasn't my old buddy Clyde, either. This was a totally different dog; it seemed the smell of the woman had turned him bigger, meaner, and those scarlet eyes looked less canine and more human. He'd changed on that woman's lawn. And, from the smell of him, he'd become much more determined. He began to lope my way, and he didn't even look back to see if the woman would follow; he knew she would.

I fled fast, trusting that Clyde's lust-sotted mind wouldn't even catch my own scent on the air; I'm a beagle. We don't stink. We're hunters, right? If the rabbits can smell us, we're fucked.