Being hungry makes you dumb.
Really damned dumb.
It’s easy to get cocky. With your camo and your gun over your shoulder, you buy into that age old lie. You’re a part of the dominant species. A fucking god on two legs. You can take what you want, when you want. Ain’t a damned fool going to stop you-’cept those other gods. But for the rest, don’t make a damn. You can blame it on those baseline needs, but the truth is?
Sometimes you just want to feel bigger.
I was hungry. That’s my excuse, and it’s still pretty fucking dumb.
But if I hadn’t been hungry, I wouldn’t have aimed. Not at a fucking cottontail, anyways. Fuckers are all fuzz and sinew in the wild, barely food at all. Mountain folk in the appalachian, they did that. Ate rabbits through the winter. Starved to death with their bellies fat, too. But this was the ozarks, not there. Provisions had ran low. Not low enough, but still.
I was a god.
I thought I could just take it.
Even gods miss, though. Thirty feet away shouldn’t have been shit, but I still did. So I ran on after it-right into the brush. Was a damned fat thing too. I could see it’s hind jiggling with every hop. I’d made it about ten feet into the briars when the trap snapped over my ankle.
My trap. Mine that I had set and totally forgot about. I let out a yell that would have curled your hair, fell to the ground howling. I got the trap open, sure.
Then got to discover the joy of limping back to my car on a broken ankle. That rabbit, wherever the hell it ran to, I’m sure that fucker was laughing it’s head off.
Not nearly as much as the hospital staff was, though. Oh, they were all too gleeful to hear it. How I’d been out camping for four days, living off the land. Only to fall into my own bullshit. Fucking big pharma, big medical punks. But they set my leg and gave me morphine. Things got hazy and dark.
I blinked and was gone.
@@@
I didn’t wake so much as sit up screaming. Then, having moved my fucking leg, screamed some more. I guess that’s a hell of a thing to hear in a hospital. You think it’d be fairly normal-but I guess when it echoes down the hall, they know it’s real.
It carried down, I figure, about sixty, eighty feet. I heard the sound of sneakers on tile, and fell back against the mattress with a wince. I clenched my jaw. I thought about that fucking rabbit.
My stomach gave a gurgle, and I let about about every god-damned curse word I could behind my teeth. I was sitting there still cussin’ up a storm when the sneakers came to a halt at my door.
“Mister Ramerez? Is everything alright?” came a calm, melodic voice. It was a lot like wind through pines-soft just like it. I was ready to tear the fuck into her, but then I cracked an eye open.
My stomach gave a whole ‘nother feeling, right in that moment. Not hunger, not superiority.
Because as I opened my eyes and looked the nurse over, just how fucking stupid I’d been really hit home.
I hadn’t thought too much about them since it happened. Unification, the Animals-with a A. I knew they existed, knew they were among us. But this far back in the woods, they stayed their place. We stayed ours. Cite all the discussions about integration you want, but it was their choice. We’d tried. They had refused.
Said us humans were gonna kill us all-the whole planet, I mean. Whatever.
But every now and then, you came across one. At the diner I work at, there’s a Squirrel. Works the check out register. Nice enough, but real quiet. The mail service has used an Ox more than once to haul stuff. Cheaper to maintain than a truck, I guess. Standing here before me, scrubs tight around her wide thighs, was a Rabbit.
One with a coat that looked just a little too damn familiar.
Shifters-that’s what they called them-weren’t uncommon, but god damn it if it didn’t throw me for a loop. I stood there a full ten seconds just looking at her before she walked in. Her sneakers-massive things-squeaked against the tile. She closed the door gently, her ears pulled together with a hairbow. They met the small of her back, and swayed as she turned to me.
She was smiling. Smiling just way too damn much for a nurse.
For all the times we think we’re superior, all the times we think we’re gods, fear is really what made humans come out on top. Everything we’ve done before the Unification and since has been out of fear. And watching that Rabbit-Lyla, her nametag read-draw just a bit closer to my bed made it all the more apparent.
I wasn’t a god.
I was just a man.
She pressed a paw to my temple, her nose twitching as he did. It was a small pink thing in the center of her face.
Just like it had been when she was in my scope.
She smiled, and tilted her head at me. Her eyes were massive black pools, big enough for me to see my reflection.
The cast went almost all the way to my knee.
I was trapped again.
She snickered, and placed her paws on her ample hips. She looked me over, then met my gaze again as she said “Guess you won’t be running any time soon?”
The fuck was I suppose to say to that? My lips moved, but she pressed a hairy finger to them. She shook her head, ears flopping against her hips. She tilted her head as she pulled her finger away, gaze still held.
“It’s okay. You didn’t know. But you’re going to make it up to me. Right now even,” she said.
I swallowed the lump in my throat, and looked at her. “Oh yeah? How’s that?”
When she chuckled, it sounded almost just like her sneakers on the floor. She walked back to the door, and set the lock. I sat there, wondering if it echoed down the hall. Just like my screams.
I won’t say I didn’t consent. Believe me, the moment her tongue literally slipped completely around my shaft, I did. But as her scrubs met the floor, I wondered just what the fuck she had in mind. She pulled my medical gown up, and kissed it.
Balls, shaft. All of it. Her pink little nose flared as she breathed in my scent, those massive eyes almost watering.
Even with the morphine, it still twitched. It got hard, and smacked against my stomach with slightest touch. Just as it always had. Lyla, she practically squealed as she began to suck me down. When her other set of lips came, when I pressed my girth inside of her?
It was almost as good as the morhpine.
Almost.
I didn’t get charged a single dime the next morning.