Sniffer
By Musuko

Lucas the badger was not what you would call a happy and productive member of society. He was terminally unemployed, habitually lazy, lazily habitual, and all in all a disgusting wastrel slob who had been largely written off as a dead expense by those who deal with the nation’s finances. Some calculation had been made somewhere, cold and severe, that determined it would be cheaper to just keep him rotting on welfare than to cut him off and wind up having to pay for him to inhabit a cell somewhere.
	And after all, if you were to look into his grubby little life, you would conclude that he was already suffering his own self-made punishment, far worse than anything you could think up for him. He was his own worst enemy, even though he didn’t quite see it that way himself. Nobody loved him. None could love him. Earlier generations would call him a vile wretch, or an uncouth barbarian. In these more enlightened years he might be called a fucking waste of space.
	And me? Well, I have encountered many of his kind in my long and eventful existence. I like to think of them as canvas. Now, that bears explaining. You see, one typically thinks of a canvas as they come fresh from the store; clean, white, bare and ready for the artist’s paint. Those kinds of canvases do exist. I could pick one up at any time I liked. They are the children of the world, the virgins, the wholesome adults and the naive elderly. There are benefits to the clean canvas, I admit, but those benefits boil down to one defining feature that also happens to be its one major flaw: it is very easy to paint one’s desired image onto it.
	But what if one was to pull a discarded canvas from a dumpster, perhaps behind some art school somewhere. One might need to scrape off the slops from the kitchen, perhaps peeling some rotting chicken away from one patch of it, leaving an ugly stain. There might be a rip or two from where the canvas has pushed up against the jagged edge of a tin can’s lid. The dumpster’s lid might have been left open by some lazy employee or scavenging homeless, letting the rain in to further soak and demolish the clean white painting surface. And then beneath all that, one finds the further marring of the failed masterpiece that consigned this canvas to the dumpster in the first place; inexpert splashes of paint, strewn across the canvas with more enthusiasm than skill.
	Now, imagine the challenge of trying to construct the Mona Lisa on such a canvas. This is the challenge I so enjoy. This was the challenge that Lucas Smith, 23, single, unemployed, presented to me. He, like so many others, was a filthy canvas. And just the thought of him, the merest mental whiff of his existence, was enough to set an electric tingle through me, sending me itching towards the paint brush. Metaphorically speaking, of course.
	I had been watching him for a long time, by his measure at least. For my frame of reference, it was little more than an afternoon. Not that such a comparison really means anything, what with time being entirely subjective. Suffice to say, I bore witness to every moment of his life, from conception through to his dying breath. I knew of his entirety, of every twist and turn of his passage through the complex web of existence. I knew, one could say, everything there was to know about this particular dirty canvas. But more importantly, I know everything about what he could have been, and what he could be. I knew at which precise moments a little dab of metaphorical paint could transform him. I could make him the king of a nation. I could descend him into murder and violence. I could twist his desires and manipulate him in countless ways.
	But, once again, where lies the fun in having things too easy? Self-inflicted handicap becomes the challenge for an all-powerful artist. I already had the soiled canvas on which to work. Now I needed to hobble my skills. A writer might ban himself from the letter “e” to see how he might cope under such challenging restriction. An artist might paint with his non-dominant paw. Myself, a being with the whole of time and space at his disposal, capable of peering into the many multitude of beings? The answer, strangely, is easy: throw a dart and see where it lands, and work only with that one randomly-picked dirty canvas, at that one randomly-picked moment, and see what one can do with it.
	And so, my dart fell at what my canvas would, were he awake, two in the morning on a thursday in mid June. As if shucking off a heavy coat I shed my knowledge of his future life, constricting myself to the narrow vision of a time-limited being. I knew now only what I allowed myself to know; the nature of the badger’s life up until this moment. I breathed in the scent of the room, feeling the colour and flavour of it all. I drank up the essence of what it was to be Lucas. Frankly, it stank.
	I floated through the chaos of junk, invisible and intangible. I touched my presence on the discarded and rotting takeaway containers, the piled and unwashed laundry, the sweaty and pungent bedding. Feeble street lighting drifted in through a dirty window and past dusty, broken blinds. The air hung with dancing dust particles. Somewhere, something was rustling, a nocturnal rodent visitor to the fetid apocalypse of poor hygiene that constituted the kitchen down the hallway. Something dripped constantly in the bathroom. And in his sleep, snuffling and farting, the badger rolled over and flopped his arm off the edge of the bed.
	Briefly, I locked away my knowledge of his past, just to see what I could discern from the room around me. The immediate impression was obvious. The room spoke volumes about the character of my dirty canvas. Extra little details gave me knowledge of the more immediate past. The broken down old work boots laying near the bed told me of, perhaps, a past that contained intermittent manual labour. Their caked, dry lumps of mud, caught in the treads, suggested that the last bout of work was some time past. Some detritus on the bedside table told another story; the various paraphernalia of drug use. Chopped up leaves in little plastic bags, sloppily measured. I touched my senses to them. Tarragon. Not use, then, but sale. This was a story I knew all too well. Somewhere, perhaps even at this moment, some naive school kids were sprawled out amongst a cloud of stinking smoke, wondering why they’re not feeling anything, but pretending otherwise for the benefit of their equally sober friends. Perhaps they’ll feign munchies. Perhaps they’ll say “whoah, this is good shit man.” So adorably stupid. I danced myself back out into my wider knowledge. Yes, there they were, just as I expected, sat in a car in an empty country lane. I would visit them in due course, I was sure.
	The phone lay where I expected it to be, underneath a pair of boxers soiled with undignified stains. The phone I knew to be owned by an ex-girlfriend who measured her need to not see Lucas again against her desire to get her phone back and found the former to be much more pressing than the latter. I tickled my way into the electronics with abundant ease.
	The phone rang.
	The sleeping form in the bed did little to react. A snuffle, and a shift of the head. Nothing more. I knew I could cheat. I could force him awake and make him dance the cancan if I wanted to. But rules were rules, even if self-imposed. I let the phone ring on. Ten minutes passed. I was patient. I had nowhere else I wanted to be other than here, hovering crouched in the fetid air, looking down at his snoring face.
	Slowly, he shifted. His blankly sleeping face subtly changed as his mind awakened, sending expression commands down into his muscles. His brow knotted. His eyes pinched and his lips twitched. An unhappy sneer was growing on his face. He rolled onto his side and flailed his arm down at the floor, toppling a half full mug of cold coffee, scattering plastic cutlery and socks, yanking up the boxers and grabbing the phone. He lifted it up to the bed and opened his eyes to peer at the bright light from the screen.
	Guess who said the caller ID. He stared at it for a moment. A growl started to rumble. I felt him register the time from the screen and his growl grew louder. He pawed at the screen, mashing it hard enough to strain the glass. On the third try he managed to activate the answer button.
	“Who the fuck are you calling me at two in the fucking morning?” he snarled. I felt a shiver in my body in the spot where my spine would be if I had one. Anger is such a wonderful emotion; born of weak helplessness, yet projecting such force. Beautiful conflict of extremes.
	“Good morning, Lucas,” came a voice through the tiny speakers. I had not used this voice before. It was a new creation, untried and untested. I was confident it would have the desired effect, however. It drew from the commanding disdain of his deceased father, from the snotty sneer of his estranged sister, and delivered its haughty attitude in a slimy veneer of the cool, educated aloofness of his old history teacher. I had calculated every iota of the voice to royally piss him off.
	“Who the fuck are you?”
	“Guess.”
	“Fuck off.”
	The phone came away from his ear. His thumb went for the button to hang up. But he stopped, staring at the screen.
	The caller ID had changed to aren’t you curious?
	He churned it over in his slow, sleep-fogged head, and I waited. Soon enough, though, the phone returned to his ear.
	“You fucking hacking my phone or something? Who is this?”
	“I told you,” I said, my constructed voice practically purring with pompous condescension. “You have to guess.”
	“I’m not playing around. Fuck you! What do you want?”
	“I just want to talk, Lucas Smith,” I said. “How was dinner tonight? The chicken nuggets looked a little greasy. Don’t you think they were greasy?”
	His fingers tightened around the phone. He pulled it away to look at the screen again. His eyes darted around the darkened room. The phone returned to his ear.
	“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, doing a passable job of keeping the quiver out of his voice. “Now, why don’t you just fuck off and-”
	“Perhaps if you had chosen the burger,” I said, cutting him off with the verbal equivalent of a dismissive wave of a paw. My senses dutifully picked up on the rising fur on the back of his neck, the near silent growl that the phone’s pathetic microphone could not hear. “You thought about it. But in the end, you felt like having chicken. You didn’t like the look of the squirrel flipping the patties, did you? Looked a bit faggy, did he not? And that got you thinking about your dick, didn’t it Lucas? You thought about having it stuffed deep in his faggy little throat, out behind the dumpsters in the alley out back, where you had that bitch Susan that one time. And you got scared, didn’t you? You got scared and angry that your brain thought of such a thing. You got so angry that you nearly punched the guy behind the register, even though he had nothing to do with it.”
	“The fuck…”
	“So you ordered the chicken nuggets instead. And you went home and watched some really violent porn on this very phone. Nothing like seeing some bitches getting bruises to put your mind at ease that you’re a full-blooded hetero alpha male, isn’t that right Lucas?”
	“I don’t know what the fuck you’re on…” He was all but shaking with rage. I danced unseen in the air around him. Oh how wicked it would be, right at that moment, to let a little tangibility into my form and caress my fingers against his cock. He would jump, alright. That would really confuse and scare him. But that’d be all but cheating. I didn’t want to cheat. Besides, I could do just as well with my voice alone.
	“Nothing like a fag to make a cock feel good though, is there?” I breathed in his ear. “They know exactly what to do. You noticed the ring on his ears, didn’t you? One on each. You thought about hooking your claws in there. You’d hold onto his ears and give them a nice hard tug and get your cock nice and deep in his throat, making him squeal. Oh yeah, you’d show him what a real man’s cock was like, wouldn’t you?”
	“Who the fuck is this?” he growled. I felt it, yes indeed; a nice swelling semi from the ever so straight badger. And not a single trick played by me. Just knowledge and my voice. “Are you the squirrel kid? Is that it? Listen, man, I dunno how you got my number, but fuck you! I ain’t gay. You better get that into your head! If I see you again I’m gonna fucking kill you.”
	“I’m not the squirrel,” I said, as calm as can be. I knew that’d be far more infuriating for him. It told him that his rage had no effect at scaring me. Lucas was one of those types who wasn’t aware that anger stemmed from weakness. He thought it meant power. “But I can see why you might think that. No, I’m someone else, Lucas. I’m a friend. A good friend. A good friend who has your own interests at heart, who wants to see you live a happy and rewarding life.”
	“You fucking weirdo, calling me at two in the morning for this shit?” I could see that he thought he had it figured out now. Just a prank caller, nothing more. Or perhaps some really fucked up telemarketer. All kinds of justification filled his head, writing my voice off as something or other that he could ignore and forget.
	“I just want to help you, Lucas.”
	“Fuck you. Keep your nose out of my business. If you call again I’m gonna call the cops.”
	“What did you say?”
	“I said I’ll call the cops!”
	“No,” I said. “Not that. The other thing.”
	“Keep your nose out of my business!”
	These were the moments I lived for. Inspiration comes with the sudden perfection of the turn of events, and everything comes together so beautifully. This was why I blocked my knowledge of his future, so I could find moments like this.
	“Very well,” I said. “You’re quite right. The only nose that should be in your business is your own. Goodnight, Lucas.”
	I sent a dial tone down the line. I intentionally used one that was a decade out of date. Just a little bit of a personal joke. He didn’t notice or care. He tossed the phone across the room with the reckless abandon of one who hadn’t paid for it. It landed on a half-eaten sandwich on a paper plate, bounced, and skittered across grubby floorboards to wind up amongst the discarded cigarette butts underneath the wardrobe. He rolled back over to face the wall, muttering unimaginative curses. And, with the innocence of a feeble mind, he was soon back to sleep again.
	I didn’t waiting. I knew what was soon to come. He slept on, in ignorance that would soon die. Already the hints of what to come were filtering through into his sleeping subconscious. Even without my particular insight, one could see it in the occasional twitch of puzzled discomfort that overcame his blank, peaceful expression. His senses were picking something up and relaying it to his dormant mind. A scent was bothering him. But it wasn’t as if this was a new situation for him. His mind ignored it. Just another whiff from his dirty lifestyle. Nothing unexpected.
	It was a fart that finally woke him, just a little past eight in the morning. I knew this to be uncommonly early for him, a creature who rarely rose before midday. The stink of his junk food fed flatulence must have been too much for even him to sleep through. He stirred like a creature from the black lagoon, unfurling from his dirty den of bedcovers and staggering across the room like a blind zombie. His bare feet knocked aside assorted detritus, and more than once he stubbed against something heavier and cursed as he kicked the offending item away. He didn’t think to look where he was going, of course.
	“Ugh,” he muttered. “Stinks like ass in here.”
	My heart danced. Or would, had I possessed one. I watched the inevitable unfold as he staggered over to the window. His eyes opened briefly, shying away from the bright light of the sun. He yanked at the stiff latch and pushed a window open, letting welcome fresh air into his dirty hovel. I knew it wouldn’t help, of course. He didn’t though.
	He continued his semi-sleeping journey towards the bathroom. His eyes opened again for the hallway, slowly adjusting to the more amenable light of the dim, unlit space; no window in there, and the bulb had died months ago without replacement. The bathroom was a little brighter, and by now he had adjusted to the light. He opened the mirrored medicine cabinet and battered his clumsy paws around in its contents, knocking over a few empty bottles of mouthwash and, of course, a half-full can of beer, spilling out a dozen sodden cigarette butts along with the stale, flat beer.
	“Fuck!” he said, shaking his paw off. He grabbed a grimy towel and sloppily dabbed at the spill. He gave up after three seconds and dropped the wet towel into the sink. He found what he had come for: the can of antiperspirant, which he sprayed liberally across himself in place of an actual wash or shower. He lifted his arm and sniffed at his pit. He recoiled from the stench.
	It smelled of ass! He shook the can and sprayed another liberal helping against his pit, until the liquid ran in dribbles down through the fur on his side. He smelled again, and recoiled again.
	“Fucking cheap spray,” he said, throwing the can with some force against the wall. He shut the medicine cabinet with a crash that wore the entire thing a fraction more off its loose wall screws. He made his way out, wiping at his armpits, sniffing repeatedly and still getting the same stale ass funk.
	The kitchen was as I knew it to be from my earlier exploration: a nightmare of dirty dishes and evolving ecosystems of festering mould. There were organisms in the sink unknown to science. One’s stomach would turn at the sight of Lucas scraping muck off a plate with his fingers and dropping a fresh slice of greasy pizza onto it, ready to eat. It was a blessing when he chose to ignore crockery altogether and just eat from his paws. He pulled open the fridge and reached in amongst the shelves, ignoring the fermenting muck and congealed milk, pulling out a cardboard container of takeway noodles. He gave them a cursory sniff to see if they were still edible. He frowned, dipping his nose in again. He inhaled deeply.
	“Ugh.”
	Even he had limits, it seems. He put the box back in the fridge and kicked the door shut. He scratched idly at his naked side and wandered through to the living room.
	“Fucking hell,” he said. “It stinks in here too.”
	He reached to cover his nose. His palm went over it. He stopped stone dead, eyes wide open.
	Ah, I thought. Here we go.
	First came the patting touches around his nose. Then the confused gasps. Then panic, and the run for the bathroom, tripping over the broken bicycle in the hallway. He barreled into the bathroom and gripped the sink, staring into the mirror.
	His nose was gone.
	He stared, disbelieving. He patted at his nose again, feeling around, claws pressing at the fur. There was nothing there. Just a blank patch of fur, unbroken by the black, glossy nose that should be there.
	A thin, keening whimper escaped him. It was a sound he hadn’t made since he was a cub. In a blind panic he felt around all over his face.
	“But I can still smell! Why can I still smell? Oh god. Oh god, what the fuck is this?”
	He slapped at his cheek. Then again, harder. Trying to wake himself up, perhaps? Been watching too many movies. Dreams don’t work like that. I watched as he danced around on the spot, flailing. He could smell. The smells felt like they were in the right place. He could inhale through his nose. He was doing it right now! He could smell, and everything smelled like ass…
	He froze. And there it was; realisation dawning, dread cold and uncertain. He turned slowly, eyes fixed on the mirror. He turned and faced away from it, and slowly bent forwards with his tail up.
	And there it was. His nose. A small black, rounded ball, sporting two nostrils, looking normal in every aspect bar one; its position. His nose was...it was...he didn’t dare give the thought words for fear that it would make the horror of what he saw all the more real.
	His nose...was between his butt cheeks, right above his asshole.
	Now, this next bit I didn’t expect, not of such a tough, shit-talking meat-head like Lucas; he fainted dead away and crashed to the floor on top of the mouldy bath mat.
	I waited for him to come to. I had no need to be impatient. I drifted around him for a while. My attention was, of course, mostly fixed on his altered rear.
	“Keep my nose out of your business,” I mused. “The only nose that should be in your business is your own.”
	Oh I could be a demon sometimes.
	He woke in due course. It was the smell. The lingering funk of his unwashed undertail was ever-present in every breath he took. He woke with a groan, curling up on the floor and clutching his face. He was repeating the same phrase; oh god, oh god. I amused myself in the thought that, in the face of an impossibility made real, he was turning for comfort to a being he personally thought to be non-existent. Or perhaps it was just a turn of phrase too deeply ingrained in him. I didn’t much care. I would muse on it later.
	I watched him stand. He felt around down there, probing and prodding at his new ass-nose. Then, with a wince and a cry, he gripped it and pulled as hard as he dared. Naturally, it didn’t come off, any more than it would come off when it was attached to his face. He started to cry, poor thing. He had the sense of mind to yank a few sheets of toilet paper of its roll and roll them into tight wads. He bent over facing away from the mirror again, watching his movements as he guided the wads into his nostrils and stuffed them in tight. He choked back a sob. The paper blotted out some of the funk. Not all, but some was better than none.
	The next hour or so wasn’t all that entertaining. The reality of the situation needed to set in, and this stage was just a flailing flap of denial and confusion. He moved from room to room, debating with himself, crying out to higher powers that he didn’t believe in, and collapsing into confused and self-pitying sobs.
	Finally, however, came the second stage, the one that I truly enjoyed; anger. Oh the way he raged. It came as a surprise to me how quickly one emotion transitioned to the other. He was stood with his forehead resting against the wall, sobbing like a child, while I dawdled around the kitchen, waiting for him to get it out of his system. The next moment, he had balled his paw into a fist and aimed a powerful punch right into the wall in front of him. His fist passed through the drywall as if it weren’t even there. He drew it back, cascading powdery dust and fragments of paint and wallpaper. Then his fist came in again, hitting the edge of the hole and widening it. Again and again, in a furious frenzy. His head came back and he roared. I felt a tingle. He was so animalistic. I imagined sliding in front of him and making myself visible and known. I imagined tapping a thought into his mind, to avoid the wastage of words, to make him know a single fact: I did this. The violence he would bring to me! Would he throttle my neck? Crash my skull against the wall? Pummel me with his fists?
	I was almost tempted to do it. But, no. I locked down the urge, but I savoured a juicy word to go with the desire; later.
	He turned from the wall, fire in his eyes, and I almost thought for a second that he could see me. But no, his rage was unfocused, exploding without outlet. He kicked at the broken down old couch and wrenched the coffee table up from the floor, throwing it over and scattering its piled contents across the room. Another rage-filled roar before the television toppled to the floor, getting stamped underfoot by his bare heel. He punched another wall, then wheeled to the window and ripped down a curtain. Interruption only came from the thudding from above. Even in his state he knew to take the warning of the old crone from the apartment upstairs, the one who was ever so friendly with the landlord. He stood in the centre of the trashed room, breathing heavily, paws over his face, feeling impotent.
	I drank it all in. It was wonderful!
	In the chaos, the toilet paper wads had fallen from his nostrils. Their departure wasn’t entirely natural. I confess to having given gravity a helping paw. Truth be told, the badger would find that nothing would stay wedged inside those nostrils for very long. I didn’t make it a total effect, oh no: I wouldn’t want it to kick in too quickly, for his suspicion to grow. No, he could stuff paper or perhaps nose plugs in there, and they would stay...for a short while. But as soon as he started to feel the merest relief at having a break from the overpowering, pungent stink of his own asshole, then oops; gravity would overcome friction and out they would pop.
	Okay, so it was cheating a little bit. Never mind!
	He clutched his paw over his nose, bending backwards to reach it properly, and kept it cupped there as he waddled clumsily towards the bathroom. I debated the next cruelty as he made his way there. Just a few seconds to make up my mind. There were so many pros and cons for each option, and I was torn until the last moment, as he reached for the taps on the bath.
	As his paw turned the rusted, protesting metal...nothing happened. Oh dear, of all the bad luck; the water was off. A broken pipe somewhere, perhaps? These things happen. No need to suspect yours truly had anything to do with it, oh no!
	He tried the sink too. Same result. Not a drop! The apartment was dry as a bone. Typical, wasn’t it? The first time he ever willingly wanted to shower and he couldn’t. He howled in frustration and smashed his fist against the mirror, spider-webbing it with cracks.
	Using all the brain cells given to him by nature, he grabbed the tossed spray can and grabbed the beer-soaked towel. He applied one to the other to make a rather disgusting, but inventive, wet-wipe. He threw one end of the towel between his legs and caught it on the other side. I wanted to laugh, watching him “floss” his rear like that. He held his breath, grimacing, as the rough, wet towel rasped between his legs, bouncing his balls and flapping his cock. Finally, he let the towel drop and took a tentative sniff. I shared the sensation with him. The funk was still there, as disgusting as ever, but now it was smeared over the top with the rancid smell of stale beer and cigarettes and, pitifully weak above that, the hopelessly outgunned fragrance of the spray. Still, it was a minor improvement.
	He hurried to the bedroom, his mind seemingly set. He hauled the previous day’s discarded clothes out from their various piles around the room and assembled an outfit of stained t-shirt, torn jeans and dirty boots onto himself. He had no mirror to check, and wouldn’t bother checking it if he did. He looked like he smelled: like a bum. He grabbed his crumpled cigarette packet, lighter and keys, and was soon out of the door, slamming it on his way through, and pounding down the stairs two flights to the exit.
	Now, where was he off to? I drifted along with him, happy to find out. He was proving to be as entertaining as I had hoped. I wondered why he was still unemployed when he was showing such energy and single-minded intent now? Was I right in my earlier reasoning, that he just needed the right motivation?
	He had no car, of course. Even the ex-girlfriend wouldn’t leave that behind for him. He pounded the pavement to the bus stop. The uncommon exertion on his unexercised, junk-fed body started a sheen of sweat underneath his fur, which inevitably trickled down his back and into his butt crack. A discomfort at the best of times. But now, it was carrying all the juicy body odour funk right across his nose, trapped in the swampy confines of his dirty jeans. He was trembling as he reached the bus stop, his paws shakily reaching for a cigarette, lighting it on his third attempt. His stomach was churning, his own ass stink too much for him to take. Had he eaten this morning, he would surely have heaved it up at this point. He took a deep drag of the cigarette and tried to relax himself.
	Some geeky little otter kid was staring at him. He glared back, and the otter looked away. Lucas kept glaring, and soon enough the otter risked a glance back, straight into eye contact.
	“What the fuck are you looking at, kid?”
	“Nothing! Sorry.”
	The otter squirmed and shifted a little down the bench, away from him. Lucas kept glaring, sucking on his cigarette. There was no mistaking it; the kid was looking at his nose, or lack of it. A bare, smooth patch of fur where his nose should be was sure to stand out.
	He stamped the cigarette into the ground, half smoked, as the bus pulled up. He fixed the driver with a hard stare as he dropped his change into her paw, but she didn’t look up at him. He chewed his lip, fuming, and grabbed his ticket. I watched with amused interest. He wanted her to notice his nose. To make some comment or expression, so he could have something to be angry at. He wanted something or someone tangible to direct his rage at. I could understand that. I floated along with him as he made his way to the back of the bus and sat down. I hovered close to him, feeling his funk. The day was warm, and the windows of the bus were closed, and his nose was trapped between his sweaty cheeks, in the clammy confines of his clothes, pressed against the rather unclean bus seat, surrounded by the body odours of his fellow travellers.
Oh how I delighted in watching him hold his paw over his muzzle, cupping where his nose should be, a combined action of hiding his modification from those around him and a futile instinct to cut off the smell in the only way he knew how, in a way that used to work. He fidgeted in his seat, and I felt his heat and discomfort grow. The sweat trickled down his back and into his crack, bathing his nose in the accumulated musk of his body, washed away down there to swelter in the stew pot of his unwashed boxers.
Poor Lucas. If only he had running water to get showered off!
The bus rattled its long, laborious route through the side roads, picking up pensioners and students, and taking an hour to make a fifteen minute journey. And joy of joys, luck and fate conspired! As the bus filled and the seats became scarce, he became aware of how the seat beside him remained empty, right up until the stop before his own, when a pretty little white-furred mouse girl, no older than eighteen at the oldest, clutching a bag studded with buttons, and sporting a ring through her nose and a conservatively rebellious green streak in her hair, climbed aboard the bus and made her way along the lurching deck, looking for a seat. Lucas noticed her as her eyes reached the seat beside him, and there she was; frozen by politeness and obligated to take the last seat available, or stand and risk offending the distinctly angry, sweaty badger.
	Like a gentleman, Lucas shifted a little further towards the window. He avoided the mouse’s eye, keeping his nose shielded. With an expression that spoke of her extreme reservation about the decision, the mouse perched on the seat, far to the edge, almost leaning right off it.
	I felt tempted to intervene, to trigger something wicked for the badger. But I waited, and my patience and inactivity was soon rewarded. It started easily enough; just a sniff at first, just one, from the mouse. This was followed by a sideways glance at Lucas. Then, perfection itself; a wrinkled-nose grimace.
	And ever so beautifully, Lucas caught every nuance of it. He shot a glare in her direction, and she snapped her eyes forward, sitting pinned by discomfort and fear.
	“Fug you looging ad?” said Lucas. The squish of his butt cheeks over his nose, and the near drowning flow of sweat down over it, gave his voice a stuffed nose sound that matched, funnily enough, perfectly with the position of his paw. I danced into her mind for just a moment, and it was joyful; she was assuming he had a busted nose of some kind, from a drunken fight or back alley argument. Her opinion of him was hardly charitable. It was glorious!
	And he in turn was seething in shame. Here was the kind of girl who lorded over him as his superior in every way at the best of times, the pompous, arrogant, clean little bitch who would never lower herself to being seen dead with a scumbag like him. At least not sober, anyway. A dickhead like Lucas could make fine hunting in the student bars, where it was dark and smelly anyway, where drunken, vulnerable girls wouldn’t know about how terrible he was until well after he’d had his fun and muddied their innocence with a little of his sleaze.
	But here, she could see him in his fullness, vulnerable himself. Dirty, stinking, ugly. A mess. His rage boiled along with his shame, and for a moment I feared he might do something unpleasant. But the bell dinged. The bus had reached his stop.
	He moved to stand without excusing himself. The bitch could get out the way or he would just plough through her. She scurried aside, keeping her acidic comment at his rudeness wisely hidden behind nervous disgust, and reclaimed the seat with palpable relief once Lucas had thundered his way off the bus and into the mercifully fresh air that washed through his clothes and lessened the nose-torturing stink in his boxers, at least by a small margin.
	The doctor’s office wasn’t far, and he was soon at the reception, paw still over his nose, struggling to answer questions. He kept a glare on the receptionist, who to his credit kept a perfectly neutral tone. Once again, no questions were sent his way that could trigger legitimate anger from the badger. The nature of his visit would be for the doctor’s ears alone.
	“So,” said the doctor, cool and serene, an elderly and fatherly lion with grey in his mane. “How can I help you today?”
	I stayed close. I kept a few feelers in the doctor’s head. He spoke for himself, but I had a little bit of puppetry influence going on. Had to make this right.
	Slowly, hesitantly, Lucas lifted his paw away from his nose.
	“Oh,” said the doctor, momentarily showing surprise and alarm before his long years of practiced detachment took control once more. “I see. I take it that it’s not always been that way.”
	Lucas shook his head. And now the anger was fading. He was a little cub again, whimpering his way through getting a shot in Doctor Sivan’s office all those years ago. “No,” he said, tone subdued. “It was like this when I woke up this morning. You...you gotta help me.”
	“Of course,” said the doctor. “Now, let’s take a look at you, shall we?” He leaned in, bringing a latex-gloved paw towards Lucas’s muzzle. Lucas shied away, paw up defensively.
	“There’s...there’s something else. It...moved.”
	“Moved? What moved?”
	“My nose.”
	“I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”
	“My nose moved! It didn’t just disappear. It...moved!”
	And here my feelers were gripping just a little, keeping the doctor away from his respectable motivation to call in a nurse. “Where did it move to?” he asked, with only a small amount of coaxing from me.
	“It moved...to…” Lucas squirmed in his seat. The vinyl felt hot against his sweaty rear. “To my ass.”
	The doctor’s eyebrows rose. “I see.” His face remained a mask of professional detachment, but enough of his surprise and, dare I say it, disbelieving amusement, showed in his eyes. It made Lucas flush all the worse. “May I see it?”
	Was the room getting warmer? Was Lucas feeling heat from his own squirming blush? Had the air conditioning malfunctioned? Was a venomously wicked spirit tweaking the thermostat? Who could say! He sweated in his seat, pressing his thighs together. His breath huffed through his mouth, but it wasn’t helping. The funk of body musk was inescapable.
	“I’d,” he said. “I’d...rather not.”
	I kept a firm grip on the doctor’s mind, guiding him where I wanted his thoughts to go. “If I don’t look at it,” he said, “how can I help you?”
	“It’s embarrassing.”
	Still that air of condescending disbelief was in the doctor’s voice. That was nothing to do with me. He made that appear. I just let it sneak into his voice unimpeded. “I understand. But I still need to look at it, so I can confirm what’s going on.”
	“Just...just wait a second.” Lucas took a deep breath, trying to clear his senses. It didn’t work. Even with most of the air coming through his mouth, a little still came in through his nostrils, and they brought with them the inescapable stink of his fetid asshole. I watched him start to tear up. “Just...hypothetically,” he said, and I marvelled at his use of such a big word. “Could you tell me what I could do.” He waved his paws, helpless and distressed, towards the unbroken fur at the tip of his muzzle. “About this. Please doctor. I’ll do anything. I’ll do anything if you make this alright. Please!”
	I probed the doctor’s mind for a moment. I watched as his automatic instinct to care and diagnose kicked into gear. He worked his way through a number of options, rapidly assessing their merits. To his massive credit, the doctor wasn’t letting anything as meaningless as his patient’s apparent lunacy get in the way of tackling a problem. I would have to return and give this dedicated servant of the people a visit later.
	But, for now, I was ashamed to say that I could not let his offer of hope enter into Lucas’s situation, even if the hope was naive and false. The doctor’s thoughts melted away, and I took almost direct control.
	“Hypothetically,” said the doctor, “if things are as you describe them, then there wouldn’t be much we could do to help you. You see, if we attempted surgery, the risk of harm to yourself would outweigh any potential benefits. You seem healthy, overall, after all. To intervene would merely be for cosmetic reasons.”
	“It’s not cosmetic,” cried Lucas. He cupped his paw over his muzzle, again instinctively trying to suppress the sense that was no-longer situated there. He rose in the seat, trying to ease the confines of his clothed rear. “I can’t stand the smell! Please doctor! Please, I’ll do anything!”
	And to my surprise, he slipped to the floor, pressing his knees into the cold tile. He clung to the doctor’s knees. The doctor’s expression of shock matched the one I would be sure to have worn, were I able to make such an expression.
	“What are you doing?”
	“Please,” said Lucas, gripping at the doctor’s clothes. “Please, I’ll do anything. Just fix me!”
	Gingerly, the doctor peeled Lucas’s fingers up away from his knees. “There’s nothing I can do. I’m sorry.”
	“But there must be, please!” Lucas’s fingers pulled at the doctor’s grip, and I dipped into his head to see what he was thinking. Oh you silly badger. Even if the doctor were inclined that way, which he wasn’t, he wouldn’t want some grubby little sweatstain like you. But nice effort, though. Good to see you thinking outside of your comfort zone.
	Gently, the doctor manouvered Lucas’s wrists back towards their owner. “I’m sorry.”
	Reluctantly, Lucas pulled away. He yanked his wrists free and sat in a dejected heap on the floor, paws flopping to his side. I had the doctor straighten himself in his seat.
	“I need to see my next patient,” he said, guided by my puppet strings. “Could you leave please?”
	Poor Lucas, unaware of the doctor’s uncharacteristic unprofessionalism, did just as he was told. I thought he might cry. I let him leave without me, while I lingered with the doctor, quietly erasing the last few minutes from his mind and constructing a more believable experience in his head. He will forever after believe that Lucas came to him with a digestive issue.
	When I returned, Lucas had already reached the bus stop. He was stood in the miniscule shade of the shelter, sweating and trembling. I curled myself around him and touched my breath to his ear. Time for a little physical presence, I felt.
	I formed fingers, invisible but tangible, and stroked down the front of his dirty, sweaty jeans. He didn’t feel it at first. Just a breeze, tickling at his clothes. Nothing more suspicious than that. The day passed around him, warm and innocent, while he stood and sweated. My fingers slid through his jeans as if they weren’t there and closed around his chubby dick. He shifted his stance a little, weight moving from one foot to the other. And now…
	“Good morning, Lucas,” I whispered, audible in his left ear. He jumped and turned his head to look. My grip squeezed around his cock and he gasped. He started to jump away, but he found himself stuck, suddenly set upon by a dozen paws all over his body; ethereal, invisible, but strong. They gripped his limbs and held him rigid, his struggles neutralised to nothing. To the world around him, he was just another slovenly badger, stood waiting for his bus.
	“What the fuck!” he cried. And he wasn’t too loud. It was nice to see that shame kept him quiet. What would he say if he cried loudly and someone came to his aid? A ghost had him? No, that wouldn’t do at all. They would just think he was crazy. His trembles became tense shakes as the featherlight touch of my fingers up and down his cock became obvious to him. The shock was no doubt overwhelming, but I suspect he wasn’t too surprised that it was happening, given what he had already experienced so far. And my voice was chillingly familiar. A small moan escaped his lips; not pleasure, not yet. It was resignation, miserable and defeated. “What’s going on? Who are you?”
	I liked the sound of his voice now. He had reached acceptance. Not a happy acceptance, but acceptance nonetheless. He was helpless, and he was mine.
	“Guess,” I whispered.
	A soft moan from my badger. And this time, there was pleasure in the voice; unhappy, reluctant pleasure. My fingers felt wonderful, sliding up and down his aching shaft, as if lubricated by the best, slickest massaging oils. I knew exactly how much pressure to apply. His jeans filled up with the musky stink of his arousal, mixing with the heat-induced sweat and days old funk of dirty, unwashed fur. And his nose was right down in there to get it all, filling his head with its overwhelming cocktail of smell, making him dizzy from the power of it, and mixing nicely with the sensation of the best damn pawjob he had ever felt.
	“I don’t know!” he cried, still under his breath. Nobody else was at the bus stop with him. Not yet. But people walked and drove past, oblivious to the perversion going on with this trembling, sweating badger.
	“You’re not even going to try?” I whispered.
	“A-are you a ghost?”
	“Oh, well, that’s pretty close I suppose.” I tickled his ear with a chuckle and squeezed my phantom paw around his cock. The gasp that spilled from him caught the attention and confused, disapproving look of an old lady passing by. My badger bit his lip hard and renewed his straining attempts to break my hold on him. It didn’t work, of course, and he remained stood still, just another ordinary passenger waiting for the bus. His jeans were starting to load up with the drooling precum leaking from his cock as I toyed with it, fresh scents for his nose to bathe in.
	“S-some kind of demon? A monster?”
	“Ah,” I said. “Yes, that’s closer.”
	A fearful cry. He was a child again, fearing the shadows in the corners of his bedroom at night. If only he knew the truth. My slick fingers kneaded at the head of his cock, and his struggles slackened off. He was getting close, and his fight had become mental rather than physical. He was trying his hardest to resist the inexorable building pressure towards helplessly creaming his jeans.
	“Please,” he gasped through gritted teeth. “Please stop. What do you want? I’ll do anything you want, please.”
	“Oh, my silly badger,” I said. “You’re already doing what I want.”
	Just a little nudge. Over the edge he went. My paw evaporated away, and his cock throbbed untouched inside the prison of his jeans, spurting his rich and sticky cum all over the inside of the fabric. He found himself without restraint, able to topple back against the glass of the bus stop shelter, clutching at his crotch. It was far too late; orgasm gripped him, cruel and unwelcome, and delivered with stimulation stopping just too short of the main event. A ruined orgasm for my badger, leaving him sticky and spent, but unfulfilled. He moaned in misery as he trembled through the peak of the ordeal. I wondered if he had ever felt a ruined orgasm before. Perhaps not!
	And now...now he had a wait, of twenty-three more minutes, according to the bus timetable on the wall of the shelter. Twenty-three more minutes of standing with the sticky stain of shameful cum spreading and soaking into his jeans. Twenty-three more minutes of inhaling his own stink. And, to his utmost shame, twenty-three more minutes of standing there with a post-orgasm hardon that didn’t seem to want to quit, leaving him weak and confused and feeling like there was something deeply, troublingly wrong with him. No amount of willpower seemed to kill it. No unsexy thought would diminish it. Even having shot his load just minutes earlier, albeit without the pleasurable release of proper, stimulated orgasm, seemed to dull the need.
	And as the bus pulled up and spread its doors in front of him, that’s when the realisation came to him; every time he caught a whiff of his own ass funk through his nose, his cock twitched just a little bit harder.
	It was almost as if some cruel spirit had done a little rewiring in his head. Funny that!
The journey home was marginally different from his journey out. He didn’t hide his nose. He barely responded when a little child stared and loudly asked his mother “why doesn’t he have a nose?” He just watched the scenery out of the window, watching the normalcy of the world pass by, while he fought the desire to sniff instead of breathe through his nose. Just a little sniff, just a dip into the ass stink, getting a throb of his cum-slick cock, bringing a moan to his lips to be stifled. The only thing keeping him from rubbing at it right there on the bus, surrounded by other passengers, was a shaky, weak desire not to be caught and arrested for it. Something was wrong. Something was very wrong, and it wasn’t just the obvious relocation of his nose.
The first thing he checked when he returned home was his shower. He stripped himself down naked, throwing his sweat and cum soiled clothes across the room. His nakedness helped release some of the potent funk from his fur, but did nothing to relieve the underlying stink. He stood at the shower, taking a deep breath, and turned the tap.
Still, the water didn’t work, held back by my intervention. He rested his forehead against the tiles and beat his fist against the dry shower head.
	“Please,” he whispered. “Please let me get clean.”
	I imagined it was the first time in his life that he’d ever wanted to get clean. This was a good start. But...not yet. He groaned, eyes clenched shut, then drew away from the wall. He made his way across the bathroom, eyes closed, knocking over an old beer can with his bare foot. He clutched his paws across his pudgy gut and sighed. Then, finally, accepting his fate, he opened his eyes and stared down at the toilet.
	Last night’s greasy takeaway was gnawing at his bowels. There was no ignoring it any more. Nature was calling, in a scream and a wail, with beating fists and gnashing teeth.
	“Please,” he gasped, and I knew he was addressing me. I wondered what he thought of me, what I was and why I was tormenting him. I stayed out of his head, wanting to keep that a mystery to myself for now. “Please put my nose back. I’m sorry I was rude! Please put it back!”
	It was heartening to see his attitude start to change. But I would have to remain stoic and not let him wheedle me into going easy on him. I retaliated, just a little bit, by sliding a phantom paw across his tummy and pressing into him, kneading, squeezing.
	The pressure in his gut grew. He cried out, ignored by his tormentor, and dived for the toilet, clanging the lid down and sitting himself down.
	“Oh god,” he moaned. The full reality of his situation sunk in. His nose had a ringside seat for the show. If he thought that the smell was bad before, he now had to face the fresh product less than two inches from his nostrils.
	“Please,” he gasped, trembling with the tension of holding in the weight of the junk-fed load threatening to burst free at any moment. “Please don’t make me do this. Please d-”
	He clapped his paw over his mouth. His eyes shot wide. He let out a muffled scream. His other paw shot up to join the first, and together they frantically clawed at the featureless, unbroken skin and fur on his muzzle, where the opening of his mouth had been until just moments earlier.
	“Mmmph!”
	It was a glorious sound. Disbelieving despair and terror. It was understandable, really. Losing your nose into your buttcrack was one level of paranormal terror, but losing your mouth completely was quite another. For a wicked moment I toyed with the idea of rebuilding his mouth into the opening of his anus, but decided against it; that would just detract from the work already done with his nose. But, perhaps I might use the idea some other time.
	He tried to jump up off the toilet seat, perhaps now having some priority that was higher than the need to defecate. I had other ideas, and he found himself stuck as if glued. My paw kneaded at his gut. His nose whistled his breath against the porcelain, every breath now forced through his ass nose. Perfect. So perfect as the first gassy fart blossomed out of his rear, to be sucked right into his waiting nostrils.
	“Mmmph!” he screamed, thrashing in place on the seat, beating his fists down at the seat under his thighs. His eyes welled with tears. So beautiful.
	It was around this moment, as the first slithering press of the waste within started to breach, that the full effect of my earlier tinkering really sunk in for the badger: between his legs, impossible to ignore, was an iron hard erection, demanding the attention of his paws. He gripped his thighs, shaking his head and making muffled protests in his throat that, due to his new configuration, blew noisily into the bowl beneath him. I think he knew what he was being manipulated towards, and was trying his hardest to resist.
	Just a little...coaxing. My pressing touch stroked at his tummy. He squeezed his eyes shut. His cock was beading precum. And as the first slimy log splashed into the water beneath him, and his nose bathed in the rich, inescapable stink of his own waste, his arousal spiked to a level that he couldn’t possibly experience naturally, and his right paw leapt from his thigh to his cock. He threw his head back, brow furrowed, muffled voice squealing through his nose, every breath sucking in the foul, intoxicating, unbearable, arousing stink, as he pawed at his cock in a near blur.
	I sat to watch, all my temporary intervention fading away. He could now stand up, if he chose. His mouth had returned. He could open it and breathe through it, if he chose. I no-longer kneaded at his gut to encourage his defecation. He could pinch off and wait, if he chose.
	But he chose none of these things. The lust had him now. He bucked on the toilet seat, shitting harder and faster, driven on by the need to suck in the smell of it, to make his cock surge in his paw, to make his head spin from the unbearable, overwhelming pleasure of it all, until his cock erupted and sprayed his body from tummy to ears in long, thick ropes of sticky badger cum, until he slumped weak and limp, paws at his side, panting exhausted breaths of shit-stinking air from beneath him.
	It was all very exhilarating to watch. And as I dipped a metaphorical toe into the waters of his mind, I could also enjoy the confused, unhappy muddle of his thoughts as well. The poor guy didn’t know what to make of it all. I decided to be kind and offer him a small reward, letting a new thought nudge into the forefront of his mind, reminding him that the tank atop the toilet contained a supply of cold, fresh water, perfect for cleaning off a dirty rear.
	But the quick scramble for the water that I expected didn’t materialise. He sat there for a while, breathing the shitty funk, brow knotted in thought. I drew back out of his head, a little alarmed by what I was sensing. And then I watched in amazement as he stood up, pulled the handle on the flush, and staggered out of the bathroom, carrying with him the stink of an unwiped rear.
	Well, this was interesting! I followed, and watched as he clambered into his bed and pulled the sheets around him, seemingly uncaring of the fresh cum rubbing against them. I could understand that; it wasn’t as if the sheets were clean to begin with. He cocooned himself, turning to face the wall, and I realised he was intent on sleeping.
	Ah. I understood now. And I settled down alongside him, touching him with some peace to help him rest more easily. I had expected a little much, forgetting that he was going to have to absorb a whole lot of strange new truths. It wasn’t every day that you encountered the supernatural.
	So, I would let him sleep. I made sure his dreams matched up nicely with the stink that every breath through his nose brought into his nose. And through the cavalcade of rotting vegetables and overflowing toilets that filled his dreams, his cock stayed hard throughout.
	And I confess, perhaps, to giving myself a mouth during the night to have a little taste from its leaking tip. Sometimes you just have to indulge yourself. And indulge myself I did. Inside the musk-laced nest of his sheets I dwelled the night, spending my time with lips sealed around his shaft, throat perfectly sized to take his length and girth with precise, pleasurable tightness. My tongue was an amalgam of various species: the long, slithery dexterity of the snake, the tickly, tingly roughness of the feline, the eager strength and enthusiasm of the canine. I drained him of precum all night long, teasing his sleeping body to the edge of orgasm over and over again. I drove sweat from his pores. I caused him to soak his sheets more than usual, turning his bed into a sweltering mess of hormone addled funk. He struggled to breathe inside it all, supplementing his nose-drawn breaths with the occasional gasp of cooler, fresher air from his mouth. But always he returned to breathing through his nose, the addiction setting in; the smell made him horny, and his horniness made him smell. It was a cruel cycle.
	I was guilty, I admit, of invading his dreams. A figure started to appear, dark and mysterious, without any defining features or species. But he knew it was the same figure each time, whatever the situation he encountered it in. And the figure bore the same voice as I had used with him, and he knew the figure was me, his unknown and supernatural tormentor. I observed as his sleeping arousal and stink-addled mind responded to my presence, intermingling these sensations with me. I stopped just shy at forcing an association like the one he now had between his smell and his arousal. I didn’t want to force that on him. I could let him develop it naturally. Well, semi-naturally anyway.
	But, all too soon, dawn broke. I knew he would sleep on until well past the middle of the day, if I chose to let him. But I had things I wanted to see him do. So, with a gentle ethereal slap to the cheek, I woke him, and he stirred and groaned and stretched, forgetting for a few blissful moments that I existed and that he was experiencing a very strange situation. But, of course, it soon came back to him. He felt at his muzzle and sighed, then rolled over and pulled the covers away to give his ass some fresher air.
	“Good morning, Lucas,” I whispered in his ear.
	He jumped upright with more energy than I suspect he had ever shown in the hours before the middle of the day. His eyes darted around the room. Then, with a resigned sigh, he flopped his head back down on his pillow.
	“Why are you doing this to me?”
	“Ah,” I said. “That’s a good question, isn’t it?” His ears twitched, but he didn’t try looking around again. My voice was everywhere and nowhere. I could pipe it straight into his head if I wanted to. But for now I chose to whisper uncomfortably close, as if I were embracing him and softly cooing into his ear. “I could, perhaps, say that I’m doing it because I can. Or just because I feel like it. You’re trying to guess what I am, and why I’m able to do this to you. Your world view is morphing, attempting to accept this new reality. You’re worrying that all that stuff you heard in church as a kid was real, and that I’m a demon sent to test you. It’s making you wonder about what happens after you die. It’s making you think beyond the simple bounds of the ordinary world around you that you see, isn’t it?”
	No reply but a small, timid whimper. His paw had moved, almost outside of his conscious control, to close around the base of his cock, to squeeze the erection that just wouldn’t go away. Once again, his breathing was voluntarily coming through his nose, sucking air past the thick filter of dirty fur between his ass cheeks.
	“So,” I continued, “you’re wondering if this is some punishment for your sins. I’ll be fair and tell you the truth; yes, this is. But not in the way that you’re thinking. There is no lake of fire waiting for you, nor are there pearly gates up above for you to aspire to. At least, not as far as I can tell. I am just as much in the dark as you are. I am not the being that you think I am.”
	I sensed his thoughts changing course, and before he opened his mouth I interrupted. “Nor am I an alien. Nothing like that. But wouldn’t that be fun if I were? Some slick, shiny creature sat in a gleaming spaceship far above, sending down these effects via some futuristic beam? No, nothing like that. I am not an alien. In fact, you know me. Or rather, you will know me some day. I’m sorry, this is all rather vague. You’ll find out fully, soon enough. But for now, why don’t you just let me answer all your questions with one universal answer: I am a friend, and I am doing this to you because I want to help you.”
	He coughed, sitting up again and throwing his bedding aside, swinging his feet down to the floor. It amused me to see that his paw was still gripped around his cock throughout, and the leaking flow of his precum was glistening over his fingers. “Friend?! You’ve got to be kidding me! What kind of friend does this t-”
	He clapped his empty paw over his mouth. Once again, it was gone, sealed away and blank as the spot where his nose had been. He let out a muffled squeal of protest, then dropped his paw away to his side. The other started to move, in long, squeezing strokes up and down his lubricated shaft.
	“Call it tough love, Lucas,” I said. He could not see me, but I knew he could sense me now; the brush of body heat, the movement of air. And then the touch of a phantom tongue between his legs, sliding gently against his musky, heavy balls. He made a noise in the back of his throat and spread his legs. Not that it was necessary, of course. “You’ll understand later,” I said, a purr in my voice. “For now, are you going to be a good boy and do what I want you to do?” And now, he felt my invisible lips on his cock, suckling gently at his tip, which must have surprised him, as his balls still felt the wet licks of my tongue.
	Like a guilty child, he nodded. His paw was moving quicker, bringing more precum flowing from his tip. He leaned back into the bed, trapping his nose into the dark, humid space between the sweaty sheets and his sweaty ass crack. He was seeking the stink now. It was an addiction, gripping him, strong and inescapable.
	“Good boy,” I said, a chuckle in my voice. I felt him shiver. “Put your paws behind your back.”
	With a reluctant, needy whimper, muffled of course, he did as he was told, sliding his fingers off his wet shaft and moving both paws behind his back. He let out a snort of surprise as his fingers passed into each other. He twisted his body and craned his head back, trying to see what was going on. I chose that moment to treat him to the feeling of a tight wet mouth deepthroating his cock right down to the base.
	“Mmmph!”
	“Feels strange, doesn’t it?” I said. “Not your cock, I mean. Your paws. They’re stuck together, Lucas. Like glue, but moreso. No fingers any more. Just one conjoined blob of flesh and mingled bone. Don’t worry, it’s reversible. Everything is reversible.”
	Hope spiked, as I expected it would. Everything was reversible. That included his nose. Suddenly I had his attention more keenly than before, even with the distraction of the sucking mouth and licking tongue that were teasing him close to the brink of orgasm.
	“You can have your paws back to normal,” I said, “once you have cleaned your home.”
	“Mmmph?”
	“Ah, of course. Forgive me. Here you go.”
	Like tearing putty, his muzzle split apart, the lips of his mouth reappearing. He gasped, mouth wide, then hung his head, eyes squeezed shut. Still the mouth suckled mercilessly at his cock. He tugged at his joined paws, trying to free them to reach in front to give his cock the single stroke he knew would take him over the edge. There was no point; he was stuck fast. And besides, I knew he couldn’t orgasm no matter what he tried, not so long as I wished to prevent it.
	“How am I going to do that,” he gasped, “with my paws stuck like this?”
	Excellent. He was thinking about the task and not, as I had feared, the indignity and unfairness of it all.
	“Why,” I said, with a cheerful tone that made him shiver again, “with your mouth, of course!”
	“What? You can’t…” He stopped. Of course I could, and he knew that. He swallowed and bit his lip, then continued again with a shaky voice. “I can’t do that. That’s disgusting. It’ll take ages!”
	“Two of those things are true,” I said. “So why don’t you get started. Don’t worry, I’ll be here the whole time. To encourage you.”
	His defeated, lust-addled moan was beautiful. And with his cock throbbing and dripping, and his nose filled with the inescapable funk of his sweaty, unwiped ass, he slid off the bed and dropped to his knees, leaning precariously forwards, with his bonded paws reaching out behind him for balance, and started work with the nearest and easiest item; gently gripping the edge of an empty cardboard soda cup with his teeth and lifting it up.
	“Dis ithn’t fair!”
	“No more talking, Lucas,” I said, and punctuated with a warning squeeze of what felt very much like a big strong paw gripping his heavy balls. He yelped and nearly dropped the cup. “Not until you’ve finished.”
	He crawled on his knees, shuffling towards the kitchen with his cup. He carried it in towards the heaped and overflowing trash bags stacked three deep in the corner. His eyes widened as the implications sunk in. My chuckle was low and sinister. “Oh my. Aren’t you going to have fun with that later.”
	With a misery-laced whimper, he dropped the cup in on top of the pile of rotting food and dirty packaging and started the shuffle back towards the bedroom.
	Oh the joy I felt, watching him slave away with a work ethic he’d never displayed before in his entire life. And all it took was otherworldly intervention. Perhaps not a sustainable method of solving the problem of the work shy, but it certainly worked for Lucas. He moved back and forth from his bedroom, always on his knees, perhaps thinking it more efficient than getting up and down with every item. Or perhaps my constant teasing of his cock had something to do with it, keeping him weak-kneed and unable to stand without stumbling and collapsing.
	The sweat built up in his fur from the exertion. Once again, it sluiced down his body and inevitably funnelled down between his ass cheeks, bathing his nose in his own body musk. It was doing his hygiene a world of good; the fresh sweat was a bath for his fur, cleaning out the old stink and replacing it with fresh, rich badger musk. If he kept at it, he would soon smell clean and masculine, a real catch for any potential mate. But, for now, that wasn’t on his mind, as he nibbled the last mouldy pizza crust from the floorboards and carried it to the garbage bags. He knelt back on the floor, exhausted.
	“Done,” he gasped. And I gave his balls a hard squeeze. He yelped and toppled forwards onto his face, panting into the tiles. “Ow! I said I’ve finished!” I squeezed harder, and he let out a cry, turning his head and banging his muzzle against the floor in pained frustration. “What do you want now?” he wailed.
	“You’re not done,” I said. And over to his right, the cupboard door beneath the sink creaked open, exposing the various bottles and sponges of his rarely used cleaning supplies. He looked at them with a startled expression that suggested he barely remembered even having them.
	“With my mouth?” he said. I held off squeezing for now. “I’ll get poisoned!”
	“Do you really think I’d let that happen to you?”
	The cap popped off the bottle of bleach, which toppled out of the cupboard and landed on its side on the floor, dispensing its contents in a stream onto the tiles. He shuffled away from the spreading puddle on his knees.
	“Get licking.”
	He shook his head. I squeezed. And with a fear-stricken moan he fell forward with his muzzle fur pressing into the puddle. He extended his tongue into the liquid, then jumped away as if stung, licking wildly at his shoulder fur.
	“Oh god. It tastes like shit! Like...actual shit!” He started to dry heave.
	“What, you thought I would let you taste bleach? Oh no, Lucas. I’ve given you a new taste. And it’s perfectly safe. In fact, it’s nourishing. Yum yum, tasty cleaning bleach! Go ahead, get licking. You’ve got your whole apartment to clean up.”
	The puddle of modified bleach spread unnaturally wide and thin across the floor, out into the hallway and through to the bedroom and bathroom. Every inch of floor space got a thin coating of the liquid. To anyone other than Lucas, this added a refreshing clean scent to the air of the grubby apartment. To Lucas, however, it made the entire place smell like an overflowing toilet. And as his tongue touched the tiles, he got to enjoy the taste that perfectly matched the smell. The tears welled in his eyes as he started on his long, miserable task. I knew, though, that the tears weren’t from the disgust of it all; they were due to the fact he was getting aroused by it! And, of course, my mouth stayed with him all the way through the long hours of stooped kneeling and licking, keeping him hovering at the edge of an orgasm. The need filled his head, turning him into a zombie, thinking only of the taste and the need; must cum, must cum, must cum.
	I am, however, a kind soul. I allowed the larger crumbs and smears to evaporate away into the liquid. I lifted away the stains that would take scrubbing to clear. And I kept his thirst at bay and stopped the liquid from sitting unpleasant and heavy in his stomach. I even drew the bleach out of the fur of his knees and feet and muzzle, allowing his body to remain untainted by the chemical smell that he perceived as being so very different. I wanted him to stay smelling exactly as he was: like a sweaty, masculine badger who has spent a day hard at work with his muscles, burning away his lazy, slobbish flab.
	And, as my final act of kindness, when his tongue finished probing the last corner of the bathroom floor, I nudged his attention upwards to see that his bathroom fixtures had been cleaned for him. They gleamed in the light, white porcelain and shiny chrome, so very unlike their previous state. He sank back on his heels, panting, every muscle aching, his tongue sore and raw, and his nose filled with the potent musk of fresh sweat, untainted by his past unwashed state or the now gone shit bleach smell. I saw the blossoming pride in his eyes. He had done it. He had accomplished something, for once in his fucked up life. And he now had a home almost fit for company to see.
	As I promised, I let his paws come apart. His fingers reformed from the amorphous blob, and he sent them flying unthinkingly to the place I expected them to go. He collapsed onto his back and lay right there on the clean bathroom tiles, both paws gripping tight around his cock and pumping hard and fast, almost in danger of tearing the skin. I draped myself across him, letting him feel a gentle hint of body warmth and a soft caress of a tongue against his ear as I let go of my hold over him and let his desperately needed orgasm erupt from his cock. He let out a moan of pleasure surely loud enough to disturb his neighbours as he coated his body and beyond with his seed.
	Before he could sink into the breathless fog of post-orgasm exhaustion and sleep, I breathed gently in his ear, watching it flick ticklishly, and said “you’ve left rather a mess on the floor around you.”
	His eyes remained closed, but a flicker of a resigned look of shame appeared there.
	“You know what you need to do,” I said.
	I lifted away from him as he rolled over onto all fours and, with no hesitation, started to lick at the tiles.
	His day returned to near normalcy shortly afterwards. He remained unclothed by his own volition, seeming to want to avoid cocooning his nose under layers of clothes, trapped in with his musky ass. He made his way to the kitchen, on the hunt for food. He hesitated at the door to the fridge. He knew what was inside, and he knew it wasn’t good. He waited, and I realised he was expecting me to interject. I said nothing, and he finally concluded that the silence wasn’t going to be interrupted. He took a deep breath, through his nose of course, and opened the door.
	Inside the gleaming white plastic shell, stacked on the clean shelves, were a multitude of fresh vegetables. Lucas stood blinking at them, dumfounded. They most certainly hadn’t been there before. His expression settled into a tired smile.
	“You did this, didn’t you?”
	“Of course, Lucas.” He felt my breath on the back of his neck because I wanted him to. “And if you clean the rest of the kitchen, I’ll show you how to make a lovely, healthy, tasty stew.”
	“Great,” he said, sounding less than enthusiastic. He closed the fridge and bent down to fetch the cleaning supplies, moving quickly lest, perhaps, I interrupt and have him clean my way. He was learning. I liked that. I watched as he scrubbed and wiped and sterilised the surfaces, the cooker, the sink. He made quick work of cleaning the dishes and stacking them to dry. My little badger was becoming transformed. And naturally, all the effort brought a fresh sheen of sweat to his drying fur. This even seemed to spur him on. The more he sweated, the more his nose bathed in the smell, the more his cock got hard, poking against the countertop and leaving little smears of precum that he had to wipe away each time with a cloth, and the harder he worked to keep the cycle going. In no time at all, the kitchen was transformed. Only the piled garbage bags in the corner told of its previous dire state.
	“Here,” I said, materialising a sheet of paper, upon which was a recipe, printed out step by step, for a simple vegetable stew that even Lucas with his absolute lack of cooking experience could follow.
	“Thanks,” he said, still sounding a little less than convinced. Vegetable stew, I imagined he thought, wasn’t exactly a nice juicy burger or a greasy, sloppy, spicy curry. But all the same, he opened the fridge and started pulling out vegetables, checking back at the recipe frequently, building up a stack on the counter. Finally, with it all ready, he picked up a knife, hesitated with nerves for a moment, and began chopping.
	I gave him a little help. My puppetry intervention helped to avoid him slicing off the tips of his fingers. The stew came together with remarkable speed, another indication to me that my little Lucas lived the life of a slob not for lack of ability to do otherwise. The final step, ladling out a healthy portion of piping hot stew into a nice big bowl, came sooner than I had expected. He stood staring at it, and it took me a while to realise he was waiting for instruction.
	“Go ahead,” I said. “Eat up.”
	He pounced on the bowl, carrying it over to the small two-person table tucked into the corner of the kitchen. I knew his body ached and his stomach gnawed. The soup would go a long way towards fixing that. He sat on the plastic chair, nose pressed down against it, forcing him to pant for breath through his mouth between hurried mouthfuls of stew. I watched, satisfied with his progress.
	The expected outcome came along about an hour later, while I had him loading armfuls of dirty clothes into his washing machine. He was bent over, stuffing socks into the interior of the metal drum, when his gut gurgled and surprised him with a sudden eruption of gas.
	“Ah!” he cried, dropping the clothes and frantically waving at the air behind him, while trying to keep from toppling to the floor. He accomplished perhaps half of each activity. The rank fart gas blasted right across his trapped nose, and from the look of his sickened expression he got a good noseful of it. So there was still a line beyond which his own funk wasn’t enjoyable! He jumped up and made a move towards the door. In the doorway, he felt an invisible paw pressing at his chest, stopping him from going any further.
	“Finish your chores,” I said.
	“But I gotta go-”
	“No you don’t. Finish your chores.”
	He whined like a misbehaving schoolboy.
	“Good boy,” I said, as he turned away back towards the pile of clothes. “You can go when it’s all done, all nice and clean.”
	And as if by magic, the door to the kitchen clicked shut, trapping him inside the small room, while all the healthy vegetables inside his gut broke down and…
	Pfffrrt…
	“Oh god,” he gasped, hurrying to load the machine with one paw, uselessly wafting behind him with the other, breath held for as long as he could.
	Ah, wonderful.
I let the door swing open some hours later. The wall of stinking air rolled out of the tiny kitchen, like a dry ice flourish to a stage show character entrance. Lucas stood in the midst of it all, trembling tensely, holding a tall stack of neatly-folded clothes and sheets. I breathed in his ear.
	“Good boy. Go put them away.”
	“Y-yes sir,” he gasped, stepping out of the kitchen. I watched his nose twitch between his butt cheeks, sucking at clearer, cleaner air. I also noted, with amusement and satisfaction, that his cock was both hard and clean; he had been turned on, but controlled enough not to pleasure himself. Or perhaps he was too focussed on getting the chore done quickly? Oh those long hours sat waiting for the machine to finish washing, while his gut gurgled and the air grew ranker, every fart blowing out across his waiting nostrils. He didn’t want to sniff...but the throbbing need between his legs forced him to, lust overwhelming comfort. Like any addict, needing just one more hit, one more fix, even as he screamed and fought against it, knowing he didn’t want it...but forever helpless against the need.
	Perfect. He was as I wanted him.
	I sat him down afterwards, on a clean seat in a tidy, clean room, with fresh air and cleanish fur, marred only by fresh, clean, masculine sweat. He nibbled on his lower lip and kneaded his paws on his knees. He left his hardon alone and untouched, but I knew he was thinking about it constantly. He looked into the empty space of the room. I got the feeling that he was at least subconsciously aware of where I lurked. It seemed to happen, after a while. They tended to get a feel for my presence.
	“So,” I said. He perked his head up. I let silence linger for a while, while I regarded him. Perhaps he had lost a little weight during all this. Only a few days, sure. But cut out the junk for even a short time and it’s amazing what a change there can be.
	“I think it’s time to let you have a small reward.”
	“Thank you,” he gasped. I hadn’t even told him what the reward was. I figured I could flick his nuts and he would be grateful. The fog and funk of his own smell was in his head, and he couldn’t concentrate.
	“And, after all, you’re going to need to look presentable for what I’ve got planned for you next.”
	He tilted his head quizzically. It disconcerted me that he was looking almost exactly where I lurked. I checked; yes, I was still invisible.
	“What have you got planned?”
	“Oh, nothing you’ll dislike too much.” I slid a newspaper across towards him, turned to the jobs section. “You’re just going to make a few telephone calls, that’s all.”
	He lifted the paper with shaky paws. The edge of it bumped against his hardon and he groaned. I just chuckled.
	“So,” I said. “As much as you’ve enjoyed all this.”
	He blinked, detecting a change in his own breathing. A paw rose instinctively to his muzzle. He gasped…

*   *   *

Everyone knows what they say about being choosey when you’re begging. Lucas Smith, age 23, without a qualification to his name, with a less than stellar employment history, was a beggar when it came to finding work. But where there’s a will, there’s a way. And with a little encouragement, even a slacker badger, newly reformed, can find a job.
	Even if it was a job scrubbing toilets and mopping floors at a local bar.
	Still, minimum wage was minimum wage. And there was pride to be had with earning his keep. For once, the world felt fresh and bright and wonderful for Lucas. Which was ironic, considering the stink he spent most of his days wallowing in.
	And then there were the clientele of the bar. Poor Lucas was a little slow on the uptake. He didn’t figure it out when the manager openly flirted with him during the brief interview. He didn’t figure it out on the first few nights, as he cleared away the detritus from the bar at six in the morning. He didn’t even get it after reading the scrawled comments on the bathroom walls.
	Finally, he did figure it out, after getting in early one day to help dismantle some sound equipment before he got to work with his scrubbing brush and ever-present hardon, stuffed tight inside latex shorts under his work jeans to keep it vaguely respectable. It was now, finally, when he took stock of the distinctly male demographic in the place as the last stragglers filtered out.
	“Ah,” was all he said. In his dull, thoughtless head, he didn’t really register that as meaning anything one way or the other. They were gay, so what? The stink of dirty toilets were tugging at him, and it was all he could do to resist rushing the dismantling so he could get to work on them.
	It was the mouse that found him first. White fur, unblemished, as if bleached repeatedly. Pink on the nose and ears and fingers and tail. And the eyes, wavering on the edge of pink and red, depending on the light. And at that first moment of meeting, the light was the dimness of the emptying bar, and those eyes looked very red indeed.
	“Good evening,” he said. The voice sent a shaky tingle through Lucas. It brought him to vivid attention. The voice was like the point of a knife against his throat. It was very much like my voice. I wasn’t present at the time, but I visited the moment again a few passings later.
	“Hello,” said Lucas. Eloquent as ever. The mouse stared with those eyes that never quite let you know where they were looking. Lucas felt himself squirm under their pressure. “Can I help you with something?”
	And now the mouse’s head dipped a little, and his gaze was easier to follow. He was definitely looking at the badger’s attire. Or maybe his crotch? Was he checking Lucas out? Was that how it worked here? Lucas’s discomfort rose, but not for the reasons he might once have had; he was longing for the fetid embrace of the toilets, to scrub and clean and transfer as much of the stink into his fur as he could. Then an evening alone with his clean bed to make it anything but.
	“You should meet my boyfriend,” said the mouse. His eyes rose up again, and now they were definitely fixed with Lucas’s. “He’ll like you.”
	“I really should get to work,” said Lucas, gesturing towards the door, lifting up a cloth from his shirt pocket, smiling apologetically. The mouse waved a dismissive paw.
	“Oh, don’t worry about that.” The mouse glanced over his shoulder. At the bar, another mouse, brown-furred where visible outside the tight restriction of his form-fitting embrace of his skinny jeans and somewhat feminine t-shirt, snapped to nervous attention. The white mouse smiled and looked back. “My friend will do the work for you.”
	“But I’m paid to-”
	“You’ll still get paid.”
	“I...okay.”
	Perhaps my work with Lucas had pushed him a little too far towards ready compliance. My own authoritarian voice had been absent for a few days. And now another steps onto the stage. Could I blame him for being weak to its power? In hindsight, I could see all the signs of this white mouse, and what he represented, what threat he could be. But I could also see as plain as day what the mouse was seeing. And though the mouse had reached the wrong conclusion for the cause of what he saw, something to do with a trivial little organisation run by a cat, he was spot on in recognising what he saw.
	And that what was the subtle line round the edges of Lucas’s nose. A seam. A join. The suggestion that a gentle tug would pull his nose completely away from his body, like a fridge magnet being popped off of a fridge.
	It rather impressed me that the mouse had spotted the little reward I had given to Lucas. Especially as Lucas thus far had seemed incapable of noticing it himself.
	The taxi whisked them smoothly away. Lucas should not have allowed himself to be stolen like that. But I could tell that he was hooked. The mouse carried an air of control about him, one that even cut through the rather racy leather clubbing outfit he was wearing. The clothes screamed bitch, but the eyes said master.
	And then the bat. And even Lucas could see the surprise. The mouse clicked the door shut behind them, and Lucas stood face to face with the bat, who, and I amused myself with this comparison later, was dressed almost identically to Lucas: grubby jeans, grubby shirt and scuffed boots and general wear and tear of a worker. The sweaty scent, rich and spicy and wholly unlike his own, filled Lucas’s nose. But his attention was on the bat’s mouth.
	“You…”
	“Don’t say it,” snapped the bat. Lucas’s eyes followed the dancing tip of the bat’s tongue. Or, rather, as Lucas was clumsily realising, his cock. Right there, between the bat’s lips, moving about just as a tongue would and should. But...it wasn’t a tongue. A cock. A cock tongue. And the bat clearly knew about it. His annoyed glare switched to the mouse. “Why did you bring this home.”
	“Hey!”
	The bat held up a finger to Lucas, and continued to glare at the mouse.
	“Because,” said the mouse. “Well, perhaps you could see for yourself.”
	The bat fixed Lucas with the glare. It had just as much strength as the mouse’s intense gaze, but without any of the subtlety. It was a blast of pure emotion, and it was mostly pissed off.
	And then it transformed in an instant. The bat laughed, clapping his odd winged paws together.
	“Oh fuck,” he cried. “Really? You’re kidding me!” The bat leaned in uncomfortably close, and Lucas leaned away. The bat was staring...at his nose? He cupped a paw defensively over it.
	“Yes, really,” said the mouse. Lucas felt him standing behind him. Dangerous. Very dangerous.
	“What are you two talking about?”
	“Tell me, badger,” came the smooth voice behind him. It made his eyes close. Bless him, he thought it sounded like me. “Have you experienced anything strange lately?”
	“I might have.”
	“Something,” said the mouse, touching at Lucas’s arm and easing his paw away from his nose. The bat stared again, a wide grin on his face. “Something that affected your nose?”
	Lucas stiffened.
	“I knew it,” said the mouse, letting go of Lucas’s arm.
	“What do you know about that?”
	“Nothing I fancy telling you.” The mouse dropped himself into a couch and fingered a magazine, picking it up with his fingertips and tossing it away. Lucas caught a glimpse of glossily-printed breasts. “Sweetie,” said the mouse; Lucas realised he wasn’t the one being addressed, “be a dear and show the badger what we’re talking about. I get the feeling that he doesn’t know what we’re talking about.”
	The bat sniggered, and Lucas tried to back away from him as he approached, one paw up, long fingers reaching.
	“Just relax, badger,” said the mouse. He patted his pockets, fishing out a crumpled pack of cigarettes. “Just let him touch your nose. It won’t hurt.”
	The bat’s fingertips touched at Lucas’s nose. He flinched. Then came an odd feeling as the bat curled his claws around the sides of it and…
	“There we go,” said the bat, drawing his paw back. He tossed something up out of his palm and caught it. Simultaneously, Lucas felt an odd pressure on his nose that felt almost exactly like…
	He felt at his nose and found only the smooth, unbroken fur that he knew from before, from my modification of him.
	“My nose!” he cried.
	The bat tossed the object again. Twirling in the air, Lucas’s nose, a small button of black flesh sporting two nostrils. He caught it and Lucas once again felt the impact.
	“Detachable,” said the bat, closing his fingers over it. “Squeezable!”
	Lucas yelped and reached for it. The bat pulled his arm out of reach and held his other paw up to block. “Careful now! Don’t want me to drop it and step on it do you?”
	The mouse fired up a lighter and took a drag on his cigarette. “So you didn’t know it could do that.”
	“No! I mean. He could...I don’t know!”
	“You don’t need to say anything,” said the mouse. “I know all about who did this to you.”
	“You do?”
	“I do.” The mouse and the bat exchanged glances and smiles. “So really, I don’t need you. But I thought you might like to meet my boyfriend here. As you can see, he-”
	“Shut up!” snapped the bat.
	“Now now, honey bunch, sugar pie, don’t be like that. Go on, give us a smile. Show our new friend your unique endowment.”
	The bat growled, and Lucas caught sight of it; the fleshy cockhead poking against the backs of his teeth.
	“Can I have my nose back, please?” he said, voice thin and pleading.
	A silent second passed. As one, the mouse and the bat burst into laughter. Lucas felt the bat’s fingers squeezing around his nose. It felt wrong, detached like that! He drew in breath through his nostrils, finding it working as usual. He smelled paw lotion. And bat musk.
	“You sound like a baby,” said the bat. “Daddy! Give me my nose back daddy! Peekaboo!”
	“Please,” whined Lucas. “What do you want?”
	“I don’t know,” said the bat, turning to look at the mouse, who had put his feet up on the coffee table and was leaning his head back, blowing smoke at the ceiling. “What do I want?”
	“Whatever you want, sweetheart. He’s your toy. Go have fun.”
	“Oh really?” The bat’s grin turned back to Lucas, a devil shining in his eyes. “Come along then, toy.” He held Lucas’s nose up and pinched it like a squeaky toy. “Let’s go have fun!”
	The bat grabbed Lucas’s paw and dragged him, full of the skipping enthusiasm of a small child. The mouse absent-mindedly raised his paw and waved, dropping cigarette ash. Lucas struggled to think of anything else to do. This was ridiculous; he was clearly bigger and stronger than both of these two. He could overpower them so easily. But instead, he got felt powerless once again, all because of his damn nose.
	A bedroom, ordinary and plain. The body scents of the mouse and the bat lingered in the air, just strong enough to filter through to the bat’s palm. As he breathed in, the bat giggled and uncurled his fingers.
	“That’s so weird. I can feel your breathing through this thing.”
	“It’s, uh…” Lucas had caught sight of the metal wrist cuffs between the pillows on the bed. “Yeah, it is.”
	“Hmm.” The bat gave Lucas’s nose another squeeze, then put it down on the dresser beside the door. Lucas thought about lunging for it, but the bat stayed within grabbing distance of it. “Alright, lie down,” he said, pointing to the bed.
	And, obediently, Lucas did just that. He wriggled up into the centre of the bed, laid on his back, eyes locked onto the bat.
	“Oh really?” said the bat, gesturing towards the headboard. “Done this before have you?”
	Lucas looked up at his arms, which he’d laid on the pillows either side of the cuffs. Well, that just made sense, didn’t it?
	“Go ahead, badger boy. Lock yourself up.”
	“I…”
	“You gonna argue?” The bat’s paw reached for Lucas’s nose on the dresser.
	“Alright alright!”
	The cuffs rattled as he pulled them out from between the pillows. These weren’t play cuffs. They were thick and strong, and they ratcheted noisily onto his wrists, locking snug and secure.
	“So,” said the bat, crouching down in front of the bed and rising up with a coil of rope in his paws. He started to wrap them around Lucas’s ankles, over the top of his boots. “I think we’re going to be good friends, don’t you?”
	Lucas said nothing, rather wisely I thought.
	“You with your weird nose. Me with my…” The bat cleared his throat and yanked a knot tight on Lucas’s ankles, dropping the loose ends of the rope. “Me with my thing.”
	He turned one-eighty and scooped up the detached nose. Lucas felt the fingers again, and he tensed up. So very strange: it still felt as if it was where it should be. And then another odd feeling, one he struggled to identify.
	“Well this is strange,” said the bat. Lucas lifted his head. The bat had his paw held out flat, palm downwards. Lucas’s nose was in the bat’s palm and defying gravity. “Your nose has got stuck to my paw, badger boy.”
	“I don’t understand. It hasn’t done that before. This is...this is all new.”
	The bat turned his paw palm-up and gripped the nose with the fingers of his other paw. With a tug that made Lucas yelp and his eyes water, it popped free once more.
	“Interesting!” said the bat, voice dripping with menace. “I shall be right back.”
	Lucas closed his eyes and tried not to whimper. It was all sinking in; he was in a strange place with strange people with his nose doing something very strange, even compared to what he had known it to do before. This was all potentially very bad.
	And it was that moment that my voice purred in his ear.
	“Hello Lucas.”
	His tense body relaxed completely.
	“You!”
	“Yes, Lucas. Me.”
	“M-my nose came off.”
	I had to chuckle. He sounded adorable. A scared little boy. “Yes, Lucas. Do you like it? I see you haven’t got it on your face right now.”
	“The bat took it.”
	“Ah, yes. Him.”
	“I’m scared. What’s going to happen to me?”
	“Well, Lucas, I believe the bat will come back in, and then…”
	“Who are you talking to?” snapped the bat, standing in the doorway. A pair of filthy, dirt-caked boots hung from his paw by their laces.
	“Nobody! Just myself.”
	“Hmm.”
	The boots dropped with a thud onto Lucas’s chest. The bat climbed up onto the bed and stepped across Lucas’s waist, then dropped himself to sit on Lucas’s stomach.
	“Ugh!”
	“Shut your face, baby. I’m not that heavy.”
	 He held a paw up for Lucas to see, showing off the little nose, then dropped it into the opening of the right boot. Instantly, the ripe stink of leather infused with bat feet musk filled his head, and his breathing quickened. The lust resident in his invaded head made him unable to breathe through his mouth.
“Getting excited, huh? Fucking freak.” The bat sounded more amused than anything. He had a paw behind his back, jabbing and poking at Lucas’s swelling crotch.
“I can’t help it…”
The bat swung his feet up towards the boots, increasing the weight on Lucas’s stomach. He groaned and struggled to keep himself tense to compensate. The bat wriggled his socked feet into the embrace of the boots, and Lucas felt the toes press up against his trapped nose, squeezing it right into the tip of the boot. The mud-caked treads of the boots loomed in front of his muzzle as the bat laced them up.
“How do they smell, badger boy?”
“S-smelly,” he gasped. Not much point trying to lie.
“Yeah, I figured they would. Been working hard in these. Lots of digging and weeding. Can you tell?” He pushed the sole against Lucas’s muzzle, flaking dried mud into his fur.
“Yeah, I can tell! Stop it, please!”
“Have a taste, go on.”
“What?”
“Have a taste of the mud on those boots.”
“No!”
“You sure?” Lucas felt the socked toes pressing against his trapped nose. The stink was overwhelming inside there. Like old rotting cheese. But still he felt compelled to breathe in through his nose. At the tips of those toes were some very hard claws, and they pressed painfully against the soft, vulnerable flesh of his detached nose.
“Alright! Stop!” A quick dash of his tongue against the dried mud, leaving a smear of saliva and carrying away the filthy, gritty taste.
“Taste nice?”
“No!”
“Go on, have another taste. In fact...you can clean them for me. You’ll do that for me, won’t you?”
The claws pressed into his nostrils. The pain and discomfort made his eyes water helplessly, and he pulled at the cuffs, getting nowhere useful. Please, he begged in his head...please make him stop. I realised he was addressing me, praying as if I were a god. I didn’t answer, but I did listen, and I stayed close.
“I’ll clean them! I’ll clean them, stop!”
“Go on then.”
With a stifled sob, Lucas pressed his tongue into the bumpy surface of the dried mud, dragging it along and catching a coating of wetted dirt in the process. He closed his mouth and swallowed away the disgusting taste. He tried not to think about it, eyes scrunched shut, tongue extending again, dragging along the filled-in treads. Only then did the bat ease the pressure against his nose.
“How kind of you, badger!” Lucas heard the rustle of paper. “Don’t mind if I read my magazine, do you? You two interrupted me earlier.” He heard a belt buckle rattling open. “Got some unfinished business to attend to. You just keep on licking. Got lots of work ahead of you.”
Lucas couldn’t see what the bat was doing, but he could feel the bouncing jolts on his stomach, and he had enough imagination to guess. Pages turned and dried mud crumbled into his mouth and the long, flexible bat toes squeezed around his nose and kept them breathing in trapped, musky air. I lay myself alongside him, present at the scene, but absent in all other meanings. I touched into my badger’s head, just briefly, and got the answer I could have obtained just by looking a little lower down his body.
Oh my, you’re enjoying this.
Had I made him this way, or merely brought something out from within him to blossom? A question for later pondering, perhaps.
The bat. I watched the bat. He stroked himself and looked at the images on the pages, but even outside of his head I could see that the source of his arousal was the powerless badger pinned beneath him. It was the way of the world; the mouse has power over the bat, so the bat must have power over another. Quite clever of the mouse, really, keeping the bat in check like this.
A few soft grunts, and a sonic squeak that the badger couldn’t hear (the mouse in the other room, however, loudly cursed and threw his lighter at the dividing wall) and the bat was done, wiping his cock into the pages of the magazine and tossing it across the room. He lay back, head resting down onto the bed between Lucas’s legs, and promptly fell asleep.
“Lucas,” I whispered.
“Mmmph?”
“You can stop licking now, Lucas.”
He whined and shook his head, tongue dragging through the treads to scoop up a coin-sized lump of dried mud, swallowing it without a thought and barely a grimace.
“Ah,” I said. “I understand.” And I let him feel my paw patting at his cheek. “They won’t reward you, Lucas. These two are dangerous. You’re unlikely to get your nose back.”
A shudder rolled through him, and he exhaled breathlessly against the boot.
“I worry that this appeals to you. Do you wish to belong to them and not me?”
He shook his head, timid.
“So you do want to belong to me?”
A nod. With tears in his eyes. Tongue paused against the treads.
“Alright,” I said. “I’ll see what I can do.”
I drifted away. And I confirmed my suspicion that he seemed aware of my presence, or lack of it. His attention returned with full enthusiasm and concentration to the task of cleaning those boots, filling his stomach with dirt while the black rubber polished to a gleaming shine. All the while his breathing pulled in the foot musk of the bat’s foot and boot, tickling those long toes with the moving air.
Poor Lucas’s stomach churned with the weight of so much indigestible dirt. But he faced two clean boot soles. The ache in his tongue, the taste of mud, the exhaustion, and of course the straining ache in his cock, tenting up his jeans...it was all worth it. He felt accomplished. He felt like a good boy.
The bat stirred eventually, rolling off Lucas and setting his feet down onto the floor.
“Hmm,” he said, tilting each boot in turn to peer at the soles. “Good little bootlicker aren’tcha?” He reached down and started to unlace the boots, while Lucas lay on the bed, swimming with pride. Soon fresh air once again bathed his nose, and he felt the bat toss it from his paw again, back and forth from paw to paw like it were a toy.
“Hmm, what to do with this. How about I flush it, huh?”
“No!”
“No? Don’t think that’d be a good idea? Let this little thing go swimming in the sewers. Mmm, yeah, I think that’d be a great idea, don’t you?”
There was a difference to the bat’s voice. Lucas picked up on it, head lifting to look at him. He stayed sensibly quiet, not daring to comment on how much fuller the bat’s cheeks looked, at how the tip of his tongue cock seemed to be poking out from between his teeth, about how this seemed to be responsible for the slight lisp entering the bat’s speech.
“That’s a horrible idea,” he gasped.
“Actually, you’re right.” The bat caught the dancing nose and gave it a firm squeeze, bringing a shriek from Lucas and another futile attempt to wriggle free from the cuffs and rope. “I wouldn’t want to let go of my nice new toy. And by that I mean you, of course. No, I’m going to keep this thing nice and safe for you. And I know just the place.”
The bat strolled out of the room, taking Lucas’s nose with him. On his own in the room, he again twisted his head around, seeking my presence. I wasn’t there, however. I was on the other side of the wall, watching the mouse with cold, precise interest. I knew this one. He was very interesting indeed.
And so it was that I had a front row seat to the bat’s activities. He went to the fridge and opened it wide. He placed Lucas’s nose on the kitchen counter and started to rummage through the fridge with both paws, opening containers and jars, sniffing them, putting some back, putting some out on the side. The pile grew. The mouse paid no attention. He was smoking another cigarette and leafing through a book.
“Don’t forget to order dinner,” he said, not looking up.
“I won’t.”
The bat kicked the fridge shut and opened the cupboard under the sink. Another search produced a large plastic container with an airtight lid. Perfect.
“What are you doing over there?”
“Making a home for the badger’s nose.”
“Fair enough.”
First to go into the container were the eggs: three of them, well past their best. The sulphurous stink that erupted when they broke against the container made the bat recoil and lean back as he tipped their slimy innards in. Next, the pack of chicken breasts, gone slimey and discoloured, bought months ago and promptly forgotten. He sliced open the packet and poured the contents in, more slop than meat.
“Open a window or something,” said the mouse, turning a page. “That really stinks over there.”
“Think how worse it’ll be for the badger!”
“I don’t care about him. I care about me!”
“I’m nearly done.”
From the fridge’s fruit and veg drawer came the orange that was soft and squishy and alive with grey mould. The bat crushed it in his paw and dropped the remains into the growing muck in the container. The same went for the carrots, the parsnips and the pears; more rotten offerings for the container’s foul gunk.
And finally, the finishing touch; half a pint of off milk, complete with semi-solid chunks. He dared not lean in for a smell. But he didn’t need to. With great ceremony he picked up the badger’s little nose, felt its breath on his fingers, and dropped it with a wet splash into the container. It bobbed to the surface and rolled nostrils up. The bat clipped the lid shut.
“Think I should make an air hole?” he said, holding the container up where the mouse could see. The mouse glanced up, gave it a moment’s thought.
“Why?” he said, looking back to his book. “He’s got his mouth. He can get air through that if he needs to. Besides, I’m not having that thing stinking up the place. Where you gonna put it?”
“I’m thinking the radiator. Get it stewing.”
“You’re evil.”
“I know.” The bat carried the container over to the radiator, carefully wedging it on top of the hot metal. “That’s why you love me.”
“Fuck off.” The mouse flicked ash towards the bat, who had ducked back into the bedroom. I floated along behind him, curious as to how Lucas would be reacting, but not altogether surprised to find him straining against his bonds and thrashing.
“Oh god,” he cried. “It smells! Stop it, please! Please!”
“Just stop breathing through your nose,” said the bat, sitting down on the edge of the bed. “I’m not making you.”
“I can’t! I can’t help it! Oh god.” He started to retch.
“Don’t you dare spew on my bed. Control yourself, you little shit.”
Lucas started to cry. His jeans were stained with the wet spot of precum leaking from his hard cock. The bat noticed and flicked a finger against it.
“What a freak, getting off on this. Well, because I’m nice, I’ll let your nose stay right where it is for the next week...or two. If you think it stinks now, imagine how it’ll be then! All that rotting food getting worse and worse. Can you imagine it? Are you thinking about it, badger? Hmm?”
Lucas could only moan, trembling, with a sick look on his face.
	“Yeah, you’re thinking about it.” The bat flicked Lucas’s cock again, harder this time, bringing a cry out through his sobs. “Fucking pervert. Just be grateful the mouse isn’t interested in you.”
	“Please...please make it stop.”
	The bat swung his feet up onto the bed and lay down alongside Lucas, his paws behind his head. “I’m gonna rest for a bit. It’s hard work all this, being so kind to you. I must have burned, like, a thousand calories. I should do this more often. I can see why my boyfriend likes it.”
	“Oh god.” Lucas retched again, fighting back the rising bile. The sour milk was the worst. The stink was in his nose even when he didn’t inhale. And when he did inhale...and he really couldn’t stop doing it...it was unbearable. It made his eyes water. “Please...I’ll do anything.”
	“Great! In that case, what you can do is to have your nose spend three weeks in there.”
	“No! I didn’t mean…” He clamped his mouth shut, fighting vomit. The bat simply didn’t care. He lay beside him, eyes closed, unable to smell anything but the fragrant scent of the bed sheets and the mild, pleasant scents of his and the badger’s body musk.
	“Be quiet now, little badger,” he said, reaching over and patting his tummy. “I’m gonna sleep now.”
	I thought about intervening. I would, probably, later on. But for now...I let Lucas feel my phantom lips on his trapped cock. He flinched at first, but then settled down, knowing what the unreal sensation was, knowing it was me. He fought to stay silent, panting for breath as I teased him towards easy climax, using his mouth for air and his nose for...feeding the craving I had given to him.
	And when the bat woke an hour later, he found a trembling wreck of a badger, sweaty and miserable, with a half-hard cock inside a pair of cum-soaked jeans. He most definitely teased him for that.

The release was as awkward as it could be: an unceremonious kick out the door, leaving Lucas on his own to make his way home, once again missing his nose. He shied away from the confused stares on the bus, a far cry from the confrontational Lucas I found once upon a time. I thought about my original goal, of making and shaping the waste of space badger into a fine, upstanding member of the community, self-supporting and self-sufficient. Things had gone a little off course. But, perhaps, a new goal was in order.
	The weeks passed, and true to his word the bat kept Lucas’s nose captive in its fetid, rotten little prison. Lucas struggled through the nights more than the days, unable to resist his instinctive need to breath in the captive stench. He slept fitfully, in brief snatches of blissful unconsciousness between bouts of unbearable horniness that demanded the attention of his stroking paw immediately. He went back to his old ways, partially at least: every orgasm went straight into his sheets, soaking them with cum and sweat and badger musk. In the first week, he still dutifully washed the sheets every morning, restoring them to cleanliness.
	But, as the weeks wore on, every day became once every two days, then three, then soon enough he simply didn’t bother at all. It’s not like he could smell them, after all: his nose was drenched in rotting food that filled his head with dizzying disgust and lust if he took a sniff at any hour of the day. What did it matter if his bed smelled like his pits and his cum rag?
	My unease grew when this philosophy started to extend into his personal hygiene. He could not recognise when he stank. He started getting sloppy with his cleaning regime. Too fixated on the smell and the ever-present drip of precum from his hard cock, no doubt. Even with the rubber shorts on, others could still smell it. He started getting a wide berth on the bus. The manager at the bar was making comments about his smell; not to him, yet, but to others. Unemployment was soon only a matter of time.
	And so, I returned to the home of the mouse and the bat, finding them in bed together at four in the afternoon, the bat squealing into a gag, the mouse having altogether too much fun. The growth inside the container was incredible. The mould had grown in over Lucas’s noise. Even then I could see it twitching as Lucas inhaled more recycled, stinking air.
	I could have done this from a distance, but this was far more fun. With a little nudge, the container toppled from the radiator and split on the ground, gushing its foul contents across their carpet. I reached in and fished out Lucas’s nose, blowing on it and dissolving away the covering of filth. Miles from me, I could sense Lucas start to shudder, dropping his mop.
	“What the fuck is that?” came the mouse’s voice, followed shortly by the mouse himself, clutching a sheet around his naked body. “Oh fuck.” He dropped the sheet to cup both paws over his mouth and nose, running back into the bedroom. “Your fucking container has spilled everywhere.” I heard the thud and the yelp.
	I gave Lucas’s nose a gentle kiss. The mouse hadn’t noticed it, floating seemingly in mid air. I whispered, and knew Lucas would hear it. “You’re mine now. For your own good. This has all been for you, Lucas. I thought you needed to take charge of your life. I was close, but still wrong. You needed me to take charge of your life. So be it.”
	The body formed as I wanted it to: shape taking place of my ephemeral being. The furred surface of my naked body shimmered, there but not quite there, real but not quite real. I glowed, a faint blue. Or perhaps green. Or orange, or red. Any eyes that regarded me would see a different thing. Sometimes a rat, or cat, or canine. And those who tried to fix me down to anything more certain would earn only confusion and a headache.
	One thing was very real, though: the rigid cock standing proud from my crotch. I had stolen it, just temporarily. The precum drooled from the tip and stunk of badger musk. The pink skin of the shaft knew my touch all too well. And miles away, Lucas was frantically undressing in the toilets and feeling his smooth, unbroken crotch. Don’t worry, my little badger. You’ll have it back soon.
	I touched his nose against the tip of his cock and felt the two surfaces slide into each other, merging into one, until normalcy was almost restored, bar the pair of nostrils flanking the central slit. I watched them flare and sniff, bringing in the rich scent of his own drooling precum. He’d have something else to smell soon. The bat and the mouse waited for me.
	“I’m not cleaning it up, idiot,” shouted the mouse. “You’re the one that put that stupid thing there. Go and sort it out!”
	“Can’t I leave it? I’ll get the badger to come clean it up.”
	“No you can’t fucking leave it! That stuff stinks, idiot! I can’t rip my nose off like he can. If I could, I would, and I’d beat you with it! Idiot!”
	I stroked glowing fingers lovingly along Lucas’s cock, feeling what he felt, sharing in the shivering pleasure of it. He sank down onto the toilet and gripped the toilet roll holder. He forced himself to stifle his moans. Who knew who else might be in the bathroom with him. Perhaps in the next stall over. Shh, my little badger. Struggle with yourself...and enjoy.
	“You’re the one who brought him here. You said I could play with him. This is your fault, not mine.”
	“Oh really? Oh really? You want to argue about this, cockbreath?”
	“Don’t call me that…”
	“I’ll call you what I want, cockbreath. Get over here. Now.”
	I thought, perhaps, it would be a good idea to show the mouse the way things should be. A little reminder that he, and the bat, weren’t the god in the building. I was. I am. As near as makes no difference, anyway.
	I eased the bedroom door open and stood in the doorway. Two pairs of eyes turned up to look at me, wide and round and very surprised. For a moment, the pair looked like the prey species they were.
	“Gentlemen,” I said, closing the door behind me, my eyes aflame, my teeth showing in my wide, grinning mouth. “Let me introduce myself…”