Lagomorph Conservation.
By Musuko

The camper jolted heavily over yet another pothole. I groaned and gritted my teeth.
	“Sorry guys!” called Jamie, from the driver’s seat. He turned and wafted his vacant grin our way, one paw on the wheel, weaving us vaguely along the desert track. “Can’t miss them all, you know?”
	“It’s cool man,” said Delaney. “It’s all cool.”
	“Coooooool,” said Lucy, her head floating a million miles away, her paw on my thigh, her fingers gently and unceasingly kneading.
	And there sat I, in the back of Jamie’s bouncing, jiggling van, squeezed between spaced out Lucy and her roaming paws, and Delaney and his arm, draped across my shoulders, his muzzle at my ear, soothing voice filling my head with all sorts of hedonistic philosophical insights. I was nineteen years old, out of my depth and swept along in an exciting new movement with exciting new friends. The air in the van was thick with intoxicating vapours and heady pheromone scents. The music from Jamie’s 8-track filled my ears with exotic otherworldly warbles. And I sat, stewing in it all, burning...and throbbing. Acutely aware that I hadn’t pawed off since the night before.
	And I think Delaney knew it. He whispered so close to my ear that his breath tickled. And though he wasn’t exactly saying anything overt, his message was clear: as soon as we’re alone tonight...
	I got the feeling that Lucy was interested too, or would be once she came back from her trip. Her paw hadn’t left my thigh for the last thirty miles, and it had been slowly drifting upwards, getting ever closer to...
	“How much further is it?” I called out to Jamie.
	“Dunno! Ten miles? Fifty? Might not even be going the right way!” And he laughed, turning the wheel to sail us in a lazy arc around another deep furrow in the road.
	Great, I thought to myself. I tried to think of boring, unarousing things. I tried to think about calculus. I tried to focus on Professor Whitman’s boring drone. I tried to think about...about...
	“It’s all just a construct, you know?” whispered Delaney. “Social norms, man. Once you think past them, then you’re free. And out here...out here man...out here we’re gonna be free. The festival’s the place, man. The place for us to be ourselves...you know?”
	Oh I knew, alright. I nibbled on my lower lip and nodded. I pressed my thighs together and tried to ignore the heat of my throbbing cock trapped between the fabric and my thigh. I kept my arms folded across my tummy, paws in tight fists and hidden at my sides, smothered under the warmth of Lucy’s body on one side, and Delaney’s on the other. And I tried not to think about being the filling of that particular sandwich, with my cock thrusting into Lucy as she gasped and writhed beneath me...with Delaney pressing his weight down on top of me...thrusting into me...making me gasp and moan and beg and...
	I shuddered. My cock surged. And for a moment it felt like it was going to go off right then and there, in my pants. What would Delaney think of that? Would that be cool? Maybe he would whisper something in my ear about not being finished yet, and he would slide his paw down my tummy and take hold of the zipper and tug it down to release me...and right there in Jamie’s van he’d take hold of my cock and stroke it, lubed with my own cum, making me moan and press against him, whining feeble protests that I would never expect him to heed, as Jamie bounced us along the desert road...
	I couldn’t take much more of this. Something was gonna give. It was probably gonna be my sanity!
	It would be easier, in a way, if Delaney would just make a move. Instead of all this dancing around with talking, breathing in my ear, making me shiver and squirm. If he would just ask. Or...better...just take. Delaney was an Adonis. Lean and strong and confident. His jet black fur gleamed with a blue tint in the sunlight. He smelled faintly of peppermint. And I knew...I just knew...that he wanted to bury his cock deep into my young, slender body...
	“No laws out here, man,” he whispered. “Nobody to tell us what we can and cannot do. Just us. We make our own rules. We can decide what’s right and what’s wrong. And if it feels right, why should we say it’s wrong, you know?”
	I nodded. I knew what he meant. Back home, or back at college, I had to hide who I was. And he had to hide who he was...although he hardly seemed to bother. Even from the very first meeting I felt his eyes on me, locked on like a radar dish. It scared me a little at first, but I didn’t know then what he wanted. When I knew...when I figured it out...well, then it was different. And every time after that when I felt his eyes on me, I felt a thrill. Forbidden desires. Shameful and exciting. And I’d go home from meetings or rallies so badly needing to lock my bedroom door and dive into bed and stuff my blanket into my mouth while I frantically pawed off, thinking about Delaney...
	And now he was practically telling me he was gonna fuck me at the festival. And I was okay with that. More than okay. I would get to lose my virginity in a tent, in the desert, to a guy...and maybe a girl too at the same time, if Lucy’s drifting fingers were anything to go by. How cool would that be?
	“Much further, Jamie?” I said, trying and failing to sound casual.
	“Think we might be close,” he said. “Dunno though. Does that look right to you guys?”
	Delaney leaned forwards, peering out past Jamie. “Does what look right?”
	“Those clouds up there. Freaky clouds man. You ever seen anything like that?”
	“They’re just clouds, man.” Delaney laughed. “You been sharing with Lucy?”
	I ducked my head down a little to peer out of the side window. I could see long streaks of cloud, like strips of bacon laid across the sky, ribboned with dazzling rainbow color.
	“It’s ice crystals,” I said. “Refracting the sunlight.”
	“Oh right,” said Jamie. He leaned forward and looked up again through the windshield. “Cool!”
	I smiled, proud of myself. Delaney was grinning at me. He rolled his eyes towards Jamie and held his fingers to his lips, miming a drag on a spliff, then making a goofy spaced-out face. I stifled a giggle. Delaney’s arm pressed a little tighter around me, drawing me snug against his side. He tilted his head down to my ear again. I felt a sudden chill, and the interior of the camper seemed to darken.
	“So, when we get to the festival, whaddaya say we...”
	And that is when Lucy screamed.
	The camper lurched forwards as Jamie slammed down the brake pedal. I fell forwards into the seat in front of me, and felt Delaney and Lucy do the same.
	“Damn it woman!” shouted Jamie. “What the hell are you...”
	He trailed off into our shared silence. All of us were staring now out of the windows to our right, out into the sky above the sun-parched desert, beyond a deep, dark shadow that now hung over us. The rainbow-streaked clouds spiralled now in a turmoil, and at their focus a black circle hung where the sun had been.
	“The sun!” screamed Lucy. “Oh my god the sun!”
	The black circle was growing. The clouds twisted around it, visibly moving, like water swirling around a drain. It was like the sun had collapsed into a black hole. But I knew that was ridiculous. And as I stared, mouth open, words failing me, I realized what else was wrong: while the camper and the area around it were now in shadow, everything else, the desert, the road, were still lit up in bright daylight. Whatever it was, it was between us and the sun. And it was getting bigger. Closer.
	“Everyone get out now!” I yelled. Lucy scrambled for the door handle, but Delaney sat dumb beside me, staring out into the sky. I beat my fists against his side, but he didn’t budge. I wriggled around to get out the other side, but now Lucy was immobile, frozen in position with her paw on the handle, the door half open.
	“Lucy, move!”
	I looked around to Jamie. He too was like a statue, staring wide-eyed out at the sky, unblinking. A tiny noise of panic rose in my throat. I shoved at Lucy, screaming at her, but I couldn’t budge her. I tried to squeeze myself out across her lap, under her arm. And as my head hung outside of the camper I heard the sound: a low, bass thumping, almost too deep to hear. The air prickled strangely at my skin, and I felt my fur fluff up with static. The black circle now filled half the sky above us. Wind picked up, whirling around us like a tornado, rocking the camper. I opened my mouth to scream, but I was stuck...frozen. The black circle swelled, rushing outwards, filling the sky. And then...

Nothing, for a while. Like a skip on a tape, jumping from one moment to the next with nothing in between. But I was aware, without knowing how, that some time had passed: like waking up from sleep and knowing it had been hours, not seconds, since you closed your eyes. I drifted back into awareness of my body. I felt cold, but not freezing. My instant impression was of being outside, in the dark desert chill, alone in the hungry emptiness. I opened my eyes...
	In front of me was a white wall, criss-crossed with seams in a regular grid, dividing the wall into squares. One of the squares was glowing white. I blinked against its intensity. I felt a sudden rush of vertigo for a moment, seeing this towering wall looming in front of me, over me, ready to topple. In my confused state I struggled to understand what was happening, my fear rising. And then a more lucid part of my brain casually nudged me with a suggestion.
	Ceiling.
	I jolted upright. I was laying on a padded surface. A bed? I saw white walls. Cabinets. A couple of chairs. A window with black night beyond. A medical chart on a wall. A white coat and stethoscope hanging from a hook on the wall beside a door. I was clothed, but only barely, in a white gown, tied around my neck, open at the back, so that the rubbery skin of the bed’s padding chafed at my butt.
	A hospital? Was I in an accident? I quickly patted myself from chest to thighs. I didn’t feel any pain. I counted limbs: yup, two arms, two legs, one tufty tail. I felt carefully across my face, expecting bandages perhaps, or some horrific disfigurement. But instead I just found my face, as it normally was. No bruises. No wounds. No pain. And yes, two long ears, just as normal. I sagged in relief, sighing.
	“Hello?” I called. “Is anyone there?”
	I swung off the bed and carefully got to my feet. Good, my legs worked. Not paralyzed then. I walked across the room, naked soles squeaking on the lino floor.
	“Hello? Nurse? Doctor?”
	I reached for the door handle. There was none. Just blank wood. What kind of hospital was this? I banged my fist against the door. But instead of a wooden thud it made a hollow metallic ringing noise.
	“What the hell?”
	I ran my fingers along the edge of the door. It felt like wood. It looked like wood. I could see and feel the grain. I could see the brush strokes frozen in the white paint. It looked perfectly normal. But, when I rapped it again with my knuckles, I got the strange hollow noise again, as if I were inside some kind of metal drum.
	Slowly...the fear began to rise.
	“Could...come someone let me out, please? Hello?”
	I moved across to the window. It was black with night outside and I could see nothing but the reflection of the room and myself. At least it reassured me that there was nothing visibly wrong with me. But what about my mind? After the weirdness in the desert, and now this? Maybe I had gone crazy. Maybe this was a mental hospital. That would explain the door. Maybe I had imagined everything. Maybe I wasn’t even who I thought I was? So many maybes...how could I ever know?
	No! I knew who I was. There would be a simple explanation for this. I just had to find it. I gripped hold of the latch on the window and pulled up as hard as I could. It didn’t budge at all. Whether the window was stuck, or locked, I couldn’t tell.
	“Hello.”
	I yelped and jumped back from the window. The voice had come from outside! It was deep and sonorous, but without the cheerful lilt of Delaney’s voice. This was like...like the thumping, booming noise in the desert. It sounded like it came from someone as big as a house. And it was coming from outside the window! I scampered backwards until I hit the bed, then staggered past it and pressed my back against the wall.
	“Please accept our apologies,” continued the voice. “You are not meant to be awake at this present time. We will adjust, accordingly.”
	“Who’s there?!”
	“Please do not be alarmed. You are in no danger.”
	“Who are you? Show...” I stopped. Did I want them to show themselves? Some stranger lurking outside a hospital window at night? On a ladder, perhaps? Or worse...was this room on the first floor, where any crazy murderer could walk up and climb in? I prayed that the window was as inoperable for him as it was for me. “Doctor!” I screamed. “Help! Somebody, anybody! Help!”
	“You may be experiencing a fear response to your present situation. This is natural. This environment has been provided to help acclimatize you. Please do not be alarmed. You are in no danger.”
	I shifted sideways along the wall, feeling my way while keeping my eyes on the window. My fingers reached something curved and hard. I risked a panicked look. It was the white gown, hanging from the hook beside the door. It was rock hard, unmoving when I touched it. I knocked it with my knuckle and got the same metallic noise as the door had given me. Was everything in this room a fake, made out of metal? The coat looked so real, just like cloth. How was that possible? I came to the cold realization that this wasn’t a hospital at all...and whoever the voice was, they were my captor.
	“Where am I?” I whimpered.
	“Please do not be alarmed. You are in no danger.”
	“You already said that!”
	“We are here to help you.”
	“Help me?! Let me go! What...what have you done with my friends?”
	There was a pause.
	“Please lay down on the bed.”
	“What? No! Let me go! I want to speak to someone!”
	Another pause, longer this time. I crept away from the wall, moving towards the window. Someone was watching me from the other side of the glass, I could tell. My instincts told me to run and hide, but there was nowhere to run to, and nowhere to hide. So I fought against my instincts, and forced myself to move towards the glass. Maybe I could get a look at my captor? I thought I could hear voices, though I couldn’t make out the words. I reached out for the glass...

I woke with a pain pounding behind my eyes. And when I opened them, searing white light blasted them back closed again. I tried to cry out...although I didn’t imagine it would do much good...and discovered the metal ring that held my mouth open.
	“Nnnrggh!”
	I tried to close my mouth against the ring, but there was no give in it at all. And I couldn’t open my mouth wider either: it felt as if the metal was formed around my teeth, top and bottom, like a dentist’s mould. I flailed my tongue around, feeling the smooth, curved edges of the ring. Something sprayed onto it, like a mist from a squirt gun. I tasted a harsh, bitter tang, and felt a tingling on my tongue. I tried to wriggle my tongue away to escape it, but the ring gave me nowhere to go. My mouth started to flood with saliva. I felt it pool in my throat, forcing me to swallow. But still more of it came, like I was salivating for the most delicious food in the world, and I felt it drooling down my chin.
	My arms were at my sides. When I tried to move them, I felt the same constricting feeling of metallic enclosure as my teeth felt. The same too with my legs. In fact, everything except my head felt like it was encased inside a metal cocoon. I started to panic, squealing through the gag. And as I did, the spray came again, bathing my tongue in more of the bitter taste, and setting off more salivation.
	“Are you calm?” It was the deep voice again.
	“Nnngh!”
	“I will reveal myself. Try not to be alarmed. You may open your eyes now.”
	I almost didn’t dare to. I couldn’t imagine what horror could be standing in front of me. If it wasn’t something horrible, why would the voice warn me not to be alarmed? I whimpered in panic. Slowly, expecting the blinding light, I opened my eyes.
	The creature that greeted me, in the soft white light of a gleaming, metallic room, was not a horror...but it was strange. This thing...this person...had short, pointed ears. It had gleaming yellow eyes, and mottled grey-brown fur. It had sharp teeth, and a blunt muzzle. I felt relief, at least, that this creature wasn’t a tentacle monster like from a trashy pulp fiction novel. But...it definitely wasn’t a lagomorph, like me, like Lucy and Delaney and Jamie and everyone else in the world. It looked...like a cat, like the pictures in the museums and books, of the prehistoric feral tigers and lions. An upright, walking, talking cat.
	A naked, walking, talking cat. And definitely male. That part wasn’t different. Except for being bigger than normal. A lot bigger. It matched his physique: he stood at least seven foot tall, maybe more. And he was looking unblinkingly at me with those yellow eyes. I felt the fear my ancestors must have felt, in the distant millennia past, back before all the predators had gone extinct.
	Could some of the cats from back then have evolved sentience, like we the rabbits had? Could some of them have survived, hidden away somewhere? It was fascinating...or would have been, if I weren’t so utterly terrified!
	“Nnnh!”
	“Please do not be alarmed,” he said. “You are in no danger.”
	I tried to scream: please don’t eat me! But the sound just came out as garbled noises, and I doubted he could understand me. I tried to look down, to see the metal that encased me. I caught a hint of gleaming, mirror-shined metal, but I couldn’t tilt my head far down enough to see properly: the cocoon covered my neck, holding it still.
	“We apologize for the circumstances of your arrival. Normally, you would be speaking to a construct that would emulate your species. However, in this instance, something appears to have gone wrong. We are still assessing the situation. We apologize for the inconvenience.”
	“Nnrrgh?”
	“For your own safety, you have been immobilized. You will not be harmed. We have your best interests at heart. We are here to help. Please, relax, and remain calm. You will experience a brief period of disorientation. This is normal.”
	A harsh electric whine filled my ears. The spray doused my tongue again. The creature descended out of my view as the cocoon rotated backwards, coming to a stop with me laid on my back. I strained against the metal, trying to move some part of me. Even my toes were confined in their own individual little enclosures. The only space I seemed to have was around my chest, where a small amount of freedom allowed my chest to rise and fall with my breathing. I was able to see a little more of the room, now. As I had noticed earlier, the walls gleamed with what looked like the same kind of metal that encased me. They were broken up by confusions of ridges and bumps, like the workings of some huge machine, or the carvings of an ancient jungle temple, painted with chrome.
	The ceiling, though, was a flat surface, and the metal acted as a mirror. I saw myself, hovering above me: the cocoon gleamed like chrome, shaped and moulded to my body like a cast. I could see every contour of my body. Even my nipples had a copy in the metal skin! It seemed to merge seamlessly with a flat metal table, shaped like an ovoid. I was sealed in place onto it as if I had been vacuum packed. With metal! My mouth was held open by a separate ring of metal, and the spray seemed to be coming from a small protrusion sticking out from it. I tried to feel for it with my tongue, but it stuck out of the front of my muzzle, a bit too far to reach.
	“You are doing very well. You are the first to undergo this procedure without the construct. You are providing valuable insights.”
	I saw the cat, standing above my prone body, inverted above me. My heart thumped like a jackhammer. His presence made me want to flee and hide. Ancient, dormant instincts. The fear of the predator, engrained deeply in my genes. I whimpered through the gag. He stood just out of my vision, but above I could see clearly what he was doing. He reached across my thigh and touched a finger to the metal above my crotch. I squealed in protest, but the spray chose that moment to activate, hitting the back of my throat, making me gag.
	“Please remain calm. I am not going to hurt you.”
	I didn’t believe him. And as I watched, the metal covering my crotch seemed to melt away, expanding a hole outwards to reveal my fur beneath...and my cock. I whined in protest. I didn’t know what he was going to do, but I couldn’t imagine an option that was going to be something I would like! I felt his fingertips touch against the skin of my shaft, and I flinched as hard as the cocoon would allow. I felt my cock rise up against his touch, swelling quickly. I groaned and clenched my eyes shut. Now? Really?! I silently cursed my cock for having the sheer gall to get hard when this...this...alien touched it. I’m afraid, I thought, as if speaking to my cock. I’m afraid, not horny! What the hell are you doing trying to get hard right now? Now is not sex time! Now is fear and panic time! Stop it! Damn it!
	“Hmm,” he said.
	“Nnrgh?”
	He moved into my vision, his strange face filling my view, looking down at me. No...wait, not looking at me. He was looking at the ring in my muzzle. And before I could twist my head away, he had reached down to it to tap the protrusion. It jetted out another spray of liquid into my throat. I groaned and turned my head to the side, trying to spit it out. But, like before, it washed into my throat with the stream of saliva the stuff seemed to trigger.
	“I understand now why you woke before the construct was ready. This is troublesome. But this also presents a rare opportunity. We will learn a great deal from you. I will increase the dosage.”
	I gagged as a sudden gush of the bitter liquid filled my mouth. Moments later, while I fought to swallow the flow of saliva it produced, I felt my hardon ebb away. Whatever was in that liquid, it seemed to act as an opposite to an aphrodisiac. Once again, I imagined I would be fascinated...if I weren’t so terrified.
	“Now we can begin.”
	I strained to see what he was up to, but I had to be content with the mirror image. I felt his fingers on my cock again, but this time it stayed limp and unresponsive. I gagged on another heavy spray. I watched in the mirror as he lifted my cock up away from my body, seeming to inspect it. He stroked a fingertip down over my balls, bringing a muffled giggle from me through the ring. I started thinking...is this what happened to all those people who claimed they’d been abducted by aliens? Was this them? These...cat things? Was I going to wake up back in the desert, with a sore butt and a headache?
	I felt a sudden coldness on my cock, and then a sharp sting just for a moment. I yelped. I tried to ball my fingers into fists, but couldn’t defeat the metal that encased them. I shouted my displeasure through the gag, until another spray silenced me. And then he let go, stepping back away from me. And in the mirror I saw what he had done: my cock was now encased in the same shiny metal that made up the cocoon and the walls and ceiling. From its base, nestled in my crotch fur, all the way up to the tip, rounded over, the metal now seemed to be a new skin for my cock, encasing it completely.
	“Nnnnnggh?!”
	“You will have questions, I am sure. They will be answered in due time. For now, you must begin a period of rest. Do not be alarmed.”
	“Nnnh!”
	I didn’t know what he did, but he must have done something. The hole in the cocoon above my cock sealed itself over, but rose up in a dome shape over my cock beneath, and I could feel the extra space it had given me this time, leaving my encased cock isolated in a hollow space inside the cocoon. Then I could no-longer move my neck: the metal that ended there now started spreading up over my muzzle, like liquid mercury. And I stared in horror up at my reflection as my face disappeared into the same metal skin as the rest of the cocoon. I saw it merge with the ring in my muzzle just before the metal covered my eyes. And then I could no-longer move my head. Only my tongue had any freedom, in my mouth that was held wide open, a fleshy orifice in the metal cocoon.
	Oh yes, and my cock had some freedom too. Sort of. The spray had stopped. And my cock, as if imbued with the memory of the cat thing’s touch, now tried to harden again. But this time, the metal tube that encased it stopped it. I groaned, and tried to press myself up against the cocoon. I could feel my cock flop upwards against my tummy, trying to harden. But the tube wouldn’t budge. It gripped my cock ever tighter, resisting its stubborn attempts to swell up and out. I yelled at it with my thoughts: traitor cock! Can’t you see you’re hurting me?
	I fought against the cocoon. I thrashed as hard as I could! The aching need to reach across with my paws and rip this tube thing off my cock was unbearable. My paws were only a foot away from it! So close...but utterly unable to move. I started to cry, my eyelashes brushing against the metal skin just above them. All the terror now melted hopelessly into anguish. I didn’t know where I was or what was happening or why it was happening. It was all so strange and unreal. I thought I would wake up, perhaps in bed? Asleep? Dreaming? Or maybe in the tent, out at the festival, and this was all just a fever dream of some bad drug Delaney had convinced me to try.
	Delaney! Lucy! Jamie! Were they going through this too? Somewhere else here in this...this...flying saucer? Because...it had to be something like that, right? This was straight out of a movie? Except for the...cock touching part.
	I groaned again, cursing my cock. No, I screamed, just because I’m thinking about you, doesn’t mean you have permission to try and get hard again!
	I tried to concentrate on other things. I had to think about a way to escape. I lay as still as I could and concentrated on listening as hard as I could. But with the metal covering my ears so perfectly, all I could hear was my own heartbeat and breathing, sounding like drum beats and rushing surf in the confined space. This was no help.
	How long would he leave me in here? Forever? I started to panic. I had never been claustrophobic...but I had never been cocooned in solid metal in an alien flying saucer before either! I writhed uselessly against the confinement, while my cock bobbed enthusiastically, encouraged by god knows what arousal source coming from deep in my psyche, and I took advantage of the one freedom I had left: I screamed. I screamed and screamed as loud as I could. I could hear the sounds I made, garbled and distorted by the metal between me and the air outside the cocoon. If I screamed loud enough...maybe someone could help me? Some brave space ranger with a ray gun! Or...maybe Delaney had broken free and could come and find me? Or maybe I could just annoy the cat thing enough that he’ll come and let me go.
	Or...maybe I just needed something to do to keep me from going mad with panic. So I screamed, until my throat was a raw throb of pain, until mercifully I drifted off into a haunted, fitful sleep.

At least, I thought it was sleep. How could I be sure I wasn’t being drugged? When I woke, it was to freedom from the cocoon...but to a restraint of another form.
	At first, I struggled to understand what I was looking at. I felt a stab of vertigo, looking across a forest of orange-crested trees towards a tall, furrowed cliff of deep red stone. I tried to cry out, my voice muffled and dead. I tried to flail in panic, but my body didn’t respond. I became aware of the pressure against my cheek, and of the blurring of the forest close to me, and the scene’s perspective snapped into a different interpretation, one that now made more sense: I was lying on my side on the carpeted floor of a hotel room, staring at the foot of the bed.
	I tried to sit up. Somehow, I knew it wasn’t going to work for me. The body’s natural sense of itself maybe. I felt the weight of the metal gripping my wrists and ankles. I felt how my arms were pulled back, and how my body contorted at the limit of its flexibility. I twisted my head around to see, as best as I could, what held me: thick, gleaming rings of metal closed tightly around my wrists and ankles, joined together by rods an inch thick, and barely any longer, bending my body back into a tight, uncomfortable hog tie.
	“Nnngh!”
	The ring was still in my mouth. And under me, where my head had been lying, was a patch of wet carpet from what looked like hours of drooling.
	Drugged. Definitely drugged. Or something like it.
	And then I heard it. The giggle.
	“Nnngh?!”
	It came again. A female voice. And then the unmistakable sound of creaking bedsprings. I looked around, up at the walls and ceiling of what looked to be a perfectly ordinary motel room, complete with nightstand and tacky wall sconces and...a lamp with its shade hung askew, thanks to the bra that now hung from it.
	And now that I looked, I could see other items of clothing. A sock here, a shirt there...laying in rumpled piles in a trail from the door to the bed.
	“Shh baby. He might hear.”
	Delaney?! No, it couldn’t be...
	“He’s out cold, silly. He wouldn’t wake for the end of the world.”
	And that was Lucy!
	I rolled myself onto my stomach, grunting with effort, getting a face full of carpet. I dug my knees into the floor and smushed my muzzle against the floor, levering myself upwards. Over I went, falling onto my other side, hitting the end of the bed on my way down and ending up awkwardly propped up. I pressed my cheek against the bed and pushed. I felt with my fingers until they touched fabric, then gripped and pulled. I teetered for the longest time on my knees, then tipped and fell onto my shins with a thump. Now my head was level with the edge of the bed, and I could see across the expanse of rumpled sheets, to two pairs of feet pointing their soles at me...and the naked, bouncing rear of Delaney, enthusiastically fucking what was almost certainly Lucy beneath him.
	“Nnngh!”
	The bodies shifted, and Delaney’s cheerful smile looked across at me from over the curve of his butt.
	“Oh hey, you’re awake. Well cool. Do you think you might...”
	Then he got an odd, faraway look. He frowned, opening his mouth. But then closing it again and turning away.
	“What was it?” said Lucy.
	“Nothing, baby,” he said. And their bed-creaking thrusting resumed. “Just thought I heard something. But it’s cool. We’re cool.”
	I panted through my ring gag and tried to make sense of it all. Maybe this was reality and everything that had happened earlier was the fantasy, a fever dream of a drugged up state. But why was I bound, if that was the case? And...and...
	I groaned, looking down. There it was. The tube around my cock. I could see it more clearly now. There was a little hole in the rounded tip, positioned exactly where the hole in my actual cock would be. I strained my head down as far as I could, trying to see more clearly. There didn’t seem to be anything holding the metal onto my cock, but when I shook my hips and made my cock sway, it didn’t seem in any danger of falling off. It felt like it was glued in place. There was no lock. No join. No seam. At least, none that I could see. It was as if someone had dipped my cock in a bucket of molten metal and then let the resulting coating set. I shuddered at the mental image and lifted my head back up. The view there was no better, and I instantly regretted it. My addled brain had finally decided to catch up with where I was, and it decided that kneeling naked, shackled, gagged and ignored at the foot of a bed where my two friends were fucking each other was a massive turnon for me, and it sent all the right signals to make my cock want to throw itself up into a raging stiffy...
	...right into the waiting embrace of the metal that imprisoned it. I clenched my eyes tightly shut and groaned. It didn’t help. I could still hear them. Bouncing away, faster and faster, breathing panted gasps together, fucking to the slick slippery noise of a lubed cock pounding a girl’s wet cunt. I laid my chin on the edge of the mattress and, knowing I was going to regret it again, opened my eyes to watch. It was impossible to pull myself away. It made my cock throb and ache and hurt, and my balls felt like heavy weights pulling down with what must be days of pent up need...how many orgasms worth were locked up in there now? Ten? Twenty? How could I even begin to count? All those happy moments with my own paw, sprawling out on my back with some dog-eared old porno mag held in one paw, while I rolled wet and slippery fingers over my cock in exactly the right way to make me feel oh so good...
	And now in front of my eyes was the very thing I always dreamed about when playing with myself. Fucking, raw and hard, wet and sweaty and dizzy with hormones, a room’s air flooded and stinking with musk, aching knees and arms trembling with strain, but hips still thrusting over and over with the constant driving need to keep that friction going, pressing deep into another person, feeling them squeeze and cling to you, claws raking through your skin, their breath against your neck, gasping and pleading, begging, while you feel your own strength wither and quake away into nothing, turning you to the exact same panting weakness, the both of you flailing helplessly towards climax, gripped tight together, slaves to animal passion...
	Oh fuck...fuck I was horny. I writhed desperately against the grip of the metal, but there was no getting free. My cock felt only its prison, squeezing and denying. My fingers strained in empty air. The need to reach around to my crotch and stroke my shaft was like the burn for breath when deep underwater after a minute. I needed it. My body needed it. More than hunger, more than air, more than life...I needed to grip my cock in my paw and stroke it fast and hard and tight, but I was utterly unable to do it. The metal held me. I had nowhere to go, and nothing I could do. And though I knew it was stupid to keep watching, I couldn’t make myself look away from the torture in front of me. And I whimpered quietly through my gag as their gasps shuddered their way up to blissful cries, and watched as their bodies slumped down, still but for the rhythm of their breathing.
	“Disappointing.”
	The cat thing’s voice. Somewhere close. Or far away. It seemed like both. Like a voice that wasn’t really there. I couldn’t bring myself to make a noise in response. I just felt too...tired. My body ached and lusted, but my mind just felt like it had given up.
	“We believed that your urge for self-preservation and the avoidance of physical distress would have led you to avoid exposure to stimulus of this nature. Instead, we find that you actively embraced that which would give you the most discomfort.”
	Delaney’s body rose up slightly, then jolted upright.
	“Lucy?!” He said. “What’s going on? Where are we? What happened to the van?”
	“We also find,” said the cat thing’s voice, “that your companions are remarkably resistant to mental conditioning when experiencing sexual stimulus. We are struggling to maintain the illusion for them, even now. We believe this explains why you yourself were resistant to our sedation previously. Do you find this situation arousing? Were you aroused when we collected you?”
	I squeezed my jaw against the gag and groaned. I was aroused then, stuck between Delaney’s flirting and Lucy’s dazed thigh stroking. And I was aroused now, watching the two fucking. Of course I was aroused! Delaney rolled to the side. And now both of them were staring at me, wide-eyed and confused. Moments later, however, the dazed look that had earlier appeared on Delaney’s face now appeared on both of them. It was creepy, watching them both zone out like zombies.
	“Are you typical?” said the cat thing’s voice. “Or are you atypical? You must understand, the conservation process requires us to...”
	I heard murmuring in the pause. And in that moment, Delaney and Lucy both closed their eyes and lay down, both of them falling instantly asleep.
	“We have decided to interview,” said the cat thing. “Please stand by.”
	I felt a heaviness in my body, and a wave of tingling wash across my skin. The grip on my wrists and ankles suddenly released, as if the restraints had disappeared. But before I could uncoil and lurch my paws towards my cock, my whole body went limp and my eyes closed, with a heavy curtain descending to black me out into sleep. I managed only one faint gurgle through my gag...a garbled curse.

“You are a species in need of management. It is not a point that you can argue with, surely.”
	I couldn’t argue. The cat thing was right. The ring that gagged my mouth made sure of that. I glared at him as he paced the room. I was back in the cocoon. I had no idea how much time had passed. I couldn’t even tell if this was the same shiny, mirrored room as before, or if it was another just like it. I wasn’t sure what to think of anything any more. Except that I hated this cat thing. That much I knew. That, and I really badly wanted to paw off or fuck something.
	“We believe that the preferred course of action is to intervene on a grand scale, providing moderation and control to offset your basic instincts, to provide a modicum of balance to the progression of your species. Do you understand thus far?”
	I couldn’t move inside the cocoon, but I could flex my muscles just a little, just enough to rock my hips and hump the air inside the bubble over my confined cock. It didn’t do anything to relieve the ache, but it felt good. It felt natural. I looked at the cat thing. If I ignored the weird and repulsive shape of his face...and kept my eyes on his body...yes. I could imagine fucking him. Seeing him bending over a bed, his strangely long and creepily flexible tail draped out of the way, his rear held up inviting me. My first thrust, strong and uncaring...right deep into him, fuck yeah. Make him yelp and shudder and squeeze. Fuck it would feel so good.
	“Your population has long ago reached untenable levels, and your species shows no sign of bringing your population growth rate into check. Our options for the conservation and preservation of your species are limited. If we were to avoid the unpleasant necessity of a large scale cull, we...”
	He paused, staring off to the side, out of my view. His expression was, as far as I could understand it on that weird and alien face, annoyed. But he turned back to me with a smile, friendly as ever.
	“You don’t need to worry about all the details. We would like you to concentrate on controlling your urges. We believed that your natural instincts would provide the control for you, when presented with the inability to satisfy your normal desires. We even provided a recreation of your natural habitat to facilitate this. Unfortunately we were...inaccurate in our prediction. In light of this...”
	He glanced again to the side. I suppose I could have tried to turn my head to look and see what he was being distracted by, but I was distracted myself: he had a beautiful cock. It was huge, matching his body. Thicker than my wrist. And the sensible bit of my brain was giving me all sorts of reasons why I wouldn’t want to go near it, starting with the sheer improbability of fitting it inside of me without ripping me open. But that was a very small voice against the hurricane of lust that wanted me to straddle his hips and knead my claws into his tummy and slowly ease myself down onto his cock until my butt cheeks nestled against his thighs.
	“We are going to attempt a different approach. We hope that you will co-operate fully...”
	He strode away, out of my view. The cocoon’s grip around me loosened. Then, a moment later, I was on the floor, catching myself at the last moment with my paws. I rolled over onto my back and stared up at the dissolving shreds of gleaming metal.
	“Yip!”
	I turned my head and spat. The ring in my muzzle had instantly turned molten, like mercury. It drooled from my lips and dripped to the floor, where it fizzed and disappeared. My cock! I reached for it, my heart sinking as my fingers hit the metal tube.
	“Damn it. Why wouldn’t you melt too?”
	I pulled myself to my feet, feeling unsteady after who knew how long spent sealed up tight inside the cocoon. I explored the room, walking along the walls and feeling my fingers into all the nooks and bumps in the metal. There seemed to be no sign of a door, nor any other way the cat thing could have left. The floor felt cold and hard against my feet. The temperature of the air was just a touch too cold for comfort. I hugged my arms around myself, feeling very small and naked.
	“Hello?”
	“Unngh!”
	I spun around, yelping. Another cocoon had appeared on the opposite wall, standing upright. The rabbit held tight in its embrace was gagged with a ring like I was. His eyes stared at me, wide and panicked.
	“Jamie!” I cried, rushing over to him. “You’re alright, thank god!”
	His lips flexed, and his tongue danced wet inside his wide open maw. He made garbled whimpering noises, and his eyes locked onto mine, alive with distress.
	“I can’t understand you,” I said. I dragged my fingers along the edges of the cocoon, trying to find a seam. The metal formed to his body perfectly, outlining all the contours and muscles that were normally hidden by his baggy clothes. It was like he had been dipped in metal. A chromed statue. He was not the Adonis that Delaney was, but he still gave me cause to nibble on my lip as I rolled my fingertips over the metal bumps that covered his abs.
	“There must be a way to-“
	I jumped back, startled by movement. And as I watched, a circular hole formed over his crotch, dissolving away like my own cocoon had. Jamie’s eyes flickered closed and he groaned: from the hole, his thick, fat cock flopped out, then instantly swelled up hard.
	I stared at it…
	And I think…I think I may have been staring for a long time. That was shock for you. It immobilised me better than any restraint could. In this strangest of places, I found myself utterly ill-equipped to respond…to the sight of my friend’s hard, erect cock, jutting out from his helpless body, aching and needy…glistening with precum…scenting the air…warming the room…
	I shuddered back to some semblance of sense as the jarring pain of my cock tube’s tightness assaulted me. I groaned and quickly turned away, cupping my crotch.
	“W-we’ve got to get out of here…somehow,” I said quickly. I felt his eyes on my back as I scampered to the other side of the room. Or maybe he was staring at my butt. I bit my lip and concentrated on my cock…which just made things worse. But I had to do it: I tugged at the tube as hard as I could, before the pain was more than I could take. I dug my claws into the fur and flesh at the edges of the metal, pressing hard, trying to find an opening, some leverage that would let me pry the tube off. I gripped it tight in my paws and squeezed. I scraped the blunt tips of my claws as hard as I could down its length. I twisted my hips and beat the tube against the wall, metal ringing against metal, howling in frustration. Nothing worked. It was like the thing were a new body part, attached to me.
	“Fuck!” I screamed. I turned back to face Jamie, the heat of frustration and arousal burning my cheeks and ears. “What the fuck is this? Who is that fucking freak?! You saw him, right? That cat thing?! He did this to me! And that to you. And fuck knows what else!”
	A sudden pang of fear stabbed through my anger and deflated it. I ran over to Jamie, placing my paw on his chest, looking up at his distressed face, trying to ignore his throbbing cock.
	“He didn’t hurt you, did he? Are you hurting? Make…umm…make one noise for yes, two for no.”
	“Ungh ungh…ungh.”
	I blinked. “What?”
	“Ungh unnnngh…ungh!”
	“Did he hurt you?”
	“Ungh ungh.”
	“Are you hurting?”
	“Unnngh!”
	I patted my paws frantically across his body, trying to find a wound, a spot that was hurting him. It took me a moment of useless beating against metal to realize how stupid I was being.
	“Where are you hurt?”
	“Unnnnghh…” He jerked his eyes. Downwards.
	“Oh.”
	I bit my lip and stepped back. His cock looked even bigger than before, swollen and red and dripping. It looked like it would blow in moments. All it would take was a little stroke. Just enough to take it over the edge. Enough to send the rich, musky cum splattering all over my paw…my arm…my mouth. My t-tongue. I could feel the heat radiating off it. I imagined myself on my knees, letting his cock rest against my nose, while I stroked off my own little cock and moaned against the hot skin and dripping precum, darting out my tongue, showing I was willing. My paw strayed down to my crotch and stopped with a metallic thunk against the tube. God fucking damn it! I turned away, blushing like crazy.
	“It d-doesn’t look hurt to me.”
	“Unnnnnngh!”
	I squeezed my eyes shut. No! I couldn’t turn back to look at him. Because I knew that he’d be staring at me. He’d be staring at me with those desperate eyes. Pleading with me. Begging with me. And I knew what he wanted…what he needed. He wasn’t hurt, but he was hurting. The things the bastard cat thing had done to me…the restraints, the encasement, the tube…the teasing…he must have done the same to Jamie. Or worse! And my chest knotted in a heavy ache of sympathy. And I wanted to turn around and make it better for him. I wanted to kneel down and take the fat bulb of the head of his cock in my lips and…
	No! I couldn’t do it! How could I? My cock was already hurting inside the tight little tube, straining to get free. I was already burning with lust that I couldn’t satisfy. How much worse would it be if I knelt down to suck him off? Making him cum down my throat, tasting it, feeling the slippery texture of it on my tongue and sliding down my throat, smelling the sweaty musk of his fur in my nose, hearing the muffled groans as I gave him all that pleasure that I had no hope of getting! No! No no no! I couldn’t bear it! But I so badly wanted it! This wasn’t fair!
	And he was my friend! I’d never even looked at him like this. Not really. Between Delaney and Lucy, I didn’t have a chance to! But now we were here in this creepy place, and he was stuck in the cocoon, with his body sculpted and rigid, everything on show, with his big thick cock hanging out. And he was looking at me, wanting me to do it, begging me to do it! He wanted…he wanted me to touch it. He wanted me to…what?
	I wheeled around to face him. Anger and shame gave me bravery.
	“D-do you want me to paw you off?”
	“Hnngh!”
	“Or suck you off?”
	“UNNGH!” His head jerked minutely, trying to nod against the grip of the metal around his skull.
	“Or do you want me to…” I bit my lip. My paw was again on my metal tube, trying to stroke through it. My cock within was a raw heat, swollen to press against the inside of the tube. From its tip, precum constantly drooled, lacing long sticky strings down towards the floor. I felt some of it drip onto my toes. It would feel so good to paw off. It would be a horrible tease to suck him off like this. He would get to feel good and I would just get…denial. It was evil! I’d never gone more than a day without pawing! Not since I first discovered how. It felt like my heart would give out and just pop if I waited any longer! And when I was so close to losing my virginity! The festival…oh god it would have been amazing! Writhing between Delaney and Lucy, panting and moaning and hearing both of their voices whispering in my ear, telling me how fucking sexy I was, sandwiched between them, rutting like ferals.
	And now, like this, I had nothing. And maybe only a slim chance to relieve the ache. I had seen it in the porno mags, and heard it from Delaney’s raunchy whisperings, and I had no reason to disbelieve it: the chance that, perhaps…I could get off even wearing the tube…
	“Or do you want me to…f-fuck myself. On…you?”
	His eyes widened. His tongue stopped wriggling about, and it seemed like his breathing stopped. Then, ever so quietly.
	“Ungh.”
	“Are…are you sure? I mean…we’re gonna feel weird about it afterwards. After this…place. N-not that we won’t feel weird about all of this anyway, but I mean…this is something…I don’t know if…”
	His eyebrows knotted together. Eyes begging. His cock twitched, dripping precum. He whined, pitiful and squeaky, mangled into embarrassing noises by the ring gag.
	“I’ve…not done it before,” I said lamely. “But I’ll try.”
	His eyes closed, and he groaned, and his lips twitched up in a distorted smile, almost as if he had already climaxed. And now I had signed up to do it…I wasn’t really sure where to start. Should I just…bend over and back onto it? That seemed ridiculous. I could try to climb up to straddle it, but I had nothing to grip onto, besides his cock, and I’d just end up slithering down the smooth metal and crumpling into a heap on the floor. And then I had to think about lube…
	Well, that part wasn’t too difficult. I shuffled up close to him, laying my side against his chest, and awkwardly avoided his eyes as I stroked my fingertips down across his tummy. Deep breath. This was it…the first time I was going to touch another guy’s cock. Or any person’s sexual…areas…for that matter. And it was a guy. Encased in metal. In a flying saucer. I held my breath and closed my eyes, dropping my fingers downwards. They came to rest against hot skin. Jamie moaned softly under his breath, and I felt the moving air brush against my ears. Slowly, haltingly, I worked my fingertips up towards his tip, and felt them slide into the warm sticky pre that clung to it.
	Well…it was probably the weirdest introduction to forbidden sex that anyone had ever had. And this was just starting.
	I lifted my fingers away, feeling the almost magnetic pull back towards his cock as the precum trailed sticky ribbons, trying to draw my paw back. I turned myself a little, trying to position in the best way to avoid showing Jamie what I was doing…which was foolish, really, considering what I was about to do. But I couldn’t face confronting him watching me, not yet. I kept my eyes squeezed closed, concentrated on my breathing, and slid my slippery, naturally-lubricated fingers down between my butt cheeks…
	“Ahh…” I gasped under my breath. I pressed my cheek against Jamie’s metal-lined chest. And for a moment, I forgot where I was. I perked my tail up and shuffled my legs apart, and drove the tip of my index finger deep into my pucker. 
	“Oh f-fuck!”
	It wasn’t dignified, and I was sure it wasn’t pretty. But it felt so good. I pressed a little deeper, wincing a little at the scrape of my claw until I got it repositioned. This was more complicated than I thought. And nothing like in the magazines. And the cat thing was probably hiding away, watching somewhere. But I didn’t care. I draped myself against Jamie and made all the delighted noises of my exploration right in front of him, while my cock strained in the metal, under my tugging paw, while my finger probed inside me up to the second knuckle.	I was impatient. My cock was impatient. I gripped the metal tube as tightly as I could, trying to feel something, anything, through it. I pushed my finger to the last knuckle and crooned my breathless whimper of pleasure. My eyes flickered open, and I saw Jamie staring at me, his brow knotted, eyes begging.
	“Soon,” I gasped. “I’ve got to...get ready first. It’s gonna hurt, right?”
	I couldn’t really read his response. Not fully. Perhaps, if pressed, I’d say that he looked like what a shrug must look like when expressed only with the face. I rose up on my tiptoes, sliding against his metal front, and nuzzled my nose in against the side of his neck. I felt his heartbeat and heard him softly groan. I felt like I was being a tease, as rotten and cruel as the cat thing. But I couldn’t make myself let go of my own cock. If there was any chance, any chance at all, that I could feel something through the metal...I would take it. I gave Jamie my sympathy, but that was all. Poor guy, rigid and immobile, with his cock free and hard, and his friend utterly refusing to touch it.
	“Be patient,” I whispered, answering my own concerns. “Soon...you’ll get to...fuck me.” I could barely say the words. They seemed so alien and unreal, like something fantastical that I would never dream of being related to little me. And even as I squeezed a second finger alongside the first to stretch out my virgin pucker, I still could barely believe it was going to happen. Minutes, seconds away from that moment...I would be riding Jamie’s cock. I would be having sex. I breathed noisily against his neck and yanked hard at the metal tube, so hard that I brought tears stinging to my eyes. I hoped and begged and prayed that this would work.
	“O-okay, I think I’m ready. Are you ready?”
	“Nnngh!”
	He was ready. I wasn’t sure. But it really wasn’t the time to be thinking, not any more. At least...not with my brain. My cock was in charge now, a screaming prisoner, taking command and driving me on. My balls felt like lead weights. Oh god how good it would feel to blow this load. Days and days worth! It was going to go everywhere. It’d be a fountain. And it would feel sooo good.
	“Okay, so I think I just...like this?”
	I turned to face away from him, bending forward and resting my paws on my knees. I looked up and over my shoulder, lining myself up. I felt ridiculous. But also...sexy. It was all because of his eyes. I saw how he was staring at me. And I felt how his cock dripped, leaking its precum to drool onto the fur of my butt. I tried to imagine how it must look for him, his naked friend bent over like that in front of him, bunny butt poised just below his aching cock. Maybe in his head it was just like in mine: a begging need to cum. I was almost tempted to keep teasing. It made me feel...powerful. But it only lasted a moment, before the shame came along: being cruel like that was for alien cat things! I was nice!
	“So...I just, kinda...”
	A shuffle backwards, and a push up onto the balls of my feet. That was all it took. I shivered at the wet pressure against my pucker. Jamie’s cock. Pressing against my tailhole. I had to linger on that thought. Process it. Understand it. The magnitude of it all...maybe it would take days or weeks to properly grasp it. But for now...just wonderful awe. Jamie’s cock. Hard. About to plunge into my rear. My rear. Nobody else’s. Mine! This wasn’t a fantasy or an image on a magazine page. This was real, and it was happening to me. I never thought it would happen.
	I braced myself...and pushed. For a moment, the head of his cock pressed flat and wide against my pucker, and I feared...and hoped...that it would suddenly pop inside me, complete with a blast of pain. But at least it would be in. And I could slither all the way to the base and feel it filling me up, so perfect.
	But instead, his cock suddenly slipped downwards, rubbing against the underside of my balls. Jamie groaned, and I reached back to grip my paw around the base of his cock. I stood awkwardly, unbalanced, and carefully guided him back into position.
	“Ungh...almost...”
	I felt my pucker start to give way. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, exhaling slowly. I waited for the pain, and slowly pressed myself back against him. Any moment now...
	“Nnngh!”
	It was a cry of distress from Jamie, and I froze, thinking I had hurt him. I opened my eyes, and with a yelp I straightened up, crashing back against Jamie’s cocoon, clinging to him alongside his cock. For some strange reason I felt the need to protect it, and I slid myself until I could cradle myself around its length. The cat thing stood over me, glaring. He came from nowhere!
	“I had hoped this test would prove that there was some hope with this intervention method. Such an easy task for you: simply do nothing. Just wait. Do nothing and accept your modification and the limitation it places on you. Refuse and reject the sexual opportunity prevented by your companion. It should not have been beyond the capabilities of a rational being. And still you fall to the temptation, even outside of your native environment, even when you know that you must ignore your basic instincts for the greater good of yourself and your species. You seek out sexual contact at every opportunity!”
	I struggled to think of something to say. I wanted to yell at him. I wanted to scream about how unfair this was, about how he couldn’t just kidnap us and make us play these cruel, twisted games. About how he couldn’t lock up someone’s cock like this and then just expect them to act like a eunuch. And he couldn’t go and expect someone to pass his crazy test if he didn’t tell them what the test was!
	But...instead of all that, I just felt like a scolded child. And that made me feel even angrier. It wasn’t a powerful anger like I would want. No, that would be useful. Maybe it would allow me to run over and punch him! No...it was a powerless, shame-ridden anger, as harmless and neutered as my cock now was. I made a meek, whimpering noise, and cuddled up against Jamie’s metal chest, gripping his cock in one paw, and tugging at the metal tube on my cock with the other.
	“Even now you seek relief when you know it is not possible. You are not a rational creature! If only you would...”
	He stopped and cast his eyes up at the mirrored ceiling. His strange, pointed ears twitched. And then his shoulders sagged and he looked down at me, eyes full of pity...or at least a close approximation of it.
	“Very well,” he said. “There remains one option left open to us.”
	I stumbled as Jamie’s cocooned body started to move, sliding backwards towards the wall.
	“Nnngh!”
	The wall behind the cocoon seemed to melt and shimmer. Jamie’s cocoon slid into it, as if into a vertical pool of water. I ran for the wall, but it was solid and unbroken by the time I reached it. Jamie was gone.
	“What’s happening?” I cried. “Where did he go? Bring him back!”
	“Decisions are being made,” said the cat thing. I gaped, blinking.
	“What...what the hell does that mean?!”
	“It means that we are unlikely to proceed with the conservation efforts.”
	“That means you’ll send me home?”
	“No.” I sagged, chest aching, cock throbbing. “Instead we will attempt...”
	He broke off, snapping an irritated look at the ceiling.
	“What?!” I squealed, my pulse rising. I felt hunted again. “Are you g-going to kill us?”
	“Please do not be alarmed,” he said. “You are in no danger.”
	He reached for me, and I flinched backwards from the grasp of that massive paw. I didn’t run, though. What use would that be? I cupped a paw protectively over my encased cock, even now still pulling at the metal and wishing desperately to have it free. I would obey anything if it meant having that freedom. I would be so grateful. I wouldn’t even be angry that I would have to earn back what was rightfully mine in the first place: the freedom to orgasm, to stroke and fuck and enjoy. My whimpering came out through my shaking lips. And as his paw settled on my shoulder, my knees buckled, and I dropped down to the floor. I wrapped my arms around his ankle and bawled like a baby.
	“Please take this thing off! I’ll do anything. I’ll h-help you with your conservation thing. I’ll help you! I’ll do what you want! Please! It hurts so much. I need to have it off! Please!”
	He exhaled a loud, rumbling noise, something like a sigh. “You are failing to understand the basic premise of this...” And now a growl, up towards the ceiling. But I still felt the prickle of terror rush through me. “Yes, alright!”
	That great feline paw descended, and five claws pressed hard into the back of my neck. Fingers wrapped around to my throat, and with inexorable force he lifted me until my feet dangled from the floor. I flailed and kicked, grasping at his fingers with my paws, gasping for air. He ignored me, and instead looked away, walking towards the wall and carrying me along as a feeble, struggling passenger. I tried to cry out as we headed straight for the flat, hard expanse of the wall...
	...and walked straight through it as if it were nothing. I snapped my eyes shut, shielding against a sudden blinding light. Frigid air hit my skin, slicing through my fur as if it weren’t there. Into this freezing brightness he walked, and I bobbed and dangled, constantly fighting for breath against the grip around my neck. We must have walked for hours...or minutes...or weeks, or seconds. I couldn’t tell. My heartbeat pounded in my head. I croaked weakly, my lungs burning, managing only short, shallow gasps. I felt about ready to pass out when, suddenly, I felt smooth metal under my feet, my weight settling onto them, and the grip releasing around my neck. Instantly I doubled over, clutching my throat, coughing and spluttering.
	“Y-you...nearly killed me!” I wheezed.
	I opened one eye, flinching from the brilliance of the light. Slowly, I forced myself to adjust, and into the light crept shapes and forms. More of the gleaming metal, twisted and woven into contraptions and designs that I could neither recognize nor comprehend. The cat thing had his back to me, his paws moving amongst the metal shapes, folding out sections, revealing a hollow space beyond. I thought about attacking him, while his back was turned. Maybe I could get in a lucky blow? But inherent fear subdued me, and I hugged myself tightly, shivering against the cold, and just waited for my fate.
	I wasn’t kept waiting long. He turned back to face me, eyes blank and uncaring. His paw shot out, and I couldn’t get my arms up quickly enough to stop him from grabbing my neck again. Up I went, struggling and gasping, as he lifted me like a doll towards the hollow space in the wall.
	“What’s happening?” I gasped, wheezing the words out through the grip of his paw. He ignored me. The metal closed in around me, shifting disconcertingly, like a living thing. Its cold touch met the small of my back and spread up my spine and around my sides. I was being inserted, backwards, into the wall. The cat thing’s paw released from my throat, but now the metal had me in its grip. My arms stuck fast against my sides as the metal formed around them. More metal flowed up behind my thighs, pushing against them to bend my legs up. My knees pressed in under my chin.
	“I’m scared!” I cried, as if it mattered. The eyes of the cat thing were cold and uncaring. He barely even seemed to be paying attention to me as the metal folded me up into a tight ball and cocooned me completely. I felt the cold creep to the edges of my face, locking my head in position. I clenched my muzzle shut, resisting the inevitable, but it was useless: the metal formed into wedges that inserted themselves between my lips, prising my jaw open. My teeth sank into the ring as it formed, and I gave in its pressure as it forced my mouth open wide.
	“Ungh!”
	I had never felt so helpless. Not even when the metal held me before, in the cocoon. Or when I knelt, shackled and ignored, while my friends fucked each other right in front of me, ignoring my frustrated arousal, nor even when orgasm was so tantalizingly within reach, with Jamie’s cock so close to pressing into me, snatched away at the last moment. But the helpless feeling didn’t come from the cocoon: it came from the cat thing, from the way he looked at me...like I was just a chore to be dealt with. Before, it had been different. I was something interesting. Prey or a plaything. Or even just a new curiosity. It was terrifying and unpleasant, yes...but it was something. Now, though, this disinterest...this was far worse. This made me wonder, with cold dread, whether I would ever be coming out of this hollow in the wall.
	I tried to beg for freedom. I knew it was no use. I knew the ring gag would muffle every sound I made into nonsensical noises. I tried anyway. And I wondered, were I to have the gag removed, whether I would beg for freedom for myself...or for my locked up and denied cock. Was I really as bad as that? A hopeless case, as the cat thing seemed to think? Bound hopelessly by my own sexual desires?
	I tried not to cry, but the tears came anyway. This was unfair! Somewhere outside of this metal place was my home, my world, filled with billions of people, rutting and fucking and enjoying. And here I was, trapped and denied, a virgin pulled away and imprisoned right at the brink of getting to have sex for the first time. It felt like my birthright was being denied me. And for what? For their “conservation” efforts?
	“Pleaghh...”
	It was the closest I could come to a word. I stared at the cat thing, begging with my thoughts, as if I might be able to transmit the contents of my mind to him. Just give me one more chance! I would prove to him that I could control myself. I would earn the right to get the tube off! I would behave! I would do whatever he wanted!
	But he just turned away from me, the job seemingly completed. I was sealed into the wall. He strode away down the gleaming corridor, off to do something else. Perhaps I was already forgotten. Just a disappointment, secured away in storage. I closed my eyes and cried. I cursed my luck and I cursed myself and I cursed my cock, which even now was still straining hard and needy inside the metal tube.

Delaney once told me, in great detail, during one of his drugged musings, that time is relative. You can stretch it or compress it by doing or thinking different things. At the time, I could kinda understand what he meant: a boring road trip could take forever. But a good orgasm could be over in an instant. It seemed almost perverse that pleasure would go quickly and suffering would endlessly stretch out. Delaney had ways, he said, to make pleasure last forever. It was all down to your state of mind, man. That’s what he said. At the time I figured he was just being a flirt, and adding that little talk into his grand scheme to get me into his sleeping bag.
	Now...I wished he was telling the truth, and I wished I had listened.
	The thing about being encased and left alone...the thing about it is...well...how to describe it?
	It seemed that what Delaney had been saying was correct. The passage of time depended on what you were doing or thinking. And if you were doing nothing, and had nothing to think about...time could stop altogether. And here, in the wall, I had nothing.
	To begin with, I was too wrapped up in my despair to feel the nothingness. I just sobbed and struggled uselessly, straining against the cocoon, wishing for freedom and wishing for orgasm in equal measure. Slowly, though, the distress wound down into nothing. It couldn’t last forever. The body can only maintain the emotional energy needed for so long. And in its place was just a numb feeling, and a thought of okay, so now what?
	It was a question that lingered for a while. I took in my surroundings, what little there were. I had an unobstructed view of the opposite wall of the corridor and little else. Without understanding what all the alien shapes and bumps in the metal were, it meant very little to me. And, after a while, the constant glare of light reflecting off the mirror shine on the metal became too much to bear. Closing my eyes gave me relief from it...and pushed me even further into my complete isolation. I could imagine myself drifting in the depths of the ocean, feeling nothing, hearing nothing, seeing nothing. In a sense, it was kind of peaceful. And it could almost have been pleasant...if it weren’t for the constant, unbearable ache of my cock. If only I could reach it and stroke it, to scratch the itch and douse the need for just a little while.
	I started to run out of things to think about. Questions started to bubble up. Why wasn’t I feeling hungry? Or thirsty? Why wasn’t my body cramping and sore from being held motionless for so long? Was anyone back home looking for me? How long had it been anyway? Days? Weeks? What time was it at home? But with no answers, and no way to get them, the questions soon fell away, ignored, settling back into storage in my mind. And before long, they were forgotten. And in the dead and empty silence I was left with only one thing to think about: my cock.
	The cat thing was right. I really wasn’t a rational being. I knew that there was no hope of me being able to orgasm. I knew that the constant, aching need would be impossible to escape. And I knew that thinking about it and trying to fight this hopeless situation would only make it worse. But the primitive hindbrain in me wasn’t listening, and it constantly clung to a hope that, maybe, just maybe, if I thought the right things and flexed the right muscles in time, perhaps I could nudge myself into orgasm without anything touching my cock. Well, anything except for the squeeze of the metal tube. And maybe that would help, right? Pressure and friction, that’s what I needed. And the tube provided half of that equation. All I needed to do was find some way of rubbing against the metal.
	So I spent god knows how long trying to find a way to do just that. I explored the confines of the cocoon, trying to find a way to rock my hips. Up and down would do. Forwards and backwards would be ideal. Maybe even side to side would give me something. I tried sucking in my tummy and using the extra room that gave me. I tried tensing my butt cheeks and pushing away from the metal that cupped them, seeing if that would give me some leverage. I jarred my hip bones against the sides of the cocoon, pressing with all the strength I could manage, until I was crying out in agony. And all the while I kept my mind active with the most depraved sexual thoughts I could manage. My fantasies put me into every bed I could think of. Every dungeon, loaded with whips and chains. I writhed in moaning pleasure under every form of body that made me weak-kneed. I rubbed my paws across muscular chests. I squeezed my fingers into slender, girlish hips, and watched as they rode in sensual rocking motions above me. I felt the sharp yank of strong fingers gripping my hair and pulling my head back. I felt the stab of pain as cocks thrust hard into me. I listened to the growled threats, and the panted professions of love and affection. I saw Delaney’s face above mine, eyes closed, lips parted, panting his pleasure as he thrust into me. I saw Lucy smiling lopsided as she gyrated her hips, turning me into a squirming, gasping mess, begging for her to go faster. I saw Jamie licking his lips as his fingers worked at the button on my pants, as his muzzle drifted downwards, as the music pounded around us and the hot desert breeze teased at the tent flap. I moaned and cried and gasped and begged and whimpered every word I could think of. I tugged at every single lust and perversion that lived in my head. I imagined every fantasy that had seen me through so many sessions of self-love, and dreamt up new ones, all in a constant haze of lust.
	And still. I could. Not. Cum.
	But yet I didn’t give up. The mind needs to keep trying, to keep hold of a thread of sanity or illusion of control. I could not accept that this was a hopeless situation. If I did...something would just burn out in my head. I would turn into a broken shell, gibbering and drooling like an animal. And part of me wondered if that’s what the cat thing wanted. To break me like a farm animal. Stubbornly, I refused to give in to the imagined whims of that alien freak. To spite him, I tortured myself. I wandered through fantasies of fucking and sucking and cumming. I dreamed of orgasm to distract myself from the denial of reality.
	I barely noticed the movement when it came. My eyes had opened hours, or weeks, previously, and I had been staring blindly into the dazzling light of the corridor, my mind adrift in the bittersweet pleasure of a tryst in a moonlit park, my back up against the rough bark of a tree, my legs wrapped around Delaney’s waist. It took a while for my mind to register the activity happening back in reality. It had become so used to there being nothing there. Perhaps it was the alignment between reality and fantasy that brought it to my attention: it was the presence of Delaney in front of me.
	“Nnnrgh!”
	No attention was paid to my guttural noises. My blurred and oversaturated vision took a while to focus. The dark splodge that I had somehow recognized as Delaney resolved itself into his naked body. The other shape that was with him became the cat thing, or maybe another of his kind. I couldn’t tell the difference. He was holding Delaney up by the neck, just as he had with me, and I stared in stunned silence, awestruck at the sight of Delaney’s heavy, strong body lifted with the same ease that my own scrawny body had been lifted.
	“Let go of me you fucker!” Delaney shouted, his words distorted by the strangle of the cat thing’s paw. He kicked his legs and beat at the cat thing with his fists. But the cat thing stood like an iron statue, unmoved by the struggle. And with the same helpless inevitability that I had gone through, Delaney was inserted into his own hollow recess in the wall. I watched, mute and afraid, as the metal closed in around him, smothering his body from view until only his face remained, staring out into the bright light of the corridor, his mouth held wide open by a ring gag, just like mine. The cat thing strode off, and for the next few minutes I listened to the angry growls of my friend.
	I could tell the moment when Delaney saw and recognized me. His eyes locked onto mine and he stopped his growling. I stared back. And that was all we could do. We stared at each other, each a mirror of the other, pitiful and weak. We made noises to each other, desperately trying to communicate. But our attempts to talk withered away into frustrated silence. We couldn’t understand ourselves, let alone each other. And what would we say if we could? Compare notes on how horny and helpless we felt?
	But silence grew stale. And I wasn’t a rational being. I started making noises again, distorted by the gag. First one moan. Then two together, then three, then four. All the way up to twenty-six short, sharp noises all in one sequence. It was exhausting and took forever, but it was a distraction. And it wasn’t as if I was short on time.
	Delaney seemed confused, but he was paying attention. Gradually, I think, I saw realization dawning. So I tested it out. First eight moans, and a long pause. Then five. Then twelve. Slowly I built the word up.
	Hello.
	It was clumsy and it was crude. But I didn’t know any other way to do it. I waited, hoping that Delaney understood. I was starting to think he hadn’t got it, and was thinking about trying again, when he started to moan back.
	Hell.
	He got it! I closed my eyes and exhaled a long sigh. I wasn’t alone, at least. And so we began talking. Every word took forever. But it seemed we had forever to talk. We compared experiences...and yes, it only helped to increase the torture to talk about it. Hearing about how his cock ached just made my own feel worse. I kept imagining him over there, under that metal, hard and aching, and how it would feel to slide my tongue along it and take the tip in my lips...
	He apologized for what happened with Lucy in front of me. They were confused. They didn’t know where they were. I replied, slowly, that we still didn’t know where we were.
	I think I no
	We were already abbreviating where we could. I listened, eyes closed, as Delaney grunted through a long diatribe about aliens and conspiracies. It was wonderful to hear him talk about this sort of thing again, and I imagined myself cuddled up against his side, laying together on a blanket on the sand, under a hot desert sun, listening to the music, feeling his paw roam across my tummy.	
	And then I imagined his fingers reaching the metal tube. I felt his tugging pulls. I heard him chuckle against my cheek. “What a pity.”
	I interrupted his theories with my moaning whimper. And then I grunted a response to him.
	Escape.
	Dunno.
	I couldn’t read his expression, distorted as it was by the gag and the grip of the metal around the edges of his face. I wondered if he could read the unhappiness in mine. I wanted a distraction. And, like the irrational being I was, I turned to one that would make me feel worse.
	What did u want do to me at the fest?
	I closed my eyes and let my imagination drift off to fill in the imagery that he started to describe. A smile teased at the corners of my mouth. He wanted me by the light of our camp fire, out under the naked stars, wrapped in blankets, wrapped up in each other. He wanted my legs over his shoulders, and our lips together. He wanted Jamie and Lucy there. He wanted to glance over every now and then and see them making out on the other side of the fire, caught up in the same lust that we felt. And he wanted, in the spent relaxation that followed, us to share a smoke, to talk for a bit, and stargaze. And then he wanted to tug me to our feet, so we could cross to the other side of the fire. And there, the four of us...well, we would lose ourselves in each other, rolling all together in a tangle, giggling and happy, with roaming lips and exploring tongues. And in all the happy confusion we would figure out an arrangement, and we would all exhaust ourselves in pleasure.
	My fingers strained against their casing. They wanted to slide across my hip to get to my cock. They wanted to prise the metal away and stroke at the hard flesh beneath. The ache was worse, and getting worse all the time. I could feel the constant drool of precum sliding out of it, maddeningly close to the satisfying feeling of shooting my cum. I tried to think back to the last time I pawed off. Before the trip. Before the abduction. Days ago. Weeks ago?
	How lng we been here?
	Duno.
	I got the feeling that all my questions would be answered in the same sort of way. Neither of us knew.
	No how long will be here tho.
	I replied with a questioning noise. That question didn’t need words. I wondered then if I would regret probing for an answer. Would blissful ignorance be better or worse than knowing the truth? What if it was forever? Before he even started grunting his reply, I started to whimper.
	They teld me. We on spceship.
	It made sense. All the metal. The shine on everything. The weird alien cat. I already knew, really. But I had hoped it wasn’t the truth. That maybe we were in some sinister government lab somewhere, under the control of some creatures they’d cooked up in a vat. At least it wouldn’t be some flying saucer, hurtling through space, far away from any hope of rescue.
	Taking us to their planet.
	I felt my heart beat faster. A whole planet of those cat things. Millions of miles from home. Or billions? I knew less about space than Delaney did. He was into all that stuff, along with crystals and ghosts and all the rest. He knew how far it would be. And how long it would take...
	Did they say hw long?
	Yes.
	I held off asking the obvious question for a while. And he didn’t offer it up. I saw the pain in his eyes, and knew that the answer wouldn’t be good. I knew the answer would upset me more than I already was. But I wasn’t a rational being. And I needed something to distract me from the unbearable ache in my crotch...even if it was something that would only increase it.
	How long?
	They said want to preserve us.
	Hw long?
	Can’t save our species. Take samples. Preserve. Like zoo. Need to take us to their world and save. Take long time to get there.
	He was avoiding the question. I grunted loudly, sharply.
	Hw lng!
	F.
	I waited. He said nothing more.
	I made a quizzical noise. What did he mean by F?
	F!
	And then I reconsidered. F was the sixth letter. He wasn’t saying F.
	Six?
	Ys.
	Days?
	A long pause. I thought I saw tears.
	Weeks?
	And still he didn’t answer. I felt my stomach hollow out. A great, empty pit of aching nothingness. A horror unlike any other. I saw the days stretch out in front of me, boundless and unmeasured. A long eternity of immobility and unrelenting burning lust, trapped and denied. And they could do it, I knew. If those cat things were aliens, with flying saucers and moving metal and mind-control...they could do it. They flew down and scooped us up, and they had power like gods. They could keep us sealed up like this. And they didn’t care about how we felt about it. We begged and they didn’t let us go. They had their mission, and we were just...samples. For our own good, the cat thing had said. It didn’t seem like it was for my own good. Maybe for the species? But fuck the species! I wanted to get free! I wanted to live again! I wanted Delaney to fuck me! I wanted to fuck Lucy! I wanted Jamie to grin and unbutton his pants and guide my head down into his lap. I wanted everything those damn cats had taken from me, locking me up and sealing me away, like some cargo for them to just haul away off into space! I wanted so many things, things that were rightfully mine...and instead there was just this. Confinement. Helplessness. Suffering.
	I didn’t want to know how long I would have to spend like this. I didn’t want to keep pushing to get the answer from Delaney. Everything I said and did just made the situation worse. But...I was not rational. And I had to know.
	Years?
	He was definitely crying. And the whimpering noises he made as he sounded out his answer would haunt me for a very, very long time. He spelled out the word, slowly, haltingly. It was a word that would make me scream, even before he finished the last letters...
	Centuries.