In the Throat of the Wolf

The Internet author known occasionally as Throat Wolf reflected on the various magnum opuses he had written over the years. Just a few of them, as a break from his more open writing career--he didn't feel comfortable having his real name associated openly with this kind of story. Search engines are strange things, and his parents were on the Internet, after all. No, the only way to be safe was to keep his name off of them, permanently.

Not that this didn't cause him some annoyance from time to time. He had written them and posted them into the ether because he wanted people to appreciate them--any people. His own close on-line friends...well, he simply didn't feel comfortable sharing these things with them, and most of the friends he even talked about them with didn't have any desire to read them. Such was life. It was too bad, in a way--because ever since he'd left FurryMUCK, he hadn't had any way to roleplay these particular fantasies out. So, of necessity, he sublimated them into his writing whenever they became too strong.

But this anonymity had its drawbacks. When you go by a pseudonym, you can't very well protest when someone puts your work up without permission, or uncredited, or with the formatting all munged. Since anon.penet.fi had gone under, he didn't even have any real way to prove who he was, did he? Anyone could claim to be Throat Wolf.

T.W. shook his head, turning to his computer screen again. He opened Emacs and began to type. Perhaps he could channel some of his frustration into another story. Why not? Perhaps start in media res, with a mysterious line like, "There was a knock at the door." He started to type, and had just finished that sentence, when--

There was a knock at the door.

T.W. paused, and slowly looked from the screen up to the door. As he sat there, the knock was repeated. T.W. blinked a couple of times, then shrugged and pushed his chair back to answer it. Probably it was that disreputable-looking neighbor again who wanted his help with something. He lived in a rather bad part of town.

He opened the door...and blinked. Something about the petite blonde standing in the door seemed very...familiar, in a hazy sort of way. Like something he had once imagined. "May I come in?" she asked, without preamble.

"Er...but...who are you?" His eyes travelled down her body, taking in the curves which were only slightly hidden by the blue-with-magenta-piping Persephone Colony Mechanic-Ranger Corps jumpsuit she was wearing--

...Persephone Colony?

T.W.'s eyes widened, and he backed away slowly. "Um...I'm sorry, you've got the wrong guy--"

"What, you're not 'Throat Wolf'? Or should I say--" And here she spoke his real name.

T.W.'s eyes were really widening now. "Um...I don't know how you found out, or managed to track me down, but if you don't leave now, I'm calling the police--"

"Now do you really want to do that? And have all the stuff you wrote come out? 'I'm being pursued by a lunatic fangirl of stories that are too prurient for me to want to have my name associated with'? Oh, that would go over real well with your friends and family, wouldn't it?"

"What...what is it you want?" T.W. asked feebly.

"To come in. Is that so much to ask?" She leaned on the door in a way that made T.W.'s trousers suddenly become uncomfortably tight. She laughed, as she reached over and flipped the lid up and down on T.W.'s mail box, outside his door. "Looks like the male's about to come early today."

"Who are you? How do you know who I am?" Throat Wolf tried again, feeling that the whole situation had somehow gotten out of his control but not quite understanding how or why.

"Better to ask how I know the little things that you didn't put in your stories, hmm? Like perhaps the color of Persephone Colony's jumpsuits? You never wrote that they were blue and magenta."

"What? Sure I did, it's right there--"

She shrugged. "Look it up. I'll wait."

T.W. moved back over to his computer, opened the pertinent paragraph, read: 

"Noooo thanks, Cassie," the petite blonde said, zipping up her Persephone Colony jumpsuit as she stepped out of the hut. "I'm not ready to experience the rigors of the Wolfen digestive tract just yet."

...and then his eyes drifted up to other words. "The petite blonde." He slowly looked up to the door, looking at her again--really looking at her, this time. And he slowly realized where he'd seen that face, that hair, that figure before. In his head. His jaw slowly dropped as he put it all together. "...oh my God. You're...you can't be...Janet?"

"You got it in one." She stepped over the threshhold and closed the door behind her, since T.W. was too poleaxed to get up from his chair. "Ew...what a mess. I can't believe you live in this dump."

"I'm working on cleaning it up," T.W. mumbled defensively.

"Be that as it may, it offends my overly delicate sense of smell. And...my God, is that a cockroach?"

"You don't have those on Persephone Colony, I suppose," T.W. said.

"Ha, I wish. They go everywhere, no matter how hard mankind tries to sterilize his outgoing colony vessels."

"Yes, well...um...if you really are who you say you are, um..."

"Can I show you? Of course I can." She took a deep breath.

Torn between shock and a growing desire to see what his fantasy looked like brought to life, T.W. stammered, "Er, no...what I wondered was...how did you get here? I mean, you're just a character in one of my stories. No offense."

"None taken." She moved across the room, stepping over random kipple and the electric fan to sit down on his bed. "You've read your Heinlein, right? Particularly the bits about alternate universes and solipsism?" 

"Er...well, yes?"

She grinned. "Then just call me the wolf who walks through walls." She shrugged. "It's not important how I got here. What's important is why I'm here."

"And...er...why is that?"

Her expression darkened. "I have a few bones to pick with you, Mr. Author Boy."

"Er...this isn't going to be another one of those 'character blames the author for all the shit that happens to him' things, is it?" Throat Wolf managed feebly. "The newsgroups I wrote for went through that whole thing several years ago, and it's really old--"

"No, actually, that's almost the opposite of what it is," Janet said. "I don't begrudge you writing me, or Cassie. Hell, I had a great time raising her. I don't even begrudge you making me crash and break my leg--or having Cassie swallow me whole because there wasn't any other way to save me. That was one hell of a tortuous situation you set up, by the way. Talk about bad writing. Of course both Cassie and I had to make the right kinds of stupid mistakes to set us up for a little gratuitous lip and tummy action. About the only worse of a setup I've ever seen are those stories on Big Gulp--you know, the ones where the woman goes to a club to pick up a man, shrink him down, insert him into her--"

"Janet! Please! My virgin ears!" Throat Wolf protested.

She shrugged. "Anyway, like I said, I don't begrudge you that. In the end, it was actually quite pleasant, and I'm glad I went through it once. But--no, what I'm really pissed at you about is that you didn't write anything else."

"...huh?"

"Look. In the story, I was at least ambivalent about what would happen to me afterward. You remember, the 'magenetic process' that could birth me either as a Wolfen or as a human? Well--I had about made up my mind to be human again. And then--you didn't write it! Cassandra decided, then, to birth me as a Wolfen instead. And so she did, and she raised me...and here I am. And I hate it. I mean--I have to eat about a gazillion pounds of soy protein every day to make up for not being able to hunt people because of that damn restrictive legal system--and even if I could hunt people, I still have a hard time believing anybody has the right to...to do that to an unconsenting sentient. And I can't even get eaten again and change back because once you've been a Wolfen, you go insane if you're birthed human. I'm a...a freak of nature, and it's pissing me off."

"Er...well, if that's all that's wrong, I can write another story and clarify the issue--" Throat Wolf hedged, reaching for the keyboard.

"No, no, no, that wouldn't do any good now," Janet said. "You've met me as I am now. It's fixed, set in stone. Anything you write would just branch off another universe, and my problem would still be the same." She shook her head. "It's all your fault for not continuing the story, not writing me as I was supposed to be."

"A...ha." Heedful of the little voice inside that told him angering someone who could swallow one whole was Not a Good Idea, trying to ignore the other little voice that said that was exactly what he wanted to happen, T.W. said, "er...does it occur to you that, well, I might have written more about you, if you hadn't come to see me?"

Janet blinked. "Huh?"

"I mean, look how long it was between Sonja's Tale and your story. I've gone that long without writing a Wolfen tale before--and each time, I usually pick up with a character, or a reference to a character, from the last one. Heck, I was just starting a story even now, as you knocked. I might just have written about you next...perhaps something about you being human again."

She sniffed. "So you could have Cassie eat me again."

T.W. shrugged. "Well, true, but it could have happened. The way I figure, you're as much to blame, for setting it in stone, as I am for not having done anything about it."

Janet opened her mouth to argue. She paused, as it began to sink in. And then she looked down and sighed. "I guess...you may be right. I hadn't thought about it like that. But...what else could I do? I had become Wolfen. It wasn't like, I was in a Schroedinger's box or something. I was what I was. Am what I am, to quote Popeye."

"You could have just...well, stayed there and been happy?" T.W. tried, getting up and coming over to her, almost against his will. "I mean--you had a good thing going there, on that planet. Perhaps I could have written something about disaster striking, all of the command structure getting wiped out, and the Wolfen deciding to prey on the remaining humans. Wouldn't that have been exciting? Chasing down your former friends and swallowing them whole, to give them a better home, a better life inside of you?"

Janet shivered. "...don't. You're getting me all hot, and I don't like getting turned on by that kind of thing...it's...it's part of what makes me such a freak."

"Does Cassie think you're a freak?" T.W. tried gently, putting a hand on her shoulder, all the while trying to tune out the voices in his head. At the moment, they were saying something about how they couldn't believe he was comforting a fictitious character who had the ability to swallow him whole.

"I...she...she doesn't think anything, that's why I'm here." She looked up, tears in her eyes. "I...I ate her."

T.W. blinked. "You...ate her."

"I...it wasn't my fault!" Janet said, tears streaming down her face. "I was one of those cases they talk about--integration shock--where the human memories don't integrate well with the Wolfen ones when we mature. It's part of why they require so much permission for Wolfenizing now, it's more likely to happen with unwilling or traumatized prey. I...wasn't quite in my right mind, hadn't adjusted well."

"Go on..." T.W. said. "Just...talk it out, maybe you'll feel better."

"I was with her one day, just after it happened. I--I was looking at her, and...well, I had a little mad on, and suddenly her aroma...she was in heat...it just made me...ravenous. So I made like...well, like there was something in my throat...started choking...she went human-form, and crawled in to see what it was...and then I closed my mouth. I...ignored her protests...I had her jammed in too tight to change or anything..."

She paused to draw a sobbing breath. "Oh, I took my time about it. Licked her real good, salivated over her, enjoyed her to the fullest. Then swallowed her down. She...she screamed, she cried...she begged me to let her out...she...apologized...and then...she was in my head, instead of my body." She paused. "At least, I--I think she is. I can't find her. She...she may be hiding from me, she may be hurt mentally...I don't know. When I came to my senses, I realized that I...I'd raped my best friend. And then--well, I had to go. Had to escape...so I ran. Across time, across dimensions, homing in on you...until...here I am."

"Oh." There wasn't much else Throat Wolf could say to that. He'd had a suicidal friend before, had friends with problems of all sorts...but never one who had eaten her best friend against her will. What did you say in a situation like that? "Then...are you going to eat me, too?"

She blinked. "Huh?"

"Well--why else would you have come to me?" He shrugged. "If I were writing the story, that's probably what I'd have you do. Come here to eat me so my authorialness could filter through to you, and you could be in control of your own fate, or something like that." He paused, noticing the look that was starting to form on her face. "It would--it would be a completely misguided notion, of course!" he said hastily. "It would really cause the whole universe to self-destruct or something, now that I think about it. Which would be an ironic way to end the story, and also explain why there wouldn't be any more Wolfen stories, ever--because the author had been digested by one. Um, paradox and all that."

"You're making my brain hurt," Janet said slowly.

"Well, good--er, I mean, it's something to think about. Or not to think about. Or, well, something."

"You're just worried that I'm going to eat you, aren't you?" Janet said. "Not it might not be interesting to see what happened, but you're forgetting...I don't like eating people. I don't think it's right."

"Did you feel the same way about hamburgers?" T.W. asked in spite of himself. "After all, cows are killed dead so we can eat them...at least when you eat a person, or animal, or whatever, they're still alive inside of you."

Janet snorted. "That's the argument Sonja used on Greg and Megan's mother in that other story you wrote."

"I know, I know, I wrote it. You just...triggered it somehow." He shrugged. "Look, I know just how you feel. Hell, how could I not? I wrote you. In some weird, sick sense, you're a part of me that's somehow taken on a life of its own. I don't want to think about what Freud would say. But...what I'm saying is, it's not wrong--not for you. It shouldn't be. I didn't write you to feel that way. I mean...I wrote you to exorcise some personal demons, true. But those demons should have their free reign, in the place where I let them play." He paused. "I'm...not making any sense, am I?"

"No. You sound like you're trying to convince yourself you're not a sick little puppy to me." Janet smiled in spite of herself. "But to accept for a moment what you're saying is true...would you be willing to prove it?"

"Er...how's that?"

"By being my first meal?"

T.W. snorted. By now, despite voices clamoring that he was beyond insane now, nothing less than a complete loony, he was beyond the point of fearing for himself. He'd gotten drawn into the philosophy of the conversation. "What would that prove? If I said yes, it wouldn't mean anything--because I'd be a willing meal, then, and the whole point is your right to take people unwillingly."

"Ahhh...so then I should take you unwillingly."

"Er...I didn't say that. Um...I'd be willing to let you eat me, except for the fact that being willing wouldn't prove my point, so it would be a waste of time anyway?"

Janet rose from the bed, sauntering toward him. Despite himself, T.W. felt his pants tightening again, just from the way she walked. "Perhaps we should consider this a trial run...my first step into a larger world?" She was...coming onto him. He began to feel woozy--what had he written about Wolfen pheromones?

Throat Wolf stumbled backward, falling out of his chair. "No--er, wait. I mean--"

She walked around, and offered him a hand up. "Hmmm?"

"I--er--are you sure you're all right? You're going on these...mood swings..." His protests were cut off when he felt her warm body pressed up against his, her arms around him, and her lips touching his. "It's...not right..."

"Perhaps not," Janet purred. "But the thing is...I've gone too long without eating, and now my baser instincts are kicking in. I...guess I'll feel worse about it afterward, but...god I'm so hungry, I can't fight it any longer--"

"Er--wait, I'll find you someone else to eat..." 

Janet drew him closer, said quietly, "But I've decided...I want you."

Throat Wolf's hands flailed around frantically as he tried to free himself. They brushed against the warmth of Janet's upper chest, the side of her jumpsuit, the holster on her utility belt... wait a sec... holster...holster...

T.W. put his left arm around her, and started kissing her back, while the right fumbled with the flap on it. "Then...maybe it'd be best to wait a while?"

Her chest heaved as she sighed. "No...no, I can't wait. I'm just about to starve...aaaah!" Janet stiffened and slumped as T.W. discharged the stunner against her. At least, he hoped that was what it was. It looked like he'd imagined a stunner to be, anyway, and the Mechanic-Rangers didn't ordinarily carry more lethal weapons--for crying out loud, why was he thinking in circles like this? He had to...to...do something. Who could he call? The police? A hospital? A veterinarian? They'd call him crazy.

So, in the end, he called the best person he could think of. He called for pizza. All the pizza he could afford.

"Nrggh...what happened?" Janet sat up slowly on his bed, a little later.

"Well, let's just say that I almost became a real 'Throat Wolf,'" T.W. said, still holding the stunner. "I think it's best I hang onto this for now."

"I...wha? Oh. Ohhh. Oh, God, yes...keep it." She shook her head. "I had a reversion episode. You just set me off. God, I'm so hungry...I haven't eaten bulk in...much too long."

"We need to find you a cow or something," T.W. muttered. "Or maybe a deer--it is hunting season..."

"I don't think I can go that long," Janet said. "I'm..." She sighed. "I'm going to have to get over my aversion and eat someone. Not you, though. But...where'm I going to find someone?"

There was a knock on the door. "Domino's!" the voice called from the other side. "Got your pizza!"

Janet slid lithely to her feet. "Ooooh! Let me get this. Pleeease?"

"Are you planning to do what I think you're--?" Throat Wolf glanced at her, then at the gun in his hand. "Er...I mean, if someone vanishes and they trace it here--"

"Oh, don't worry, they won't trace it here. I've got ways around that." Janet grinned wickedly at him. "And would you pass up the chance to watch? Truly? To see the very thing you've been writing about all this time?"

"Er..." Throat Wolf said again.

"Look, you said it yourself, right? It's not wrong for me to want to do it...and you even arranged it in your writing so there isn't any of that nasty 'I killed someone' guilt, because they're not really dead." She shrugged. "Ignore for the moment the fact that, because of diminishing returns, it gets hard to eat enough bulk to birth all of them after a while...but hey."

Throat Wolf sighed. "All right...all right." He pulled out his wallet. "Pay the man for the pizza, and...er...invite him in."

Janet smiled. "I will do exactly that. Oh...and you might want to go back into the kitchenette, or else my pheromones might just knock you out."

"Er...good idea." T.W. wandered back into the kitchenette, and leaned against the refridgerator, watching with a feeling somewhere between horror, disbelief, and...well...arousal. Janet opened the door and smiled to the man--or at least T.W. assumed she was smiling, as her back was to him. She took the stack of pies, handed the man the money...then smiled at him and whispered something. The man's expression turned to dazed, and he limply put out his hand and let Janet lead him inside.

He was...probably a college kid, T.W. decided. Early twenties. Not much of a mustache or beard, probably delivering pizzas to help pay the way through college. Never mind that the value he was taking off his car doing it was probably about the same as what he was getting paid.

Well, he shortly wasn't going to have to worry about that anymore, at least.

Throat Wolf watched with an odd sort of detachment as she led the boy over to the bed and sat him down on it. She whispered something in his ear, and he nodded raptly and began to take his clothes off. Janet did the same, sliding out of the one-piece jumpsuit and utility belt to reveal she was totally naked underneath. She whispered in his ear again, and he began disrobing faster.

T.W. couldn't tear his eyes away, now. For Janet's body was every bit as fantastic as he'd ever imagined it might be...and she was teasing the pizza man with it, moving it back and forth in front of him...hypnotizing him. And hypnotizing him, too, T.W. realized...or perhaps that was just a hint of her pheromones in the air.

Now they were kissing...she was pulling him closer to her, putting her arms around him, caressing his body with light hands. The boy looked like he was somewhere between dazed and disbelieving, and now quite far away from caring. She kissed him, and kissed him again...they made their way to the bed now. After not much further foreplay, she was on top, lowering herself onto him. T.W. by now was physically incapable of turning away...for he knew what was going to happen next, and he did not want to miss it for the world.

Nor was he disappointed. As her lower body still straddled the pizza driver's, still pinning him down...she began to change. Her body sprouted brown fur, and her head sloped forward, becoming more angular...larger...her body elongaged and bent, pushing forward and backward--her legs were changing into a more canine configuration, and another set were coming in between those and her arms. T.W. recognized this form, of course--what had been called "wolftaurs" on FurryMUCK, and one of the main forms the Wolfen favored. She was a big one, too--her haunches overflowed the head of the bed, bumping up against the shelves beyond it, and her forepaws brushed the wall at the bed's foot. The driver was completely pinned underneath, still coupled to the spot under Janet's wolf-tail.

"Well, now," Janet rumbled. "What have we here?" She gently reached underneath and pulled the nude man up for a face-to-face. "Well, don't you look delicious?"

"What--what are you?" The man seemed to have snapped out of the hormonal trance a little--perhaps it was the adrenalin and endorphins from the afterglow.

"Hungry," Janet said. "And since you did such a good job of satisfying me one way...I thought you might want to see if you could do so another way, too."

"I...oh no...I have to get back to work--er...let me go, please!"

"Do you really want that?" Janet whispered to him. "I can free you from your boring, everyday life...promise you a much more fulfilling and comforting one inside of me..."

"I...er..."

She cradled him in her arms, like a doll or a child. "Imagine it...feeling the warmth all around you as my tongue caresses you on the way down...ending up in a sweet, hot place where your cares and worries dissolve as you do..."

"Let...let me go...please?"

"I'm sorry, but I can't do that. You see..." She lowered her voice to a whisper. "...I'm starving. And you're the first shot at a decent meal I've had in forever. I'm going to have to take advantage of that while I can." She grasped him below the armpits and lifted him up, to look at him face to face...and then she licked his face. As he gasped and spluttered, she opened her maw wide, lowering the halves of her jaw over his head.

Ignoring his muffled cries of, "No--no!" Janet crammed him into her mouth, head first. His struggling became fainter as more of him went into her mouth. Janet glanced over her shoulder and winked at Throat Wolf, and turned slightly to afford him a better view of the front of her throat. He could see the silhouette of her dinner making its way down, struggling as it went.

In spite of himself, Throat Wolf was fascinated--and more than a little turned on. He glanced down and started in some embarrassment as he realized where his hand was going. Janet's chuckles were muffled by the body disappearing into her mouth, but her eyes conveyed the humor.

The man went in up to his waist...to his thighs...his feet vanished into Janet's mouth. She swallowed again, and twice more, and those passed down her throat as well...and then he was gone, and but her sides were bulging as her stomach accomodated the meal.

"Come here," Janet called over to Throat Wolf. "Come here and feel this. Don't worry, I won't bite."

"I know you won't...you don't bite, you swallow."

"Silly boy, I'm full now. And I want you to...come on, just come here. I won't eat you. Yet, anyway." She winked.

Throat Wolf came out from the kitchenette, and over to where the Wolfen reclined on his bed. "Put your hand...right here." Janet patted the side of her wolf torso. "And your ear, too, if you want."

"What'm I...oh." As his hand touched her side, he could feel through it the outline of a body. The man's shoulder, it felt like. He was still squirming inside her, and for a moment Throat Wolf saw the silhouette of a hand against her skin. Leaning closer, he heard the muffled cries for help, growing gradually fainter.

"Isn't he sweet? Well, actually sort of sweet-salty." Janet smiled. Throat Wolf shivered in spite of himself. It was one thing to say Wolfen should hunt and eat live prey...but to be faced with the reality of it...

"Would you do me a favor? Help me digest him?" Janet rumbled. "Just...massage my side there. Yes, there...that helps the juices flow evenly...I'll have him broken down before you know it."

Had it all just been a dream? Throat Wolf wondered, as he woke up the next morning in his bed. A dream brought on by rereading his old stories and taking those herbal sleeping supplements that always brought on the funky dreams. Yeah, that had to be it. Funky dream. He hadn't just had one of his fictitious characters wander into his life, talk about Heinlein, and eat a pizza delivery man. She hadn't then taken the man's uniform and his car and gone off to "take care of things," coming back with a story about driving it into the river where it would be found in a day or so. She hadn't curled up in the corner to sleep while he crashed in the very bed where she had sex with and then devoured the delivery man. It had all been a dream...just a dream...then...why was he hearing gentle sobbing coming from across the room?

Throat Wolf peeped out from under the covers, over the dozen or so empty pizza boxes that had added to the general kippleness of his room, to see Janet, now in human form with her knees drawn up to her chest, crying. She looked up, saw he was awake. "Why didn't...why didn't you stop me?" she asked quietly. "I wasn't...I wasn't in my right mind..."

"Because I didn't want to see you hurt yourself with the Wolfen equivalent of anorexia?" Throat Wolf sighed. It hadn't all been a dream. He wasn't sure whether he was disappointed or relieved. "Look...you enjoyed yourself. And your dinner enjoyed himself, too. Well, maybe not at the end, but from what I was seeing it looked like some great sex to me. What's it going to take to make you stop beating yourself up about it?"

Janet shook her head. "I don't know. I just...it feels like something's wrong inside of me. I ate him with hardly a second thought. And I nearly ate you, earlier. But...I know it's wrong."

"Right, it's wrong to eat when you're hungry. I'll have to remember that."

She glared at him. "You're not one of us. You could never understand."

"Janet, do you know how silly it sounds saying that to the person who wrote you? I know you from the inside out. I can understand just about as well as I possibly could without being you." Throat Wolf shook his head. "What is your problem? How can I fix it? No, no...that's rhetorical, don't answer." Throat Wolf got up and wandered over to his computer, not bothering to throw on anything other than his briefs. He moved the mouse to disengage the screensaver and called up that aborted text editor window, on which to doodle. 

Janet watched him, for a moment forgetting even to cry. "What're you--"

TW held up his hand without looking at her. "Shhh--shhh, I'm trying to think." He plinked idly away on the keyboard for a few seconds. "What is your problem...hmm. You know, if you're a character I created, from a world I created, it logically follows that your problem, whatever it is, can be dealt with as if this were a story I was writing. If it were a story I was writing...what would it be? And how would I deal with it? If I was writing this story about myself...what should I do to help you? What would I want me to do?"

"You're confusing me. That's what you're doing."

"Shush. There has to be a solution, and one that's amenable to both of us. I don't write snuff stories, you know that."

"Just ones that look like snuff stories. I remember how the first part of She-Wolf ends," Janet sniffed.

"Don't confuse me with the facts, I'm thinking here." T.W. typed out a brief outline in the text editor window. "Follow it to its logical conclusion...and...hmm."

"What?" Janet asked.

"Well, the most likely thing is that I'm supposed to care so much for you that I give up my existence for you--"

"--like my father did for Charlene," Janet pointed out.

"...letting you swallow me and digest me and hoping I can sort out whatever your mental problems are from the inside of your head."

"--like Chet and Sonja did," Janet said.

"Er, well, yes. As a writer, I'm nothing if not thematically consistent." He chuckled ruefully. "And at the same time...assuming that I'm writing this story about me, it would be more directly fulfilling one of the author's fantasies, which is another mark in its favor. After all, it's a lot easier to fantasize about oneself when you write the story involving yourself."

"Isn't that called Mary Sue or something?"

"Or something, yeah." He shrugged. "Anyhow, that's the way I'd write it if I were writing it. And, though obviously I'm not, since this is real life, well, your problem follows from causes stemming from stories written by me, so it should hold true that the solution is similar."

Janet nodded slowly. "So you think...that you can deal with my angsting problems...by letting me eat you? That's...utterly crazy. It's corny. It's bad...wri...ting...my God, you might be onto something! So...when would you like me to eat you?"

"Er...I didn't say that I wanted you to eat me...I just said that if I were writing this as a story, it might...be...be...what are you doing?" As the nude engineer sauntered over toward him, Throat Wolf realized to his chagrin that he'd left the stunner on the shelves by his bed...and then, as she kissed him, the thought left his mind entirely.

She was standing before him now, completely naked, kissing him...funny, when had she become the most beautiful girl in the world? But she was...she had a sort of a soft glow surrounding her. Throat Wolf wondered why he'd never seen it before. But it seemed like there was something about her that he needed to remember--something vital. But...why worry about it? It would come to him.

She kissed him with those ruby red lips of hers, sending a thrill through his body. Such sensitive lips...she seemed to know just what turned him on, and boy was he ever getting that way. Her arms were around him, cradling him to her. She whispered, "Have you ever had a girl eat you before?"

"No..."

"Well, you're about to now..." She kissed him again...it seemed her lips were growing larger...or was he growing smaller? It didn't matter...they were such soft lips...so warm, so inviting...the tongue was not so much probing his own mouth now as simply licking his face, but he didn't mind that...it tickled a little, but didn't feel bad. He closed his eyes.

There was something covering his head now, like a hood...as her tongue pushed his head back and forth, he realized it was her mouth. He'd never known a girl who could do that with her mouth before. Just how big a mouth did she have? Again...something he ought to remember, but...the way he was feeling now, he couldn't think of it.

Her hands placed his own hands over her breasts...they were already swelling, the aurioles growing quite hard. He massaged them...it seemed the least he could do. Then her hands reached down to below his waist, to make sure that things there slid together the way they were supposed to...and he thrust, and thrust, and...bliss.

Throat Wolf felt a couple of soft, puffy things lower down now, around his neck...lips? If that thing moving against his face was a tongue, that was sort of what they had to be, wasn't it? They felt a little strange, but...not so bad, all in all. Now they were moving down past his shoulders, and his hands had to stop massaging her breasts so they could stay straight at his side. She was pushing him upward...reluctantly, he came loose from her. Funny, now his head was bumping something...then, as her tongue mashed his chest against the roof of her mouth, being shoved forward into that something. It clutched him tightly--he couldn't move his head, and it was hard to breathe now. And he was being pushed further into it, as the encircling lips passed his waist.

The realization slowly dawned on Throat Wolf that he was now entering the throat of a wolf--though one in human guise. The odd thought crossed his mind that he'd never written about them doing that before. And then, before he could think to struggle, he was distracted by the sensation of a giant, warm, wet tongue against his privates...and even though he'd thought he'd shot his load just a few minutes before, he found himself hardening again, thrusting again despite the discomfort of his head and neck, and being carried away on a wave of pleasure. 

By the time he was aware of himself again, Throat Wolf's ankles and feet were the only part of him not surrounded by warm wetness, and they were passing those giant lips at this very moment. All the blood was rushing to his head from being suspended upside down in Janet's throat. He was being eaten alive...and he was held too tightly by her esophagus muscles to do more than squirm a little...and he could tell by the laughter from all around him that she liked that.

His head was breaking through into the open now...he was being squeezed out like a tube of toothpaste. His shoulders popped out as his knees went in, then his chest, then gradually his legs...T.W. was lying on his back, now, in what felt like a large, wet leather sack. Only he knew it really wasn't so large at all, it was just normal human stomach sized, for that's what Janet was just now.

The Wolfen spatial magic had shrunk him down to size--except it hadn't, really; when she digested him, she'd still get his entire body mass to fuel her. He didn't know exactly how it worked; he'd just written it that way. For a moment, the insanity of it amused him, almost hysterically...he was the only person in the world--perhaps in the entire multiverse--to understand so clearly what had just happened. He was almost embarrassed to find himself babbling, "Oh...no...you ate me. You really did...it's really happening to me. You really ate me. This is...really what it feels like...what I wrote about all those times...oh no..."

He felt a sort of gentle pressure all around him as Janet gently massaged her stomach. "It's all right...this is what you wanted, remember?"

T.W. moaned. "Oh, God, no--all the loose ends in my life. My friends, my family...if nothing else, I'm just going to vanish for a few years. At least."

"You could beg me to let you out, you know..." Her voice sounded drowsy...

"Would it help?"

"No...but it would let me get off again...God, I love the feeling of power from that...having someone inside me, pushing against my tummy, trying to get out..."

T.W. pushed against the stomach wall gently. "Oh...please...please let me out?"

"Oh, yes...that's the way...just like that..." The stomach motion felt like she was rocking gently...touching herself? T.W. struggled gamely until the fumes and the fluids began to overtake him--it was all he could do. His last thought was that he certainly hoped his theory had been right...because if it hadn't, then it was all for nothing.

He was adrift in a flickering realm of sensation, like someone was showing an out-of-frame movie way too fast. He felt as though he should be nauseous, but lacked the body to be nauseous with. Then things stopped moving so fast and solidified, and he found himself on a vast plain of mist. He knew, rationally, he should have expected this...it was where Greg had found himself in Sonja's Tale, after all. Still, it was a little odd to find one's stories coming true--especially one's more prurient stories. Why couldn't it have been one of the nice pedestrian fantasy or science fiction worlds he wrote about in his non-pseudonymous identity? 

He snorted, thinking about it. Probably because meeting one's writer had become passe in them. But for vore stories, it was practically de rigeur, wasn't it? How many of them featured a protagonist who just happened to be named the same as the author? "Just my luck...I swore I'd never write a story like that...and so the story wrote me, instead." 

Throat Wolf started walking. "Now, if my hunch was right, there should be a dream sequence somewhere around here that explains what's going wrong in her head. I even think I know what it must be--or what it would be if I were writing it. Janet's been acting like two different people...and she mentioned what happened to Cassandra earlier. I'd have done that so the audience could start putting things together so the ending wouldn't seem to be coming out of nowhere. So..."

The landscape changed, and T.W. was walking through a forest. A familiar-looking forest, actually--it looked as he'd imagined the Persephone Colony groves to look when he'd been writing their story. Even if his imagination hadn't been this sharp and vivid, it had been the same. He took a moment to reflect again upon how strange it was to have one's imagination come to life, then kept walking. From a clearing up ahead, he heard a low moaning sound, and quickened his pace. If it was what he thought it was...

And it was. A wolftaur was lying on her chest in the clearing, moaning, her mouth lolling open. Another woman--this one a brunette, whose face looked slightly Slavic when seen in profile, was just leaning forward to look into the mouth.

"Stop! Wait!" Throat Wolf yelled, running forward. "Don't! Wait a moment, Cassandra!"

Cassandra stopped, and looked up. "What? Why should I? And--who're you?"

"My name--is not important. I'll explain it all later. But listen--she's got integration shock, and she's mad at you for making her a Wolfen! She's trying to trick you--she's going to eat you if you stick your head in there."

"Why should I believe you?"

"Look, let me look in her throat, then. If I'm wrong, then I'll be your meal. Right here, right now."

Cassandra cocked her head. "Without paperwork and witnesses? That would cause more trouble."

"I'm not from your world. They wouldn't know me. I'm...well, it's hard to explain where I come from, but it's not here."

Cassandra paused, then turned to look at Janet, stepping back slightly and reverting to her similar wolftauran form. "Is what he says...true?

The Wolfen's expression had changed from one of pain to one of rage. She jumped to her feet and charged at Throat Wolf. "How dare you! You ruined everything!"

"You'll thank me for it in the en--gah!" In the ensuing tackle, T.W.'s head was knocked against a tree, and the lights went out for a few moments.

Throat Wolf came back to awareness to find himself lying facedown on something soft and wet. He managed to raise his face and look up, and saw what he expected to see--daylight filtering in from between two rows of teeth. She was playing with him...pressing him against the roof of her mouth, savoring him...despite himself, T.W. was becoming aroused again. But...there was no time for that now. Peering between Janet's teeth, he saw Cassandra at the far end of the clearing, looking very upset.

"Go over to her," T.W. whispered.

The sound issued from Janet's windpipe, behind him. "Gwah?" 

"I know you can hear me perfectly well--there's tubes connecting people's mouths to their ears, and Wolfen are no different. I said go over to her."

"Gwy shouh I? You wuih ebwythih."

"Look, just consider it a last request, eh? I've got no trouble with you eating me...what I've got trouble with is you two breaking up. You're friends, you're family--look, just go. Before you swallow me. And don't talk with your mouth full."

For a long moment, Throat Wolf thought that the gambit might not work. She was still suffering from integration shock, after all--he didn't know what she'd do. He could only hope, since she was one of his characters, that she'd be inclined to be reasonable. And so, after that long moment, he was relieved to see the terrain start slowly dipping and moving, as Janet made her way over toward Cassandra.

Cassandra looked up, bitterly. "What do you want? To try to eat me again, I suppose?"

"Now that's not fair, and you know it," Throat Wolf said loudly. "She's under integration shock--she's not in her right mind. You know what that is, it's why they assigned her to watch you after you were cubbed." 

Cassandra started. "You...how do you know that?"

"I know a lot of things. I even know how your sister became your mother, a long, long time ago. But that's not important." He paused for a moment as he slid backward a few inches in Janet's mouth. "I don't think I have much time left, but--you need to apologize to Janet."

"Apologize? But...I thought she wanted to be a Wolfen."

"At the moment, she more sort of doesn't. So you need to apologize to her...now. And mean it."

Cassandra looked at Janet. Really looked at her, almost as if seeing her for the first time. Then her eyes widened, and her expression softened. "I...oh, God, Janet, I am sorry. I...I didn't realize. How could I have been so thoughtless. All I wanted was for you to be...like me...and for us to be friends and companions this way. I never thought that...you might feel so badly about it when you remembered."

And then--it was hard for T.W. to see from this perspective--they seemed to be next to each other, leaning against each other...making up with soft murmurs that didn't suffer from one of them having a full mouth. And then...Janet's mouth started to open, wider, and her tongue was pushing him forward. Was she letting him out...? No...it wasn't any lighter outside her mouth. Throat Wolf felt the teeth scrape gently along his side, and then landed on...another tongue? He suddenly realized what had happened...he'd just been kissed from Janet's mouth...into Cassie's. For a moment, the insane thought, "Oh, she's making up with a gift, how sweet," passed through his mind...then, as he started sliding toward the back of Cassie's throat, Throat Wolf said, "Er...if you're both friends again, I don't suppose you could let me out now?"

Cassandra's voice spoke in his head. "Now, now...you said I could eat you."

"If it wasn't true, I said! And...it's true, so..."

"Details, details..." Her head tilted back, and Throat Wolf was once again crammed into a tightly constricting tube of muscle, forcing him back and down, head first, into the belly of the beast. As the warmth surrounded him, he simply couldn't help himself. It amused Cassie. "Oh, you're trying to make yourself hard for me to swallow by putting out a little spike? Nice try, but it just won't work. Oh, and now you're lubricating your progress...mmm, tasty."

A few moments later, Throat Wolf plopped into another hot, moist bag. He sighed...through the wall of body tissue, he could hear conversational tones, though he couldn't make out any of the individual words. But they seemed friendly--and perhaps even more than friendly. Throat Wolf sighed, and waited for digestion to come. He wondered if it would be different to be in the Wolfen dreamscape of someone who was herself within a Wolfen dreamscape.

And then, suddenly, everything bucked around him. He was being all tossed about...and then pushed up. He gasped at being squeezed again. Cassandra was...regurgitating him? "But that almost never happens in these stories," T.W. murmured. "Even if the victim's expecting it."

But up he came, to be spat out into Janet's waiting arms. She was now human in form, and quite naked. Cassandra changed to the same, now that T.W. was all the way out. Throat Wolf managed a feeble, "Er...hi."

"We remember now," Janet said.

Cassandra nodded. "You've broken the cycle. We're not...conflicted anymore--we're two separate personalities again. And I think, Janet will be a little better able to deal with eating other people now, too. But...how did you know?"

Throat Wolf shrugged. "Well, it was what I'd have written. Funky mental meldings are one of my recurring themes, in whatever writing I do. Having the two of you get all tangled up and not knowing who was who in the same body...it just logically followed."

"Er...huh?" Cassandra asked.

"I'll explain later, silly wolfie," Janet said. "Anyway...it was quite a risk you took, enticing us to eat you like that."

"Well, that part of it was an accident," Throat Wolf admitted. "Not that it wasn't an enjoyable enough accident, but...God, what am I going to do now? I can't be gone for the several years it'll take for Wolfen or human magenetic gestation and growth back to maturity. My family and friends will worry about me."

"I think...we can solve that problem," Janet said. "In my travels, I've found that different universes move at different rates of time. We'll just find a really, really fast one to birth and raise you in, then come back, and it'll only have been a few days here."

"You can do that?" Throat Wolf asked. Janet nodded.

"Er...universal travels?" Cassandra asked. "I have been out of the loop, haven't I?"

"I told you, I'll explain all that later." Janet rolled her eyes. "Anyway...this is the point where you have to decide."

"Decide?" T.W. asked.

"Human...or Wolfen," Janet said. "Just so it's clear there's no confusion and we don't start this thing off again."

T.W. blinked. "Well, isn't it obvious? I mean, all things considered, I'd rather be--"

Had it all just been a dream? Throat Wolf wondered, as he slept lazily, even as the sun was rising high in the sky outside. It had been a strange one. He had been--wait, why were the covers wet?

He opened one eye, and sighed, looking out at the world from behind a set of teeth. All of his body was in her throat, except for his head, which just filled her mouth, so that his cold black nose was nearly touching the back of her front teeth. "Mooooom! Cassie's swallowing me again!"

The jaws around his head opened, and the smiling face of a blonde human looked in. "Aww, isn't that cute..." She reached in and petted him, then gave his nose a slight shove, as if to push him all the way down her throat.

"Mooom!"

She winked. "Sorry! Cassie, cough him up."

The Wolfen cub's throat muscles contracted, and Throat Wolf was expelled into the cool, damp air of the cave. He landed on a mat of straw, looked around, and stretched. As Janet scolded Cassie, over Cassie's protests ("But Mom, he shouldn't call himself Throat if he doesn't wanna be in mine!"), T.W. wandered out of the cave mouth to wash the Cassie drool off his fur in the creek. He sighed happily. All that stuff about being a human, writing stories about the Wolfen...it had all been a dream.

Or had it?

The real Throat Wolf grinned as he clattered out the closing lines of the story on his loud old IBM PS/2 keyboard. The nice thing about writing anonymous stories was that you could be as zany as you wanted in them. After all, nobody was ever going to connect them back to you anyway. Why not?

Perhaps it was a little smug of him, but he felt rather proud of this story. After all, writing stories about oneself was a staple of the vore (and sex stories in general) field. It had been done to death. (Usually literally, in the case of vore stories.) Which meant that the field was ripe for a clever, self-aware parody of the trend. If he did think so himself.

As for all that alternate universe solipsistic stuff...well, who believed in that, anyway? If pressed, he supposed he could explain it by saying that when an author's characters meet the author, the universe is instantly and retroactively split off from the main universe to become a separate one, so even if the protagonist had really been him up to the point Janet had knocked on the door, it wasn't him for everything that followed...

"Yeesh, I'm making my own brain hurt now."

Throat Wolf shrugged, and leaned back in his chair, just grinning for a moment. He couldn't wait to see the reactions when this hit the TSA-Talk list, and would be sorely disappointed if he didn't at least get one or two "what the hell?" type of comments. And heck, the way the story was going, he probably would.

He sat there for a while, smug in his complacency, until a few moments later, when...

There was a knock at the door.

THE END