In her group of friends, Iris had a few names, most of them disparaging in a playful way. She was the loud one, the bitchy one, the one who dressed like a slut. They were all things Iris would admit to readily; she liked the attention, and some would argue she was filling a void her loving but oftentimes busy mother left in her life.

The pink-haired possum leaned against the facade of the drugstore. Her breath made small puffs. Some of the other kids in the cluster, who ran the gamut from eight to twelve with herself at the upper end, smoked cigarettes pilfered from parents and older siblings. Iris didn't smoke, she just stood with her fleshy hands sunk into her pockets, watching cars go by, enjoying a cold evening in the Midwest as well as an impoverished girl could.

At times other kids would pass by. Iris and her group were neutral towards most. Some stopped by to talk or borrow cigarettes, others nodded and continued on their way.

Then there were the weirdos. The older kids, the dropouts, the junkies. They were the ones Iris and her friends jeered at, relying on numbers to get away with their teasing. Nobody would pick a fight with a dozen kids even if their ages averaged towards eight or nine; nobody until the tall fox walked by.

None of the children knew his name. They had heard stories about him, a goon of a boy standing six-foot-seven at a time when his peers were still being stuffed into lockers with room to spare. He had dropped out long ago but lingered around town, surrounded by rumors like a mysterious gunslinger in some old western movie. His attire was a mix of poverty and edge: ragged jeans, black tee, a threadbare waistcoat. Black hair hanging to his mid-back, ruby-red eyes, overlarge tusks better suited to an extinct sabertooth.

None of the other children teased him, but Iris was the loud one, the bitchy one, and it was rare that a girl as poor as she was had the chance to bully somebody. She said loudly enough for him to hear, because that was the whole point, "Geez, look at the Goodwill reject." Some of the kids chuckled - but the sound was mostly nervous.

He paused near their group and looked over some of the younger children. Most of them slunk behind the older kids upon meeting his stare, and some unceremoniously left. Then he put his eyes on Iris who regarded him smugly, still resting her weight on the storefront. The warmth of the drugstore fogged the windows, making the figures within blurry and indistinct. It was late enough that the sodium lights were beginning to kick on, row after row.

"What did you say, cunt?"

The children who were familiar with the word from their parents recoiled. A few more left. Iris, well-versed in foul language but shy about using it around her impressionable younger sisters, stared at the stranger in disbelief.

"Do you kiss your mother with that mouth? Wow." She looked to the other kids for approval but most of them were pulling away. Those that lingered looked at her with worry in their gazes.

He loomed over her, and an adjective she had read in a book crossed her mind: [i]bestial.[/i] The dropout was bestial and terrible. His clothes had the neutral smell of laundry washed not with laundry soap, but dish detergent. He leaned close to her face on which she wore a scowl, but her eyes were nervous and darting.

"Want to learn to eat without teeth, bitch?"

Iris bristled. She huffed but pressed her back against the storefront. "Hey, fuck you, jerk," she said, meaning to sound indignant but her voice came out of her neutered by intimidation.

Suddenly he clapped a paw around her shoulder and he squeezed with thick fingers until she yowled. He started around the building with her, dragging her; Iris squealed and dragged her feet but he pulled her without difficulty. As he dragged her he muttered, "I'll teach you, fucking cunt. I'll fucking fix you."

Iris' friends stared after her. Some ran off. Others stared, wracked with indecision. One by one they ran away, none of them to the nearest adult. They all ran off to forget they had ever seen anything.

He threw her against the drugstore dumpster. Her hip caught the corner and sent a white-hot lance of pain up through her body. Her teeth gnashed and she loosed a silent scream, tumbling into the slushy snow in the alleyway.

"Owww, fuck you," Iris bleated, crying but indignant, galvanized by the rough treatment. "You asshole!"

He descended on her, unfazed by the verbal abuse she slung his way. His jowls pulled back, showing teeth to the gums. Iris thought her neck, maybe even her entire skull would fit in his jaws. She hissed, "Don't touch me, don't put your fucking paws on me again!"

In direct defiance he pushed a paw under her shirt, passing her flat stomach and palming her equally flat chest. The few other boys who had touched her chest had grinned or blushed but he did neither, his face frozen in a scowling snarl.

"Don't touch me," Iris repeated, a note of panic in her voice now. She grabbed his paw through her shirt, but he was massive and muscular; both her fleshy hands couldn't equal one of his paws. His fingertips slid over her nipples, stiffened by the cold, and she shuddered at this violation. "Stop it, quit!" the possum shrieked, and the tears flowed faster.

His wide red eyes roamed her small body. He reached under her skirt with his free paw. He squeezed her groin, which panties covered. They weren't enticing to look at; they were blue, thick, came in packs of five at Wal-Mart. Iris cried out and pressed her thighs tightly together in reflex. "No, quit! Don't touch-, don't touch me there!" she yowled, still fighting his paw on her chest.

He forced a finger against the split of her cuntlips. The digit entered her with her panties tented around it. It seemed somehow worse than a naked finger to Iris. Cringing, crying, she swung at his face and her bony fist ineffectually struck his snout. The possum hissed at him, swung again and again, then finally swung at him with an open palm, her claws unsheathed. Their points raked into his muzzle, tearing open shallow, but bloody cuts. He showed no reaction to the pain but he was quick to grab her fists, securing both of her hands in one paw.

He said as she struggled and hissed, "Gonna break your fingers for that."

Her pink, bright eyes opened wide. She blubbered, "Wait-, wait, no!"

Finally his stoic snarl broke, but the grin he gained was worse. He clutched her fists under his and he began to squeeze; blood pounded in her hands and her finger bones popped one by one. The pain was only just starting when she squealed, "Fuck you, fuck off! Fucking homeless creepy [i]prick!"[/i]

Suddenly he let go of her fists, and she rubbed her knuckles and wrists for only a moment before the worry settled in that she was in for something worse. She stared at his face and saw it was back to a snarl. She panicked and tried to scoot away, to get out from under him so she could get up and run, but a burly paw clapped around her hip, squeezed so sharply that she bruised, and yanked her back.

"Let go, you fuck!" she screamed. She had more to say, very strong words for him indeed, but that was when his fist collided with her snout. Brilliant pain the likes of which Iris had never felt before blossomed in her face. A thin but bright gout of blood spurted from her left nostril the way ketchup does from a packet squeezed too tightly, and she uttered a deep, wounded noise unlike her girlish squeals and screeches. The possum flopped slack against the slushy concrete, arms cruciform and eyes open half-lidded, glazed like cue balls.

For a moment she appeared to be dead, and the fox stared intensely as if willing her to come back to life. Then she groaned and reached for her snout. She touched it tentatively and cried out from her own gentle touch.

"Owww, fuck," Iris bleated, and she tried to curl up, make herself tiny and unappealing to the fox. The terror of being molested had been pushed aside by the pain but it was still in her thoughts. Now Iris was fully aware of how outclassed and helpless she was, and when he started to touch her again, now with heavy breaths and almost virginal earnestness, she said plaintively: "Please don't hit me anymore, I'm sorry. Please."

"Shut up," he puffed. His paw slid across her smooth breast. His knuckles were sore from the punch but her body and her proneness made him forget all about the ache and the cuts on his snout. He grabbed her narrow thighs, pulled them apart like splitting a wishbone.

The possum cringed in pain and aggravated her broken nose. She said, sniveling, "You're gonna break my legs, stop!"

She caught a glimpse of him through the haze of her tears. Scowling at her, close enough she could have bitten his nose off - if she wanted to lose teeth, she thought. He said close enough that his breath, somewhat pungent with liquor, washed over her face: "You keep bitching at me and I'll put your body in this fucking dumpster."

Her feisty nature was just a leftover ember after a wildfire, but Iris wanted to call his bluff. [i]You wouldn't fucking dare,[/i] she would have said. And she would have been right. This troubled boy was many horrible things, but he was no killer. The pain in her nose and the primal terror he made her feel told her not to push his buttons. He might not murder her; but he might make her wish he had. She had no idea a broken nose could hurt so badly and she didn't want to try for more.

"I'm sorry," Iris said, voice small, feeble. She hated it. She thought she sounded the way her youngest sister did when she dropped a cup of Kool-Aid on the carpet.

He snorted, and then he licked her. The lick was slow, in fact sensual. His broad tongue dragged from her neck, up her cheek, along the side of her head. Iris would have found it disgusting except she was only grateful that he stayed away from her shattered nose.

"You taste good," he huffed across her face. He kissed the side of her head, tusks menacing her. Then he lifted her shirt, examined the flat chest he had already fondled. Quietly he grumbled as he kissed her nipples, stiff from fear and frigid temperatures. Iris trembled. Any pleasure the girl would have felt was buried under fear, and the coppery taste of adrenaline was high in her throat like heartburn. She did nothing to resist him, said nothing to dissuade him. She was only relieved he wasn't touching her nose.

"Gonna fuck you," he said. There was little menace to his voice. It was as if the worst of the storm was over, and now only receding thunder remained in his tone. Iris listened, too afraid to look, both because she feared what she might see and because moving her head might aggravate her nose. She heard his zipper, the clatter of his belt buckle. And then he clambered over her, eclipsing her, staring into her eyes with his smoldering red glare.

He said, "Touch it. Don't use your claws, or else."

"Touch-, touch what?" Iris asked, her voice almost eager. Implicit in her begging tone was the message: [i]I'll do anything, please don't hit me again.[/i]

"My dick, dumb bitch," he growled, gaining an edge in his voice.

"Your-?" Iris forced herself to look down. She saw it, his dick, and her mouth hung open. Evidently the reaction excited him because he grinned in a way that was almost cute in its eagerness. "What is this?" the possum bleated as she cupped her chilly palms around the first penis she had ever seen.

To the touch it was exceptionally warm, and it pulsated gently in a way she found off-putting. It reminded her of a show-and-tell in class several years before. A classmate had brought in her pet iguana, an alien-looking reptile but one that was docile to the touch. It had been bizarre, even alien to the seven-year-old Iris. Five years later and Iris experienced the same feeling palming the fox's large and knotted phallus.

"Slut like you doesn't know what cock is?" he asked, sneering. Iris decided she preferred it when he was cold and quiet. "You're about to get real familiar with it, I guess."

Iris had only vague notions about sex. Girls at school had mentioned it, and its lip-biting, claw-raking moments of passion were blackly fascinating to Iris in the same fashion as liquor and drugs: forbidden adult things. But everything the possum had heard about sex painted it as a positive experience; her broken nose and ass half-numb in the slushy mess behind the drugstore left Iris feeling anything but positive.

"What are you gonna do with that? It's-, it's really big," Iris murmured, just shy of stammering.

The fox grumbled lowly, "I don't want to spoil the surprise, cunt." He was still grinning, the expression all malice. He grabbed at the lacy leggings the possum wore, fingered one of the small rips in the fabric, and started to rip it wide open.

Iris whined, "Stop that! I only have one pair of those, dude!"

Suddenly he clapped a paw around her snout, squeezed it, and tweaked her broken nose with his thumb. She squealed so sharply that his ears splayed back even though he had physically held her maw closed. Tears blotted out her vision and she grabbed his wrist and clawed at him, desperate to make the pain stop.

He said close to her ear, "You're about to have only one pair of teeth if you don't fucking shut up. And [i]stop fucking clawing me[/i] or I'm gonna cut your hands off."

The pain was so severe that Iris had to consciously tell herself to take her hands off of his wrist. Blood gelled under her claws. She clenched her fists, whimpering, huffing through her crushed nose, bubbles of blood forming and bursting on her left nostril. Gradually he let go of her snout. Her maw opened; she blubbered, but tried hard to keep the noise down. "I'm sorry," she bleated, "I'm so sorry, please don't..."

"Dumb cunt," he hissed. He grabbed her panties by the crotch, jerked them down and exposed the possum's virgin sex.

Having her loins exposed to the fox, Iris knew, meant a line was being crossed. This was sex, this was something very adult and she understood now what mother had meant when she had nebulously said, "You'll know when the time is right." Because for all the things Iris didn't know, she knew for sure this wasn't the right time for sex.

She said pathetically, "Please, whatever this is... please, no..."

But he laid himself over her, practically eclipsing her. His penis rubbed against her and its warmth was almost pleasant. Something about it seemed correct to her, but the brutish, ugly scowl on his face was loathsome. She touched his shoulders, smearing her nasal blood on his coat. "Please," she whimpered. "Ple-e-ease..."

He notched his pointed canine cock into her labia. Iris cringed at this sensation. All of her masturbation had been clitoral, never penetrative; the idea had simply not occurred to her. Now this big fox was spreading her open for the first time in her life. The point of the tip made the entry gradual, but the pain came on quickly as his girth spread her. Very soon her toes were curling, but not with pleasure. Her body trembled, but it had nothing to do with the cold. Pain like she had never felt wracked her entire body and made even her broken nose seem mild. "Oh-, oh god, stop!"

"Shut up, cunt," he lowly said. There was something to his voice, some hint of pleasure that almost made him sound docile but his words were pure venom. He licked her neck like a predator, licked her face. His boozy breath made her wince, and the wince made her nose ache.

The fox met resistance in the tough membranous wall of her hymen. He pushed against it and Iris gasped in pain. Fearing her own outburst, she squeezed her snout shut, gingerly avoiding her nose but otherwise silencing herself aggressively. Even then, when he forced through the membrane and tattered its edges, Iris squealed into her clenched jaws. She was staggered by the pain, unaware that anything could possibly hurt so much. And still, the fox continued to enter her, gouging her vagina around his overlarge penis. Her hands fell away from her snout and she shuddered in agony. "Ah, please, please," she blubbered, snuffling and gasping. "Stop it...!"

"I figured you were some kinda slut wearing shit like that, didn't know you were a virgin," the big fox grumbled. A grin of almost delirious pleasure was plastered across his snout. Even with tears blurring her vision so badly, Iris could see his many sharp teeth for what they were. He moved slowly, not out of mercy but necessity; the possum's virgin cunt was so tight that it fought every inch he put into her. He dragged his tongue across her neck, then pushed up her shirt and bared her mostly smooth chest again to the bite of the cold air. "Flat bitch," he breathed across the smooth plane. "Good thing your pussy is so goddamn tight."

"God, stop," bleated Iris. "I'm so, so sorry for saying what I did, I really am, I'm-, I'm so-"

He nipped her chest, pinched a nipple in his teeth; the possum winced. "Shut the fuck up," he grunted. "Just shut your fucking hole and let me fuck you."

"It hurts so much," the possum whined.

Calmly, he straightened and looked down at the penetration. Blood wept around his cock, fresh and bright, and he found that no matter how hard he pushed now, he couldn't get any deeper into the girl; but each time he pushed, she cringed and gasped and clawed at the slush below. Deep inside, his cock prodded at the tender, small orifice of her cervix, each push causing her immense pain. To him it felt like he was pushing against a fleshy wall, not unlike her hymen but markedly more sturdy. He thought he could have forced his way through it but there was already an awful lot of blood and she was barely keeping quiet. He settled on pulling back, and he bucked back into her with what he could. He snarled, "You gonna tell anyone about this?"

Each time he entered her, his penis stabbed at her cervix; Iris never adjusted to the pain and was constantly cringing and gasping as he had his way with her. Low, uneasy noises escaped her often clenched jaws, and the copper smell of blood was crisp in the dry winter air. On the chance it might appease him and stop the pain, she answered emphatically, "No! Never, no! I swear!"

He grunted acknowledgment but kept going, working his hips faster, pushing harder. Her cervix was pushed in with each of his thrusts and the pain worsened steadily. Iris said through gnashed teeth, "Ah, gawd, please...! I can't take it, it's unbearable!"

"So's your goddamn bitching!" he snapped. He hunched over her, and again she thought of him as bestial. He was already annoyed that he couldn't fit inside of the possum and angered by her cunt attitude; now her begging was grating at his nerves. He gripped her shoulders, pinned her in the slush, and fucked her harshly, even hatefully.

"Cunt, fucking-, lousy, bitchy cunt," he hissed under his breath. His eyes fell half-lidded and his body language stiffened. Iris didn't know what was wrong with him, only that he was getting rougher, moving faster. She cowered against the slush, feeling cold and numb but not in the place she wished she was.

"Don't kill me," she bleated.

"Tell anyone about this and I will," he sharply warned her, spittle flying onto her face and chest. He threw his weight into his thrusts, cock beating her cervix, girth wallowing out what minutes earlier had been a tight, virginal pussy. Suddenly and with a pleasurable bray, the massive fox came. Hot seed, salty and sticky, jetted into Iris. It wormed its way into her womb; stung her broken hymen; salted all the microscopic tears his rape had shredded into her vaginal walls. She squealed, thrashed, and ultimately clenched her snout closed again. Her body shuddered as she tried to cope with the agony of being raped and seeded. It both puzzled and revolted her, and she hated him as much as she feared him.

"God, that's what I fucking needed," he huffed across her neck. "But it would've been better with the knot. Stupid bitch." Slowly he slid his penis out of her, giving Iris her first taste of relief. Her insides were hot, stinging from the salt, and she felt strangely cavernous in his absence. It was vastly preferable to having him inside of her.

The bigger and older boy stood and pulled up his jeans. He said coldly, "Get dressed and get the fuck out of here. Or don't. See if I give a shit. Go ahead and freeze to death if you want."

"Leave me alone," the possum said, no assertion in her voice at all. She sat up slowly and had long since stopped caring about the cold slush underneath.

As Iris pulled on her panties, the tusked fox loomed over her. He said, "I know where you live, bitch. That dumpy fucking trailer park."

She stared up at him. "I don't-, I'm not gonna tell anybody, I swear."

He grinned. "But I'm not done with you, bitch. I'll come by."

Despite her wounds inside and out, Iris felt a surge of sisterly devotion. "Don't you touch my little sisters."

He planted a wet foot on her chest and pushed her into the slush. He was so heavy and strong that Iris toppled like a dead tree. "Don't act tough now. You had your chance before I popped your cherry." She stared at him incredulously. He snickered, took his foot off of her and pointed down. "Look, dumbass."

With as much dread as curiosity, Iris looked down at her leaking sex. Semen tinted the color of blood oozed out of her. She stammered, "What-, why-, what's this blood from!?"

The fox ignored her. "When I come by, you'd better not fight me. Not unless you want your face broken. Or something bad to happen to your sisters. You said they're younger than you? Then I bet they're a [i]lot[/i] tighter than you are."

"You-, you jerk," Iris snuffled, still staring at the ooze escaping her. She felt unfathomably dirty, seeing bloody semen roll out of her. "I hate you..."

"Yeah, you and me both," he said. "Later, cunt. Try washing that thing."

Iris watched him go. Even when he was gone, she didn't feel safe. She ended up blotting herself with her panties, but even then, it wasn't enough, and so she scraped inside of herself with the cheap fabric. She hissed in pain, and the blue fabric came out sticky and dark. She threw the panties into the dumpster and tried to smooth her skirt over her legs. One of her fishnet leggings was torn all the way down her thin leg like a sausage casing. She didn't care, just wanted to get home.

Out of the alley, she looked for him on the dim street. She expected to see him standing under the sodium lamps, waiting for her. But he was gone.

Quickly, like a bandit escaping town, Iris ran home. Her mother was away at work - thank god. Her sisters would try to ask questions but she was good at blowing them off, her prerogative as the aloof older sister.

At home, the hot air of the gas-fired furnace felt wonderful on her body, which had been chilled almost to the bone. Her sisters Lily and Daisy were in the living room, watching the old console TV. Daisy, the youngest, greeted her cheerfully but Iris walked right past her.

Into the bathroom she went. She locked the door, shed her clothes, climbed into the tub and turned the water on full blast and as hot as it would go. She stood trembling in the frigid spray, sobbing under the cover of the flowing water, and when it began to warm up she washed herself without conscious effort.

Iris put her dirty clothes in the washing machine and her ruined leggings in the trash. She had to walk through the living room to reach the utility room, but this time her sisters didn't bother her. She was hungry but being empty seemed better than being full. She went back into her room which she split with Lily, the middle sister. It was only eight o'clock, but Iris fell into bed, cried for several minutes, and soon passed out.

He was in her dreams. He was abstract, shadowed, more a concept than a person. But he was there with her, all night long.