Mitzi muttered to herself as she stepped out of her interrupted shower. The insistent knock at her door sounded again. She tucked a towel in tightly around herself but left her hair dripping as she padded across the thin carpet of her downtown apartment. At the door, she did a quick check to make sure she was decent, then cracked the door open with the sliding latch still secure.
        “Good afternoon, ma’am!” chimed a too-cheery voice. “My name is Leigh, and I’m selling cookies for Girl Scout Troop 268! Could I interest you in some of our famous Thin Mints?”
        Mitzi closed the door, undid the latch, and opened it all the way. The girl on the other side was a cute little fennec, just shy of five feet, with ears as big as her head. She looked maybe thirteen or fourteen, an age that made Mitzi tremble with forbidden desire. Mitzi was a stalwart law-abider, ever cautious of the extra scrutiny she drew due to owning an adult establishment in a conservative city.
        And yet, the girl in front of her, with her nearly-flat chest and her gently rounded backside was so tempting. She felt her loins warm under the scant covering of her towel.
        “You’re evil,” she said with a giggle, her eyes twinkling. “An evil temptress.”
        “Evil?” the girl replied, huge ears perking and large eyes glittering with innocence. “They’re just cookies, ma’am. Delicious, and low calorie, too!”
        Mitzi reached up and gave her towel a tug, the thick terry falling off her body easily. The girl’s eyes widened. Mitzi’s nipples were already stiff, throbbing exquisitely around the piercings there.
        “Get in here,” she hissed, grabbing the Girl Scout by her sash and jerking her into her apartment. The door slammed shut as Mitzi pushed Leigh’s tiny body against it firmly, bending down to kiss her as boxes of cookies tumbled from the girl’s hands. The girl yipped softly as Mitzi’s tongue thrust inside her mouth, slender body arching off the sturdy door and up into Mitzi’s nude body. Mitzi’s hands stroked over her body, grabbing, tugging, hungry in their frantic movements.
        Leigh reached up, catching the chain that connected Mitzi’s pierced nipples and giving it a firm tug, the metal studs jerking in her flesh and making her hiss. Mitzi’s claws unsheathed as she pawed the girl, drawing the sharp things up her slender thighs in a slow, erotic threat, sharp points parting fur to scrape her delicate flesh. She pushed up the skirt hastily, the garment a little too snug on hips that flared out a little too much for her apparent age.
        She sheathed her claws and turned one paw inward, sliding up between the girl’s thighs, cupping her testicles and giving them a playful squeeze.
        “These aren’t standard issue,” she growled teasingly against Leigh’s lips. Her fingers shifted upwards slowly, moving along the warm, turgid shaft that was trapped in the girl’s cute panties. Leigh moaned quietly, lifting up on her tiptoes to thrust her hips forward. Mitzi’s fingers discovered a small stain of precum at the trapped shaft’s tip.
        “I’m not a standard issue Girl Scout,” Leigh breathed softly, whimpering
        Mitzi grinned, a predatory gleam in her smile.
        “Where’d you find the uniform, anyway?” Her fingers moved reluctantly away from the throbbing shaft, up to the girl’s shoulders. She pulled Leigh off the door and gave her a hard shove. She was easy to push around and ended up falling into the couch as Mitzi intended, eyes wide, twinkling with arousal and that hint of juvenile fear that really made Mitzi wet.
        “It’s mine! Can you believe it still fits? I thought you’d like it, you disgusting pervert,” Leigh spoke in a sweet voice despite her words, carrying a high pitch that trembled slightly to match that look in her eyes. Mitzi groaned softly with desire, eyes raking over the Girl Scout’s narrow body.
        “I do like it,” she purred, strutting toward her predatorily. Leigh sat as if entranced, her eyes likewise drinking in the site of Mitzi’s nude, thoroughly pierced form, still young at only twenty-five, but blessed with every deep, womanly curve that Leigh’s body lacked. Her breasts swayed just slightly as she walked, and Leigh’s eyes followed them. 
        Mitzi dropped to her knees on the floor in front of the girl, fingers deftly jerking down her panties, letting her pink canine cock spring free. Her fingers wrapped around the length without hesitation, palm twisting over the tip to gather a bead of precum, then stroking down her length to make the throbbing thing glisten.
        “So big for such a little girl,” she cooed appreciatively, watching the uniformed girl thrust her hips into the air as Mitzi began to stroke her. Leigh wasn’t the biggest she’d seen or been with. At six inches, her cock was pleasantly average, though it had a girth that Mitzi enjoyed. But on such a little body, it looked huge, and it was Leigh’s body that Mitzi had always been after. Leigh was nineteen, but her body still held all the sweet, undeveloped lines of someone much younger, the sort of lines that drove Mitzi wild. Depending on how she acted, she could appear much younger, and Leigh was a very good actress. The little sister of Mitzi’s only employee, Leigh had teased out every forbidden, illegal, shameful kink Mitzi had, and they both got a thrill from indulging them.
        Mitzi’s hands danced slowly up Leigh’s narrow body, fingertips brushing over her butt and up her sides, glancing across the edges of her tiny breasts before turning and sliding back down again. She lowered her head and Leigh let out a girlish squeal as her cocktip sank past Mitzi’s lips. Mitzi groaned with delight around the thick member, pierced tongue flicking across the tip, lapping up the pre that was beading there. Leigh’s fingers curled in her hair, gripping and pulling, and Mitzi let the full length of her slide into her mouth, the tip bumping the back of her throat.
        “F-fuck,” Leigh squeaked in her sweet, girlish voice. Then she panted, “Mitzi. . .”
        Sucking firmly, Mitzi lifted her head up despite the needy pull of Leigh’s little hands, until her lips slid off the tip with a pop. Leigh whimpered and her cock thickened and twitched, a half-spurt of cum bubbling out of the tip and spilling down her shaft as Mitzi pulled off just before the girl could reach orgasm.
        Mitzi clucked her tongue disapprovingly, then stroked the side of Leigh’s cock with tongue stud as she lapped up the cum.
        “Bad girl,” she cooed. “You know the rules.”
        Leigh trembled on the couch, her body still trying to get over her circumvented climax, narrow hips jerking spasmodically. Mitzi waited, watching as more cum drooled sluggishly from the pointed tip of Leigh’s canine cock. She licked her lips, eyeing the girl, and grew impatient. With a feral little growl, she knelt down and bit Leigh’s inner thigh, sharp enough to draw a slight trickle of blood. Leigh yelped and whimpered, spreading her thighs as wide as her panties, still around her knees, would let her.
        “What’s the rule?” Mitzi demanded.
        “L-ladies first,” she responded with a soft whimper. “B-but Mitzi. . .” she started, but Mitzi silenced her with a sharp slap to her flank, wishing Leigh was in a position where she could strike that pretty ass instead. Leigh whimpered, arching her hips up off the couch. The girl’s pretty little cock was so sensitive that Mitzi had to keep her rules ironclad if she was going to get more than a few moments of fun out of her.
        “Don’t worry, sweetie,” Mitzi cooed, pulling her panties off completely. “I’ll let you go first.”
        Leigh made a soft squeak and got out the first syllable of a protest before Mitzi pushed her thighs apart and nudged in under her velvety-furred testicles. Then, those slender legs were wrapped around Mitzi’s head as the fennec squealed and Mitzi’s tongue drilled inside of her. Mitzi slipped her hands in under the girl’s butt and squeezed firmly as she pushed her barbed tongue inside her warm snatch. Leigh always tasted sweet, just the way Mitzi imagined those cute underaged girls who tried to sneak into her store tasted. It was intoxicating and her tongue pushed in deep for more, then jerked out quickly to rasp her barbs against the fennec’s g-spot. Cute little hands twined in her hair again and Leigh’s petite rump flexed in Mitzi’s grasp as the girl came in a hurry. Tiny hips bucked against Mtizi’s muzzle, and her tongue was awash in fluid as Leigh’s cunny clenched and twitched around the invading tongue 
        Mitzi didn’t ease up at all. She drank hungrily from the slender girl’s orgasm, pumping her tongue in hard, twisting her tongue every which way so that her raspy barbs teased every inch inside her. Leigh was barely touching the couch any more, the cute little faux Girl Scout perched on Mitzi’s shoulders, fucking her face desperately as her girlish squeals filled the little apartment. Pressed against her forehead, Mitzi could feel Leigh’s testicles twitch and then clench as the girl’s bucking shifted into a slightly different direction.
        Mitzi let her claws dig into the girl’s butt, drawing ten little beads of blood from her clenched flesh, then pushed her away hard. Leigh yelped and landed roughly back on the couch, hips outthrust, cock swollen and practically purple as the top twitched and drooled. Leigh whined, fucking the air for a few moments before she settled back on the couch, trembling and whimpering. Mitzi gave her a moment to calm down, but only a moment.
        She leaned in, drawing her fingers up Leigh’s smooth inner thighs, tickling over her balls and then circling her index finger and thumb around the base of the girl’s cock. Slowly but inexorably, she squeezed, deepening the desperate purple tint of the shaft and stopping the dribble of pre.
        “Should I get out your ring?” Mitzi asked in a dangerously neutral voice. She leaned forward, tongue flicking across the girl’s tip to tease her and taste her again. Leigh shook her head, whining frantically.
        “P-please, no, ma’am,” Leigh huffed as soon as she could find the breath. After a few evenings that were far too short for Mitzi’s liking, she pulled a special toy off the shelf for her little girl. The cock ring Mitzi had found was so tight it could delay Leigh indefinitely, which meant hours of fun for Mitzi, and hours of frustration for Leigh. Mitzi was tempted to fetch it, despite the protests.
        Mitzi stood slowly, shivering at the way Leigh’s eyes raked hungrily over her mature body, her cock twitching at the sight. Mitzi smiled and stepped forward, lowering one knee to the couch and then the other, straddling her cute little Girl Scout.
        “If you cum before I do,” Mitzi cooed into the fennec’s huge radar ear, “You will regret it.”
        Her fingers delicately wrapped around Leigh’s shaft, nestling it against her slick, pierced labia. Mitzi smiled, feeling Leigh tighten underneath her and the swell of her cock in her fingers. She could’ve cum right then, if Mitzi hadn’t ordered her not to. Mitzi licked her lips, glancing to the side at the end table where she kept her condoms. The passion of the moment convinced her to trust her birth control instead. Besides, she was still a day away from her actual heat.
        She slid down on Leigh’s cock at a painfully slow pace. Leigh hissed out her breath and clenched her eyes shut, pressing back into the couch and lifting her hips, teeth gritted as she tried to control herself. The fennec’s thickness filled her so perfectly and Mitzi let out a sweet moan at the sensation of being stretched. She pushed down as her butt met the girl’s thighs, wiggling down hard, shoving the cock as deep inside her as it would go.
        “M-mitzi. . .” Leigh whispered, mouth hanging open. Mitzi grinned and leaned forward, kissing that sweet little mouth, letting her delicious little girl taste herself. Leigh clutched her, her entire little body fiercely tense as Mitzi raised her hips. Her butt came down the second time with a firm smack, settling quickly into a hard, fast rhythm meant to both test Leigh’s resolve and also get herself off nice and quick.
        Leigh kissed her back hungrily, little tongue thrusting into her mouth for a deeper taste of her own mingled sexes. Mitzi grabbed the girl’s shoulders, hanging on tight as she fucked herself wild on the girl’s lap, the couch lifting back on two legs then thumping to the floor with the force of Mitzi’s strokes. One of her neighbors pounded angrily on the adjoining wall but she only drove her body into Leigh’s harder, crying out as the little Girl Scout’s fat cock filled her again and again, making a froth of her slick arousal.
        Leigh broke the kiss, crying out in desperation, shaking her head frantically, her body upthrust and tense. “Mitzi!” she squealed as a warning and apology, out of control. Mitzi barely heard her as her own body tensed suddenly, squeezing like a vise around the thick shaft inside of her. She felt the hot gush of Leigh’s cum filling her womb just as she came and threw her head back, squealing with delight as her hips jerked against Leigh’s little body. Her cunt clenched tightly around the throbbing shaft inside her, milking it, coaxing more and more of the hot cream out of the little girl underneath her as if she were starving for it.
        The swelling began as Mitzi was still cumming, grinding her hips obscenely on Leigh’s lap, stirring her snatch full of thick jizz with her lover’s still-stiff cock. Then she was being stretched, tighter and tighter until she squealed from the pain and pleasure of it, another quick little orgasm ripping through her body and nearly making her pass out. She clutched to Leigh’s little body, hunching over her and trembling as the fennec’s knot plugged her completely, thicker than anything else Mitzi had ever felt inside her--which was saying quite a bit.
        Panting, she nestled down into her favorite little girl toy, limbs curling around her slender body, full breasts pressing up under her chin. She wiggled on the knot, groaning with delight, clenching her muscles around the thick thing.
        “Fffffuck,” Mitzi whispered into Leigh’s neck.
        “Mmmm,” Leigh agreed, hugging tight against her. Mitzi could feel the sudden heat of Leigh’s blush against her cheek. “I. . .I held out as long as I could,” she said, apologetically.
        “You did wonderfully,” Mitzi reassured her, panting. “You know how much I love your knot in me. It’s not fair when you swell up before I can shove your pretty cock inside me.” She nuzzled the herm’s neck, licking it slowly, her barbs stroking the flesh under the fur. “I hope you didn’t have anyplace to be,” she said with a giggle.
        Leigh blushed a little deeper, sighing as Mitzi licked her. “Just in your arms,” she replied. Then she sighed. “Sorry, that sounded less stupid and cliched in my head.”
        Mitzi laughed. “Silly girl,” she chided gently. She pulled back a little, allowing a little space between their bodies, and began unbuttoning Leigh’s blouse under her sash of merit badges. “I think we’ll keep this outfit here,” she teased. “I think you’ll be wearing it quite a bit.”
        “Better than the schoolgirl outfit? And the innocent one-piece swimsuit?” Leigh asked, the tone in her voice teasing, “You’re such a dirty pedophile,” she said with a grin, then yelped when Mitzi slapped her across face.
        “Hebephile. Perfectly law-abiding hebephile,” Mitzi corrected her sharply, taking the sting out of the slap with a fond kiss. She plucked the blouse off of the fennec’s slender body, leaving her in only the sash and hiked-up skirt. Leigh simply stuck her tongue out in response to the correction.
        Mitzi shifted her weight gingerly, hissing as the stiff cock nudged inside her now over-sensitive cunny. Her shift toppled them over, and she nestled Leigh’s slender body into her more mature curves, cuddling the girl into back of the couch as they lay knotted together.
        “Nap?” Leigh asked, her eyes already closed.
        “Mmm,” Mitzi agreed, nestling her face into Leigh’s neck. A fennec’s knot could last nearly three hours, which left plenty of time for intimate cuddling, conversation, naps, and little else. Shortly after they’d met, Mitzi had contrived to spend nearly an entire day knotted to the girl, going at her again just as the previous knot would fade, a full day of the most intimate cuddling punctuated by violent, raucous sex. She shivered as the memory came to her, and contemplated getting herself knotted through the whole night as sleep tugged at the edges of her vision.

        ***

        An angry whistle pulled Mitzi out of her sleep, the sound of her phone alerting her of a text message. Leigh was awake, propped up, still pinned between Mitzi and the couch, still knot-deep in Mitzi, watching television over Mitzi’s shoulder.
        “Morning, sleepy,” she said with a giggle.
        “A nap was your idea. What time is it?”
        “Six or so. Wanna go grab dinner after. . .” she trailed off, letting the sentence finish itself.
        “Mmm,” Mitzi agreed blearily. Afternoon naps didn’t treat her well, even when she was so perfectly stuffed and satisfied. She groped over the arm of the couch to find her phone on the adjacent table. Leigh hissed, shifting her hips and pushing into Mitzi’s body. Mitzi groaned, her cunny clenching around the shaft inside her instinctively.
        “Leigh,” she whispered in a huffed breath, body trembling slightly.
        “You’re the one moving like that,” Leigh said with a cute pout before disproving her own point by gently grinding her hips into Mitzi’s body. Both of them groaned quietly and Mitzi had to catch her breath with her face pressed against Leigh’s shoulder, panting shallowly. Having been tied for over two hours, they were both ready to go again. Mitzi slid her leg up over Leigh’s small hip, hissing as it stretched her wider, grinding down on Leigh’s shaft. The remote toppled to the floor as Leigh’s hand lifted to Mitzi’s hip, squeezing and pushing in hard, the knot trying to slide deeper inside Mitzi’s cunny, though it didn’t budge.
        Barely remembering the phone in her hand, Mitzi glanced at the screen before tossing it away to join the remote. Her fingers stopped though, gripping the device before it could slip from them, pulling it closer so Mitzi could reread the message displayed on the screen before it blacked out again.
        Mitzi stared at the blank screen, still seeing the words there as if they had been burned into the screen, though it was her eyes they’d burned into. Leigh kept grinding against her, her breath shallow and cute little sounds coming from her eager mouth, but Mitzi barely felt it now. She suddenly felt. . .obscene. She pushed gingerly on Leigh’s shoulder, whispering softly, “Stop it.”
        Leigh growled at her playfully. “N-. . .” she started to protest, thinking it was one of Mitzi’s games, then stopped when she saw the expression on Mitzi’s face.
        “What is it?” Leigh whispered, her body coming to rest nestled against Mitzi’s.
        Tears pricked at the corners of Mitzi’s eyes and she just shook her head, burying her face against the couch cushion and Leigh’s shoulder. Leigh made a soft noise of surprise, then shifted against her gently, wrapping Mitzi in her arms and nuzzling her ear with concern. When Mitzi didn’t respond, the fennec’s deft fingers carefully extracted Mitzi’s phone and pulled up the message.

        [James: Just heard. Jill Doe presumed dead--lost at sea. Service tomorrow @ 1. Thought you’d wanna know,]

        “Mitzi? Who’s Jill Doe? I thought I you’d introduced me to all your friends.”
        Mitzi sniffed quietly and considered ignoring the question. Unfortunately, in her position, avoiding Leigh was a much more difficult prospect than usual. Still, she let the silence drag out for several long minutes as she tried to decide how much to admit.
        Just as Leigh was beginning to grow restless and upset, Mitzi finally let the words tumble out of her. “She wasn’t my friend. Not really. Not after what I did to her. I just. . .I feel responsible.  Like she’s gone because of me.”
        Mitzi inhaled shakily, still hiding her face from Leigh. She held her breath for a moment, expecting to tumble back into tears, but they didn’t come. Admitting her guilt didn’t make her feel better, exactly, but she felt a little stronger. Tortured instead of grief-ridden. She could handle torture.
        Leigh was silent for a long moment. Then, softly, she said, “Um. This says lost at sea. Unless I’m secretly sleeping with Poseidon--which would be awesome, don’t get me wrong--I don’t think you could be responsible for that.” Leigh’s tone was light, trying to cheer her up without cheapening the moment. The Poseidon comment drew a light chuckle from Mitzi but little else.
        “Not responsible like that,” Mitzi said, deliberately evasive.
        Leigh shifted and Mitzi gasped quietly as the movement shifted inside of her as well. Leigh grabbed her chin and pulled her face out from the cushion of the couch to look at her, handling her roughly, staring her down. Leigh’s eyes were stern and stormy with concern.
        “Responsible like how, then? If you’re not going to tell me, it sounds like you oughta tell someone. Should I call Sheila?”
        Leigh threw Sheila’s name into the conversation out of desperation, Mitzi knew. She still wasn’t sure how the crafty little fennec had found out the name of her shrink in the first place. But the ploy didn’t work, not this time.
        “Sheila already knows. Jill is the reason I started seeing her in the first place.”
        Leigh’s large ears swiveled at that, the girl’s face creasing as she considered the new information. She chewed her lower lip for a moment. Mitzi tried to hide her face again, but Leigh wouldn’t let her go. Mitzi sighed in resignation, closing her eyes.
        “I. . .I screwed some things up pretty bad when I was still at Griffin Heights. I wasn’t even a teenager yet. I was selfish, and I didn’t really think about how things I said and did would affect other people.”
        Leigh made a soft, sympathetic sound and released Mitzi’s chin. She settled in close and wrapped her arms around her again. Mitzi sighed, letting herself be soothed by the warmth of the fox’s body.
        “Tell me,” Leigh coaxed softly. “I’m not going anywhere.”
        “I started goofing off instead of studying. Skipping class or sleeping through it. Doodling. Making out with girls or boys in the bathroom. I was smart or manipulative enough to get away with it in every class except for Mrs. Jackson’s pre-Algebra. I’m shit at math, and Mrs. Jackson wasn’t buying any of the bullshit I tried to sell her. It got to the point where if I didn’t pull a passing grade out of pre-Algebra, I was going to be expelled. They don’t hold you back at GHA. You pass or you go to public school.
        “So my parents hired a tutor. Jill. The neighborhood’s girl-next-door. Pretty blonde hair, pretty blue eyes, perfect grades, and already getting scholarship offers at sixteen. I tried to weasel my way out of it, but she would catch me and listen to me and calmly tell me everything I was screwing up until I believed her and actually started showing up for her lessons. She was way more patient with me than I deserved.
        “But I still hated math. After that first week of convincing, we actually started lessons, and I was tearing my hair out with frustration. Until one day, I. . .I smelled a way out. Literally. I don’t even think she knew, but I could smell her season and suddenly I knew how to get out of doing math, even for her.”
        Leigh gasped softly, but Mitzi kept talking. She was too far into her admission to stop now.
        “I seduced her. Aggressively. Seduced probably isn’t the word for it. I guess the first time, you could say I raped her. I was eleven and she was sixteen and I got under her skirt under the table in the library study room and shoved my tongue in her snatch until she came on my face. As long as I was getting her off, I didn’t have to learn anything, so I kept getting her off. A lot. After a week or so, she gave up resisting and I had my first real love affair. And she didn’t stop trying to teach me either, even through all that, she’d still try to find a way to get around to the lessons. But whenever she did, I’d just get her off again until she was too tired to speak.
        “And then I flunked pre-Algebra. I think I got maybe twelve points out of a hundred on the last test, and my gig was up. My parents were furious. You know how expensive that school is, and I’d just pissed it all away.
        “So I did the only thing I’d learned how to do and found a way to weasel my way out of it. I blamed everything on Jill. I cried rape and said that she’d been using me instead of teaching me anything. My parents threatened to press charges, but they calmed down after Jill got sent off to boarding school in Toronto and the Does agreed to pick up my tuition.”
        “My story kind of fell apart when I ended up flunking not just one, but half my classes in seventh grade. But the damage was done. Jill was humiliated and as far as I know she never came back to Roosevelt City. It made the local news when she was accepted into a prestigious doctoral research program at Berkeley. Toronto, California, the South Pacific. . .I know it’s delusional but every time it felt like she was running farther away from me and the awful lies I spewed about her.”
        The words finally stopped. Leigh was frowning and quiet. Mitzi couldn’t meet her eyes. She pressed her muzzle back to the couch cushion and let a few more tears seep out of her. Inside her, she felt Leigh’s knot abate, and the fennec gently disengaged herself. The warmth of Leigh’s body pulled away from her as she sat up, and still she didn’t say anything.
        Finally, “Listen,” Leigh said softly. “I know the timing sucks, but I have to go.”
        Mitzi sat up as well, staring at Leigh, who wouldn’t meet her eyes. Feeling oddly ashamed, Mitzi pulled the discarded towel, cold and still damp, over her naked body. Silently, she begged Leigh to meet her eyes, to not leave her. Staring at the wall, Leigh straightened her skirt. She slipped out of her Girl Scout sash, folding it before buttoning her blouse back up.
        “I’m. . .I’m sorry. I just have to go.”
        Mitzi nodded quietly. She licked her lips and then gambled desperately. “Would you. . .could you come with me tomorrow? To the service? I want to go. To apologize, I guess. Or something. I’d feel a lot better if I had you there with me.”
        Leigh hesitated a moment, then glanced over her shoulder at Mitzi for the first time since standing up.
        “Sure,” she said softly, looking away again. Mitzi could hear the lie in her smile. “Just call me, okay?”
        The door shut almost before Leigh finished the sentence, closing behind her so hard that it rattled the forgotten Thin Mint boxes on the floor.
        Mitzi shut her eyes and let herself fall back onto the couch. She groped around until she found the remote discarded on the floor. Picking it up, she shut off the television that had been nattering persistently in the background the entire time. She wasn’t sure where the rage came from, or why, but she felt better watching the remote break into a dozen pieces while leaving a dent in her wall. A moment later, her adjacent neighbor pounded angrily on the same wall from the other side.

        ***

        The angry whistle of her phone pulled Mitzi back into consciousness. Mitzi blinked against the sunlight streaming through the window, her head pounding furiously at being awoken. She worked her mouth, trying to wet it as her vision swam alarmingly. She stood from the couch, still nude, and her clumsy feet clattered bottles on the floor. Blearily, she squinted down to identify them. Tequila. Vodka. Wine. Stupid, predictable Mitzi, she chided herself. No wonder she felt like shit. She couldn’t quite remember getting the idea in her head to drink the pain away last night, but she wasn’t surprised at herself either.
        She found her phone near the remnants of the remote, amidst the the pieces of a few other things she’d decided to break last night. Luckily, her phone had fared better than the remote, plate, picture frame, and box of Thin Mints had. Her phone’s metal casing was dented and scratched, but the screen was still intact. Electronics these days. Just didn’t know how to break properly.
        She had to rub her eyes several times before the numbers on the screen coalesced into a single line. Eight fifteen. An ungodly hour, considering the bottles she’d killed last night. Still time enough for the service though. Just enough time to get herself cleaned up and over her hangover. A notification of two messages blinked insistently in the corner of her screen. 

        [Leigh: Hey... I can’t go with you today. I’m sorry. I think I need some space. Or time to think or something.]

        [James: You got it boss.]

        She thumbed past Leigh’s message, barely reading it. Leigh might think she was breaking up over text, but Mitzi had heard that breakup last night. The breakup in Leigh’s voice had uncorked the wine bottle.
        The text from James, Leigh’s older brother, warranted more investigation, however. She was surprised to find out that, at some point in the night, her drunk self had had the forethought to ask James to cover the store for the day, even though he’d covered for her the day before, too. There were also some unfortunate drunk texts with less than charitable comments about his sister. She frowned at those, embarrassed, but James seemed to have glossed past them easily enough. Thank God. She wasn’t sure what she’d do without him.
        A hot shower and a greasy breakfast did a lot to improve her mood, if not her pounding head. Gradually, she started seeing only one of things and her feet remembered how to work. Dressing for the service took more thought than she had expected. She had few things that were both black and appropriate for a church. She dug through the closet until she managed to dig out the plain black blouse she’d worn under her robes at graduation, and a pair of dark grey slacks she’d bought for an interview before starting her own business.
        Mitzi stared at herself in the mirror, frowning, then checked the time. She still had a couple of hours. She stripped the clothes off and draped them over a chair so they wouldn’t wrinkle. She stood in front of the mirror again and carefully started removing her piercings, washing them and setting them aside in a little dish she’d bought for doing exactly that, but had never actually used. She smoothed the fur over her face after removing all four cheek piercings. She felt weird with empty holes in her face, but at least her fur would cover them. There wasn’t much she could do about her ears.
        Ducking under the sink, she dug through the various products she’d accumulated over the years. Finding the kit, she stepped back into the shower. When she stepped out again over an hour later, she peered at herself in the mirror. She frowned a little at how damaged her hair looked. Her wild colors usually hid the split ends and dryness, but sporting her natural, boring, dusty brown, it was obvious how badly she’d been mistreating it. She ignored her hair dryer, opting to let her mop of brown hair dry sloppy and disheveled, the way she always had through school.
        She pulled the clothes on again along with a pair of black flats to go with them and stood in front of the mirror one last time. What she saw this time felt more appropriate. She was hardly Mitzi anymore. Instead, she was the grown up version of Melissa Watkins, nothing but pretty blue eyes and messy brown hair. She didn’t want to be Mitzi today. She didn’t want to hide. Not from Jill. Jill deserved to have Melissa at the service today, not Mitzi. And Melissa deserved whatever the Does had to say about that.