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Not so much pr0nz in this one, but that's not really the whole point of SatL unlike a number of other stories on this site, so y'all gonna have to deal with that ya wankers. o3o\nAnyway, hope y'all still enjoy the next piece of the story!\n\nPS - I'm now starting to question the idea of naming all the chapters this way. I wanted to do it because I plan to have multiple chapters on this first day of existence, then another bunch for a separate day, and organizing them into chapters and parts seemed like it made sense. Any thoughts?", "description_bbcode_parsed": "JEEEZ this took longer than I expected it to, but it's finally ready to be seen. Not so much pr0nz in this one, but that's not really the whole point of SatL unlike a number of other stories on this site, so y'all gonna have to deal with that ya wankers. o3o
Anyway, hope y'all still enjoy the next piece of the story!

PS - I'm now starting to question the idea of naming all the chapters this way. I wanted to do it because I plan to have multiple chapters on this first day of existence, then another bunch for a separate day, and organizing them into chapters and parts seemed like it made sense. Any thoughts?", "writing": " All I could think to do was immediately retreat back into the bathroom and slam the door behind me, and as I took a moment to wrap my lower half in the towel I had brought along, I could hear the duchess outside laughing rather insanely. Straightening myself up and regaining my composure, I couldn’t help but crack a little smile of my own. With my nethers shut away out of view, now hidden by the brown cloth that I kept a firm clamp on with my phone to stop it from falling down, I turned the knob and forced the doorway back open.\n “Girl, what you be creepin’ on me for?” I asked with a little snicker and a faux-gangster tone of voice as I stepped back out into the warm sunlight that shone through a tall, thin, two-paned window to my right. The thick wooden blinds were lifted halfway up, and they had been turned to cast light in the shape of about five or six fairly thin rectangles onto the carpet. The next window had been left completely shut, and not a single ray was permitted to poke its way through. It bothered me ever so slightly due to the lack of symmetry amongst the wall, but then again this was Ivy who had put the blinds this way, and I know better than to not simply accept when she sets out to trigger my organizational tendencies.\n “Bitch, if anyone’s creeping, it’s you, Mister Rection,” she retorted back, struggling to hide her smirk. Ivy was a rather short and moderately plump wolf, though she did have a knack for flattening her belly with exercise. It wasn’t even that long ago that she was nearly as round as I, and I could only ever admire that about her. She was always persistent and hard-working in whatever endeavor she undertook, that is unless the endeavor was a household chore, and this often would cause further clashing between us.\n Despite never minding her choice in expletives all too much, it still didn’t change the fact that had she not fit the description of the word she had just used, if one were to take this statement out of context it would likely provoke a number of animals to swarm her with unbridled rage and a vast array of personal weaponry from fists and claws to pitchforks and molotovs. Needless to say, I could feel my face lighting up with embarrassment.\n “Oh, you… saw-”\n Ivy had cut me off with a quiet chuckle before I had the chance to finish. “I saw a bit of pink,” she stated plainly. “And I’m still wondering how big it is after ten fucking years.”\n I rolled my eyes at her as I began to make my way back across the living room to the kitchen and replied, “Not gonna tell.”\n “Oh come on!” she whined back at me as I passed through the archway.\n I gave the stainless steel tea pot that always sat on the stove a couple of knocks with my index knuckle, and my tall, perked ears told me that there was a good amount of water still sitting inside it as I listened to the slightly muffled clanging it made. Pushing in and turning the knob to ignite the flame underneath, I began to further consider Ivy’s request. I had already seen the full extent of her heated spade several times before after walking in on her in bed with a few of her many Tinder dates, and now that she had actually seen that part of me for the first time, it did seem fair to tell her, but then I had an idea.\n “Four inches,” I told her nonchalantly. She now could only see the right side of my body as I continued to fiddle with the stove, and had she been able to see the left corner of my mouth begin to curl up into a smile, she knew me well enough to notice it right away and immediately see through my fib.\n “Wait, are you serious?” Of course she was shocked - doubtful of my statement, but still shocked that it might not be false. After all, it’s not very common for someone of my height and stature to be so under-endowed, but it wasn’t unheard of. Most European dragons like myself have bits of similar length and girth as my own, though I’m still a bit of an oddity since it’s much more likely to come across someone with all that dragon-y mass to be split between two separate pieces.\n Just to drive the idea home and mess with her head a bit, I looked down blankly at the four-level, quarter-circular spice shelf mounted to the wall over in the corner while scrunching up my mouth to give an exaggerated frown and shrugging cluelessly. Ivy began to laugh again, and I followed suit as I turned away to head back into my bedroom. She raised her voice a bit so I could hear her say, “No, wait, don’t be fuckin’ with me on this. Are you for real right now? Four inches?”\n Instinctively, I shouted back, “Four inches,” and I heard her chuckling as I gently shut the door behind me with a satisfied grin on my face.\n Safely sealed within my cocoon of privacy and warmth from the space heater I had left on, I ripped the damp towel off and tossed it onto the corner of my bed which I still had yet to properly make. As I carefully stepped over the wires strewn about the space between the foot of the bed and my black-painted dresser, I had to push aside the bulky surge protector to stand comfortably and look myself in the mirror. I looked above my face to peer at the blue, red, brown and orange southwestern tapestry I had hanging on the wall behind me. The decorative multi-colored christmas lights seemed to still be holding up nicely after being nailed into the drywall for nearly a month now, and noticing this restored my smile back to full strength again for the sake of knowing that I had done a good job hanging them up.\n Satisfied for the moment, I gripped the stainless steel handle on the top drawer and pulled it open, revealing my neatly-organized array of undergarments. It was mostly boxer-briefs and socks of varying sizes and colors, though there were also a few wife beaters and… “Oooh!” I had just pulled a pair of light-blue-dark-blue horizontal-striped feminine panties decorated with Groucho the Trash Monster, a character on the popular children’s show [i]Poppy Lane -[/i] a show that, after nearly thirty years of running on the air, had now become a popular icon with adults remembering their childhood and expressing their nostalgia in their apparel. I didn't remember ever watching the show myself, but nevertheless I still liked to wear them because I thought they were rather cute, and with my internal bits it was (for lack of a better term) comforting to know that I could wear them and potentially be mistaken for having feminine parts. I’ve never really bothered to understand why, but those kinds of things have always made me feel better about myself.\n I slipped the garment on and brought myself back over to the full-body mirror. My stomach hung over the waistline a little, but they otherwise fit rather snugly. I twisted my body from side to side trying to pose myself in whatever way I thought would be most attractive, and I turned the majority of my body away from view to get a look at the back side. I allowed my hands to grope my bubbly cheeks a little with a devious smirk. I had lifted up my tail to show off the cursive text that read, “Total” on one side of the hole my tail stuck through, and, “Grouch,” on the other. Just for an extra dash of moodiness, I gave my ass a little slap and watched it jiggle in the mirror before returning to the dresser and slipping on a pair of dark-colored jeans.\n I donned a light brown sweater as well, sliding each of my wings through their respective holes with relative ease. I grabbed my lucky purple comb and ran it through my thick, crimson, shoulder-length locks before tying it all back into a large bun with one of the many loose hair-ties that always sat in a neat pile on top of the dresser. Fully clothed and after reaching down to pick up my laptop off the floor just underneath the mattress, I turned the knob to my bedroom door once again to be welcomed by the sound of a whistling tea kettle and a plastic fork spreading avocado onto whole grain toast.\n Ivy had already made herself breakfast and it appeared that the unused portion of the avocado would only be destined for a fate of cling wrap and the fridge, so I popped the question as I flipped off the fire and went to set my computer down on the seat of the couch in the next room. \"Think the other half of that will last 'til tomorrow?\"\n \"Probably not,\" said the wolf without half a care in the world. \"Do you want it?\"\n I came back into the kitchen with both hands now free, and I answered back while reaching over her and opened the cabinet to pull out a box of cranberry hibiscus tea, \"I would love it,\" because I always knew exactly how to thank someone for half a stone fruit.\n I began to pour a small dollop of honey into a baby blue mug and placed a bag of tea on top of the sticky substance, draping the string over the rim of the cup before pouring hot water over top of it. Immediately, the water began to turn a bright red, though I knew the color had little to do with how it actually tasted. I decided to leave the cup where it was as it steeped, and I pulled out my loaf of potato bread to retrieve two slices before clamping the bag closed with the small plastic clip it came with. I set the bread in the toaster next to where Ivy was seasoning her own breakfast with fresh-ground salt and pepper and switched it on, making the copper wiring inside begin to whir with electrical current and heat.\n Ivy took her first bite and gave an audible moan, and I couldn't help but chuckle as I retreated back into my room once again, though this time I left the door wide open. Once I had snatched up the towel to hang up over the rim of the door and dry out, I bent myself down to reach deep within the recesses of my bed and reveal my trophy.\n My yellow-painted, twelve-inch-tall, hand-blown glass water bong that I had named Phoebe was my immediate go-to for any of my smoking experiences largely due to the smoothness it provided but also because it was the only pipe I really had any reason to store away in a special place for the sake of its size, and after pulling it out into the light I noticed that the inside could do with a cleaning before use. I could be taking better care of it, but this blunder only slightly soured my mood. I opened up the small door built into my night table to reveal my vacuum-sealed container which I brought out to set on the kitchen counter along with the pipe.\n Ivy merely took a passing glance at my actions, but my heart's pace had begun to quicken with anticipation. I turned on the hot tap so that it flowed strongly while pouring a few drops of blue dish cleaner down the top of my bong. I stuck a finger under the water and felt it begin to heat up, and after a few seconds it had reached a temperature hot enough to create steam as it would impact the metal sink. I pulled out the hose, stuck the nozzle into phoebe's mouthpiece, squeezed the trigger hard and the water immediately changed direction, surging up through the rubber tube as it began to fill the bong up with hot soapy dishwater, and it hit me that I had neglected to remove the downstem because the water level inside the bong was rising much faster than it should have been. WIthout thinking, I released my grip on the head of the sprayer and the water reset itself back to flowing out of the tap.\n The glass was now quite scalding, but no dragon would be phased by a temperature like this, so I flipped the pipe over and dumped the hot, bubbly fluid out of the mouthpiece, further increasing the temperature in the spot near the end where I gripped it. I set the pipe back down and took hold of the small, glass downstem that was preventing the water from spurting out the feed hole properly, and gave it a few little twists back and forth with my thumb and index finger curled around the end of it. After dragging it out of the tiny rubber ring that housed it, I set it aside and sprayed water down the mouthpiece once again, now allowing it to escape freely through the ring. After a moment, the liquid began to become less cloudy and bubbly until finally reaching a state of pure clarity, and then I knew that Phoebe was ready.\n I turned the hot tap off and flipped on the cold, now only permitting a gentle stream to run out of the tap. I flipped the switch on the white filter attachment to have the water go through the filter, and I then stuck Phoebe’s head under it to fill up the bottom sphere with cold, clean, freshly strained sewer juice.\n “You want a hit?” I queried to the wolf who was leaning up against the front door and just finishing her last bite of avocado toast.\n She swallowed then replied with a little sneer, “Well, I did buy the shit for you.”\n The moment she finished her statement I froze dead in the middle of pushing the downstem back into the rubber ring. I knew that I had been completely smashed the previous night after the party, but I could at the very least recall paying for my own bud. [i]Did I black out at some point?[/i] No, I couldn’t remember anything of the sort. “Wait, what?” I said stupidly. Come to think of it, I couldn’t recall anything that happened after getting in the car to come home.\n Ivy scoffed at my response before bending over to pull out a black leather booklet from a drawer in the little cherry wood kitchen table we never actually used other than to house the microwave and toaster. She opened it up and spoke rather coldly, “I lent you forty dollars to buy an eighth from Yousef.” I had gone back to refitting the downstem while we had this exchange, and now that I had set it in a place I was happy with - a little less than half of the stem set below the surface of the small pond contained within the glass bubble - I took the bong and placed it down on the counter while going over to read what was in the book. The note was there, plain as day, dated December 24th and everything.\n I gave a hefty, “Humph… Okay then,” before looking up to see that Ivy was actually smiling at me.\n “You were so fucking drunk last night. You really don’t remember?” I shook my head before going to the freezer to retrieve an under-sized ice cube and dropping it into the bong. “You’re such a dork,” said the wolfess with a snicker. “You don’t even have a hangover?”\n “You know me, I never get those. Just DADS, probably.” Ivy blew a raspberry as a response. “Exactly.”\n Just then, I heard my bread pop out of the toaster which I retrieved right away, and after scooping out the remaining avocado and spreading it over the two pieces with a salad fork, I decided to add some garlic powder to my usual salt and pepper that I always sprinkled delicately over them. I had set them on a paper plate so I could bring them into the next room with ease just as I did with Phoebe at that moment. As I set the items down on the pine coffee table next to my black cannister, I made a second trip back into the kitchen to retrieve the tea I had been allowing to steep for several minutes now.\n Finally after much anticipation, I sat myself down on the left side of the short-back, blue microfiber loveseat I had picked up on the side of the road sometime over the summer, and by then Ivy had already placed herself on the opposite side. “Do you remember which strain he said it was?” I asked her, hoping to have some knowledge of what I was about to get into.\n She answered plainly, “I didn’t ask. You sure maybe you didn’t ask him yourself?”\n “Maybe...” Excitedly, I began to feel around for my phone, but I remembered tossing it onto my bed before. I leapt up from my seat, and I could see out of the corner of my eye that Ivy had extended her legs to place her feet where I had been sitting. I ignored it for the moment as I snagged the small tablet off the bed and shoved it into my jeans pocket. While still there, I took the liberty of making the bed up, thrusting the far corner of the bright red comforter back into its corner and smoothing out the rest of the fabric to accommodate it. With all chaos completely eliminated from my bedroom, I strolled back to the couch while scrolling through my recent messages. “Seems to be Sour D again.”\n “Oh, alright.” said Ivy, refusing to move her legs back to let me sit down.\n “You don’t like this one?” I asked, standing over her and looking down at her brown travel mug while she took a sip.\n “Well, it’s just not my favorite. I liked the Strawberry Haze way more.” I still pretended not to notice that she had extended her legs across the length of the sofa and simply sat myself down on top of her ankles which made both of us groan in comedic pain as I felt her bones digging into the back my ass cheeks, and she felt my enormous weight squishing them into the corner. “Oh god, stop it please!” she laughed, straining her voice. I began to laugh too, and after setting my phone on the table next to me I lifted myself up a bit for her to move back to how she was before.\n “You deserved that for stealing my spot, dick,” I sneered. She stuck her tongue out at me while I popped open the vacuum seal on my plastic container, sliding off the lid to reveal the various paraphernalia that was stored inside. Not only was there a silver grinder, a pink cigarette lighter, and Phoebe’s bowl stem, but there was also a four-inch rainbow-spotted glass dry pipe I had named Skittles. I had owned this pipe for nearly a year already, and its age certainly showed; the resin was thick and grimy - perfect for sticking in one of the many steel filter screens I had laying at the bottom of the can.\n “Well to be fair, the strawberry stuff came from Andrew, and his shit’s way better than Yousef’s,” I said frankly as I removed the pipes, lighter and grinder to reveal the small eighth-ounce bag of cannabis we had picked up the previous night. \n “True. Sucks that he just dropped off the face of the earth.” I squeezed my hand inside the container and gripped the bag of weed with my index and middle fingers, slowly pulling it out into the light. I took a close look to see the thin strands of orange fiber woven in and around each and every little flower visible through the clear plastic bag.\n I popped it open and gave it a whiff before letting my eyes close, flopping my entire body back against the couch, and breathing a deep, smiling sigh. Stanky, earthy, and almost with the smell of gasoline, it felt comforting and familiar to my senses. I passed the bag to Ivy who took a small sniff of it before noting, “Kinda smells like grapes.”\n “Grapes!?” My eyes burst open as I shot her an amused look of bewilderment while she pulled out a nug the size of her thumbnail.\n “Tiny nugs too,” she said with a grimace.\n “Well, that’s how I like them,” I rebutted, holding out an open hand for her to return my stash to me. “I like the portion control.”\n “You know smaller nugs mean shittier weed, right?”\n “Well, I wouldn’t say that’s always true, but it is Yousef so...”\n She thought it over for a moment before sighing, “I guess you’re right,” meanwhile I had stuck two nugs into the silver grinder, just enough for the sake of Ivy and I sharing a fair amount that would get us both to a peak. I closed the lid and began to twist hard, hearing the sound of leaves ripping and stems cracking before the motion started to become easier. As the resistance became nonexistant, I twisted the lid faster going back and forth hard while tipping the grinder every which way to get as much bud to fall into the second chamber as possible. I lifted the magnetically-attached cap away to see that there were a few pieces of fresh bud still stuck to the teeth of the grinder, so I did my best to brush them into the holes with my claw, and with all of the ground-up cannabis safely in the next chamber, I put the cap back on and twisted the next piece anti-clockwise, screwing it off and revealing all that was inside.\n By this point, Ivy had pulled up a small stool and set my bong on it after sliding the darkened, resin-rich bowl piece into the downstem, sealing the connection with a rubber o-ring that sat around the base of the bowl. There was already a filter screen shoved inside it, so I scooped up the grinds with two fingers and packed it into the tiny dish, carefully being sure to let any pieces that wouldn’t make it to the bowl to simply fall back into the grinder.\n “You hit it first,” I requested. “You bought it.” Ivy nodded and reached for the pipe, taking a firm hold of it and resting the base in her lap before igniting the pink lighter and burning up the plant. The water began to bubble up fiercely as smoke filled the entire chamber and rushed up to her mouth. She took the lighter away, trying to avoid torching the bowl while she continued to smoke. Nearly ten seconds had passed before the bud went out and she lifted the bowl out of its place to clear the pipe, and after holding the smoke for a bit as she passed the bong to me, she blew the smoke up into the air where the rays of light shone onto it and made it clearly visible. I watched the clouds puff and flow in every direction, trying to see if I could spot a pattern, but the only patterns I could see were those I saw on weather radars - air simply flowing in random directions and never really having a pattern at all.\n “Big one,” I said while Ivy started to cough and sputter harshly. I chuckled as she reached for the glass of water she had apparently set on the floor next to the couch right under my nose. I then pressed my own lips against the head of the pipe and lit up the bowl from the right side over, being sure to only burn what I planned to take in. I started inhaling slowly and deeply, the bubbles making way for the smoke to fill up the chamber once more, and I felt it begin to fill my lungs. At first it was just warm, but it quickly began to sting, so I gripped the small piece of glass that stuck out from the bowl and lifted it away, clearing the pipe out and taking in a bit of clean air to force the smoke all the way down. I held it for a moment, though a bit longer than Ivy was able to before slowly and gently exhaling.\n Immediately, the psychoactive effects became apparent. Slowly, I felt my body begin to relax, and an uplifting sensation began to wash over my entire being. I sunk back into the couch once again as Ivy asked, “What do you think?” At first, I didn’t respond, trying to analyze what I was feeling.\n “Feels good,” I said. “Very calm and uplifting.” She nodded in approval as I passed the pipe back to her. She took another hit while I stared at the television across the room that stood blank and dormant with a ray of light reflecting across the glossy display. After letting out her smoke, Ivy took her third hit before laying back against the couch like I was and returned the pipe back to me again.\n I took my second and third hits, these ones much slower, longer, and heavier than my first, and the effects really started to hit me then. “Man, that’s some good shit right there,” I spluttered through a small cough that I tried so desperately to suppress. My eyes had begun to dilate, and staring up at the light fixture on the ceiling was made difficult because of this inability to focus on a single point in space.\n The next twenty minutes seemed to fly by while Ivy and I talked and continued to smoke. She had told me all about how one of her coworkers had been hitting on her, and I had to reassure her that it wasn’t anything to do with her, but rather a fault on this guy’s part. I pulled over the cubic leather ottoman to prop my feet on and told her, “Not only is it unprofessional to be hitting on you in the workplace, but it’s not even appropriate because you’ve already told him no,” which, stoney as it may have been, was one point that seemed to lighten her spirits. Eventually, the time came for her to get ready for work, so she took her final hit, and retreated to her room. With her door closed, I opted to open up my phone and watch a review video about the old PT Cruiser, but just as the narrator had begun to define postmodernism, Ivy opened up the doorway to reveal her outfit to me.\n She wore a short, pink floral pocket skirt with black leggings, knee-high, brown buckled boots, a maroon blouse and long white cardigan. “Necklace or no?” she inquired while holding up a long silver chain with a teal pendant on it.\n I paused my video and looked her over from top to bottom, trying to compare and contrast the color of her clothing with her sandy brown fur and bright blue eyes that nearly matched the pendant she had picked out before answering, “Yes, necklace.” She stepped back to look in the small mirror she had nailed into the wall before unclasping and donning the piece of jewelry. I saw her give a smile as she looked at herself, and knowing she was satisfied with my suggestion made me smile as well. I hit the play button and the video resumed after taking a second to buffer. A few minutes later, the wolfess had gathered all her things and stepped out the front door in the kitchen, “See ya later, then.”\n “Bye,” I responded simply before the door closed behind her. I paused my video again to listen to the stairs creaking as she went down to ground level. I heard her shut the door downstairs and immediately pulled out my laptop to set next to me while I rested my feet on the ottoman. I undid the button and fly of my jeans post haste, and I was able to get a good look at the lengthy bulge that extended to one side of my Groucho panties. I pulled the waistband back and my pink member stood itself straight up, curving a bit towards my face.\n I made myself comfortable and opened up my laptop screen to the right of me and logged myself in. I opened up a browser and typed in the first three letters of PornHub before it was filled in for me, and just as I was about to tap the enter key to be whisked away into a world of erotic imagery I suddenly heard my phone start to play a familiar tune: an 80’s-style synthesizer playing an arpeggio sequence with an extremely low artificial bass drum that would begin to steadily grown in volume and intensity before dropping hard and heavy with synth, bass, and an electric guitar - the default ringtone for my phone.\n [i]You have to fucking kidding me.[/i] I had picked it up to see the name “Guillermo Orfeo,” with a picture of my father displayed on the screen. I sighed deeply before sucking it up and tapping the answer button. “Hello?”\n I was surprised to hear my mother’s voice answer back. “Hello mijo, how are you?”\n “Oh, hi mama. I’m alright, just…” I paused for a short second, trying to recover from my mistake of saying what I was up to as I glanced back and forth between my bong and my junk which had now gone soft. “...doing some job hunting.” [i]Yeah, right.[/i] I put my nasty away, disappointed, before continuing, “How are you?”\n “I’m fine, I’m fine. Did your mattress come yet?” She didn’t sound particularly excited to hear what I had to say - more-so like she was only asking me out of obligation.\n “Yeah, it came like, three days ago. Or… no, two days ago.” [i]Way to not sound completely blasted, dipshit.[/i] “I meant to text you to say thank you the other day, but I guess I just drafted the message and didn’t actually send it. I set it up though, and it’s really comfortable.”\n “Oh good, I’m glad you like it. How’s Ivy doing?”\n “She’s pretty good.” I started to chuckle as I remembered, “Actually, she just got a promotion, and they made her the assistant manager, so now she’s making a full-on salary.”\n “Wow, good for her!” Now she sounded happy. “Tell her congratulations for me, won’t you?”\n “Sure, ma. I will,” I said with a hefty sniff, trying to cover up the sound of my fly being zipped back up.\n Suddenly, I heard another voice in the background. “Tamaya, let me talk to him.”\n “Oh, your dad wants to talk to you, mijo. Here…”\n “No, wait! I-” It was already too late.\n “Hola, Serrano,” I heard him say with a very stern tone.\n I huffed quietly before replying, “Hola papi.”\n “I erm…” As per usual, he sounded unsure of what he wanted to say to me, though I could still tell that he had written notes beforehand. “I need you to go into your Google Drive for me and look at this document I shared with you.”\n [i]Great, just what I need: a lecture from the finance police,[/i] I thought, knowing I could never have any kind of excuse to bail on the conversation. Slowly, I rolled out the word, “Okay,” as I opened up a new tab and clicked my bookmark to take me to the homepage of the site. I opened the Shared folder and found the document he wanted me to see: something called, “Serrano’s Loan.” [i]Of course.[/i]\n I couldn’t help but open it up and start reading, meanwhile Guillermo had begun to ramble. “So, I know that you’ve been taking money out of your bank account and not putting it back in. Is there any reason for that?”\n Instinctively, I began to get angry at him both in response to his invasive line of questioning and the introductory text at the top of the document reminding me that I still owe him nearly a thousand dollars in rent money that he had volunteered to subsidize. This would have to be the last straw, because if not now, then when? “Is there any reason for you having access to my bank account when I’m 20 years old?”\n Even though I’ve asked him this a number of times, he still gave the exact same answer: “Because parents need full transparency with their children.”\n “Okay, even aside from the fact that I’m not a child, why don’t you need, ‘full transparency,’ with your other child?” Now I could start getting back at him because he had begun to stammer like he always did when I called his bluff.\n “Wh-what? We do have full transparency with her.”\n “Yeah, I don’t think so. She called me the other day to tell me about her car not starting and wanting my advice, seeing how I’ve actually been under a car before, and after I helped her solve the problem herself instead of just suggesting the car be towed to a mechanic like you apparently tried to have her do, she opted to stay on the phone with me for a little bit to tell me about how she has finally become independent from you and mom, how she got a credit card and a bank account completely separate from the one that-”\n Now he was pissed, and I could tell because he had defaulted to interrupting me in the middle of a sentence. “Okay, okay, look, just forget Reyna for a second, this is an irrelevant point, and you’re derailing the conversation.” Now in a rage of my own I stood up from the couch while taking a deep heavy breath to calm myself while my father continued to ramble. “All I wanted to do was share this updated document in the hopes that it reminds you to stop spending your money and start saving it.”\n “Saving it for what, exactly?”\n “Things you might need like a car, or a house, or retirement; You know, so you can prepare for the long haul instead of thinking about today.”\n “Okay, first of all, who in the world has ever [i]needed[/i] to retire? Second of all, a house is just out of the question for me at this point in case you forgot about my sub-hundred-dollar checking account balance. Third, I am saving for a car, but it just so happens that the one I already have is perfect for what I need it to do, and right now, there are other things that I need more.”\n He retorted back immediately this time with, “Such as?”\n It took a second to think of them, and even though I couldn’t come up with everything, I still managed to roll off in rapid fire sequence, “Such as my aromatherapy pens, for one thing, or some suspension modifications, or some batteries for my controller so that I can play a driving game to relieve stress…”\n Again, Guillermo cut me off, “But none of those things are important. You need to differentiate between needs and wants.”\n “Dad, has it ever occurred to you that maybe I simply value certain things more than you do, and that my stress can’t be relieved by guzzling bourbon like yours can?”\n This stopped him dead in his tracks. There was a low, quiet pause for nearly fifteen seconds before I heard him say, “You’re so naive, Serrano.”\n I’d had enough at this point. I simply hung up the phone because I knew that if I had verbally expressed my anger to him and made it apparent that I was losing my shit like he’d known me to do so many times as a child, it would only give him the moral high ground.\n I put my phone in my pocket before looking down at the bong, debating whether I wanted to take a hit or not. I knew that if I did, it would only make my situation even worse, and it would only serve to amplify the emotions I already had brewing in my mind. I thought it best to set the pipe aside for now, and having lost any trace of arousal after all that, I sat back down, took my last bite of avocado toast, and gulped my last swig of tea before plugging in a controller and booting up my favorite game, [i]Grand Theft Auto 5.[/i]\n Nearly thirty minutes had passed before I completely moved on from the altercation and opted to finishing off the bowl. I paused the game just after completing a mission that placed me back at my safehouse and reached over to pick up Phoebe once again. I lit it and took a hard toke, though there wasn’t much bud left to burn at this point, so I only managed to exhale a tiny puff of smoke. [i]This is why you use what you grind, kids,[/i] I jokingly thought to myself as I tapped the ashes into my now-empty cup of tea, almost admiring at how pointless the non-sequitur was. It only took a short moment to stuff another bowl with weed before I lit it up and took it in hard. As the smoke filled each remote corner my lungs, I felt its harshness burning the flesh inside my throat, straining my bronchioles to the near point of bursting.\n It was times like these where I wished I could keep myself more in check while smoking. I couldn’t resist the urge to spew it out voilently, rasping and hacking up the essence of my mistake. Even after all my experience, it still could never trump the asthma I supposedly grew out of a few years ago. Desperately, I reached for the glass of water Ivy had left at the foot of the couch and took a hearty swig that sent cold, liquid grace all down my throat, giving it a clean wash of relief as it passed over my epiglottis. With several deep gasps of oxygen, I began panting at the effort gone into the ordeal of rejecting the negativity from my insides.\n When I had fully recovered from my second coughing fit of the day, it seemed only right to pick the bong up once again and right my wrong: taking another hit to make my last one be as smooth as the first one I had taken today. With a click of the lighter and the sound of bubbling water, I took my toke just as I had intended, sealing off the leaks of chaos and mistakes that plagued my thoughts and shoving them back to the deepest recesses of my subconscious mind never to be addressed again. I reached down under the coffee table next to me to retrieve the black and green, oversized headphones that I always kept in the small plastic bin under there. After resting them on my head, allowing them to completely encompass my tall ears, I picked up my controller once more and was about to fully immerse myself into the vast world of San Andreas with a click of the plug being slotted into its port.\n There was only one problem with this: it seemed that I must have done something on accident because upon pressing the button to resume my game, the screen went completely black as if it was changing its display resolution. It flickered, jittered, and jerked the viewfinder every which way across my laptop screen. I began tapping the keys to try and wake it up, but it was no use. The game was having an outright fit, and there was nothing I could do but wait it out. Being already at a peak high, at this point I merely opted to sit back and watch the show. The game continued to fidget for a few more seconds before I heard a near-deafening crackle emanate from the speakers on my laptop. Immediately, I snapped myself back to focus on what was even happening before I realized that the game had set itself back to normal. It was still on the pause screen, but at least it was accepting commands from the directional pad and scrolled all around the menu with no problem.\n I pressed the start button a second time and the game returned to the open world as if nothing had happened. Still a bit dumbfounded, I brushed off the experience much like I did with the coughing fit, trying to think nothing of it. After I directed my character to his garage and had him clamber into a bright yellow Testarossa knockoff and backed it out of the driveway, I began to speed away down the road before suddenly crashing into a sedan that had been parked on the side of the road just out of view of the third-person camera, which must have been simply too much for the game to handle because at that moment, my headphones uttered a loud crack much like the one I heard a moment ago, but of course this time it was blasted right at my poor audio receptors.\n The sound knocked my eardrums hard, and it took a moment to readjust after flinching so heavily at the screaming agony that shot out of the earpieces, and when I did it was as if the entire world had come to a hush. My character was moving, the game was running completely fine, but the only sound that I could hear was the wind running over the aero of his yellow sports car. It was as if I had somehow become a being that couldn’t hear, but also one that didn’t need to. Suddenly, it was as if the strange audio experience combined with just starting to roll down the hill after the apex of my high had sent me onto a plane of reality where nothing mattered anymore.\n It didn’t matter that my parents had spent hundreds of dollars on a queen-size mattress for their guest bedroom while they left me stuck with a 20-year-old twin, or that they had bought one for my sister but not for me. It didn’t matter that I felt enormous guilt for pushing them to the point of spending hundreds of dollars on a new mattress for me, or that I had been mooching off their funds for nearly a year now. It didn’t matter that I didn’t have an actual paying job, and my only source of income came from YouTube, and it didn’t matter that I only made a hundred bucks a year from it. The fact that I’d never held a status of employment for very long, the fact that I never tried to actually find something to apply to, the fact that I only ever felt inclined to sit my ass down on the couch and smoke up; none of it seemed to even be present in my mind as I played this strange game of silence.\n I didn’t have the motivation to make my life any better than it already was because I had countless people around me willing to stick out a limb for my sake, and even though the endless guilt and regret constantly filled my existence, in this intoxicated state of euphoria, all those troubles had seemed to melt away. All that mattered in this moment, in this state of being, was switching to the first-person camera and letting myself drive this golden stinger into oblivion.", "writing_bbcode_parsed": "     All I could think to do was immediately retreat back into the bathroom and slam the door behind me, and as I took a moment to wrap my lower half in the towel I had brought along, I could hear the duchess outside laughing rather insanely. Straightening myself up and regaining my composure, I couldn’t help but crack a little smile of my own. With my nethers shut away out of view, now hidden by the brown cloth that I kept a firm clamp on with my phone to stop it from falling down, I turned the knob and forced the doorway back open.
     “Girl, what you be creepin’ on me for?” I asked with a little snicker and a faux-gangster tone of voice as I stepped back out into the warm sunlight that shone through a tall, thin, two-paned window to my right. The thick wooden blinds were lifted halfway up, and they had been turned to cast light in the shape of about five or six fairly thin rectangles onto the carpet. The next window had been left completely shut, and not a single ray was permitted to poke its way through. It bothered me ever so slightly due to the lack of symmetry amongst the wall, but then again this was Ivy who had put the blinds this way, and I know better than to not simply accept when she sets out to trigger my organizational tendencies.
     “Bitch, if anyone’s creeping, it’s you, Mister Rection,” she retorted back, struggling to hide her smirk. Ivy was a rather short and moderately plump wolf, though she did have a knack for flattening her belly with exercise. It wasn’t even that long ago that she was nearly as round as I, and I could only ever admire that about her. She was always persistent and hard-working in whatever endeavor she undertook, that is unless the endeavor was a household chore, and this often would cause further clashing between us.
     Despite never minding her choice in expletives all too much, it still didn’t change the fact that had she not fit the description of the word she had just used, if one were to take this statement out of context it would likely provoke a number of animals to swarm her with unbridled rage and a vast array of personal weaponry from fists and claws to pitchforks and molotovs. Needless to say, I could feel my face lighting up with embarrassment.
     “Oh, you… saw-”
     Ivy had cut me off with a quiet chuckle before I had the chance to finish. “I saw a bit of pink,” she stated plainly. “And I’m still wondering how big it is after ten fucking years.”
     I rolled my eyes at her as I began to make my way back across the living room to the kitchen and replied, “Not gonna tell.”
     “Oh come on!” she whined back at me as I passed through the archway.
     I gave the stainless steel tea pot that always sat on the stove a couple of knocks with my index knuckle, and my tall, perked ears told me that there was a good amount of water still sitting inside it as I listened to the slightly muffled clanging it made. Pushing in and turning the knob to ignite the flame underneath, I began to further consider Ivy’s request. I had already seen the full extent of her heated spade several times before after walking in on her in bed with a few of her many Tinder dates, and now that she had actually seen that part of me for the first time, it did seem fair to tell her, but then I had an idea.
     “Four inches,” I told her nonchalantly. She now could only see the right side of my body as I continued to fiddle with the stove, and had she been able to see the left corner of my mouth begin to curl up into a smile, she knew me well enough to notice it right away and immediately see through my fib.
     “Wait, are you serious?” Of course she was shocked - doubtful of my statement, but still shocked that it might not be false. After all, it’s not very common for someone of my height and stature to be so under-endowed, but it wasn’t unheard of. Most European dragons like myself have bits of similar length and girth as my own, though I’m still a bit of an oddity since it’s much more likely to come across someone with all that dragon-y mass to be split between two separate pieces.
     Just to drive the idea home and mess with her head a bit, I looked down blankly at the four-level, quarter-circular spice shelf mounted to the wall over in the corner while scrunching up my mouth to give an exaggerated frown and shrugging cluelessly. Ivy began to laugh again, and I followed suit as I turned away to head back into my bedroom. She raised her voice a bit so I could hear her say, “No, wait, don’t be fuckin’ with me on this. Are you for real right now? Four inches?”
     Instinctively, I shouted back, “Four inches,” and I heard her chuckling as I gently shut the door behind me with a satisfied grin on my face.
     Safely sealed within my cocoon of privacy and warmth from the space heater I had left on, I ripped the damp towel off and tossed it onto the corner of my bed which I still had yet to properly make. As I carefully stepped over the wires strewn about the space between the foot of the bed and my black-painted dresser, I had to push aside the bulky surge protector to stand comfortably and look myself in the mirror. I looked above my face to peer at the blue, red, brown and orange southwestern tapestry I had hanging on the wall behind me. The decorative multi-colored christmas lights seemed to still be holding up nicely after being nailed into the drywall for nearly a month now, and noticing this restored my smile back to full strength again for the sake of knowing that I had done a good job hanging them up.
     Satisfied for the moment, I gripped the stainless steel handle on the top drawer and pulled it open, revealing my neatly-organized array of undergarments. It was mostly boxer-briefs and socks of varying sizes and colors, though there were also a few wife beaters and… “Oooh!” I had just pulled a pair of light-blue-dark-blue horizontal-striped feminine panties decorated with Groucho the Trash Monster, a character on the popular children’s show Poppy Lane - a show that, after nearly thirty years of running on the air, had now become a popular icon with adults remembering their childhood and expressing their nostalgia in their apparel. I didn't remember ever watching the show myself, but nevertheless I still liked to wear them because I thought they were rather cute, and with my internal bits it was (for lack of a better term) comforting to know that I could wear them and potentially be mistaken for having feminine parts. I’ve never really bothered to understand why, but those kinds of things have always made me feel better about myself.
     I slipped the garment on and brought myself back over to the full-body mirror. My stomach hung over the waistline a little, but they otherwise fit rather snugly. I twisted my body from side to side trying to pose myself in whatever way I thought would be most attractive, and I turned the majority of my body away from view to get a look at the back side. I allowed my hands to grope my bubbly cheeks a little with a devious smirk. I had lifted up my tail to show off the cursive text that read, “Total” on one side of the hole my tail stuck through, and, “Grouch,” on the other. Just for an extra dash of moodiness, I gave my ass a little slap and watched it jiggle in the mirror before returning to the dresser and slipping on a pair of dark-colored jeans.
     I donned a light brown sweater as well, sliding each of my wings through their respective holes with relative ease. I grabbed my lucky purple comb and ran it through my thick, crimson, shoulder-length locks before tying it all back into a large bun with one of the many loose hair-ties that always sat in a neat pile on top of the dresser. Fully clothed and after reaching down to pick up my laptop off the floor just underneath the mattress, I turned the knob to my bedroom door once again to be welcomed by the sound of a whistling tea kettle and a plastic fork spreading avocado onto whole grain toast.
     Ivy had already made herself breakfast and it appeared that the unused portion of the avocado would only be destined for a fate of cling wrap and the fridge, so I popped the question as I flipped off the fire and went to set my computer down on the seat of the couch in the next room. "Think the other half of that will last 'til tomorrow?"
     "Probably not," said the wolf without half a care in the world. "Do you want it?"
     I came back into the kitchen with both hands now free, and I answered back while reaching over her and opened the cabinet to pull out a box of cranberry hibiscus tea, "I would love it," because I always knew exactly how to thank someone for half a stone fruit.
     I began to pour a small dollop of honey into a baby blue mug and placed a bag of tea on top of the sticky substance, draping the string over the rim of the cup before pouring hot water over top of it. Immediately, the water began to turn a bright red, though I knew the color had little to do with how it actually tasted. I decided to leave the cup where it was as it steeped, and I pulled out my loaf of potato bread to retrieve two slices before clamping the bag closed with the small plastic clip it came with. I set the bread in the toaster next to where Ivy was seasoning her own breakfast with fresh-ground salt and pepper and switched it on, making the copper wiring inside begin to whir with electrical current and heat.
     Ivy took her first bite and gave an audible moan, and I couldn't help but chuckle as I retreated back into my room once again, though this time I left the door wide open. Once I had snatched up the towel to hang up over the rim of the door and dry out, I bent myself down to reach deep within the recesses of my bed and reveal my trophy.
     My yellow-painted, twelve-inch-tall, hand-blown glass water bong that I had named Phoebe was my immediate go-to for any of my smoking experiences largely due to the smoothness it provided but also because it was the only pipe I really had any reason to store away in a special place for the sake of its size, and after pulling it out into the light I noticed that the inside could do with a cleaning before use. I could be taking better care of it, but this blunder only slightly soured my mood. I opened up the small door built into my night table to reveal my vacuum-sealed container which I brought out to set on the kitchen counter along with the pipe.
     Ivy merely took a passing glance at my actions, but my heart's pace had begun to quicken with anticipation. I turned on the hot tap so that it flowed strongly while pouring a few drops of blue dish cleaner down the top of my bong. I stuck a finger under the water and felt it begin to heat up, and after a few seconds it had reached a temperature hot enough to create steam as it would impact the metal sink. I pulled out the hose, stuck the nozzle into phoebe's mouthpiece, squeezed the trigger hard and the water immediately changed direction, surging up through the rubber tube as it began to fill the bong up with hot soapy dishwater, and it hit me that I had neglected to remove the downstem because the water level inside the bong was rising much faster than it should have been. WIthout thinking, I released my grip on the head of the sprayer and the water reset itself back to flowing out of the tap.
     The glass was now quite scalding, but no dragon would be phased by a temperature like this, so I flipped the pipe over and dumped the hot, bubbly fluid out of the mouthpiece, further increasing the temperature in the spot near the end where I gripped it. I set the pipe back down and took hold of the small, glass downstem that was preventing the water from spurting out the feed hole properly, and gave it a few little twists back and forth with my thumb and index finger curled around the end of it. After dragging it out of the tiny rubber ring that housed it, I set it aside and sprayed water down the mouthpiece once again, now allowing it to escape freely through the ring. After a moment, the liquid began to become less cloudy and bubbly until finally reaching a state of pure clarity, and then I knew that Phoebe was ready.
     I turned the hot tap off and flipped on the cold, now only permitting a gentle stream to run out of the tap. I flipped the switch on the white filter attachment to have the water go through the filter, and I then stuck Phoebe’s head under it to fill up the bottom sphere with cold, clean, freshly strained sewer juice.
     “You want a hit?” I queried to the wolf who was leaning up against the front door and just finishing her last bite of avocado toast.
     She swallowed then replied with a little sneer, “Well, I did buy the shit for you.”
     The moment she finished her statement I froze dead in the middle of pushing the downstem back into the rubber ring. I knew that I had been completely smashed the previous night after the party, but I could at the very least recall paying for my own bud. Did I black out at some point? No, I couldn’t remember anything of the sort. “Wait, what?” I said stupidly. Come to think of it, I couldn’t recall anything that happened after getting in the car to come home.
     Ivy scoffed at my response before bending over to pull out a black leather booklet from a drawer in the little cherry wood kitchen table we never actually used other than to house the microwave and toaster. She opened it up and spoke rather coldly, “I lent you forty dollars to buy an eighth from Yousef.” I had gone back to refitting the downstem while we had this exchange, and now that I had set it in a place I was happy with - a little less than half of the stem set below the surface of the small pond contained within the glass bubble - I took the bong and placed it down on the counter while going over to read what was in the book. The note was there, plain as day, dated December 24th and everything.
     I gave a hefty, “Humph… Okay then,” before looking up to see that Ivy was actually smiling at me.
     “You were so fucking drunk last night. You really don’t remember?” I shook my head before going to the freezer to retrieve an under-sized ice cube and dropping it into the bong. “You’re such a dork,” said the wolfess with a snicker. “You don’t even have a hangover?”
     “You know me, I never get those. Just DADS, probably.” Ivy blew a raspberry as a response. “Exactly.”
     Just then, I heard my bread pop out of the toaster which I retrieved right away, and after scooping out the remaining avocado and spreading it over the two pieces with a salad fork, I decided to add some garlic powder to my usual salt and pepper that I always sprinkled delicately over them. I had set them on a paper plate so I could bring them into the next room with ease just as I did with Phoebe at that moment. As I set the items down on the pine coffee table next to my black cannister, I made a second trip back into the kitchen to retrieve the tea I had been allowing to steep for several minutes now.
     Finally after much anticipation, I sat myself down on the left side of the short-back, blue microfiber loveseat I had picked up on the side of the road sometime over the summer, and by then Ivy had already placed herself on the opposite side. “Do you remember which strain he said it was?” I asked her, hoping to have some knowledge of what I was about to get into.
     She answered plainly, “I didn’t ask. You sure maybe you didn’t ask him yourself?”
     “Maybe...” Excitedly, I began to feel around for my phone, but I remembered tossing it onto my bed before. I leapt up from my seat, and I could see out of the corner of my eye that Ivy had extended her legs to place her feet where I had been sitting. I ignored it for the moment as I snagged the small tablet off the bed and shoved it into my jeans pocket. While still there, I took the liberty of making the bed up, thrusting the far corner of the bright red comforter back into its corner and smoothing out the rest of the fabric to accommodate it. With all chaos completely eliminated from my bedroom, I strolled back to the couch while scrolling through my recent messages. “Seems to be Sour D again.”
     “Oh, alright.” said Ivy, refusing to move her legs back to let me sit down.
     “You don’t like this one?” I asked, standing over her and looking down at her brown travel mug while she took a sip.
     “Well, it’s just not my favorite. I liked the Strawberry Haze way more.” I still pretended not to notice that she had extended her legs across the length of the sofa and simply sat myself down on top of her ankles which made both of us groan in comedic pain as I felt her bones digging into the back my ass cheeks, and she felt my enormous weight squishing them into the corner. “Oh god, stop it please!” she laughed, straining her voice. I began to laugh too, and after setting my phone on the table next to me I lifted myself up a bit for her to move back to how she was before.
     “You deserved that for stealing my spot, dick,” I sneered. She stuck her tongue out at me while I popped open the vacuum seal on my plastic container, sliding off the lid to reveal the various paraphernalia that was stored inside. Not only was there a silver grinder, a pink cigarette lighter, and Phoebe’s bowl stem, but there was also a four-inch rainbow-spotted glass dry pipe I had named Skittles. I had owned this pipe for nearly a year already, and its age certainly showed; the resin was thick and grimy - perfect for sticking in one of the many steel filter screens I had laying at the bottom of the can.
     “Well to be fair, the strawberry stuff came from Andrew, and his shit’s way better than Yousef’s,” I said frankly as I removed the pipes, lighter and grinder to reveal the small eighth-ounce bag of cannabis we had picked up the previous night.
     “True. Sucks that he just dropped off the face of the earth.” I squeezed my hand inside the container and gripped the bag of weed with my index and middle fingers, slowly pulling it out into the light. I took a close look to see the thin strands of orange fiber woven in and around each and every little flower visible through the clear plastic bag.
     I popped it open and gave it a whiff before letting my eyes close, flopping my entire body back against the couch, and breathing a deep, smiling sigh. Stanky, earthy, and almost with the smell of gasoline, it felt comforting and familiar to my senses. I passed the bag to Ivy who took a small sniff of it before noting, “Kinda smells like grapes.”
     “Grapes!?” My eyes burst open as I shot her an amused look of bewilderment while she pulled out a nug the size of her thumbnail.
     “Tiny nugs too,” she said with a grimace.
     “Well, that’s how I like them,” I rebutted, holding out an open hand for her to return my stash to me. “I like the portion control.”
     “You know smaller nugs mean shittier weed, right?”
     “Well, I wouldn’t say that’s always true, but it is Yousef so...”
     She thought it over for a moment before sighing, “I guess you’re right,” meanwhile I had stuck two nugs into the silver grinder, just enough for the sake of Ivy and I sharing a fair amount that would get us both to a peak. I closed the lid and began to twist hard, hearing the sound of leaves ripping and stems cracking before the motion started to become easier. As the resistance became nonexistant, I twisted the lid faster going back and forth hard while tipping the grinder every which way to get as much bud to fall into the second chamber as possible. I lifted the magnetically-attached cap away to see that there were a few pieces of fresh bud still stuck to the teeth of the grinder, so I did my best to brush them into the holes with my claw, and with all of the ground-up cannabis safely in the next chamber, I put the cap back on and twisted the next piece anti-clockwise, screwing it off and revealing all that was inside.
     By this point, Ivy had pulled up a small stool and set my bong on it after sliding the darkened, resin-rich bowl piece into the downstem, sealing the connection with a rubber o-ring that sat around the base of the bowl. There was already a filter screen shoved inside it, so I scooped up the grinds with two fingers and packed it into the tiny dish, carefully being sure to let any pieces that wouldn’t make it to the bowl to simply fall back into the grinder.
     “You hit it first,” I requested. “You bought it.” Ivy nodded and reached for the pipe, taking a firm hold of it and resting the base in her lap before igniting the pink lighter and burning up the plant. The water began to bubble up fiercely as smoke filled the entire chamber and rushed up to her mouth. She took the lighter away, trying to avoid torching the bowl while she continued to smoke. Nearly ten seconds had passed before the bud went out and she lifted the bowl out of its place to clear the pipe, and after holding the smoke for a bit as she passed the bong to me, she blew the smoke up into the air where the rays of light shone onto it and made it clearly visible. I watched the clouds puff and flow in every direction, trying to see if I could spot a pattern, but the only patterns I could see were those I saw on weather radars - air simply flowing in random directions and never really having a pattern at all.
     “Big one,” I said while Ivy started to cough and sputter harshly. I chuckled as she reached for the glass of water she had apparently set on the floor next to the couch right under my nose. I then pressed my own lips against the head of the pipe and lit up the bowl from the right side over, being sure to only burn what I planned to take in. I started inhaling slowly and deeply, the bubbles making way for the smoke to fill up the chamber once more, and I felt it begin to fill my lungs. At first it was just warm, but it quickly began to sting, so I gripped the small piece of glass that stuck out from the bowl and lifted it away, clearing the pipe out and taking in a bit of clean air to force the smoke all the way down. I held it for a moment, though a bit longer than Ivy was able to before slowly and gently exhaling.
     Immediately, the psychoactive effects became apparent. Slowly, I felt my body begin to relax, and an uplifting sensation began to wash over my entire being. I sunk back into the couch once again as Ivy asked, “What do you think?” At first, I didn’t respond, trying to analyze what I was feeling.
     “Feels good,” I said. “Very calm and uplifting.” She nodded in approval as I passed the pipe back to her. She took another hit while I stared at the television across the room that stood blank and dormant with a ray of light reflecting across the glossy display. After letting out her smoke, Ivy took her third hit before laying back against the couch like I was and returned the pipe back to me again.
     I took my second and third hits, these ones much slower, longer, and heavier than my first, and the effects really started to hit me then. “Man, that’s some good shit right there,” I spluttered through a small cough that I tried so desperately to suppress. My eyes had begun to dilate, and staring up at the light fixture on the ceiling was made difficult because of this inability to focus on a single point in space.
     The next twenty minutes seemed to fly by while Ivy and I talked and continued to smoke. She had told me all about how one of her coworkers had been hitting on her, and I had to reassure her that it wasn’t anything to do with her, but rather a fault on this guy’s part. I pulled over the cubic leather ottoman to prop my feet on and told her, “Not only is it unprofessional to be hitting on you in the workplace, but it’s not even appropriate because you’ve already told him no,” which, stoney as it may have been, was one point that seemed to lighten her spirits. Eventually, the time came for her to get ready for work, so she took her final hit, and retreated to her room. With her door closed, I opted to open up my phone and watch a review video about the old PT Cruiser, but just as the narrator had begun to define postmodernism, Ivy opened up the doorway to reveal her outfit to me.
     She wore a short, pink floral pocket skirt with black leggings, knee-high, brown buckled boots, a maroon blouse and long white cardigan. “Necklace or no?” she inquired while holding up a long silver chain with a teal pendant on it.
     I paused my video and looked her over from top to bottom, trying to compare and contrast the color of her clothing with her sandy brown fur and bright blue eyes that nearly matched the pendant she had picked out before answering, “Yes, necklace.” She stepped back to look in the small mirror she had nailed into the wall before unclasping and donning the piece of jewelry. I saw her give a smile as she looked at herself, and knowing she was satisfied with my suggestion made me smile as well. I hit the play button and the video resumed after taking a second to buffer. A few minutes later, the wolfess had gathered all her things and stepped out the front door in the kitchen, “See ya later, then.”
     “Bye,” I responded simply before the door closed behind her. I paused my video again to listen to the stairs creaking as she went down to ground level. I heard her shut the door downstairs and immediately pulled out my laptop to set next to me while I rested my feet on the ottoman. I undid the button and fly of my jeans post haste, and I was able to get a good look at the lengthy bulge that extended to one side of my Groucho panties. I pulled the waistband back and my pink member stood itself straight up, curving a bit towards my face.
     I made myself comfortable and opened up my laptop screen to the right of me and logged myself in. I opened up a browser and typed in the first three letters of PornHub before it was filled in for me, and just as I was about to tap the enter key to be whisked away into a world of erotic imagery I suddenly heard my phone start to play a familiar tune: an 80’s-style synthesizer playing an arpeggio sequence with an extremely low artificial bass drum that would begin to steadily grown in volume and intensity before dropping hard and heavy with synth, bass, and an electric guitar - the default ringtone for my phone.
     You have to fucking kidding me. I had picked it up to see the name “Guillermo Orfeo,” with a picture of my father displayed on the screen. I sighed deeply before sucking it up and tapping the answer button. “Hello?”
     I was surprised to hear my mother’s voice answer back. “Hello mijo, how are you?”
     “Oh, hi mama. I’m alright, just…” I paused for a short second, trying to recover from my mistake of saying what I was up to as I glanced back and forth between my bong and my junk which had now gone soft. “...doing some job hunting.” Yeah, right. I put my nasty away, disappointed, before continuing, “How are you?”
     “I’m fine, I’m fine. Did your mattress come yet?” She didn’t sound particularly excited to hear what I had to say - more-so like she was only asking me out of obligation.
     “Yeah, it came like, three days ago. Or… no, two days ago.” Way to not sound completely blasted, dipshit. “I meant to text you to say thank you the other day, but I guess I just drafted the message and didn’t actually send it. I set it up though, and it’s really comfortable.”
     “Oh good, I’m glad you like it. How’s Ivy doing?”
     “She’s pretty good.” I started to chuckle as I remembered, “Actually, she just got a promotion, and they made her the assistant manager, so now she’s making a full-on salary.”
     “Wow, good for her!” Now she sounded happy. “Tell her congratulations for me, won’t you?”
     “Sure, ma. I will,” I said with a hefty sniff, trying to cover up the sound of my fly being zipped back up.
     Suddenly, I heard another voice in the background. “Tamaya, let me talk to him.”
     “Oh, your dad wants to talk to you, mijo. Here…”
     “No, wait! I-” It was already too late.
     “Hola, Serrano,” I heard him say with a very stern tone.
     I huffed quietly before replying, “Hola papi.”
     “I erm…” As per usual, he sounded unsure of what he wanted to say to me, though I could still tell that he had written notes beforehand. “I need you to go into your Google Drive for me and look at this document I shared with you.”
     Great, just what I need: a lecture from the finance police, I thought, knowing I could never have any kind of excuse to bail on the conversation. Slowly, I rolled out the word, “Okay,” as I opened up a new tab and clicked my bookmark to take me to the homepage of the site. I opened the Shared folder and found the document he wanted me to see: something called, “Serrano’s Loan.” Of course.
     I couldn’t help but open it up and start reading, meanwhile Guillermo had begun to ramble. “So, I know that you’ve been taking money out of your bank account and not putting it back in. Is there any reason for that?”
     Instinctively, I began to get angry at him both in response to his invasive line of questioning and the introductory text at the top of the document reminding me that I still owe him nearly a thousand dollars in rent money that he had volunteered to subsidize. This would have to be the last straw, because if not now, then when? “Is there any reason for you having access to my bank account when I’m 20 years old?”
     Even though I’ve asked him this a number of times, he still gave the exact same answer: “Because parents need full transparency with their children.”
     “Okay, even aside from the fact that I’m not a child, why don’t you need, ‘full transparency,’ with your other child?” Now I could start getting back at him because he had begun to stammer like he always did when I called his bluff.
     “Wh-what? We do have full transparency with her.”
     “Yeah, I don’t think so. She called me the other day to tell me about her car not starting and wanting my advice, seeing how I’ve actually been under a car before, and after I helped her solve the problem herself instead of just suggesting the car be towed to a mechanic like you apparently tried to have her do, she opted to stay on the phone with me for a little bit to tell me about how she has finally become independent from you and mom, how she got a credit card and a bank account completely separate from the one that-”
     Now he was pissed, and I could tell because he had defaulted to interrupting me in the middle of a sentence. “Okay, okay, look, just forget Reyna for a second, this is an irrelevant point, and you’re derailing the conversation.” Now in a rage of my own I stood up from the couch while taking a deep heavy breath to calm myself while my father continued to ramble. “All I wanted to do was share this updated document in the hopes that it reminds you to stop spending your money and start saving it.”
     “Saving it for what, exactly?”
     “Things you might need like a car, or a house, or retirement; You know, so you can prepare for the long haul instead of thinking about today.”
     “Okay, first of all, who in the world has ever needed to retire? Second of all, a house is just out of the question for me at this point in case you forgot about my sub-hundred-dollar checking account balance. Third, I am saving for a car, but it just so happens that the one I already have is perfect for what I need it to do, and right now, there are other things that I need more.”
     He retorted back immediately this time with, “Such as?”
     It took a second to think of them, and even though I couldn’t come up with everything, I still managed to roll off in rapid fire sequence, “Such as my aromatherapy pens, for one thing, or some suspension modifications, or some batteries for my controller so that I can play a driving game to relieve stress…”
     Again, Guillermo cut me off, “But none of those things are important. You need to differentiate between needs and wants.”
     “Dad, has it ever occurred to you that maybe I simply value certain things more than you do, and that my stress can’t be relieved by guzzling bourbon like yours can?”
     This stopped him dead in his tracks. There was a low, quiet pause for nearly fifteen seconds before I heard him say, “You’re so naive, Serrano.”
     I’d had enough at this point. I simply hung up the phone because I knew that if I had verbally expressed my anger to him and made it apparent that I was losing my shit like he’d known me to do so many times as a child, it would only give him the moral high ground.
     I put my phone in my pocket before looking down at the bong, debating whether I wanted to take a hit or not. I knew that if I did, it would only make my situation even worse, and it would only serve to amplify the emotions I already had brewing in my mind. I thought it best to set the pipe aside for now, and having lost any trace of arousal after all that, I sat back down, took my last bite of avocado toast, and gulped my last swig of tea before plugging in a controller and booting up my favorite game, Grand Theft Auto 5.
     Nearly thirty minutes had passed before I completely moved on from the altercation and opted to finishing off the bowl. I paused the game just after completing a mission that placed me back at my safehouse and reached over to pick up Phoebe once again. I lit it and took a hard toke, though there wasn’t much bud left to burn at this point, so I only managed to exhale a tiny puff of smoke. This is why you use what you grind, kids, I jokingly thought to myself as I tapped the ashes into my now-empty cup of tea, almost admiring at how pointless the non-sequitur was. It only took a short moment to stuff another bowl with weed before I lit it up and took it in hard. As the smoke filled each remote corner my lungs, I felt its harshness burning the flesh inside my throat, straining my bronchioles to the near point of bursting.
     It was times like these where I wished I could keep myself more in check while smoking. I couldn’t resist the urge to spew it out voilently, rasping and hacking up the essence of my mistake. Even after all my experience, it still could never trump the asthma I supposedly grew out of a few years ago. Desperately, I reached for the glass of water Ivy had left at the foot of the couch and took a hearty swig that sent cold, liquid grace all down my throat, giving it a clean wash of relief as it passed over my epiglottis. With several deep gasps of oxygen, I began panting at the effort gone into the ordeal of rejecting the negativity from my insides.
     When I had fully recovered from my second coughing fit of the day, it seemed only right to pick the bong up once again and right my wrong: taking another hit to make my last one be as smooth as the first one I had taken today. With a click of the lighter and the sound of bubbling water, I took my toke just as I had intended, sealing off the leaks of chaos and mistakes that plagued my thoughts and shoving them back to the deepest recesses of my subconscious mind never to be addressed again. I reached down under the coffee table next to me to retrieve the black and green, oversized headphones that I always kept in the small plastic bin under there. After resting them on my head, allowing them to completely encompass my tall ears, I picked up my controller once more and was about to fully immerse myself into the vast world of San Andreas with a click of the plug being slotted into its port.
     There was only one problem with this: it seemed that I must have done something on accident because upon pressing the button to resume my game, the screen went completely black as if it was changing its display resolution. It flickered, jittered, and jerked the viewfinder every which way across my laptop screen. I began tapping the keys to try and wake it up, but it was no use. The game was having an outright fit, and there was nothing I could do but wait it out. Being already at a peak high, at this point I merely opted to sit back and watch the show. The game continued to fidget for a few more seconds before I heard a near-deafening crackle emanate from the speakers on my laptop. Immediately, I snapped myself back to focus on what was even happening before I realized that the game had set itself back to normal. It was still on the pause screen, but at least it was accepting commands from the directional pad and scrolled all around the menu with no problem.
     I pressed the start button a second time and the game returned to the open world as if nothing had happened. Still a bit dumbfounded, I brushed off the experience much like I did with the coughing fit, trying to think nothing of it. After I directed my character to his garage and had him clamber into a bright yellow Testarossa knockoff and backed it out of the driveway, I began to speed away down the road before suddenly crashing into a sedan that had been parked on the side of the road just out of view of the third-person camera, which must have been simply too much for the game to handle because at that moment, my headphones uttered a loud crack much like the one I heard a moment ago, but of course this time it was blasted right at my poor audio receptors.
     The sound knocked my eardrums hard, and it took a moment to readjust after flinching so heavily at the screaming agony that shot out of the earpieces, and when I did it was as if the entire world had come to a hush. My character was moving, the game was running completely fine, but the only sound that I could hear was the wind running over the aero of his yellow sports car. It was as if I had somehow become a being that couldn’t hear, but also one that didn’t need to. Suddenly, it was as if the strange audio experience combined with just starting to roll down the hill after the apex of my high had sent me onto a plane of reality where nothing mattered anymore.
     It didn’t matter that my parents had spent hundreds of dollars on a queen-size mattress for their guest bedroom while they left me stuck with a 20-year-old twin, or that they had bought one for my sister but not for me. It didn’t matter that I felt enormous guilt for pushing them to the point of spending hundreds of dollars on a new mattress for me, or that I had been mooching off their funds for nearly a year now. It didn’t matter that I didn’t have an actual paying job, and my only source of income came from YouTube, and it didn’t matter that I only made a hundred bucks a year from it. The fact that I’d never held a status of employment for very long, the fact that I never tried to actually find something to apply to, the fact that I only ever felt inclined to sit my ass down on the couch and smoke up; none of it seemed to even be present in my mind as I played this strange game of silence.
     I didn’t have the motivation to make my life any better than it already was because I had countless people around me willing to stick out a limb for my sake, and even though the endless guilt and regret constantly filled my existence, in this intoxicated state of euphoria, all those troubles had seemed to melt away. All that mattered in this moment, in this state of being, was switching to the first-person camera and letting myself drive this golden stinger into oblivion.", "pools_count": 1, "title": "Chapter 2: Settling In for the Long Haul", "deleted": "f", "public": "t", "mimetype": "text/rtf", "pagecount": "1", "rating_id": "2", "rating_name": "Adult", "ratings": [ { "content_tag_id": "4", "name": "Sexual Themes", "description": "Erotic imagery, sexual activity or arousal", "rating_id": "2" } ], "submission_type_id": "12", "type_name": "Writing - Document", "guest_block": "t", "friends_only": "f", "comments_count": "1", "views": "296" }