Reader’s Digest
by Sini



Micah the Fox sat in a square cushioned chair of the library’s solar, reading The Dragon Who Ate Little Foxes by an Unknown Author. He was one of the “weird type” who read spooky stories in broad daylight, whereas most foxes would wait till at least nine o’clock when the moon was up, in a dark room quiet with a flashlight on the narrator’s face and a handful of other foxes gathered round, accompanying that narrator. (The narrator would always insist a full audience increased said spooky story’s impact. But let’s face it. They were teenage. Spooky stories—especially ones concerning a “maw” and an unsuspecting vulpine—scared them shitless, and the handful of other foxes was a buffer, that reassurance you could cling to someone when the predator got close, that hungry predator, lurking, creeping, stalking.) Anyway, Micah was weird. His Father had told him he needed a time-consuming hobby (“Some’n that builds character”). And Micah’s friends, who you couldn’t pull away from a horror novel by Stephen Fox if your life depended on it, convinced him that stories would both “build character” and “consume time.”

Among other things.

The Dragon Who Ate Little Foxes, one friend said as if he had actually read the book, was very engrossing; said pick it up, it had a catchy plot and well-constructed characters; said it’d swallow you right up.

That friend heard the rumors, alright. But he was not a malicious person. He was only “testing the waters” the way young foxes sometimes did. Why, that’s how young foxes learned: from a finger by the fire burned!

Page eighty-eight in The Dragon Who Ate Little Foxes. Flip to page eighty-nine. Micah looked like a predator himself, ready to pounce out of his seat from all the gosh darned suspense. The fox in the story was tra-la-la-ing through the woods, a basket in hand. The dragon, a set of evil eyes following the fox through the shadows between the trees: his eyes got bigger the farther along the path the fox ambled, but every time that fox felt a pang of fear and looked the evil eyes were gone!

“No no no no no,” Micah whispered shrilly, his heart racing; “he’s right on your shoulder, dude, right on it,”

his rump hardly touching the seat anymore,

the maw of the dragon opening up behind the fox,

“Just look left, to your left, oh my goodness, no—no—no—

“NO!”

In a seizure, Micah sprang from his seat and screamed. The book went flying. The book fell, spread open to pages eighty-nine and ninety. Micah’s spring became a somersault landing him onto the book.

Well, that’s what would’ve happened, were that this were an ordinary book.

He landed into the book.

* * *

“NOOOOOOOOO!” Shouted the fox as he dove forward, the basket flying off one of his flailing arms.

The dragon presently snapped his jaws where the fox had been.

“Damn, I missed.”

The fox grunted, tasting dirt. Dirt was nasty, so he brushed his knees off and stood and faced the dragon. Leaping lions! He had imagined a RED dragon—for surely all fire-breathing creatures were RED?! Instead, the hideous thing facing him was a black-and-purple dragon, whose fangs were backward! Had the Unknown Author not known that fangs went the other way and incorrectly detailed the tale? Come to think of it, the fox did not remember a detail about the dragon at all. Merely that he was a dragon.

Then again, the fox for the life of him could not remember his own name. Was it Todd?

Who was he before he jumped out of his seat?

“Hey, fox. What chu doin’ jumping away from my jaws like that?” the dragon asked, with hardly any vocal inflection.

“If you were a fox would you let yourself get eaten? What was I supposed to do? say ‘woo’ and cannonball into you?”

The dragon’s eyes went wide AS cannonballs. “That wouldn’t steer us away from the plot, but that wouldn’t stick to it, either. Say, fox! What’s gotten into you, ole buddy, ole pal? I thought we settled this dispute before the preface of the story.”

“Preface?”

“Before the part where the author says, ‘For all the cubs who wander the woods: be careful of the scaled you should.’ That part. We sorted this out before we even got introduced, fox.”

“Will you quit callin’ me fox? I have a name!” The fox blinked and seemed to fight a conflict within himself immediately after he said that.

“No you don’t. Your name’s fox. You don’t have a name cuz you get nommed. Foxes who get nommed become belly fat for me; the only name they really need is ‘plus ninety pounds for Sini!’ You’re about ninety, right? A scrawny chap. It makes sense, since you never make it to the picnic with your gram. Shame. That sandwich in your basket always ends up on me! That pear in your basket—mine! (Hee hee. Not like I’m complainin’.)”

“You said Sini.”

“Sini’s my name.”

“Well, why don’t I have a name?”

“Because whenever I eat cha you forget whatever happened in the story the next time around it’s told. And since you didn’t give yourself a name in our settlement before the preface and I did, I have a name and you don’t.”

“Well, why don’t we go back to before the preface then?”

“Fox! I’ve been hunting you for a whole half an hour. Besides. We can’t go back before the preface now; s’far back as we can go now is the preface itself. Author’s rule. Not mine.”

“Now, why don’t we just politely ask the author to let us go back before the preface? Surely he or she won’t mind?”

The dragon growled, “No one sees the author. And you think I’d let you have a name? Do you realize the power of names, little one? Do you know why the author’s name is kept secret?”

“No.”

“Listen. I don’t like the liberties you’re takin’ here, trying to barter me out of a meal. Trying to get us both in trouble, by deviating from the author’s plot. (Already the text is changing, the googledocument rewriting itself. The author’s backup save file is on his flash drive, but he misplaced it [it’s in his pocket]). Why don’t you be a good fox and get in the good dragon’s jaws, eh? And we’ll live happily ever after?”

The fox stared.

“Eh? Howzabout it, ole buddy ole pal?”

The fox ran.

Snorting, Sini snooped his muzzle into the tipped-over basket. He scarfed down a bacon-lettuce-tomato sandwich, had the pear for dessert then belched. So begins a chapter to be discarded in the restored book . . . A whole lot of Control-Z. He took off, flying after that pesky little meal-on-legs.

* * *

Who’s the author of this bloody awful story? What’s a flash drive? How did the dragon know the flash drive was in the author’s tennis shoe? And a million more questions presented themselves. Poor chap. They kept bombarding him, carrier packages landing on the doorstep of his consciousness. That would have been cool and all, if he could answer the first ones. “No, brain! Don’t ask me why the dragon’s breath smelled like Uncle Jack!”

He fled through a tunnel of trees arching overhead, the trees as bent as old crones. He leaped into a tumbleweed mess of branches, twigs, leaves, came out the other side spitting up tree bark.

He looked up.

A cave mouth. A dark abyss.

“With my luck that’s the Dragon’s Lair!” said the fox, exasperated.

He rejected the idea of entering that Dragon’s Lair with every fiber of his being! As a matter of fact, he’d rather encounter that Jerkwad Author than reencounter the dragon’s face and the dragon’s god-awful breath . . .

Lo!

An idea took shape!

“Why don’t I go see that Jerkwad Author for myself? I’ll give him/her a piece of my mind—one he/she couldn’t possibly plot.”

And so the fox set sail for the Author.

Seeded in his mind was now a character objective.

To find home!

To recover his name!

* * *

Meanwhile, Sini trailed the tracks of the fox. He was flying across a dirt trail under a canopy of pine needles.

“Say!” said Sini. “Foxes are kinda like pine needles.”

. . . Then he frowned, wondering how he had come to such a conclusion.



A while later, as he was soaring through the pine trees, he explored that thought from earlier a slight more: “Pine needles might be abundant, but you only come across a needle that makes you say, ‘Gee! I want to keep this needle’ every once in awhile. It’s not too often I get possessive of a pine needle; same principle applies for my foxes.”

And with that, Sini understood his personal motive. One thing the Unknown Author could not successfully incorporate into previous drafts of The Dragon Who Ate Little Foxes was believable character motives. Knowing why a body was to do a thing made a body confident. And a confident dragon was all the more dangerous . . .

* * *

Meanwhile! The fox trekked up a steep hill in cleated sandals. Why he was trekking up this steep hill was the simplest of the two questions to answer:

He supposed Unknown Authors lived in great castles atop the highest geographic landmarks in their stories.

The hill was both high and atop it crowned with fortifications tall as sequoias, their battlements stationed with archers wielding crossbows you could from far off mistaken for artillery. Amid the fortifications, two towers of vermillion roofs lanced high, high, high—high enough to dizzy a poor chap. These things made the place both a castle and great.

As for the second question:

He had found the cleats on the way to the steep hill. Why the cleats were there was a question that didn’t occur to him until later in a cathedral. But how convenient the cleats were! You really had to hammer your way up the heavy incline; he felt like he was scaling not a hill at all, but a Leaning Tower of Grass.

As the grass beneath his feet began to bend and flatten itself out, the fox drew up before a moat. It made a halo round the fortifications. The drawbridge was up.

Cupping his paws to his muzzle he shouted to the heavens, “Hey! Hey whoever is up at the top of the wall! Could you please lower the bridge? I’d like to speak to, to, to”—wait, to whom would he speak?—“the King of this castle.”

A rank of fox archers squinted, through the dense clouds spying a fox jumping up and down and waving his paws far far below. One shot an arrow.

The fox screamed, bowling out of the way. An arrow that could spear a fucking dragon out of the sky crashed into the earth, tossing heaps of soil up. When the fox opened his eyes, a crater ringed itself around the arrow, the arrow stuck in a pillar of earth with but a patch of grass atop it resembling an apple gnawed to the core. The fox was whimpering, shaking.

“Sheesh, Alan. You didn’t have to hit him with the dragon bolt. He can’t’ve been any older than ten-and-five.”

“If I ain’t hit ‘em with the dragon bolt no one else would’ve. You say the same thing about every visitor: ‘Alan! He was only a kid!’ Last time I let one loose he came back with a whole platoon, lances, wall-shields, the shabang. You tell me he was only a kid? Do kids have armies?”

“Did you see an army, Alan?”

“Hey you bickerers. Why don’t you look down and see? Little bugger’s still live.”

Sure enough the smoke had cleared and a little fox was jumping up-down-up-down, making vertical snow angels and shouting inaudibly.

Claws drove into Alan’s shoulder warningly; a shadow drew over him from behind and he gulped.

“Who’re you guys shootin’ at, huh?”

Amongst them was the King.

* * *

Humongous arched doors swung open. Trumpets sounded. A pair of squires ran through the doors then down the cathedral, unrolling a red carpet that had been tied up like a sleeping bag by gold ribbon. Squires donning gold-and-red robes escorted the fox down the hall, the fox catching glimpses of harlequin windows and sandstone pillars on their stride down the red up to the altar. For a moment atop the altar they stood. Stood facing a clothed table. The fox was suddenly aware; the squires round him seemed to have their heads bowed in prayer! He began to bow his head to join. Then one squire smashed a platemail boot into the table. It shot across the altar, exploding upon contacting a handsome open-armed rendition of Fox Jesus.

“THERE SHALL BE NO SACRIFICE TODAY!” belted the squire.

“NO SACRIFICE TODAY!” squire #2 agreed.

Hurriedly they shoved him across the altar and through the wreckage of table, through a violet banner of velvet that hung underneath the rendition of Fox Jesus—

into a torchlit passage—

through the torchlit passage—

winding, weaving.

Iron doors bolted slammed shut behind them when they came into a faintly-lit dungeon; torch flames whisked. The squires took the fox under the arms and led him to a shadowy shape at the end of the room. The shape was huge and still and familiar. Only when the neck turned and those evil eyes blared bright as headlights did the fox realize whose presence he was in.

The squires exited.

“Sini!” the fox cried, hushed by squire paws clapping over his mouth.

The shape’s features materialized. Ebon scales and purple plates appeared, shimmering in the dancing fires. Sini faced the fox; then he leaned in, his smile broadening and nostrils expanding. A dramatic, extremely-passionate SNIFF vacuumed the fox’s mane toward his nose. However did the dragon get here? The fox felt faint. Felt the blood leave his face.

A kiss Sini set on the fox’s temple. “You’re half-right and half-wrong. Yes, my name’s Sini. No, I’m not the one you met earlier. Though, me and him are pretty much linked, so I do recall the conversation of earlier.”

“But surely you know about our settlement? The preface of the story? Look—I didn’t come to intrude upon the castle. I just need to find the King of the Castle.”

“If there’s any other King of this Castle, pinch my tail!”

Sini lifted the fox up; a scream accompanied tossing and swinging and arms flailing. The dragon held him up by the furry nape of the neck between a digit and thumb.

“Lemme go lemme go lemme go,” insisted the fox, almost in tears.

“And as far as go prefaces, yes, I think I would know what I wrote at the beginning of my own story.”

“You’re?”

“Unknown Author of The Dragon Who Ate Little Foxes? Why yes! Thank you for grabbing a copy, by the way, dear. My book enjoyed consuming you as much as I will, in a second here. Oh—don’t you mime the victim, now, little one. You’ll come to like the ending of this revised version of the book. Why, I’m not even typing it. As we speak the googledocument rewrites itself according to the actions we take. I came through the portal because I thought it’d be fun to act with you. Together now—author and character. We pants the whole plot! Fun fun.”

A conscious expression flashed over the fox’s face, which he quickly hid. He said the actions ‘we’ take. Had they, fox and dragon, a symbiotic relationship? If Sini gave him writing privileges, had he also the ability to rewrite the story however he wanted? Testing this was necessary. Preferably in the next ten seconds, before he took a tour down the author’s gullet into the reader’s digest.

“You’re thinking, fox. Brilliant! I didn’t even ask you to think; you’ve become a conscious character. Autopilot wasn’t anticipated. But when I entered this world all its characters began to steer the ship themselves. Hm. Hm.”

Sini set the fox on a treasure chest, and as he took an Arisfoxle pose thought over the possibilities: what could he bring through the portal and what could he bring out? . . .

. . . while the fox thought over his. . . . And the cleats couldn’t have been in the story before I imagined them. How else could they have gotten there? What purpose would have been the cleats, if not to hammer me up the hill?

And realized: Unless the author Sini knew I was coming? He created SOME of these things before I ever arrived. Think of the castle. Think of the castle walls. I couldn’t have come up with those; I’d only heard them mentioned in reference to medieval times before, without a solid picture of them in my mind’s eye.

But realized: No. They definitely popped up when I needed cleats the most. My own emotions created the cleats. Unless Sini’s a telepath (who knows my every emotion) or controls my mind (which he can’t, because he’s preoccupied in his own thoughts right now and already said I’m on ‘autopilot’, I’ve the ability to manipulate the storyworld.

The fox thought of meanest, ugliest, most nastiest monster a eighteen-year old fox could think of. A were-fox. Oh, I’ll show you TRUE horror, Sini.

Sini snapped out of deep thought when the a bubbling red vial of bile appeared in the fox’s paw. “What the fuck is that? Who said you could have that?”

The fox ignored him, raised the vial to his smirk, drank. So greedy were his gulps, the red bile frothed down his muzzle and neck. Bulbs of bile hung and dripped from the fox’s bobbing Adam’s apple. Suddenly there was a pang of pain; a scream nearly huffed the torch flames out. The room’s ceiling brushed against the back of the fox’s ears, and the fox opened his eyes; and he saw Sini, a small puppy-dog to him! The fox grinned a foul grin, his eyes narrowing on his inferior and his lips curling back in a baritone snarl.

“Who said I couldn’t?” the fox said softly, his voice still rattling the treasure chest now beneath his footpaw. One heel could cover the dragon’s entire skull.

“That’s cute. You grew a few inches . . .”

“Yes, and I’m rewriting the story, starting now.”

Sini lithely leaped back as the fox’s jaws clamped shut, the loud smack bouncing across the dungeon. Seeing the fox ball shaking fists and grunt, Sini snickered. Another CLAMP came Sini easily out-maneuvered with a whisk of his wings and a hop to his side. Kicking the metallic doors open Sini said to the pair of squires stationed outside, “Escort our guest to the cathedral; there WILL be a sacrifice, alas.

“And,” Sini added, “don’t bother using this exit; use the ‘giant monster exit’ on your immediate left when you enter the room.”

The fox shot a paw through the doorway, but his claws raked back with naught but dungeon rock. He cried, deeply, but as shrilly as when he dropped his picnic basket, “NOOOOOOOOO!”

Draconic snickers made their way down the tunnel.

A whistle was blown. The pair of squires was met by dozens of squires marching down the tunnel. Each of these dozen squires held a few links of chain, very long chain; and five chains total there were.

These chains the fox saw. The squires surrounded him thickly as a police unit breaking up a frenzied mob. The fox shouted madly. He drew his arm back to backhand them all; but chain shot out and handcuffed his wrist. Immediately muscles seized up, a shockwave rippling up to his shoulder. The fox screamed loud. Chain after chain, leaping out at him: snakes! Arm-arm-leg-leg-head; the whole ensnarement played out like a Quran reading. With a resigning moan he staggered, from a wall fixture knocked over medieval helms and broadswords clattering to the floor then hit the ground with a thunderclap. Like ants they swarmed him.

“Now lift!”

“PULL!”

“Liiiiiift!”

“PULL!”

Sini awaited the platoon of squires at the altar, where he had cleared a space to paint on a giant rug of papyrus a pentagram by spilling wine, emptying glass bottles. It’s very pretty, yes, Sini thought as he looked over the finished product, scratching his chin; legit enough to summon Fox Satan with, probably, but for sacrificing a fox it should do the trick.

The squires arrived, ironclad legs of a giant furred centipede, hauling the fox through a chamber doorway.

“There you are!” said Sini, and watched the fox thrash and kick. “Now now, dear. No need to be excited. We’re just gonna make an equivalent exchange: I give you some of my smallness for an equivalent amount of your bigness.”

The fox spat, “You!”

“It’s come to my attention your character has developed quite quickly. A bit too quickly, and far too dramatically, if you ask me. I mean . . . you’ve outgrown the main character. Tsk tsk! We can’t be having that.” A kiss to that vulpine nose as big as his snout. “Sharing is caring. What d’you say, squires?”

“THERE SHALL BE A SACRIFICE TODAY!”

“Yep.”

Hustling, they laid down the fox in the pentagram belly-up; opposite ends of the chains spiked themselves into each point of the pentagram. Then they scattered out of the cathedral. Sini wriggled on top of the fox’s furry belly then took a deep sniff up to the Adam’s apple, sucking fur against his nostrils.

“You smell like apple pie.” He sighed happily.

Dragon’s breath tickled the fox’s neck; nervously, now, he began to sweat out sweet beads.

Beads as big as the dragon’s fists; he lapped them up with long, sticky strokes of his tongue, the tongue curling and uncurling. “You’ve stopped struggling.”

Grow, dammit, grow! thought the fox. Demanding his body start to spurt again was no use. Struggling against the chains elicited electrical shocks, so on that the fox had given up. He watched as the dragon stood up. The fox’s quickening breaths made his chest rise and fall, rise and fall, the dragon riding the tide. “Won’t you return me to my home?”

Sini grinned. “Oh, you’re overdue . . . but before I return you you need to be willing to return.”

What does that mean?

This was the last question this fox had.

Sini leaned in and suckled on the fox’s neck, shivering the fox, and then sank in his fangs. A discomforted moan wheezed out of the fox as the dizziness came over him. Suddenly he sweated profusely, breathed faster, blanketed Sini with his fox paws, cherishing the dragon warmth underneath. His pheromones exploded. He and the dragon’s mixed musks cast a particular glow to the air: earthy, spicy, like pumpkin. Muscles seized up—but with a reassuring stroke across the furred cheek Sini said soft into his ear: “This is the settlement, right dear, this is what you wanted.” Initially the fox grappled with himself; No, no, I want to go home, but the Author’s desires and his were merging, making sense together, unquestionably as yin and yang, female and male, pumpkin pie and whipped cream . . . Home is what I want, came a thought; but where is home? And You’re already near, another voice jabbed.

Sini probed over the fox’s neck, licking, nipping, chuckling. To himself he thought, The neurotoxin’s setting in a bit too quickly. With his pulse rocking me back and forth, I wonder what might a three-hundred milligram dosage would’ve done. “Fox. Fox, listen to my voice.”

“Y-yes.”

“Calm.”

“Okay.”

“You’ve made your decision?”

“I want . . .” His voice trembling.

“Again.”

“I want . . . I want you.”

A snicker. “No, you want me to have you.”

Hesitation.

“Say it.”

“I . . .”

“It’s alright, dear. Go on now—spit it out!”

“I want you to have me.”

“Alright. That wasn’t so bad, was it? Right you are. Now I’m gonna unchain you and you’re gonna be a good fox and stay flat on the pentagram, okay?”



“Okay?”

“Okay.”

Sini went round yanking the spikes out of the papyrus. Then he reseated himself.

When his paws ran along the fox’s whiskered muzzle, the fox’s cheeks went cherry. Sini leaned in and, driving his claws into those cheeks, closed his eyes and kissed the fox. There came a lusty whinny, a soft pawing against scale, a stiffening of the fluffy tail. Sini’s tongue pushed into the fox’s mouth, exercising over the fox’s, exploring. Now salivas mixed. Ever weary the fox grew, weakness accompanying his dizziness. Ironically the fox was shrinking, the dragon growing.

Hundred after hundred of pounds he siphoned. His black scales whined, tore, peeled away; new, more lustrous scale replaced it. His muzzle grew, and the kiss more intense. The way a leech latches onto a host, drains the host of his/her blood supply, fills itself until full, Sini sucked dry the fox of his towering frame. An onlooker would have gotten the “leech” impression, anyway, were that the onlooker knew not the dragon was the Author. The dragon out-growing me: it’s the natural order of things, something had convinced the fox. Beyond a reasonable doubt he belonged with Sini.

But before they could be together Sini had some character developing to do.

“Mm,” the fox said, between smooches; “s-so big . . .”

“Mm,” Sini agreed.

He had grown from a relative “puppy-dog” to “bulldog” to “husky” to “small pony” size, in the fox’s eyes. The fox shrank as Sini shot up. Soon he made eye-level with the high windows of the cathedral; he’d scaled higher than even Fox Jesus on the back wall. His surge of growth brought the pair to their original size ratio. Granted, they were still both gargantuan. It just happened that now, Sini was so huge a careful swing of his head could still accidentally destroy a beam of the vaulted ceiling. Sini’s eyes turned to slits, lasering down on the fox blushing hotter and hotter. An amused snort fizzled smoke from the dragon’s nose-holes then the dragon bowed his head, his nose caressing up the furry body. The body shivered. The shiver was prickling fur. The prickling fur seemed to—if fur could soundlessly do such a thing—buzz like static over a television screen.

As the maw opened.

As dragonbreath washed over him. Slicked back his prickled fur. Curled his toes into the soles of his footpaws.

The tongue lapped him up, up, and onto his feet. And he staggered back.

Down the steps he stepped in reverse, the church rows bouncing to every crash of his heels. And when Sini pursued him, great booms came; and sandstone dust sputtered down from the pillars. And chandeliers swayed and jerked crazily. The fox threw up paws in his defense, miming an invisible barrier, shaking his head. This shake meant not “no”. It meant only that, well, a fox need consider sacrificing himself to the dragon Gargantuan very thoroughly, very planningly. That jump into the jaws need come when Fox Jesus say to the fox, “Come, fox; and with scale you will be one; and with your fur shall scale be contented” and no sooner!

“No,” Sini said.

He’d backed the fox against the humongous arched doors. And, despite being shrunken, the fox’s ears still grazed the framework fifty feet up.

“Your conflict ends here.”

Sini’s tongue shot out, caressing up. The fox moaned, buckling at the waist, seizing the outer framework. Dragon’s breath was indescribably warm and indescribably powerful. The doors shuddered as Sini let out a prolonged exhale. Remember Uncle Jack, a voice called to the fox; remember how foul the dragon’s breath is, how godforsaken awful it is, how, how . . . and faded. Who was Uncle Jack? The fox couldn’t remove his gaze from the dragon’s, couldn’t retreat into his own thoughts to think.

The maw opened and he couldn’t shun away; his gaze was attracted to those slathering jaws, those stretchy jowls as a bull is attracted to red. Another fox from a time of the past would have gawked at the thought of “cannonballing” into the gullet; but this fox was different. This fox considered the thought, relished the thought, acted upon it. And as if sleepwalking he very sluggishly and mechanically laid paws on the moist lips, slid them around canines, pulled himself up. The great tongue carpeted out underneath him, tasting, yes, and lapping him in muzzle to belly. Fidgeting calmly the fox climbed farther. Tastebuds flowed like pink kelp beneath his prying claws.

A rumble booming, reverberating throughout the cathedral, making stained glass shiver. A shift of gravity.

Behind him the tongue rose up. He slid farther.

Vertigo, now, as he gazed into the gullet. The saliva in thin sheets across the throat flesh gave off glimmers of rainbow light, from the stained glass above the cathedral doors. Till the jaws relaxed shut. Then the fox was in abyss. Then sliding, squelching—

—a yelp—

—then falling, falling.

Feeling rings of the gullet grasp over him, handle him, handle him with hard flexes, and on his stomach firm squeezes: the claws of the dragon priding themselves over his prize. The dragon groaning, smirking, his muzzle tucked the top of a quivering neck bulge. A bulge he had bound there by the throat flesh’s coils constricting, clenching then slackening, clenching then slackening . . . The process giving the prey the impression of being milked. Was he to the dragon a honeyed biscuit? a pie slice of pumpkin? of custard cream? His oxygen was wavering fast, his face reddening. He panted; and sweat poured as steadily as he respired. Heedless of his prey’s slow suffering, Sini jerked and jerked his neck again, cooing every time those rings of the gullet clutched. Euphoria took him as he reared, fell backward and crashed down, flattening innumerable cherrywood church rows—just counting the ones under his ass.

An elated whinny, and Sini’s tail shot out, obliterating the rows across the aisle. A dust-devil of cherrywood erupted.

He tossed onto his belly then gulped.

A lewd slurp dilated a throbbing entrance. The fox whined loud. A slackening flesh-hold sent him shooting down and through the chute and into the stomach.

The feeling of fullness came to Sini as his gut inflated, burbled. Moaning he drove his claws into the sides of it and deeply kneaded.

The fox cried out, a jarring current of stomach acids tossing him, tossing over him. He felt the dark-purple bile bubble and ooze. Whimpering he curled into a ball. When he made little gasps for breath, he wished he had come up with something—come up with fresh oxygen. But every little gasp became a brief choke; the chokes comprised a cackling; he kicked and clawed, and muffled screams of “SINI” sent rolling ripples over the dragon’s gut.

Sini hummed, a rich bass making stained glass windows shudder and pillars quiver. His tail looped around a pillar and squeezed it. Sand began to sift. Sini straddled his gut and chuckled and, throwing back his head, let loose a loud “Brrrrrrrrrrraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrp.” His own skull rattled. Stained glass exploded, the sounds of shattering muted by the bass. Immediately the bulge of his belly softened. The fox’s outline faded away. The kicking and clawing stopped.

“K.O.” The dragon snickered, snorting out a waft of gas.

Light was streaking over his swollen belly from the round hollows the stained glass had inhabited. Fatigued grunts, strokes of a paw followed the resounding gurgles. When Sini slapped his gut, the smack it made rang through the cathedral, soared across the aisles and rebounded from the vaulted ceiling; the space created great acoustics. He belched again. The chain links of the chandeliers whined, altar furniture shook and communion goblets rattled. Sini polished over his gut with his palms as if it were a crystal ball, rumbling his content. Smoother and smoother his plates became, the meal rich in the vitamins for glowing scales “A” and “B” taking their toll. A toll Sini took regretlessly! He belched again—and out from his filthy maw shot a vulpine skull no smaller than an S.U.V., and clattered to the main aisle covered in rotting bile. Below it slather pooled, a hot mess reaching into the remaining cherrywood church rows.

But wait. There’s more, thought Sini wryly, and patted his pudgy paunch.

Swelling occurred: awful, bloating swelling. The sort you get when you’re not only a dragon, but a poisonous dragon whose prime waste after a meal is gas—gas expelled orally, and overproduced. Overproduced because the chemical reactions in the digestive process make it so. Think diet Coke. Think Mentos. Now, take your diet Coke and your Mentos and mix them together. Shake the concoction furiously. In the case of diet Coke/Mentos, what follows is a fizzy eruption from a bottle. An explosion. The poisonous dragon, by nature, has a similar explosion when digestive enzymes meet living prey. An explosion of . . . excess.

He grated out a bone-rattling belch, but his belly only swelled up, up and up. What an awfully gassy fox that was. It scaled the cathedral space toward the vaulted ceiling, blocking out sun from some of the round hollows. Feeling the light on his face retract, the dragon harrumphed! He strained himself into a sitting-up position then belted out a “brrrrrrrrrrraaaaaAAAAAAAAAaaappp” with his quaking jaws yawned so wide open, there was nearly no crook. The following, terrible “hu-AAAAAARRRRRrrrrrrrrppp” threatened to throw the roof on its foundations. Pillars groaned; support beams shook in wild seizures; Fox Jesus bounded forward, free of the nails (no crucifixion pun intended) that had hung him up, and shattered into 1,000 pieces of winking glass over the papyrus pentagram.

The pressure wouldn’t let up.

The gurgling croaks his gut made had a haunting reverb to them; the sounds backfiring off the walls filled the cathedral with an ambience very ominous. Sini kept lashing out those lewd belches, discharging foul plumes of purple. One of them, a throaty “burrraaaaaaaaaap,” sounded like the slurp you make when you finish off a soft drink. Another one, a slick “URRRRRRRRRRoomfff!” sounded like the call dragons sometimes make to attractive females. Anyhow—whatever they sounded like, they weren’t enough to ease the rapid-growing pressure. So huge his gut had gotten, the purple plating pleaded for mercy, and, as the belly grew and the plating didn’t, the scaly black “skin” below it had emerged. The ratio of plate-to-skin had equalized.

Sini was trapped. Sini had one single option. Either Sini continue to burp out the gas or, worst case scenario, explode. Like a diet Coke bottle capped immediately after having four Mentos dropped into it.

And so Sini heaved into that great exercise ball of a gut. He pumped and pumped with his paws. He sucked in air. Held it in an air pocket until his gut roiled and gas rolled up his gullet into that air pocket. Then he groaned out in a tone as low as a kargyraa throatsong a “brrrRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaarrrrrurrrrrRRRRCHHH!” The bulge sank below the round hollows . . . then sprang right back up.

Hot dam! I’ve never had a fox so gassy for a meal before. They should come including warnings on their nutritional labels: “CAUTION if you’re a poisonous dragon or any other species that suffers from serious oral gas issues!” Of course, Sini knew that then the taxes on foxes would spring up faster than his fucking gut and then he’d be back to buying wolf-stuffed spring rolls.

Okay. Problem. The support beams of the vaulted ceiling just met his fucking gut. They were caving inward, snapping like twigs. Suppose he did somehow belch up the thousands of pounds of gas (which even, somehow, outweighed the prey who had given him gas to begin). What would such an earth-shattering burp mean to him? It’d mean a roof crashed down on his head and the whole castle in ruins. Reminder: the castle was as important to the proper functioning of the portal as the left-lobe was to the creative process. Matter of fact? Destroy the castle and kiss your portal goodbye.

Sini understood. No portal, no return to the real world. No return, no revised version of The Dragon Who Ate Little Foxes. Then, fuck was the point of this? Pleasure played a part, sure, but he needed an audience of foxes. Foxes who’d read his book, become consumed by the book then bump into him in the woods—so he could get really bad gas and worry about leveling the castle again.

In three seconds the support beams would give.

Sini held his breath, slowing the pace of the novel. A million ideas he’d surf through in those three seconds: they included: putting a small puncture in his stomach, barrel-rolling through the side of the cathedral, willing a shrink potion into existence. But no. He’d lose things. He couldn’t choose those. Instead he chose to gain.

Some background info’ll help here.

Poisonous dragons absorb poison. Sini, being the Poison Dragon Aspect of Malygomire, had bonuses to this ability. When he absorbed poison it could be purposed for three things: being expelled, imbuing in him strength, and transforming him. Now, when poison dragons digest their prey the produced gas is deathly poisonous. So currently Sini was rich with the most valued currency to his kind.

Fumigating the cathedral was pointless. Having the power to level it—well, Sini was trying to avoid leveling it.

Sini closed his eyes. Concentrating on the gas in his gut, he found in his mind a string as slim as a guitar’s. He twanged it. Then he opened his eyes, hiccoughing. His stomach shuddered beneath the support beams, as if hesitant to break them like twigs. Sini slapped the sides of his gut then grunted, sounding constipated! Head thrown back, varicose veins shot up his neck, blueberry veins, writhing, flexing. Then he roared. In a sudden spasm his stomach shrank a size, and dipped below the curve of the vaulted ceiling; and Sini howled a howl that startled squires and archers and watchmen about the castle grounds into foetal positions. The stomach compressed still, a rank of chandeliers rising up from behind it. Muscles seized up. Then instinctively Sini rolled onto his flank and likewise folded inward into the foetal position. Curses he yowled as he barreled about the church rows, bulldozing them flat. As his stomach recoiled—so far so he could wrap his arms around it—he was possessed by a series of shakes and sudden limb contortions. A “beeeeeeeeeeeeelaaaaaaarch” was followed by elongations of the fangs, horns, wing-claws, claws, tail, tail-spikes, snout-horn, neck-spikes and snout. Murky fumes spread throughout the room, eating up the clean air, and curtaining the dragon in a thick plum fog. The rest of the transformation was hidden. All we can conjecture is that there were lots of grumbles, barrel-rolls and belches.

From the round hollows the fumes billowed up. The fog inside wasn’t clearing per se, but thinning into mist. And beyond the mist a black-and-purple dragon appeared.

His whiskered head he reared, the sword-like spikes on the nape of his neck whipping up. His lip drew up in a snarl, revealing monstrous, cream stalactites and stalagmites. His canines and incisors. The castle thundered as he stood: the shock wave rolled over everyone: screaming, archers on the parapet were flung against battlements and squires in the bailey against the lawn. And Sini standing so tall the horns on his bowed head scraped the vaulted ceiling gazed down. In the shattered shards of glass formerly Fox Jesus he saw himself. His whiskers perked up. Contentedly he rumbled. He looked back and saw his stomach deflated, but not quite.

The dragon barked an order: a loud RAWR. The castle foundations rocked. The squires came running. The cathedral doors burst open as they swarmed in, little robed ants. They’d no time for marveling at Sini’s metamorphosis; one needst not keep waiting one whose claws could shishkebab busses. Again Sini RAWRed. Immediately they sprang to the corners of the papyrus, pulling the corners into the center then tying the corners together. Glass made crashes and sharp ringing sounds. And so the papyrus became a knapsack the size of a gazebo. The squires trampled over one another to reach the tied top, form a chain of squires with bound limbs from the tied top to the altar floor. One chain turned to two. Two turned to three. Three to five. The chain fingers heaved! Rested. Heaved! Sini cringed and winced nonstop until the little robed ants had taken out the trash. Then they swarmed back into the cathedral bringing a clean sheet of papyrus. Onto the altar it was laid; the wine was spilled, the pentagram remade.

Then “BRING ME THE VULPINE SKULL” the dragon commanded.

The squires scrambled. They brought back the skull then dropped the skull. It clattered onto the pentagram. Bile and slather had coagulated and dried to the skull, turning it the dark maroon of a rotten pomegranate. Flies buzzed about the scalp and maggots festered in the eye sockets. The slather still steamy bled into the pentagram, making the pentagram glow like boiling blood.

Then “BACK YE!” cried Sini; and the squires fled, and were gone again.

Dipping his nose to the pentagram he uttered a metallic growl. His eyes closed, brows hardened. Grooves sharpened, pronouncing the underlying muscles of his neck. Then his neck jerked and jerked and jerked. And putting his paws to his stomach Sini moaned, looking fit to regurgitate a very HUGE hairball. Jerk. Jerk. Jerk. The wet noises of his acids heaving and heaving, straddling his stomach side to side, harmonized into an eery orchestra. Reverb filling the room. A bulge suddenly crawling up underneath his chest to his gullet. For a fleeting moment his stomach dropped to his ankles, swollen into an egg-shape. Then his eyes lit up. A flurry of neck jerks was followed by an “urrrrRRRRRRRRRRRUUUUUaaaarrrp” the sound of clacking bones. Surely enough a tailbone, limb bones and ribbed vertebrae flew out from the undulating jaws. They came in cracking thuds around the skull. A hot stink steamed up from the discardings. These new ones had been warped a dark maroon shade, but weren’t quite as dark as the decaying skull. Sini inhaled deeply. Slowly he sighed the stink.

“Alright!” said Sini, then bowed his head thoughtfully.

He was silent for a minute before he said grace. He thanked the Fox for that great meal then humbly requested the Fox accept his son’s remains as a sufficient sacrifice for Him, that He might open the portal. The Fox in the Beyonds thought to himself “Hm, hm, he did eat mine own son,” and “Hmmm, he may ravage the real world should I open the portal for him,” then thought “Well, he did dye my son’s bones a pretty red color. Alright I guess!”

The discardings turned to mulch, melting into the papyrus. The papyrus turned black. Sini stepped away when the pentagram blazed a blaring red and the papyrus folded in on itself, forming an origami teardrop. Suddenly a blinding light engulfed the room. Sini shunned his head away, blinking hard. When the light was less harsh on his closed eyes and when he heard a low whisper like some faraway wind, he opened them. A transparent curtain of gold ebbed across the surface, like a ripple over a pond. And within the ripples Sini caught fractals of a cave: fractals of a Dragon Lair: his Dragon Lair. There shimmered as if a mirage an image of his futon and basket chair and desktop, the desktop screen still tabbed onto the googledocument The Dragon Who Ate Little Foxes.

“We’ll have the change that title,” he said. Then he stepped into the portal.

* * *

A fox stood outside the library reading the Unknown Author’s newest book, The Dragon Who Ate Big Foxes: a book based on another book he/she had written earlier in the year. Reading and reading until the text stood up from the page and the text from other pages in the book flew onto the open pages and the head of a black-and-purple dragon formed.

A grinning dragon, opening his jaws . . .