Pets 2: Pani's Story (12 page)

As Papa took the two cans of powdered formula from her arms, she sidled up to the check-out counter, arching up onto tiptoes as she reached across it for her collar. She turned it over in her hands twice, that black swatch of leather that was dotted all along the lower edge with sparkling silver bells feeling much heavier than she knew it really ought to. With a sigh, she put it on, which made the sales attendant laugh and Papa praise her with an affectionate rub of his large hand down the back of her head and between her shoulders.

Bowing to press her forehead against the counter, she stared at her reflection in the glass.

Maybe if she pretended hard enough, she could make herself believe she was going through a grunge phase. Black makeup and baggy clothes, instead of bright baby-doll dresses and cat bells around her neck.

When she felt the lighthearted tug at her braid, she pushed away from the case and dutifully allowed herself be led back through the store to a small rear room. Trudging along with her eyes downcast, it wasn’t until she heard the door close behind them and the light switch on that she realized the store clerk had joined them. One glance around the small room with its sparse furnishing, complete with exam table and sink, Judy almost laughed. This wasn’t just a pet shop, it was also the local vet clinic. Of which she was now a patient.

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“Great,” she said morosely. “Is it time for my annual rabies shot?” Sliding his hands under her arms, Papa picked her up and set her down again on top of the table. She lay back when he directed her to, but kept her legs tight together, her hands gripping the edge of the table until her knuckles whitened. Gynecological exam was the worst thing she could think of, right up until Papa rolled her onto her stomach and firmly secured her wrists behind her back in the grip of his no-nonsense hand. That was when she began to realize she didn’t have a dark enough imagination.

Papa petted and stroked her hair, shushing her the one time she tried to twist her arms free and so Judy lay still, her cheek pressed to the cool surface of the table. The sound of metal clinking lightly against metal had her twisting her head around in time to see the clerk standing over the sink, sanitizing what had all the appearances of being a scalpel.

This time, she really did try to get her hands free, twisting her wrists in opposite directions and ignoring Papa’s soothing attempts, especially when she felt the cool, wet caress of an antiseptic swab cleansing a small patch of skin just above and between her shoulder blades.

“What are you doing?” she stammered, her voice barely above a whisper. Her mind raced while Papa stroked her hair one last time before placing his hand firmly upon the back of her neck and pressing down until she was pinned. “W-what…” Although unable to see him, Judy still felt it when the clerk lightly touched two fingers between her shoulders, just above the cool spot where the swab had disinfected her skin, and then she felt the touch of the scalpel.

She gasped as the blade cut a line of white fire into her skin, but the real pain didn’t hit her until he wiped the blood away with a piece of neatly folded swab soaked in cool liquid that stung like hell’s furies the instant it touched her wound. Her scream was low and guttural, forced through tightly gritted teeth as he wiped and wiped.

“Be good, Pani,” Papa told her when she began to buck and thrash, her legs writhing against the table, banging it with her feet and knees as she fought to get away.

At the very edge of her peripheral vision, she watched the clerk pick up a small devise with a sterilized pair of medical tongs. Catching only a glimpse of it before he again disappeared behind her, she could have sworn the devise was nothing more sinister than a battery watch.

Small and round, it couldn’t have been any bigger or thicker in size. But the moment the clerk began to wedge it into the muscles of her back, Judy could have cared less what it was or even what it was for.

She screamed, loud and long, fighting desperately to get off the table, but between Papa’s restraining hands and the clerk’s, all she managed was a few feeble kicks and thrashing bucks that succeeded only in knocking over some unseen bottle and spilling liquid all over the floor.

With the battery-shaped device in place, the clerk began to stitch the wound closed again, the repeated jab of the needle biting into her back, followed by the pull of the thread, drenching her back in fire. The room ran red with it, turning black all around the edges. To lose consciousness would have been a blessing, but Judy was simply not that lucky. From start to finish, she was awake through it all, right up until the clerk cleaned the blood from her back and ruffled her hair. If Judy could have got out of Papa’s hands in time to catch hold of the scalpel, she’d have stabbed one or both of them.

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“Let go!” she cried, tears streaming down her face as she struggled to wrench her way off the table.

Papa pulled her into his arms instead. She shoved violently to break free, but even that feeble effort ended with little more than a huff when he simply tightened his embrace and began to rock her, gently kissing the teardrops from her cheeks. Unable to get away, she gave in instead. Like a good little dog.

“Good Pani,” she said miserably, using words he could understand and hoped he felt as guilty for hurting her as the look on his face suggested.

She supposed she ought to be grateful she wasn’t been spayed. Although, as Tak’buh steered her back to the front of the store and they passed through that row of human kibble food, she couldn’t help but glance up at all those smiling photos of babies and children and wondered if perhaps being spayed weren’t something she should hope for.

All of Papa’s items were still waiting in a neat stack to be paid for when the reached the check-out counter: two cans of formula, the leash to match the collar she was wearing, and a white boxed kit with no picture but a few stark black lines, dots and swoops that must have been writing on the front and side labels. Her shoulders twinged when she reached for it, and though not a very large box, it was just heavy enough to hurt when she tried to pick it up.

Papa took it away from her almost immediately. “No, Pani,” he said, letting go of her braid just long enough to push everything out of reach. Then he reached for his wallet, withdrawing an interface chip which he handed to the clerk.

Hands hugging her own shoulders, her fingertips tentatively tracing along the stitched edges of her wound and the upraised bump the metal made in her back, she glanced up when she felt him startle. It wasn’t until he snapped his head around to look at her that she realized she was, for the first time since getting out of the car, completely free of him.

At first, Judy didn’t move. She simply stared back at him, knowing there was no place to run to and her shoulders aching just enough that, frankly, all she really wanted right now was to go home, crawl into her crib, pull the covers up over her head and sleep until it didn’t matter anymore.

“Good, Pani,” Papa said soothingly, his hand moving slowly as he reached for her, as if afraid that any sudden movement on his part might send her scampering off towards the nearest exit. She almost handed him her braid, except that that was when Hi-I’m-Lisa and her owner came out of the costume aisle with two pretty new dresses to join the check-out line.

Her shoulders twinged; her muscles tensing as she locked eyes with Lisa. And suddenly she had the most horrible feeling that in six years’ time that would be her, roaming through the pet store, babbling like a lunatic because she was that desperate to hear someone—anyone—say her name. Her real name. Judy, not Pani. Just Judy.

“Good Pani,” Papa said again, reaching for her braid.

His fingertips nearly had her when Judy suddenly wrenched away. With Lisa jumping up and down, screaming, “Run! Run! Run!” Judy raced for the store’s front entrance.

The doors barely opened in time, sliding sluggishly apart but only because Papa’s much larger frame came into range. She squeezed out between the glass panes just ahead of his reaching hands and was off, dashing down the front sidewalk and dodging the outreaching hands 54

of a pedestrian pet owner who’d been on his way into the store before she came crashing into him.

It was a half-hearted effort right from the start. The only place she could think to run to was to the vehicle that had brought her here in the first place: Papa’s car, parked two rows out from the store. But with Papa calling frantically after her, she leapt out into the road, sending fast moving cars swerving wildly to avoid hitting her. Two smaller vehicles managed to get out of the way in time, but a second larger cargo-sized van barely slammed on its brakes in time. Judy froze directly in front of it. There were just enough seconds of tires screeching on pavement for her to wonder if being splattered across that front grill might be better or worse than a lifetime of babyhood, when Papa seized hold of the scruff of her dress and yanked her back to the safety of the sidewalk.

Her split second of suicidal indifference shocked her. It left her shaking almost as badly as Papa’s barely restrained fury when he grabbed her shoulders, roaring down into her face and giving her that one, single, hard shake of emphasis. Dropping to one knee there on the sidewalk, he then threw her across his upraised thigh.

Bad baby.

Seeing the grill of that huge transport vehicle and not the concrete of the sidewalk a bare two inches from the tip of her nose, Judy didn’t fight him. She grabbed his ankle instead, needing to hold onto something, almost grateful when she felt him yank her frilly yellow underpants down the backs of her legs. Her already raw thighs stung where the elastic scraped her, but she was glad for that. She wanted to hurt; she wanted him to do that hurting and remind her of why she’d run in the first place.

“Call me Pani,” she moaned, tears already splashing down upon the sidewalk and making the tiny indentions in the concrete swim before her. Maybe if she heard that alien name, it would help her to hate him again. No more strange kisses or soft caresses from comforting alien hands.

Her muscles locked, bracing herself against his leg as she felt the slight jerk of his body just before his arm raised high above her. She wasn’t expecting to feel anything but the hard breadth of his hand cracking down across the naked swells of her ass, and so the whip of the leash came as a painful shock. Six lashing snaps of leather rained down upon her in rapid succession, the narrow lashing strip hugging her bottom in lines of crisscrossing pain that first stole her breath and then made her cry out. She arched, clinging to his leg as she thrashed her own, not to get away this time but just to endure and to feel and, maybe, just to get her head back on straight again.

But those six fiery strokes were all that he gave her, and then it was over. Far too quickly in her mind, and he never did say her name.

Catching the scruff of her dress, Papa yanked her up off his knee to stand on her own feet again. A veritable mountain of disapproval, he released his hold on her scruff, all but daring her to bolt from his side again.

She didn’t. She was done trying to escape, and she knew it. She met his dark and angry stare, hoping she looked as sincere as she felt. But if he noticed, that faint supplication did not help to subdue his temper. He caught her collar and, with a snap of the clasp, attached the leash to it. Then he hauled her back into the pet store, albeit only just long enough to pick up a few 55

more items and to pay for his purchases.

Although not chokingly tight, Judy hooked her fingers between the collar and her throat, but didn’t dare try removing it. A recalcitrant pet, no one paid her any attention at all. Only Lisa, who called out to her once, but Judy kept her sad gaze locked on Papa as he gathered the cans of formula into the crook of his arm. Pulling that white boxed kit to him, he opened it to check the contents. Judy found herself blinking at the penis-shaped object that he withdrew, as long and as thick as his forefinger, she hardly believed what her eyes were seeing.

Turning his head, Tak’buh glared down at her, more muttering under his breath than he was scolding her now, the look on his face making that artificial phallus in his hand seem infinitely more threatening. Suddenly needing to be touched, Judy hugged herself again, but there was no reassurance to be found in the worried caresses of her own hands. Papa not only bought that box of faux penises and plugs, but he made her carry it all the way back to the car.

Barely feeling the collar around her neck anymore, barely feeling the tender welts swelling across her flanks, she held it in her lap all the way home. More than ever before, she wished she could just go home and crawl back into bed, burying herself under the blankets until this whole miserable day was over and forgotten. Unfortunately, something told her Papa was not going to let this evening pass into remorseful obscurity. And with the weight of the box balanced upon her legs, Judy endured the rollercoaster-ride home in teeth-gritted silence, trying all the while not to think about what was going to happen next.

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Judy hated the baby-doll dress Papa forced her to wear right up until he stripped it from her, leaving her to stand naked and shivering—and not because it was cold—in the living room.

Only her collar remained, that tiny row of silver bells jingling along the bottom edge in time with her trembling.

“Can’t you just spank me and have it be over?” she wheedled, plaintively calling him Papa just so he would talk to her. Or even just look at her, instead of through her or at her while he firmly bound her arms, folded up behind her back, wrist to elbows, in a stark black sleeve that she could not wiggle free of regardless of how desperately she tried.

“Papa,” she pleaded, starting to get a little scared, particularly when he brought out a padded, low-backed chair and set it in the middle of the room directly in front of her. Cold that had nothing to do with the temperature of the room snaked in through her gut, gripping her stomach as if with a fist of pure ice. “Papa, please.” He gagged her then and lay a soft pillow over the hard wooden back of the chair before bending her over it. Sniffling, biting at her gag and whimpering, she was tied down, her ankles splayed wide apart, one to each leg of the chair, and a wide black strap that laced around both the chair and pillow to buckle at her back, keeping her bent so far over that her forehead rested upon the cushioned seat and the tips of her toes only barely grazed the floor.