Story by Athalon
DISCLAIMER: All characters and situations appearing in this work are fictitious, and are intended for mature audiences only. If you are not a legal adult, or it is illegal for you to read about adult situations, then you may not read futher. All characters belong to their respective owners. This story is not to be reproduced, copied, or otherwise published anywhere, in any way shape or form, without the express permission of the author.
Lucky the lioness combed out her full, golden mane, arranged the tresses in a high and hasty mound. And topped it all with several garish dyed feathers. The slinky, clingy beaded dress which bunched and hunched and bound here and there and the other place was a rental. She staunchly refused to remember that an only slightly less horrible model actually belonged to her own wardrobe. Halloween was Lucky’s favorite pagan holiday. After Christmas. The party tonight she’d been looking forward to for months. Or at least since she’d gotten that box of jack o’ lantern condoms at the adult novelty store.
With a squeal and a screech, T2 crashed into his mother’s room. The foxlion, eleven years old or so, came to a smacking halt at the bureau in front of which she was dressing. He met her scowl with a grin. Then took in her costume.
“Ma? Can we tawk?” There was such a look of concerned disapproval on his face as one can only have at eleven. “You look like something from the cwaft table at the fwee mawket…”
Lucky sniffed. “I’m a showgirl, from before the first war. A flapper.”
T1 popped into the room. “Fwapper? Isn’t that what the pwummer replaced when he fixed the baffroom?”
T2 shrieked with laughter, to imagine his mom as flush hardware. The twins were identical both in appearance and in their strange sense of humor.
Lucky sighed, spritzed a huge and visible volume of perfume upon the air; then stepped into the oily aura, an olfactory Alfred Hitchcock entré. Her costume from ‘The Roaring Twenties’ had just seemed so appropriate to the lioness when she was shopping that afternoon.
T2 examined the bottle of French fragrance. “Ooh… day… toilet?” T1 went off into a fit of glee.
By the time T2 finished laughing, T1 had spied the final touch to his mom’s ensemble – the accessory de rigeuer – a scruffy-looking yellow feather boa. He snapped it over his shoulders, sidled it back and forth, one knee raised and shaking his bare chest seductively. “Rose tint my world!”
Even Lucky roared. It hadn’t been since high school that she’d donned a magenta wig and danced the Time Warp. Again.
T1 snagged the scraggly feather garland from his brother, whipped it about himself, flipped it across one outstretched arm. And began to sing Diana Ross. “I can’t covah up my feewings, in the name of love!”
“Trevor!” T2 shrieked!!
Lucky shook her head. Perhaps that new school she’d sent the twins to hadn’t been such a good idea. Too liberal. Why just last week…
The bell.
That mangy yellow boa floated forlornly to the floor, as the screaming twins made a dash for the door. Lucky was left in unexpected peace, unanticipated respite. She checked her coif, poking and shifting this way and that, tucking under, trussing up.
Jerry, a teen cat who lived down the block, had disappointed Lucky when she’d phoned. He’d planned to go out with friends, apologized with sighing profusion that he couldn’t take the twins trick-or-treating. He was their usual sitter these days, and Lucky wondered briefly if perhaps he’d changed his mind, come over at the last minute. But her boys hadn’t called out to her from the entrance hall, and she assumed the ring had been lilfurs out early with older sibs to score their share of sucrose before sunset. She dismissed the thought, returned to her primp.
The mirror was an unaccustomed friend tonight, she decided, sketching on oekaki lipstick with shocking inattention to the shape of her muzzle. The lioness smacked experimentally, then seductively, arching her brow with a come-hither look. A few strokes of rouge brought out her high cheekbones, hinted at that inner huntress who only surfaced after the second round of drinks.
She surveyed the results. Approved. “Mmmm, I feel good!” Lucky was excited. She held out her wrists to the sides, danced a few steps to the right. Gave a chorusline kick, a wild and a untamed thing!
That new club, El Cabana Yiff, would be hopping tonight. Perhaps after hitting a few of their regular pubs, she and her friends might wind up there. She’d heard from the other office girls about that stripper they had… Preyfur? Something like that. Male hyena, nice ass. Among other things. Lucky had changed the sheets on her bed that afternoon, hopefully. And thinking about it now, shivered with antici-
“Sis!” It was Tricia, Lucky’s older. They feigned an embrace, mimed kisses first to one cheek then to the other, touching nothing but air.
“Girl! Yo’ is dresst fo’ bling!” Tricia roared, a player. “Let me look atcha, biz-ho!” She eyed the other lioness like a pimp as Lucky posed, a posturing runway model, blushing girlishly. Lucky felt like she had on prom night, the prototypical play of scene, younger sister in front of older, the final inspection. Except, of course, Tricia had been in leather jacket and chaps then. Greasy biker jeans, boots. Old Spice.
Lucky giggled. “You’re looking rather, well…”
Atypical. But Lucky didn’t say that. Tricia appeared as if she’d stepped off a cake in a Catholic school. The short frilly dress she had on was the epitome of sweetness and light, the veil on her head too incongruous to be cute. Lucky had ridden to the prom on the back of her older’s Hawg all those years ago, an embarrassing yet sweet-through-the-bitter memory she both cherished and loathed. And yet here was that same sister, virginal as she surely never had been, chaste and demure beyond the dreams of the nuns at St. Lovejoy’s.
T1 lay with his head in his twin’s lap. He trembled; T2 dripped traumatic tears.
“What happened to Awnt Twish?”
“I dunno, Bwother. Just hold me – nevah let go!”
“I pwomiss!!”
“But are you sure it’s a good idea?” Lucky was still doubtful. The twins hadn’t been told yet.
“Of course it is. My nephews are old enough to go out on their own this year. Besides… Are you gonna tell them they have to stay home, cause Jerry wasn’t available? And you’re going out?” She closed one eye meaningfully.
“Well, couldn’t you break the news to them? They…” Lucky was about to say, they love you more. But she drown that unwanted birth, not given to the oceanic depths of introspection at which dwell strange creatures such as these.
“No, I can’t.” Firmness, familiar. Familial. The sort that turns the weighty decision on genetics, the slightest of reasons.
“You could…” Her sister’s dress was still unnerving, a doily on a dump truck. Lucky knew it would be unfair to ask Trish to give up her own plans, take T1 and T2 around gathering candy.
And Tricia would give her no easy way out.
The lioness sighed. “I guess it wouldn’t be right, would it?” The answer on her sister’s face was obvious.
Who took it in stride. “Awright, boys!” their aunt bellowed down the hallway. “She fell for it. Getcher costumes on!”
Shrills of joy echoed through the house. Tricia shrugged innocently, turned to her sib’s bookshelf.
“Got any Clive Cussler?”