This is the first part of a Halloween story featuring a lynx and a wolf on a date. What is the wealthy wolf hiding in his huge mansion...? Look out for Part 2 just before Halloween!
(Part 2 will be broken into two further version - one adult, and one mild.)


The Wolf and the Door
Part 1

A Halloween Tale by Finch



I felt idiotically adolescent as I stood in front of Kevin’s house, my heart beating fast as I tried to summon the brief courage necessary to ring the doorbell. I was 30, well old enough to be beyond that sort of pre-date anxiety. Just a date, like maybe dozens I had been on before. But this time it was with someone I was pretty sure I was a fan of. Maybe that accounted for the jitters, but regardless, I felt a little ridiculous, outside in the dark, dressed in an outfit I hoped was both sophisticated and sexy (a slim, muscle-hugging turtleneck in burnt orange under a cream-colored denim jacket), my tail twitching involuntarily behind me as I stood on a doormat that read “Trick or Treat!”, my finger hovering over the button that would ring the bell and usher me inside and into Kevin’s unusually large Uptown house.

A sudden shriek behind me made physically jump, a whole-body twitch that jolted my hand away from the doorbell. I turned around to identify the scream as coming from a girl belonging to a pack of about six of ‘em, all costumed in various revealing outfits, a group of young people obviously heading to a raucous night of Halloween partying. The holiday fell on a Wednesday this year, so the whole week was bookended with parties on both weekends. The sole party I had replied “Yes” to was next Friday, and from what I could tell, the weekend fewer revelers had chosen as the “true” Holloweekend. At 30, I was beyond caring about making sure I chose the best-attended parties, or the craziest, or the one with the most fervent costumers. A small get together was fine with me. And besides, my costume this year wasn’t complex—just a construction helmet I planned to wear with a reflective orange safety vest, nothing else underneath, stripper-style.

That Saturday night, my only plan was not fucking it up with Kevin. I was becoming a fan of his. And he was a very good-looking wolf.

Getting scared by the party-night scream of an undergrad just made me feel even more ridiculous, so I steeled myself, swung around, and hit the doorbell without further delay. From inside, I could hear a pleasant, bass-heavy chime. I let myself feel the cold breeze blow the fur on my face. Kevin opened the door, and it took me by surprise—I hadn’t heard him approaching it from the other side.

“Hello,” he said with a honey-warm smile. He had on a silk navy shirt over tight gray slacks, and, like something out of a fucking movie, a towel tossed casually over one shoulder, obviously still in the middle of cooking something, the scent of which was now starting to waft through the open doorway.

“Hi,” I replied. Kevin had specifically, and insistently, told me not to bring anything. He would have it all covered. I didn’t even pretend to protest at the time. Kevin was a wealthy man. He knew it, and I knew it.
“Come in,” Kevin said, and moved to let me into his house.

From outside, the house looked large, bigger than most on the block, but nothing ostentatious. Inside, I could tell it was truly huge. The entryway immediately recessed into a sprawling, open living room that seemed to extend back further than I would have guessed possible by looking at the house from the front. A glass and white-wood staircase near the right of the living room led to a second floor I couldn’t see. Also to the right, I could see a peek into the kitchen through an open doorway, all stainless steel and marble. There was an island in the kitchen over which hung an expensive-looking set of pots and pans, and although half of it was out of my view, I could see that the island contained a large oven, at that point currently in use. A sizable pot on the range above the oven gave off a visible waft of steam that floated toward the exhaust fan also hung above the island countertop.

“Wow,” I said as I took a few steps inside. And then, pretending like I had seen such opulent wealth before, “A pretty cozy place you’ve got here.”

Kevin gave a small, understanding laugh. “C’mere,” he said and followed it up by swinging his arms around me in a full-bodied hug. I could smell above his cologne—oak and vanilla and money—the scent of whatever he was working on in the kitchen. This strikes me as corny to say, but I’ll relay the fact anyways – buried in the large wolf’s upper chest, it was one of the finest hugs of my life. While on other dates I found such tactile interactions fraught and a little uncomfortable (how long should we maintain contact? Should I make the hug seductive with a sensual rub of the back? Would a tight squeeze indicate interest, or should I opt for something gentler?), that night, the costumed undergrads in the world outside already a far-distant memory, I felt nothing but genuine and happy desire. I was not becoming a fan of Kevin, I was already a devotee, and it only took until that moment to realize it.

“I’m sorry,” Kevin said as we pulled apart, both of us already in a new lifetime, “but I’ve got something going I need to get back to before it burns. I’m not as good at timing these things as I think I am.”

“Of course, of course,” I said, ushering him with my paws back toward the kitchen. “Anything I can help with?”

“No, no, I’ve got it.” Kevin was already hallway to the kitchen, and I followed slowly, not trying to appear too attached.

I stopped at the doorway and looked in as Kevin began to stir whatever it was that was in the pot. A glass Pyrex sat on the counter next to the stovetop, full of what looked like baked green beans. The oven light was on, but I couldn’t see through the glass to guess what was baking in there. Kevin had promised me something autumnal when we planned the date night earlier that week. The smell of something savory hit me with force, and I realized I was actually very hungry. The appetites were piling on top of each other.

“I’ve got a bottle open if you want some,” Kevin said, gesturing toward the end of the island. While he was bent over a giant recipe book propped open with an expensive-looking marble vase, I poured a glass of white wine from the open bottle into one of two stemless wine glasses Kevin had set out.

“Can I pour you one?”

“Please.”

I filled the other cup to what seemed a classy proportion, matching the amount in my own glass, before reevaluating and tipping another couple of heavy pours from the bottle into each container. Kevin was still scrutinizing the cookbook, one paw still distractedly stirring the mystery concoction in the pot, when I tried to hand him his wineglass. “Oh, can you set it there?” he asked, nodding toward an empty spot between ingredient-filled bowls. I obliged.

The wine was dry and tart. Not quite what I usually went for, but at that moment, I loved it. Hunched over, Kevin was about at my height now, and I could see the muscles in his back straining the fabric of his shirt.

Kevin straightened up from the cookbook and looked at me. “Feel free to give yourself a tour of the place, if you’d like. This might take me a minute.”

“Sure, sure,” I said. I had been enjoying watching Kevin at work, at the way his body moved cooking, but I was happy for the opportunity for a little snooping, snooping blessed by the host no less. I kept my wine glass with me as I sauntered out of the kitchen and back into the living room. It was just as big as I remembered it from a few moments earlier. Against one wall, an enormous white leather sectional framed the largest television screen I had seen outside a sports stadium. Further up that same wall, a second seating area was staged around a fireplace. The fabric sofa there looked luxurious and comfortable—qualities I confirmed by testing it with my ass. However, the accent chairs that complemented the arrangement were angled and austere, a lot of polished wood with not a lot of cushion. Even to my less-sophisticated eye, though, they looked tasteful and pricey.

There was a small, covered porch attached to part of the living room that opened up to, had it been day, I’m sure would have been a bright green yard. The size of the yard was like the house itself: surprisingly roomy. Since when did Chicago blocks accommodate mansions of this size? Was Kevin also paying for some sort of space-dilating technology that artificially bent space-time to allow for a bigger house? I peered through the dark, sipping my wine glass, looking for the pool. There were no obvious light switches, so I had to make do with the light coming from the living room windows and the moon above. No pool. So I guess not that impressive, on consideration, I thought sarcastically. I laughed a little to myself then, the wine perhaps already getting to me; how had I bagged someone like Kevin?

Back inside, I made a quick run of the upstairs, which consisted of three bedrooms, two huge guest rooms and one monstrous master. I didn’t go into Kevin’s room, but even my quick peek through the doorway gave me a glimpse of a large attached bathroom and at least one walk-in closet filled from floor to ceiling with clothes. Kevin’s bed was made, but the tops of both his nightstands and dresser were cluttered. Compared to the austere guest rooms, Kevin’s room was lived in, even, despite its size, a little cozy.

But even more than a possible pool, the thing I hoped to see the most was a basement. I knew enough about Chicago architecture and construction to know, despite the modern interior renovations, this building had to be pretty old. If there was anything left of the original structure, any traces of what it had been along the way, I would find it down below. Unless it had been turned into a home theater, which wouldn’t be so bad either. But I hoped for something less finished. The underground in a city fascinated me. Things got written into the air below ground and persisted in ways they didn’t up above the street, echoes small and big from the beasts who came before us. Some places, outside America, even had the history of before the Change etched into the ruins below the feet of their inhabitants.

So I was pleased that the door below the staircase, made of some sort of shiny and solid rosewood, opened to a dark staircase leading to an equally dark basement. I switched the light on above the stairs and was further delighted: wooden stairs, some sort of ancient wood that looked frayed in a few places. I put a foot on the stop step to test it: yes, it could even be described as rickety. I couldn’t believe my luck. The extent of Kevin’s money obviously hadn’t been able to reach refinishing an old basement. Or maybe, and this would certainly endear me to him forever, he shared my love of buried, ancient Chicago.

I knew I should probably go back to Kevin in the kitchen, insist on a peek at the subterranean later, but I was already on the top stair. A quick glance wouldn’t hurt. I put my foot on the next step, eliciting another high-pitched moan from the old wood. Step by step, squeak by squeak, I made my way into the basement.

At the bottom of the stairs, I could see the extent of the room. The ceiling was low, but the room was big and filled with so many shelves I couldn’t see to the opposite side. The room obviously was big enough to fill up the entire footprint of the mansion. Just to my left, an old lightbulb sat glowing a dim amber from its perch on a large stone column, likely part of the original foundation of the structure. The shelves, made alternatingly of wood and chrome metal, were filled haphazardly with boxes, tubs, old crock pots, garbage bags bulging in jagged, random directions, and other miscellanea as befitting a wealthy wolf. They extended in an orderly labyrinth. As I walked the maze, I could tell by the settled dust that some stuff had been moved recently and other stuff looked like it could predate Kevin’s arrival at the mansion. If there was an organizational system to it all, I couldn’t determine it.

As I ran the back of my index finger along what could only be described as an old and simple cauldron sat alone in the middle of a shelf, its ancient dust collecting in my fur, I noticed against the wall a narrow, maroon door. It looked older than anything else in the basement. A third of the way up the entry, a window framed in iron with vertical iron bars like a jail cell window revealed nothing but pure, black beyond. A knob, the same color as the iron bars of the window, sat above a keyhole, the sort of keyhole one would look through to catch a glimpse of a crime like from a murder-mystery set in the Victorian days. I clapped by paws together to rid them of the accumulated dust and walked toward the door. There was a lightbulb above the doorway, but it wasn’t shining, so I couldn’t make out any of the fine details of the door, nor anything beyond it.

I wasn’t surprised when the knob didn’t turn, but I pushed on the frame of the door anyways and startled when it began to swing open. Cracked half a foot, I could just see further black inside. I pushed a little harder and the door moved more, the bottom scraping a little on what appeared to be packed dirt. I could start to smell what was in the room—wood, some earth, like damp moss or leaves, and something almost sweet I couldn’t identify. It was noticeably chillier standing in the widening doorway. My eyes began to adjust a little to the lack of light, and faint geometric outlines began to emerge, large rectangles and circles. I put my paw on the edge of the door, ready for the big push that would open it the rest of the way, when I saw movement against one of the rectangle shapes in the room.

“Fuck” I said involuntarily and stepped back. I got ahold of myself and grabbed the iron knob of the door to close it as fast as I could. It knocked against the frame with a solid thud like the sound of a tomb door being closed. I looked another beat at the iron window in the doorframe, waiting to see – what exactly? A pair of dim eye reflected in the basement light?

Two turns into the maze of shelves and knickknacks, I nearly collided with a giant wolf.

“Got lost?” Kevin asked. He held two wine glasses. “You forgot this at the top of the stairs.” He extended one of the glasses, the more drunk of the two, toward me.

“Thanks,” I said, feeling a little out of breath and a little caught, although what I had been caught doing, I wasn’t sure. Although perhaps snooping around a partially finished basement on an early date was a little much. Kevin appraised me with an easy smile as I took the glass from his outstretched paw. The smile didn’t waver as we both waited a beat for the other to say something. Something like uncertainty crept into my mind, and the creepiness of the basement—cobwebs, dimly lit corners, creaky wood, a dark chamber with a medieval-looking old-ass door—finally hit me. It was just me and a wolf nearly a full head taller than me down there.

Finally, Kevin’s smile widened just a hair and he chuckled. “Couldn’t help yourself, could you? My little explorer.” He looked handsome in the basement light now. He probably always looked handsome. “Got the full tour now? Want to return with me to the land of the living aboveground?”

I smiled back. “Of course.” And then, feeling like I should say something more. “I like old homes.”

“Doesn’t get much older than this,” Kevin said, and then led me back to the staircase that deposited us into his cavernous living room. I could smell whatever Kevin had been working on a little more now, the delightful and pungent odor jumpstarting again my potent appetite.

“Just a little longer for the soup to simmer. Butternut squash with black beans and quinoa and some homemade rye break bowls I made yesterday. More of a stew than a soup—I remember you saying how much you like stews when the weather turns cold.”

I had such as much, but even I didn’t remember saying it, let alone thinking it, but I had on our very first date, a boozy meetup at a highbrow bar just a few blocks away from Kevin’s mansion. Early on in the date, Kevin had promised to pick up the bill and encouraged me to drink what I wanted, even, actually especially, the pricey whiskey cocktails which were the bar’s specialty. Despite his casual dress that night, I had spied his Cartier dress watch, an unmistakably bona-fide piece, and realized I was dealing with a rather monied canine, taken him up on his offer, and got properly drunk on some of the best whiskey I’d ever drank. During one of my drunk ramblings, I had extolled to Kevin my love of the autumn, mentioning, among the other virtues of the season, the pleasures of a hardy stew, despite having had stew twice, maybe three times total in my life. He had remembered.

We sat together on the white sectional across from the huge television, Kevin at one angle and me close by on the other, a respectful distance between us. I set my wine glass on the mid-century coffee table an arm’s reach away while Kevin took a measured sip from his own glass, his massive paw tipping the liquid gracefully into his mouth. The gray fur on his also-massive muzzle twitched ever so slightly as he withdrew the glass from his lips.

“1909,” Kevin said.

“What?”

“That’s when it was built, this house. During the first Chicago Boom after the fire. So technically not the oldest around, but definitely has some history in its bones.”

“No doubt,” I said stupidly. I was trying not to stare at the muscles of his upper chest peeking out from his silk shirt.

“There’s another section to it, an old event room and servants’ quarters attached to the kitchen, but it hasn’t been updated since the 50s and is unusable. For now, at least. It’s my upcoming project.”

I wanted to ask him about the room I had seen in the basement, but Kevin was smiling at me with his eyelids a quarter closed, his shoulders relaxed, his shirt unbuttoned at the top a deliberately provocative number of buttons, a paw resting casually on his inner thigh. No need to remind him of my snooping around. We looked at each other for a few moments more, neither of us saying anything. Kevin’s smile didn’t waver. Somewhere, a clock I hadn’t noticed, probably something either classy and ornate or chic and minimalist, ticked seconds away with a steady, audible click.

Just as I was about to try and say something alluring-and inane about how my own project was my body, working on it at the gym, there was a shriek from outside, loud enough to hear from the street and through the stone walls of Kevin’s house. We both startled, my jump a little bigger, before we heard the cackling laughter. Another group of Halloween revelers—the same piercing scream inspired by pre-game beers and costumed inhibition as had scared me before at Kevin’s front door. There was no escaping the party in Uptown Chicago when the end of October came around.

I smiled a little sheepish at Kevin and he returned it with a knowing shake of his head. The kids, huh? Just as he opened his mouth to say something, I was startled again—how many time would I jump that night?—by something shrill and electronic coming from the kitchen.

“The stew,” Kevin said in a low register, his voice almost a growl, like he had smelled prey out on the open field. “I’ll be attending to that”

“Let me help,” I said, making to stand up.

“No, no, I wouldn’t think of it.” Kevin winked at me. “It’ll just be a minute. Stay right there. If you’re good this time, I’ll bring you some more of that.” He pointed toward my wine glass on the coffee table.

“Deal.”

As Kevin walked into the kitchen, I couldn’t help myself: I bore a hole straight through the seat of his pants looking at his ass he walked, his tail swishing ever so slightly. He disappeared into the kitchen. From where I sat, I could just see a sliver of the other room, a slice of the marble island and what looked like a stately dining table a few feet beyond. I could hear Kevin open a drawer, the rustling of various metal and wooden utensils, and then the sound of what sounded like liquid sloshing into a glass. I relaxed on the couch. After a couple seconds, I thought fuck it, and grabbed my glass of wine to down the rest in one swig, the tart white filling my mouth so my cheeks bulged ever so slightly. I tried not to make a sound as I put the glass back on its coaster.

I rubbed my paws on the front of my pants, trying to quell the semi-erection borne of the scant glimpses of Kevin’s body. No need to embarrass myself with that like I was some over-excited teenager. I craned my neck around to get another quick glimpse of where Kevin had vanished into the kitchen. No sight of him, but I spied the source of the ticking, a clock, smaller than I had imagined, cream face with black hour and minutes hands but a bold blue second hand. Small, but it still looked like something that cost as much as my monthly rent. A little entranced, I watched the blue second hand tick away ten seconds, then twenty, then thirty, before I realized how strange I would look if Kevin suddenly came back into the living room. I checked my phone: it was just a little after 8. A gurgle in my stomach reminded me again of my appetite.

Against the same wall where the fireplace was set, there was a white bookcase that extended nearly to the ceiling. It was filled with knickknacks and small sculptural items amidst a scattering of books laid horizontally in neat piles. Another quick glance to the kitchen confirmed no returning Kevin, so I stood and walked the few paces to the shelf. The first stack of books at eye level were large art books, the spines displaying the names of famous photographers, only a couple of whom I recognized. I leafed through the topmost book on the pile, looking through a collection of snapshots with the same woman, a beautiful lioness, staged and posed in various ways as to resemble stills from films. I put the volume back and surveyed the rest of the offerings. A cubist face, a wolf, grimaced at me a couple shelves up, and I amused myself by trying to form my own face into the same expression. My eyes continued their sweep upward.

Near the very top of the shelf there was a stack of books with a simple black cube sitting on top. None of the books had writing on their spines, and at least a couple of them looked old and frayed. I squinted a little, and I could make out that the cube wasn’t all black like I had thought: there were strange symbols inlaid in faint gold around the entire thing. Along the spine of the largest book that made up the base of the stack I could see the same symbols in the same faint gold. They looked runic. I reached up as far as I could, but my paw was just able to make it to the book, and I could feel the cracked, leathery binding under my fingerpad. As I withdrew my paw, I was aware of the silence of the house. I looked back toward the kitchen—still no sign of Kevin, and I couldn’t hear him anymore either. Just the ticking of the clock was audible.

Kevin wouldn’t mind if I appeared to help him with the stew. But when I entered the kitchen, the wolf wasn’t there. A half-filled glass of wine sat next to a pan covered in tin foil. I wandered over to the dining room; the table was set up with two place settings, one on the end and one right next to it, kiddy-corner. I gripped the back of wood dining chair and gazed around the rest of the kitchen. The marble countertop against the far wall extended back to what appeared to be a sizable walk-in pantry. I couldn’t see behind the corner where the counter and cabinets ended, and then I remember Kevin mentioning the unfinished section of the house—maybe the entrance to that was back there and was where the wolf had vanished to.

Sure enough, I was half-right in my initial assumption of a large pantry; there certainly was an enormous square room filled floor to ceiling with wire shelving containing a truly astounding quantity of foodstuffs. But one section of the shelving was ajar, revealing a semi-obscured doorway to a short hallway, itself containing two weathered doors. Both were closed. A single light fixture on the ceiling was turned on. Fuck it, I thought, and tried the rightmost door first.

It was the entry to the unfinished section, which in the dim light coming from the hallway appeared be an ancient ballroom in miniature. I could make out a light fixture, a whole chandelier, hung in the center of the room. Underneath was unpolished hardwood flooring that ran the entire course of the space, which was empty save for some sort of bar running a short length against the far side of the room. I thought I could make out the fixtures for curtains above the sizable windows on both sides of the ballroom, but whatever window dressings that had existed had been long since been removed. Also notably missing: an attractive and tall gray wolf dressed in a sexy silk shirt. I took one more glance around and shut the door behind me.

The other door took a little more effort to open as it resisted giving way in its frame. After a hard tug on the doorknob, I nearly struck myself with the door as it swung quickly open. I was hit with a blast of cold air and a smell I had experienced before. Immediately inside the doorway was a black-metal spiral staircase going straight down. It was another entrance to the basement.

Before I really realized what I was doing I found myself halfway down the spiral staircase, my paws gripping the flaky metal as I made my way down the steep, winding stairs. A servant’s entrance back in the day, I guessed. At the bottom, I was deposited into a different entrance to the same labyrinth of shelves I had encountered earlier. The lights were on, but no sign of my wolf-minotaur.

It didn’t take me long to end up back at the maroon door with the iron-barred window—I must have been close to the other entrance on my first visit before I beat my hasty retreat and was rescued, if that was the right word, by Kevin. This time the door was open, and I could see that a light was on inside. Just as I was about to stride forward, another cold jet of air seemed to materialize from the bare floor of the basement and blow sudden apprehension into me. What had I almost seen earlier? I looked at the open door—with the light inside, I could see bits of the maroon paint was flaked and scratched off in places. No, that wasn’t right. The scratches formed patterns, indiscernible to me but containing the hint of familiarity. The light inside flickered a little: movement.

To Be Continued…