Prison Cel

By Pappy Wolf

Franco Provini made one last lap around the gallery, his tread getting heavier with every step. He’d given up looking forward to a Clement Glass exhibition years ago, but his paper still expected a review. What could he say at this point? The only thing that ever changed with Glass’ work was the medium. Paintings, ceramics, bronzes, fabric sculptures, even mobiles… the hapless striver had tried them all with zero innovation. Everything looked like something someone else had done better. The compositions were inept, even jarring to look at.

This evening’s offerings included drone photos of drawings Glass had inscribed in damp beach sand with a stick. He had made the unfortunate choice of framing the images behind highly polished glass which reflected the glare of the gallery lights. Provini saw his stern, tan face glowering back at himself, his tweed jacket, dense black beard and mop of silver curls giving him the air of a disapproving teacher. The choice to eschew matte glass could be intentional, he supposed. A reflected image could make the observer part of the art. But he didn’t trust Glass to be that clever.

As always, Glass’ imagery was baffling. Provini considered himself a reasonably clever man, but he couldn’t determine any rhyme or reason behind what he saw. It wasn’t symbolic or shamanic or anything. It was merely a collection of random images mushed together in a chaotic collage. The only thing he could tolerate in Glass work was the cartoonish nature of his figures: goggle-eyed, toothy anthropomorphic dopes with big teeth and bulbous noses. Provini was an aficionado of animation and owned a vast collection of animation cels from the all-time greats like Fleischer Studios, Tex Avery, Burt Gillet and Harmon & Ising. Glass’ scribblings were an insult to their craft, but at least the goony faces gave him something pleasant to rest his eyes on.

Despite almost universal critical drubbings, influential people paid big money for his work. He was a wealthy man. Any decent hack would have taken his ill-gotten loot and retired. But no, Glass only worked harder. There were rumors that he was a pill addict and never slept these days. Provini found himself praying the man would overdose and leave him in peace.

A husky baritone with an unpleasant Kentucky twang interrupted his brooding. “See something you like?”

Provini beheld the artist himself, smiling wanly and holding two plastic cups of wine. Glass wasn’t an unattractive man. Provini always had a thing for bears, and Glass was a prime example: tall, stocky and hairy with multiple piercings, including a septum ring, and an almost obnoxiously prominent bulge. He had the prerequisite male pattern baldness and closely shorn pate, plus a blonde walrus mustache with a white streak on the left side. But there was something in Glass’ dark blue eyes that always put Provini’s teeth on edge. It was a look. Vague and distant, as though Glass was looking at something behind you.

Glass handed him a substandard Merlot and answered his own question. “No, of course you don’t see anything you like. I can tell. I can see the withering headline in my mind.”

Provini inhaled sharply. “What do you want me to say to you at this point? You know how I feel about this. The medium doesn’t matter. At its core, this is just more of the same.”

“Good thing it’s not FOR you,” Glass sniffed.

“Nobody said it should be.” He glanced over his shoulder at a well-known political operative conversing excitedly with Glass’ agent. “You have a huge fanbase. You should be proud.”

Glass followed his gaze and said, softly, “It’s not for THEM, either.”

Again, something enigmatic surfaced in the man’s expression. Provini wanted to know more. Did Glass ever interrogate his own motives? Maybe not. His style suggested something impulsive and perhaps uncontrollable. Like it was a bodily function. That would explain the detached nature of it. But Provini wanted him to improve. He wanted to like his art. Maybe, if someone pressed him on why he did what he did…! Intrigued, he leaned forward and asked, “Who IS it for, Clement?”

The artist flinched. “Sorry… I kind of drifted off there for a moment.” The vague blue eyes suddenly came alive, peering at Provini with a sparkling alertness. Provini had never seen the man look so alert. At last, he was looking at him and not through him. “Dear old Franco,” he breathed. “I can’t explain it. Not now and not here. But we’ll see each other again, very soon. I’ll lay it all out for you then.” With that, the artist seized his hand and squeezed it. And then his smile grew shy, his eyes clouded, and he walked away in his usual rolling, bowlegged gait, happily muttering to himself.

Provini had a late supper with friends that night. They introduced him to a charming and very handsome young man with a fireplug build, a notched eyebrow and muttonchop sideburns. His name was Dutch. The kid was an animator. His friends asked Provini how things were going with his divorce from Tony, and then they spent the next hour relaying complimentary facts about Provini to Dutch and vice-versa. Provini was so preoccupied by his odd encounter with Clement Glass that he didn’t realize the dinner had been intended as a surprise blind date. Luckily, Dutch hadn’t been in on the plan, and he was just as annoyed by the deception. Provini and he agreed to finger each other in the handicap stall and call it a night.

Back home, Provini was restless. While typing up his review he drank two bottles of Merlot (the good stuff, not that gallery swill) and passed out a few minutes after sending the piece to his editor. He dreamed of nothing remarkable, and yet he was overcome with dread. There seemed to be other minds in his dreams, watching him. As he moved through clumsy recreations of his favorite haunts, he began to feel oddly insubstantial. When he walked, he bounced, like an astronaut on the moon. The dream sidewalks acted like trampolines, sending him high in the air. And then, delicate silver chains descended from the heavens and put hooks into his airless hands and feet. The chains pulled at his limbs, making him dance.

He awoke with a wretched taste on his tongue and a sore nose. And a raging erection. His six-inch cock threatened to break through his designer boxers. Already, a dark stain was spreading over the cotton crotch. His thoughts were velveteen, the way they always were first thing in the morning.

But was it morning? The light from outside was dim, although the clock indicated it was almost nine. Not thinking about it, he placed a hand on his damp bulge and playfully squeezed it. “Save it for the bathroom, old boy,” he scolded himself. Pulling his hand away, he could still feel fabric on his fingertips. And then he saw it.

He was wearing gloves. White silk gloves with vents on the back. He did own a pair like that, but he’d only worn them once to a retro formal event, along with his tuxedo and a rented top hat. Why did he have them on now? Had he been sleepwalking? That was a worrying thought. Annoyed, he tried to pull them from his hands, but they refused to budge. He flexed his fingers, feeling a tingle in the flesh. His hands felt a bit swollen. Just like his nose. Grabbing his phone from the nightstand, he headed for the bathroom to investigate.

The floor seemed to have a slight bounce to it. It was his sleepy imagination, he reasoned. The floors were polished concrete; they wouldn’t move at all. Still, he had the urge to bounce as he walked and even a notion to pump his shoulders and wag his arms in time to his steps. Too much Merlot… that was the culprit. He must still be a tad drunk.

When he saw his nose, the phone slipped from his gloved fingers and clattered on the granite sink top. The bottom half was indeed swollen, to an extent that it resembled a hot pink golf ball more than any human appendage. Gingerly, he probed it with his hand. Although it looked inflamed, it was not sensitive to the touch. His fingers clutched it and refused to let go. Slowly, they bore down on it, squeezing it until it was nearly flat. Suddenly, the fingers released their grip and the thing reinflated with the loud, wet honk of a Model T horn.

Within seconds, the nose lost all texture and grew perfectly round, smooth and shiny. Painlessly, his teeth released themselves from his gums and dropped to the sink top alongside the phone. In a panic, he used a suddenly very swollen and very long tongue to swab the stragglers from his mouth and spit them out alongside the first. New teeth were coming in. Big, blocky ones, featuring a championship set of buck teeth that protruded past his lower lip. And then the whole lower half of his face distorted, pushing outward into a cartoonish, green-furred canine muzzle with whiskers and an overbite. His dog’s tongue hung from one side of his snout, dripping saliva onto the floor. He backed away from the horrifying image in the glass and crashed into the wall. He jabbered to himself, his voice sounding thick and deep and weirdly accented. “This isn’t… this isn’t happening… this isn’t ha—hah—huh HUH HUH HAW! GOLLY WILLIKERS!”

His shaft was harder than ever, and seemed much bigger now than should be possible. Something about his revolting part-cartoon state was turning him on, more than anything ever had in his life. The gloved hands seized his rod and yanked it over the hem of the boxers. It was covered in green fur, like his muzzle, along with his suddenly shaggy balls. “Huh HAW! I’m HORNY!” He yanked at his cock, watching it swell and grow like a balloon. The more he stroked it, the bigger it got, and he didn’t want to ever stop stroking it. His balls were the size of oranges, then cantaloupes, then watermelons, rampant with shaggy green and very musky fur, aching and sloshing with gallons of cum. His cock was a cop’s baton, no, a baguette, no, a baseball bat, and then as long as one of his own legs but much, much thicker than that. He was struck with the mind-boggling realization that he was still just looking at his canine sheath, because then a pointed red tip emerged from the furry flesh and stretched out five feet until the monstrous phallus was curving back over his head. He pleasured it with both arms, licked it with his ridiculous tongue, gave it sloppy kisses and gave it adoring compliments in his moronic deep South accent. It rewarded him with a shower of gooey cum that was as light as cotton candy and tasted like vanilla frosting.

Bathing in his own fluids hastened along the changes to his body. His gloved hands doubled in size while his two middle fingers merged into one. His feet followed suit, growing long and flexible with a green pelt to match his balls. His ears migrated to the top of his skull and flopped over, extending into things more befitting a basset hound, with a velvety green coat of hair. A V-shaped patch of green fur appeared in the center of his muscular chest. And a long, bushy tail emerged from the base of his back, just over a green-furred rump.

With his libido sated, he began to return to his senses. He skidded through a layer of evaporating cartoon cum and braced himself on the sink top to keep from falling. The mirror showed him a hybrid of cartoon and man. A freak. The cartoon parts of him reminded him of the work of BUB: highly detailed and textured, like a CGI version of some classic animated character. He still had his silver curls, but his beard had been reduced to a pointy goatee on his receded chin. His eyebrows had gone green and had exploded in size, jutting from his forehead in an untamed thatch. In his peripheral vision, he noticed that he was suddenly holding something. It was a mortarboard, its proportions as exaggerated as his own body. Embroidered in yellow block letters on the top was the misspelled word, “NAWLEDGE.” Already, his cartoon hands were placing it atop his head. There was a brief sucking sensation, and he realized that it would never come off.

Was he dreaming, still? Was he tripping? Had Glass put some slow-release hallucinogen in his drink? It couldn’t be real. Except that it FELT so real. He’d done peyote in college and ayahuasca at a strange “church” in Brazil. This wasn’t that.

He should call someone. It he was drugged (and of course, he must be), he should have a doctor get him cleaned out. His three-fingered hand fished through a pile of his human teeth and found the phone. His digits moved like lightning, tapping the number. Eagerly, he held the phone way, way up to his floppy ear, which obligingly lifted up for him.

A weary voice said, “Christ, Franco! What is it now…?”

His muzzle opened, his long tongue lapping at his square teeth. “Tony,” he breathed. “Huh HUH HUH HAW! I’M HORNY!”

A pause, and then the voice moaned, “Don’t booty call me on a Sunday goddamned morning, Tony. Are you drunk again? Are—”

Provini had stopped listening. The walls were shifting, moving toward him, pushing him out the door. As the tile shower crashed into the doorframe, the doorway shrank up into nothingness and left him with a blank wall. The loft ceiling was plunging down towards him, ventilation and water pipes snapping, his suspended track lighting crashing to the floor in a shower of sparks. All around him, doors and windows erased themselves, rugs and furniture sank into the floor like capsizing ships, and he was left to run around in rapidly shrinking circles, terrified, his absurdly large genitals bumping on the concrete as he screamed, “Golly WILLIKERS!”

Finally, he was left to cower in the middle of the floor with his eyes squeezed shut and his gloved hands over his dangling ears until the ruckus stopped. When he dared to open his eyes again, he found himself in cliché of a jail cell, just four stone walls, a cobblestone floor and a plaster ceiling. There was an arched wooden door outfitted with an oversized keyhole and an iron ring by way of a handle, and a small, barred window opposite that. A flickering torch mounted to the wall provided scant illumination. He bounced to the window and strained to see out of it. Crimson lightning hinted at a wasteland dominated by gnarled, dead trees.

The door swung open. Beyond the portal was a profound darkness. Provini bounced over to it. The torchlight stopped cleanly at the threshold, as though the darkness was eating at it. He shivered, crying, “A-hoo-hoo-HOO! This sure don’t look good for ME!”

Then, in the darkness beyond the door, a dot of golden light appeared. It shimmered and grew larger, expanding into a roughly humanoid shape. A rescuer! As the person drew closer, Provini could see that he was stocky and had a rolling, bowlegged gait. Clement Glass. It had to be. But as the artist neared, he could see that Glass had changed the way he had.

Cartoonish feline features marred Glass’s sexy body, all of them coated in fur the color of sunflower petals. A long, swishing tail lashed behind him, while his feet were plump and adorned with sharp claws. Like himself, Glass wore white silk gloves on his swollen hands. Big cat ears topped his skull, connected to his blunt kitty cat muzzle by lynx-like whiskers on the sides of his round skull. The well-known walrus mustache had gone stark white and grown into a grandiosely curling handlebar. His eyebrows had turned caveman like his own, but in a shade of yellow to match his pelt. He had the triangular patch of fur on his chest, and his cock and balls had been similarly distorted. An asymmetrical bronze star over his left nipple was engraved with the word, “LAW.” As he swaggered into the room, the door swung shut behind him. From nowhere, he produced an exaggerated British bobby helmet and placed it atop his head. In a bad Cockney accent, he growled, “Oi, you! Time for your punishment!” In his usual voice, he whispered, “Franco, it’s me! I can’t explain just yet but do me a favor and turn around.”

Too overwhelmed by everything to resist, Provini did as he was told. His obedience was met with a furious spanking. Weeping, the critic took the abuse and watched his green cock start to swell again. The hair on his arms stiffened. They were being watched. He was sure of it. With his cartoon dog dick at half mast, lust fogged his brain, and his fears fell away. He liked being punished. His tail wagged above the blows. Still, it seemed appropriate to pretend he was upset. “Golly WILLIKERS,” he screeched. “What in tarnation did I DO, Sir? YEOW! That SMARTS!”

“You know what you did, bitch,” the artist snarled. “But keep crying. It gets my motor going!”

The critic happily obeyed. Soon, the spanking ceased, and he felt a hard, warm, moist cock head the size of a volleyball probing his sore ass. Despite its girth, it pushed easily enough into what turned out to be a wildly elastic anus. His eye rolled backwards as a dumb animal passion swamped his compromised brain. Drool poured like a waterfall onto his own rampant cartoon cock. Mindlessly, he stroked it with both hands, keeping his rhythm in time to the artist’s thrusting. They came together, with the artist’s cloying cartoon cum erupting from Provini’s slavering canine mouth. The fact of it snapped him back to reality. He really was empty inside, just like in his dreams. His dog dick softening in record time, he collapsed to the floor, exhausted. The feline bobby withdrew and knelt next to him, a massive arm around his heaving shoulders. “Golly WIL--!” He caught himself and concentrated on speaking the way he should. “What is this, Clement? What are we doing? Is this real…?” His voice trembled.

Glass squeezed him and stroked his arm. “It’s real, alright. This is my final medium, and we’re both a part of it. I don’t have much control over it, sad to say.”

“You never had much control over ANY of your mediums.” The terror in his speech was giving way to an airy giddiness. His cartoon personality was trying to reassert itself.

Glass chuckled at the gentle insult and cast a nervous glance skyward. Provini followed his gaze but saw nothing but a ceiling. “I don’t know how much time we have before… I mean, I don’t know how much longer we’ll be able to talk like this. Like our old selves. But I wanted to explain, if I could. Are you a religious man?”

Provini looked curiously at his longtime journalistic target. The deep blue eyes were vibrant, glittering and gorgeous. “I used to be,” he confessed. “I would have called myself an atheist yesterday. Now? Fuck if I know.”

“Of course, of course. Me, I was always searching for God. Not in the usual sense. I wanted to see His face. Instead, I found THEM. They’re from somewhere outside our reality. They watch us, all of us. They control the universe. And they want to be entertained. When they saw me looking back at them, they demanded I make cartoons for them. I fucking HATE cartoons. Maybe that’s why I’m so bad at what I do. My heart’s not in it. But they thought it would be funny. And nothing I created was good enough. They’re the reason I’m popular. They arranged for me to earn a lot of money so I can make more art. But I’m… well, obviously, I’m a hack. A few days ago, they told me that they were going to take complete charge of the situation and do THIS to me.” He gestured at his warped body. “But they needed a second person to alter and stick in this scenario alongside me. Every Tom needs a Jerry. Every Coyote needs a Roadrunner. So, I chose you.”

A brainless laugh was at the back of Provini’s cartoon throat. He tried to suppress it, but it still bent his words into dry, chuffing sounds as he shook off Glass’s embrace. “Are you fucking kidding me…? This is what, then… revenge? For bad reviews? Are you that goddamn petty?” With renewed fear, he saw that both their overgrown cocks were getting hard again. Against his will, his hands flew to the artist’s rod and began to stroke it. Glass returned the favor.

“No, Lord, no…!” His voice had taken on the same horribly light-hearted tone as his own, but the words seemed to be sincere. “I like you, Franco. And I think you like me, too. You’re the only critic who seemed to want to understand me and who wanted me to improve. Everyone else just read me for filth and probably laughed their asses off while they did it. I couldn’t go through this with someone like that. And I don’t have any real friends. It’s sad, but it’s true.”

A thrill of pleasure was dancing through Provini’s green-furred cock. His fat fingers stroked and squeezed Glass’ yellow-furred rod with increasing force. The critic scoffed and looked away. “Wow, what a HAW HAW…!” He hurriedly bit his flopping tongue and felt a measure of self-control return. “What an HONOR. Oh, Jesus…! This is a nightmare! How long is this going to continue?” He braced himself for the answer as their strawberry-toned shafts arose from their bestial sheaths.

“This is it for you and me,” Glass replied, sadly. “Just the two of us in this room, me hurting you and then fucking you, over and over.” He flinched as the shaft quivered and dripped pre. In his awful Cockney voice, he cried, “Nnnggh… OI! Bless my soul, but you’re a born wanker!”

Provini blushed. “DAWWW…! I can suck a mean cock, TOO, sir! Huh HAW HAW HAW!” They came in tandem again, splashing the walls with sweat, foamy, ephemeral cum.

Back in his regular voice, the artist gasped, “I’m so sorry.”

‘Oh, the hell you are,” Provini scowled. He was so tired, and he could feel the cartoon dog clawing at his old personality, shredding it. Still, there was something hot about the combination of cartoon and man. They were like satyrs or centaurs or mermen. He wondered if those were his own thoughts or the dog’s. It was getting hard to tell the difference. “You absolute bastard… I can’t even tell who I am anymore.”

“Like I said, we don’t have much time. But you’re Professor Pooch and I’m Bobby Puss. A dog and a cat. A classic cartoon duo. I can feel Bobby Puss taking over for good. You can probably feel something like that, too. I guess it’s best if we just surrender to it. It’ll be easier that way.”

Beneath the whiskers and ears, Provini could see the sad, troubled and very handsome bear who had caught his notice so many years ago. He felt dizzy. Professor Pooch, phony hillbilly academic, was rummaging through his old memories and tossing them out. In their place were cartoon antics, with him building dangerous contraptions in a barnyard, drawing the ire of his nemesis, the perpetually outraged Bobby Puss. His past was flattening into a series of painted cels atop watercolor backgrounds. He took a deep breath and made his decision. With so little time left, he didn’t want to spend it mired in hatred. Wrenching his cartoon hands from Glass’ cartoon dong, he clutched the man’s kitty cat chin and said, “I forgive you.” With that, he placed his snout on the cat-man’s muzzle in a deep and very tender kiss.

Professor Pooch pulled back from the smooch, his retreating snout causing Bobby Puss’ mouth to stretch outward with the sound of a rubber band. Furiously rubbing his face, Bobby Puss hopped to his feet and sputtered, “Nobody does that to an officer of the law!” Producing a billy club out of thin air, he bopped the daffy dog atop his mortar board. The hat rose up into the air, spinning on the peak of an exaggerated welt.

Professor Pooch shrieked. “What did I do, Sir? What did I DO--?”