Waking up in Strangeville 

by

Emily Safeharbor 

A silent scream shredded her mind as reality melted like wax beneath a flame. She was nowhere, no body, no breath, no form, just the shriek of her being tearing loose from some existence she used to have. Around her stretched a hum: infinite, impersonal, like the engine noise of the universe idling behind an iron curtain. And folding into her from all sides were numbers, not the symbolic ones scrawled by human hand, but the actual forms of numbers, cold and vast, uncountable, pressing in like invisible architecture collapsing inward. Then, with a soundless snap, she was.

Consciousness crashed into form like a thunderclap, one moment outside of time, neither future nor past, the next present. The transition was violent. Vision surged into focus, breath returned in ragged gasps, and sensation poured across her skin like ice water. She blinked. Her surroundings sharpened in a rush of color and symmetry that made her head spin. Too much pastel. Too much noon brightness. The world around her looked like a detergent commercial come to life: rows of identical houses in soft, saccharine hues, each with white railings, hydrangeas in matching planters, and pink-painted doors. The picket fences ran in perfect lines, separating yards that seemed copied and pasted into place by a god obsessed with 1950s Americana. The clouds above didn’t drift . . .they held their shape like stickers glued to the sky. One in particular, shaped like a lamb, hadn’t moved at all since she blinked. She checked twice. It was the same.

Every house was a clone, same porch swing, same flower trellis, same windows gleaming with polished smugness. It was a neighborhood curated for bliss. Manufactured peace. A stepford geometry of domestic perfection. And there, dropped into its center like a misprinted character from the wrong book, was her.

She groaned, a sound torn from her dry throat like it had to claw its way out, and tried to push herself up. Her hands dug into the grass. Her arms trembled. She forced her elbows straight and tried to lift her chest. So far, so good. But when her legs attempted to follow suit, the coordination failed. Her hips drooped, her spine bent in a steep downward arch, and her knees splayed out in the grass, refusing to align beneath her like they should. She looked down, her breasts swayed, uncomfortably full and bare in the open air, and her thighs trembled from exertion. Her stomach churned. What the hell was wrong with her legs? Why did her wrists feel like they were designed to press into the earth rather than grip anything? She tried to stand again, growling through her teeth, but her feet curled the wrong way under her. Her ankles didn’t hold weight. They folded. Her body twisted forward with a dull thump, her forearms collapsing into the grass and her cheek mashing against the cold dirt.

She laid there panting, too confused to scream. Because it wasn’t just that her limbs weren’t cooperating, it was that they resisted standing. Every attempt felt wrong, like trying to ride a bike to the Moon. Her center of gravity had shifted down and forward, as though her hips and spine had been pulled into a new blueprint without her permission. Her muscles knew something she didn’t, some alien posture they insisted on returning to no matter how hard she pushed. And the terror rising in her throat wasn’t just confusion. It was recognition. This was happening.  She was experiencing this.  

And she was naked. Completely. She felt the breeze brush between her thighs. There was no mistaking it: she was like an animal whose sex was as much a part of her identity as her eyes or her name.

From this low, humiliating vantage point, cheek pressed to earth, limbs crooked and trembling, everything loomed. The white picket fence bordered her view like a child's crib, gleaming slats throwing long shadows across her half-naked back. The doghouse sat behind her like a taunt: white, pristine. She was wearing a collar and a chain too, the chain swinging between her breasts, and the name “CUPCAKE” engraved on her collar. She looked, really looked at the chain rattled behind her, bolted to a stake in the yard like a leash pinning a dog to its territory.

She wasn’t a dog. She wasn’t.

She tried to speak, tried to scream out the truth, I’m not supposed to be here, I’m a human, my name is,  but what came out was a soft, involuntary yip. High. Feminine. Breathy. It startled even her. Her eyes widened. She clutched at the collar, fingers fumbling, nails scraping at the buckle, but it wouldn’t release. Her palms didn’t work properly, her fingers refused to close all the way, and her wrists were stuck in a low angle that made them better for crawling than for unlocking anything.

A whistle, too bright, like a soundtrack from some sun-bleached sitcom. She lifted her head instinctively, heart catching with a flicker of hope, someone. Someone who might see her. Help her. But before she could form a word, her mouth betrayed her. Just another yip of happy submission. And there he was, stepping out of his truck like it was any other day, a grin stretched across his face, was a milkman.  He walked straight to her like nothing was wrong. Like she wasn’t naked, collared, chained to a lawn. Like she wasn’t human.

“Hey there, girl,” he said, squatting beside her with a breezy laugh. “You’re just glowing this afternoon, huh?” She stared up at him, frozen in her shame, unable to do anything but pant. He reached out and, oh god, his hand landed on her bare hip, stroking down with lazy, practiced ease. She jerked, but not away. Her body stilled. Her skin lit up where he touched. She felt heat blooming under his palm, trailing down her side to the soft curve of her ass. She tried to tell him to stop, to look at her, to see, but another little whimper slipped out instead. Feminine. Flustered. Her thighs twitched.

And then his hand slid lower.

She couldn’t breathe. His fingers brushed between her legs, petting softly, casually. Not perverse. Not even curious. Just kind. Like this was what he did for all the neighborhood pets. And her body, traitorous, humiliating, responded. Her slickness kissed his knuckles. Her hips rocked forward, just a little. Her breath caught on a moan. No. It felt good. It shouldn’t feel good, but it did, and he was already patting her ass and standing.

“All set,” he said brightly as he stopped. “Be good now.” He was gone before her brain caught up, whistling down the street. She stared after him, stunned, burning.

Then her limbs jolted into motion, crawling forward with frantic, clumsy jerks, too slow, too late. The leash snapped taut, jerking her back into the grass. She lay there, cheek in the dirt, thighs still wet, and wanted to scream.

She knew now, knew it with the gut-deep certainty of a nightmare that wouldn’t blink, that this wasn’t a hallucination or some fevered psychosis spiraling off the rails. This was somewhere else. The logic was wrong here. And at least one person in this bright plastic hell, one real, tangible, smiling person, had touched her naked sex like it was normal. Had looked her in the face and seen nothing strange. No alarm, no question. Just a pet in the yard.

Then, with a musical creak and the clink of ice in a glass, the door to … her . . . house swung open, and out stepped a vision ripped from the painted nightmare of a vintage ad. A 1950s housewife, flawless and glossy and gliding down the porch steps in kitten heels and pearls, her lips lacquered red as a candy apple. She spotted her at once and smiled with perfect teeth. "Oh, Cupcake! There you are."

The world was framed from below, angled as though her own height had shriveled, stolen away and replaced with this humiliating nearness to the floor. She could see under the woman’s dress, the swish of the hem, the padded bra outline through cotton, things she should never be seeing from this angle, this low, like a creature beneath notice.

She groaned again, weak, shapeless, high in the throat, and the woman above her just giggled, cooing like the noise was adorable. “That’s my little chatterbox,” she said, fingers combing through Cupcake’s hair like brushing out a well-kept show dog. “You always get so vocal when you’re happy to see me.” Her gloved hands moved with practiced rhythm, stroking down the sides of her pet’s face, tracing her jaw, then gliding lower, over her shoulders, past the chain that swung between her breasts.

Her gaze followed the sway, lips parting just slightly as she tsked. “Still heavy,” she murmured, almost to herself. “Might not be able to wait until lunchtime, sweetie. You poor thing.” Then, with casual ease, her hands slipped down and cupped the girl’s bare breasts from beneath, lifting and weighing them like she was checking a cantaloupe at the farmer’s market. “Look at you, just bursting again. Always so full at noon.” Her thumbs rolled over the nipples, brushing them in slow circles. “That’s what I get for sleeping in.”

Cupcake whimpered, but it was soft, almost pleased, an ugly sound her body gave without permission. Her thighs squeezed reflexively. Her nipples hardened against the cotton of the gloves.

“Oh, you like that, don’t you? Don’t you?” the housewife giggled, leaning in to nuzzle the girl’s ear like she might with a particularly affectionate retriever. She squeezed her pets breasts gently, then again harder, letting her fingers bounce the flesh. “Good girls love their noontime rubs. Isn’t that right, baby?”

The front door creaked open behind them.

The man of the house stepped out, all clean lines and cheerful stride, black pants, white shirt, suspers, and black tie straight, shoes glinting in the sun. “There’s my Cupcake,” he called out, voice full of mid-day warmth. “Is she already getting frisky?”

“She’s been waiting since she woke up this morning,” his wife beamed, not stopping her soft fondling, fingers now rubbing lazy circles around the areola. “I think she missed us.”

“She’s always so responsive,” he said proudly, descending the porch steps. “We’ve got the happiest little dog on the block.”

“I was just saying how full she is,” the housewife replied, giving another playful jiggle before finally letting go, fingers trailing back up the chain, giving it a little tug that made Cupcake’s collar jingle like a bell. “She’s just bursting.”

The man chuckled, sipping from his thermos. “That’s our girl. Well, I guess I have time to take care of her before I leave for work.”

The words the man had spoken, “take care of her” weren’t words of comfort, not when spoken with that cheery calm, that dreadful domestic routine. It was the tone someone used when refilling a pet’s water bowl or rubbing their belly before work. And the way his belt buckle had clicked, the casual flick of his wrist as he undid it, God, her body knew what was coming before her mind let itself say it. And still, somehow, the fear in her chest didn’t translate to words in her mouth. She could feel the panic in her ribs, the scream trying to claw its way out, but it translated into breathless whines and panicked yips. She sounded excited. Eager. She sounded like a dog being promised a treat, and that betrayal made her stomach twist in on itself with a horror too deep for language.

She spotted it by sheer accident, just beyond the edge of the porch, by the smooth expanse of white driveway. A piece of sidewalk chalk, stubby and worn to a nub, half-smashed at one end. It glowed against the concrete like a flare. Not a tool. A lifeline. She bolted for it, or tried to, her hands flailed beneath her, wrists bending too low, fingers refusing to grip or brace properly, forcing her to crawl. Her breasts swung beneath her like humiliating weights, brushing the lawn with every jolt of motion, and her thighs slid wetly with each jerky lurch forward. Her breath sawed in and out through clenched teeth as she reached the chalk, collapsed next to it, and fumbled it between hands not responding to any commands with finesse. Her fingers wouldn’t close right. Her palm had to press it into the pavement, dragging it awkwardly with a movement more like pawing than writing. But she didn’t stop. Her brain screamed commands at muscles that weren’t listening, and somehow, through sheer force of desperation, the message took shape.

I'M NOT A PET she scrawled, the chalk squeaking in protest as she gouged the white letters into the concrete. Her arms trembled from exertion, sweat running down the valley of her spine. The words came out jagged, crude, uneven as hell, but they were words. Her. Voice. On. Chalk! 

A declaration of sanity carved into this pastel nightmare. And then, faster, more erratic: HELP ME, scratched in frantic, broken strokes, the chalk nub grating on the driveway with each letter like a scream echoing through a storm. Her breath came in ragged gasps. Her hair stuck to her cheeks. Her thighs trembled and stuck together with the same traitorous wetness she couldn’t stop, but it didn’t matter. This was it. Proof. Something they had to understand. She lifted her head, eyes wide and pleading, and looked up at them, ready for the horror, the recognition, the moment where the veil would tear and they would see her.

They smiled.

The woman beamed like it was a party trick. “She’s doing the Chalk Trick again,” she said, clapping one gloved hand to her chest with delighted affection, like Cupcake had just fetched a ball on command. “Oh, honey, isn’t she just the cleverest thing?”

The man laughed, dropping his belt entirely now, the brass buckle clinking on the concrete. “She always does this when she gets frisky. It’s adorable.” He squinted at the writing like he was admiring crayon art on a fridge. “Look at those little squiggles. It’s almost like she’s saying, ‘Please pet me!’” The two laughed and started cheerfully walking towards her.  

Cupcake’s mouth hung open. Her chest heaved. She bent her head and spotted a newspaper near the milk crate, eyes scanned the front page. STOCK MARKET AT ALL TIME HIGH! It screamed.  She could read the headline. She knew every word. This world had her language. And yet when other humans saw her writing, they didn’t see it. They weren’t pretending not to understand.  They couldn’t see it was English.  

That broke something.

Not a crack. A shift. A plate inside her consciousness sliding an inch off its axis, misaligned now, uncorrectable. The woman leaned down, stroking her again with that same sickening fondness, the same gentleness that should’ve been comforting but was too polished, too practiced, too placating. “She’s really worked herself up,” she murmured, brushing sweat-matted hair from Cupcake’s forehead. “Did the Chalk Trick all by herself. That’s our clever girl.”

Cupcake didn’t flinch as the hand moved lower, gliding down her side again, this time not pausing until it rested on the heavy curve of her hip. Her knees twitched. Her stomach convulsed. She tried to say No, tried to blurt out Don’t, but it came as a breathless, high moan instead, almost a whine, not pleading but needy. It sickened her. The sounds coming from her own throat didn’t belong to her. 

The man crouched behind her again, hand ghosting up her inner thigh, his voice still cheerful, still infuriatingly casual. “She's soaked. Just look at her. Poor girl’s gonna burst if we don’t help.”

Cupcake wanted to scream what she knew. That she wasn’t a dog. That this wasn’t right. She remembered her home. Her job. Her name. Her human skin. She remembered all of it with perfect clarity, more vivid now than ever, because here, in this sunlit nightmare, it had become her last defense. Her identity wasn’t eroded, it was a fortress under siege. And now her body betrayed her again. Her hips arched forward. Her back bent wrong. Her thighs parted, wet, gleaming in the soft white sun. `

The husband’s hands slid down her back with the proprietary ease of someone handling something he owned, each stroke dragging a shiver across her skin, every inch of contact staking claim. His fingertips brushed the curve of her ass, down the backs of trembling thighs, pausing just enough for her muscles to tense in anticipation, revulsion, fear, and then back up, languid and warm, as if she were a pet he meant to soothe. She whimpered through gritted teeth, fists failing to clench, nails failing to dig tiny furrows into the grass beneath her. 

Her spine resisted all attempts at upright posture, her body insistent on its unnatural alignment, and her hips stayed canted and low, elevated only just enough that her sex was shamefully exposed, her breasts hanging beneath her and swaying as she failed to wiggle free. Her face burned, flushed and sticky with sweat, hair clinging in damp curls around her cheeks as her mind railed against every inch of her position, this wasn’t human, this wasn’t her, but her flesh couldn’t remember how to be upright, and the hands holding her were too strong.

He knelt behind her now, his movements steady and unconcerned, sliding his trousers down with the air of someone about to perform an afternoon routine, no urgency, no exhibition, just expectation. Her limbs quivered. Her back arched against her will. Her cunt throbbed. She hated it. Hated how ready her body felt. Slick and open and dripping, the heat between her legs more intense than any she had felt in her life intensifying with every second he hovered just behind her. Then she felt the first touch, blunt and hot and heavy, nestling between folds already wet, the head of his cock slipping along the seam of her with lazy precision, not yet penetrating but testing, brushing, parting her only slightly. Her breath caught. Her thighs tensed and twitched. She could feel how close he was, how easily he could slide inside.

And when he did, when his hips pushed forward with calm inevitability and his cock sank into her in a smooth, claiming thrust, the sound she made didn’t come from her mind. It burst from her throat, high, keening, helpless. Aaaaahn, ! Her jaw dropped open. Her cunt clenched tight around him, muscles fluttering in reflexive, shameful welcome. He was so deep, too deep, filling her like she was built for it, and her body responded as if it had been starved for exactly this. Slick heat squelched with each pulse of movement, and every inch he withdrew only made her hips rock back to meet him again. She didn’t moan, she whimpered, yipped, whined, a chorus of sounds that made her want to rip her own throat out, because none of them were human.

The woman was kneeling in front of her now, stroking her head with both hands, cooing softly like she was encouraging a trick. “That’s it, Cupcake. Just like that. You’re such a good dog. You’re so good for us, baby.” Her gloved hands moved lower, beneath the swaying weight of her breasts, cupping them gently, then more firmly. Cupcake’s breath hitched. Her eyes flew wide as those hands squeezed, lifted, pressed. Her nipples were raw and tight, almost aching, and then came the pressure. The first pulse of milk squirted free with a soft wet sound, and her whole chest seized, muscles spasming in a way she hadn’t even realized was possible. She moaned, high and cracked, trembling from the release. The milk flowed again under the careful rhythm of the woman’s hands, each stroke drawing more from her aching breasts, and with it came a calm she hated, a warmth, a rightness her mind screamed against.

Her body had needed it. Badly. She hadn’t known. She hadn’t realized how full she’d been, how heavy, how desperately she’d needed to be relieved. It shouldn’t have felt like this, it shouldn’t have felt good, but it did. It was overwhelming. A wash of sensation that dulled every sharp edge in her mind. The woman’s voice blurred into honeyed static, her touch rhythmic, expert, kneading and coaxing, and the milk kept coming. She sagged forward, the grass soft against her cheek, breath huffing in little ragged puffs as her back was fucked and her chest milked and her body just gave. She hated it. She hated it, but she couldn’t fight the end. Couldn’t stop what her traitorous flesh was building toward.

Her climax hit like a rupture in her spine, a seismic jolt that didn’t build or crescendo so much as detonate, all at once, ripping her apart with a savage pleasure that annihilated thought and form alike. One moment she was straining, resisting, gritting her teeth against the rhythm; the next, she was reduced to sensation, blinding, uncontrollable, molten. Her back arched, taut as a bowstring, every muscle pulled to the edge of pain as her cunt clamped down around the man’s cock, spasming in hungry pulses, milking him with mechanical inevitability. At the same time, her chest seized in sync, breasts jerking with every squeeze of the housewife’s gloved hands, milk gushing in thick, rhythmic bursts as her nipples throbbed with raw, aching release. Her cries broke apart into sharp, panicked gasps, strangled at the edge of articulation, each noise less human than the last, gurgled, yipping, barking sobs that drove her hips to grind helplessly backward, desperate and automatic, as if some deeper programming in her had taken the controls and all she could do was watch from inside.

The man groaned as he shoved deep, his cock pulsing inside her with deliberate, unhurried spurts, every pump of semen sinking into her with finality. She could feel it filling her, hot and thick, every drop soaking into the shameful softness of her most exposed part. She was being fucked, and her body accepted it with the helpless compliance of an organism obeying instinct. She sagged as the tremors began to slow, her limbs trembling and useless, the orgasm having hollowed her out like an emptied vessel. She was spent. Milked. Filled. And in that moment, as the last waves of climax rolled sluggishly through her, her body sagged into the grass in a posture of perfect, perverse fulfillment. Her mind screamed, clawing at the walls of her skull in protest, but her body knew only peace.

And then came the calm.

Not peace, exactly, something thicker. Slower. The aftershock of release, warm and drowning. A syrupy golden weight slid beneath her ribs and pooled low in her belly, tugging her down from within. Her muscles, wrung out and twitching, began to melt into the lawn like candlewax. Her eyelids fluttered. Each blink slower than the last. The sun pressed heavy on her back, the leash jingled softly as it swayed with her unsteady breath, and her limbs slackened, gone soft with endorphin-laced exhaustion. It felt like falling into a warm bath after running until you couldn’t breathe. She could feel the quiet pulling her deeper, soothing her, seducing her with the promise of nothingness. She didn’t want it, but her body did.

She fought it. Or thought she did. Her mind tried to scream again, to bite and claw and hold on to the last jagged edge of her awareness. She hated how good this felt. She hated it. She hated the contentment stealing into her bones, the slow rhythm of her breath, the heat pooling behind her eyelids. She hated how her thoughts were dissolving into color, into haze, into blankness. But her arms gave out first, then her shoulders, then her jaw slackened as the housewife leaned in and pressed a kiss to her brow. “Good girl,” she murmured, smoothing sweat-drenched hair from her forehead. “Such a good girl.”

She heard the man’s zipper go up. Heard his footsteps crunch over the walkway toward the car. And still, she couldn’t move.

She lay in the yard, cheek pressed to the grass, her view a surreal jungle of green blades standing tall like sentries around her. Each one impossibly clean, impossibly neat, dew clinging to their tips like faceted beads of glass, refracting the sky above into a thousand pastel fragments. Light poured down from everywhere, not like the sun but like a stage lamp, blanketing every surface in flat, perfect clarity. There was no darkness here. No shadows to hide in. It was the kind of light that exposed everything, that made privacy a fiction.

A sprinkler ticked on behind her. Tick-tick-tick, a mechanical chirping that set her teeth on edge, and then a soft hiss as water arced gracefully through the air. The arc curved wide, narrowly avoiding her prone form, not accidentally, but precisely. The droplets avoided her like she was nothing. Not grass. Not soil. Not worthy of watering. They passed above her and landed behind, fulfilling their designated purpose. And she, lying half-naked and leaking in the sun, was not part of that purpose.

And that thought, somehow, was the worst. The final one.

She wasn’t the grass. She wasn’t the homeowner. She wasn’t a person. She was the fuck pet.  The literal fuck pet.  Something put there by something else to fulfill a purpose. And as her eyes drifted shut again, her thoughts unraveling she felt the realization bloom quietly and awfully in the center of her chest, that she had a purpose here. It had been demonstrated to her. Proved. It was obvious now. She had a role, fuckpet, and she’d fulfilled it perfectly.

She tried to scream at the universe.

But all that came out was a happy yip.

The End.

[ Based upon the painting “Waking up in Strangeville” and done by request from the painter SliceReality. Painting can be found a deviantart ]