A straight razor does what my teeth couldn’t.

His scream is dull around the edges. I had to get him to swallow another painkiller.

I hold his detached penis in my hand, sticky with his blood. It feels smaller than it did when it was on him, and now the base is ragged, slanting slightly to the right.

No matter. I lick the blood off the palm of my hand. His blood. The taste is intoxicating.

Now my feet feel sticky. Looking down, I see blood is starting to mat my fur. I see the now-open arteries from which it sprays.

He laughs nervously in between his short gasps for breath. Labored breathing. Shock.

“Do you feel it, still?” I ask him. “You need another pill?”

He doesn’t say anything. His eyes are unfocused, a little glassy.

“Sonic?”

The hedgehog’s ears perk up. “No,” he forces out. “No, I’m—O.K. now, Demetri.”

“Sonic, I think you should take another one.”

He grits his teeth, lets out a low moan, before conceding. “O.K., O.K.”

I pull the little pill bottle out of my leather chaps. Twist open the top, with Sonic’s severed penis squishing between my fingers. Out pops a big green pill. Zohydro, 20 mg. Two slaps on his cheek and he opens his jaw. I place the pill on his tongue.

“Wadder,” he mumbles, pleading.

The rag I used for water last time, he sucked the thing dry. Two and two come together, suddenly. With the rag in the palm of my hand, I press against the bloody hole where his dick used to be. He groans, trying to buck away from me.

“Don’t fight it,” I command. “Don’t move.”

He complies, with reluctance. His blood soaks the rag in a matter of seconds.

“Yeah, baby,” I coo, stuffing the rag into his mouth. His teeth sink a little bit into my fingers, pain bursting under the skin of my fingertips like fireworks. Something jolts through my dick.

“You taste that?” He nods his head. “That’s your blood. How do you like it?”

Sonic sucks on the rag. “Mm,” he says, high-pitched and tense.

“How does it taste?”

“Fucking,” he manages to say, around my fingertips and a blood-soaked rag. He swallows the pill. I pull out of his mouth, trying to twirl his severed penis like a baton in my other hand. It’s too thick to do that well. It sticks to my palm too much.

“Now,” I can barely contain myself. “You want a taste of the real thing?”

He nods, enthusiastically, while swallowing hard. Opens his mouth. Sticks out his tongue.

“Close your eyes,” I tease him, the tone of my voice a little sing song. His eyelids flutter, then shut. I see the change; he wants to be good for me. Not only have I captured him as prey, now I’ve tamed him.

I press the head of his own dick against his tongue. He traces the bottom of it, up to the tip. His saliva mixes with the beads of blood on his severed penis. Or maybe that’s just the blood already in his saliva. There’s so much blood; it’s getting hard to tell from where it’s coming.

“Go on,” I push his dick a little further into his mouth. “Take a bite.” Turning prey into predator. Self-predation.

He bites down into the glans. His brow furrows. He chews it more, barely getting his jaw around it. Then he takes more of it into his mouth, almost automatically, so that it slips out of my hand.

“Stop,” I demand, with a hiss. “Leave some for me. That was the deal.”

He does stop. The severed penis falls out of his mouth, not at all chewed. It lands in the puddle of his blood with an audible wet slap.

“I—I can’t,” the disappointment drips off of his voice. “I can’t chew it.”

I pick it up off the ground. His teeth didn’t even leave a mark. I assume he didn’t try hard enough. Maybe the painkillers were affecting his ability to chew.

Two slaps of his cheek get his jaw back open. “This time I’ll help you,” I say, getting him to accept his own severed penis into his mouth. He shakes his head, protesting around his own dick. I pull it out.

“No,” he says. “I can’t. It can’t be chewed. It’s too tough.”

I examine it. It seems smaller than before, now. I carefully place it in my own mouth, feeling the cold, sticky traces of saliva on something that’s already been sucked. Tasting the tang of iron that’s now causing my stomach to flutter. And not in a good way.

Suppressing the urge to gag, I pull it out.

“It’s too tough,” he keeps saying, rolling his head deliriously. “It’s too tough. It’s too tough.”

He knew what I was looking for. He was looking for it, too; he was ready. He had just one request, though, on where to start. Like with a slice of pizza, it’s an unspoken rule that you always start at the tip.

Sliced bell peppers and onions accompany his genitals in one of my frying pans. It’s too late to go to the grocery store for a lemon, so I’m hoping that some butter will help it get tenderized enough.

Tying Sonic up to a dining chair wasn’t out of any erotic desire, not like the cross. It was necessary. He didn’t struggle. He just couldn’t sit up anymore. The telltale paling of his skin—visible even under that cheap blue dye job he has on his quills—showed me that he was running low on blood. Not that I would guess from the still-flowing stream from his crotch.

I push the severed penis around the pan, listening to the crackle of it frying. Press down against it with my wooden spoon.

It’s still too tough, even now.

Suddenly from the dining room, I hear a scream. Low at first, then getting louder and more desperate. Sonic’s. A ragged, wounded-animal cry tears itself from his throat.

Painkillers, I think. More painkillers. Leaving the penis on the stove, I run to his side, rapidly fishing that bottle of Zohydros out of my pocket. His eyes are wide open, just staring at nothing. The brain beginning to run out of fuel, I guess. Sputters from a motor that sucked in a fume. His screams make my head sting.

“Painkillers, Sonic,” I say. Slapping his face now five, six, seven, eight times to get him to open his jaw. “The food will be ready soon, I promise.”

Another pill on his tongue. This makes number nine. I press it in with my finger, making sure it adheres. For lubrication, I summon up a wad of saliva and spit in his mouth. It takes its sweet time getting there. My palm pushes against his throat, trying to manually stimulate his swallowing reflex. He swallows, he does. He takes it down. His dry tongue clicks on the roof of his mouth.

His jaw hangs slack. He stares past me, at the ceiling. He does not scream anymore.

I can’t say that it doesn’t slightly bother me, this mothering him. I’m not supposed to do that to prey. At least, I’ve never thought about doing that to prey, but this is my first time really predating.

“Sonic? Are you still with me?”

He nods, once, with his jaw still open. I push it back up, closing his mouth. And then I kiss him, deeply. Pushing my tongue into his mouth forcefully. Chewing on his lips with my own. Reminding myself of my—I mean, reminding him of his place.

Sonic’s mouth moves with my own. But he doesn’t kiss me back.

It’s not as fun when you don’t get a response.

When I walk back to the kitchen, smoke is starting to stream out of the pan. I curse, flipping Sonic’s penis over with the spoon. The skin has blackened. I curse again. I suppose that’s what sauce is for. Touching the meat with the base of the spoon reveals that it has softened, though, so I start to hope that something will finally go right.

Slicing through the cooked penis with a kitchen knife isn’t as easy as I pictured, in my head. It’s not quite sausage, no matter how much I fantasized it would be. A little spongier. I hope it tastes better than it looks.

I bring it and a warm chili with me to the table, sitting close to Sonic. He lolls his head in the direction of the noise after I set down his plate, serving him a slice of his own penis with my fork and knife. At this point, I’m not even sure if he can remember what we’re doing.

“Open your mouth,” I say. “Have a bite. I’m sure you’re delicious.”

He does open for the fork when it hits his lips. The chili helps, I think. He takes it in his mouth. He chews it once. Twice. Then spits it out. It slides down his bare chest.

“Maa,” he manages.

I catch the chunk with my fork. The chili has slid off further down his chest, showing the meat’s black skin.

“Come on, Sonic,” I try pressing the chunk of penis back into his mouth. “Eat it. Eat your chilidog.”

But this time, he doesn’t even open his mouth. “Ehh,” he moans, his eyes getting dimmer.

My brow furrows in some unknown emotion. Confusion. No, frustration. I take a fresher slice of his penis off the plate, with a good amount of chili, and put it in my own mouth.

A minute later, I’m scraping off the remains of his cooked penis into the trash.