Hello My Name Is...

A customer at Katie's diner is messing with words, and Katie—or whatever her name is now—has got to stop it. Mature.

Katie kept her name tag pinned above the left breast of her pink button-down blouse. It was part of the outfit she had to wear: the blouse, the matching skirt, and the apron she kept her pen and order pad stuffed into. At the start of every shift, she dug her name tag out of the bowl in the back next to the shift schedule, and pinned it to her chest. It was the one part of the dumb, outdated outfit that she had no problem with.

At least, not until today.

Two other name tags were missing from the bowl when Katie clocked in. The first belonged to Liz, who was making herself busy in the late-afternoon lull by tidying up around the register. Her shift would be over in an hour and change, and Katie knew she was just counting down the minutes, because that's what she did herself when she had the eleven o'clock shift.

The other was Benny's. He was just the busboy, but he was six-foot-something and had once tackled someone who'd tried to leave without paying. Katie had never talked to him much, but she gathered he'd played football while he was in school. She was jealous of him, because he didn't have to wear pink.

As far as Katie could tell, it was a normal, slow day at the diner. She'd gone around to each booth and pulled down the blinds, so the sun wouldn't be glaring in through the windows, and had checked to make sure the table of college-aged guys didn't need anything. They were no one she knew, thankfully.

The Stream

A livestreamer crowd-sources her own transformation into a cougar anthro. Explicit.

I've streamed like twice before. This time, I'm trying to go big. I've got my desk lamp pitched up as high as it'll go, aimed right at my face. Even though I'm doing the just-rolled-out-of-bed, tee-shirt-and-panties look, I brushed my hair and put on just enough makeup to look like I'm not wearing any.

Last time, I made like sixty bucks in donations. This time, I'm gonna break two hundred.

I open up the streaming client. There's the empty chat room on the side, there's the empty donation log on the bottom, and in the video preview window, there I am. I've got that blank, computer-screen look in my eyes. I tip the webcam up just a little, so it's not cutting off the top of my head, then tuck a stray bit of bangs behind my ear. I mouse over 'start streaming', then click.

Every time you start, there's this pinch, like someone just closed a bag clip against the back of your neck. Still haven't gotten used to that. I reach back and rub that spot. Already there's a couple of viewers on the chat list, though, so I straighten up and smile at the camera.

"Hey, guys."

Each chat message comes in with a tapping sound.

sup

you got a theme for this stream?

I shrug and lean back into my swivel chair. "Nothing much, just relaxing. And yeah, let's make it..." I click the 'theme' dropdown and scroll down till one of them catches my eye. "...Feline."

$20 – Feline pops up in the donation log a couple seconds later.

A shiver runs up the back of my spine. The hair on my neck stands on end, and I can bet that it's thicker, too. The chill feeling dissipates when it hits my scalp, but then I feel it sliding across my ears. When I reach up to touch them, I can feel the fuzz of fur growing along the rims, and the little pointed tips at the top.

"Woah. First time doing species stuff," I say, with a small laugh. There's four people in the chat now, which isn't bad. Last time I topped out at six.

Shoplifters Will Be Prostituted

A quick story written as a warm-up. Content warning for rough language and the sort of stuff you'd expect from the title. Explicit.

While the coyote up at the cash register had her nose down in her phone, Kris slipped another two bracelets off the rack and dumped them into her bag. Her bag was one of those big clunky ones—ten percent of why she wore it was because it was trendy, and the other ninety because you could stuff a lot of expensive stuff in there.

Well, as expensive as you could find in Too U, at least.