Domestic Humans
- Alessio Mischianti
- May 25
- 15 min read
Trained to unlearn themselve
sthey repress their instincts
powerless
sterilized
while trying to escape:
they are too cute.
“The usual for me, Maurice…and for you, my love? What can I get you this morning?
”Ever since we had met five or six years earlier in a stone cottage on the Yorkshire moors, we had repeated the same ritual. We would wake up early, but without getting out of bed, we would stay there, between one kiss and the next, telling each other about our lives that had crossed paths almost by chance. At first you wanted someone else, or rather, another one, but through some strange twist of fate — for those who believe in it — or some eccentric will of God — for those who believe in that — you had found me instead. In fact, no one had chosen me from the dating site, but that afternoon, at the stone cottage, many people had come for tea, and perhaps she, the other one, had confused you, had gone up to a different table, or perhaps it was you who changed your mind at the last moment, seeing me alone and defenseless, waiting for no one. Everyone else had taken a seat; I was the only one left standing. To be fair, life in the stone cottage was not so bad. True, it rained a little too often and we did not go out much; there was a lot of damp in the room, the iron on the door sweated rusty dew from the locks, but outside the grass was very green, and there was never any shortage of food. I had been there since I was born, and by then all my friends had found the love that had carried them away.
Now they had a family, a family I truly desired with all my being. When you knelt down in front of me and offered me biscuits, I understood that my moment had finally come too. A few glances were enough, a few words; you used so many little pet names and gave me a caress I will never forget. I watched you pay the bill. I knew the tea was offered by the owners of the stone cottage on those occasions, but still, you paid with several banknotes. They also gave you a few accessories and a little bag with the place’s logo on it; drawn there was an old roommate of mine, smiling. You were not exactly my type. Your grey, frayed hair, covered in red, left me with a strange feeling, as did the makeup, too much and too heavy, creating a mask that clung to your face and carved through the wrinkles. I would have preferred a younger girl, perhaps a childless couple. But in the end, I had been raised to give love, and possibly to receive it: a lonely sixty-eight-year-old woman like you was perfect.
We took a train on that first day together, and that night a direct flight to Nice. We immediately moved to a tiny village on the Côte d’Azur, into your seaside house, which you had bought to spend your retirement in. You could no longer bear Paris. Your job at the tax office had not worn you out all that much, but the city had: you could not stand people, the noise, feeling the urban movements of life, and of death. In that village there was only one bar, open even in winter, and Maurice, the barman, who made sublime cappuccinos. For you, he made it with extra foam, hot but not too hot. I fell in love with your lips kissing the milk, with the imprint of your mouth on the cup, among the feathers of your colorful coats. Your wardrobe overflowed with shoes, stilettos, leopard-print lingerie.
I had the feeling, a strong feeling, that those lips had been touched up a little, just a slight plumping, like your breasts, firm and sharp, almost science-fictional for your advanced age. It must be said that you kept yourself in shape: every morning, one or two Asana sessions, and art also played its part. Living in that village, far away from everything, you had been able to focus on yourself and begin painting: fairly banal landscapes, a few occasional surrealist exploits. Perhaps the most beautiful painting was the one you made of me. You painted me exactly as I was, though with a face less gloomy than it truly is. And after finishing the painting, you confessed to me that your ex-husband had left you as soon as he discovered you were pregnant with your first and only child. When I asked you where this child was, you burst into tears and revealed your most desperate secret to me: at fourteen weeks, you had decided to have an abortion. You had never managed to forgive yourself for it.
At twenty-five, you had found yourself alone, in some ways even widowed — of your husband, of your child, of yourself. Your parents had left you without a penny; they wanted you to graduate before becoming a wife, a mother. The door of their house had been slammed in your face, with your belly. If nothing else, those bastards had warned you that he was not the right man to marry. A half-broke street artist you had met in Montmartre, some kind of dancing mime from Alsace, who apparently knew how to use words well outside the muteness of his little shows for tourists, and knew how to use his dick too. You never saw him again. The only piece of news that somehow connected you back to him appeared in a scrap of newspaper, a little headline you read in passing: “body of Alsatian mime found on the banks of the Seine.” But the dead mime hardly mattered. The real problem was the total, unfillable abyss that had opened inside you from that horrible period onward. A void you had spent your whole life trying to fill. And which only now, with me, you seemed finally to have filled for good.
Even if I did not understand your methods. Sometimes you held me too tightly, kept me shut in, beside you, for hours. You decided when and how I could go out, when and how I could drink, eat, breathe.I thought love was supposed to be shown more gently, but then again, I had never known love before you. I had only been raised, cared for; I had relied only on the stories of others. Perhaps they had lied to me. The fact is that, after those splendid early days, I had begun to feel strange, almost a prisoner of this love of yours.And even Maurice, the barman, had noticed at breakfast that morning that something was wrong with me.“What happened? Do your teeth hurt?”
I had not accepted his sugar-free langue de chat. Usually I could not wait for it; the pastry chef prepared it especially for me in person. But in fact my teeth really did hurt — or rather, my whole mouth ached. The night before, it had been clamped shut, sealed with a muzzle to make me keep quiet, while I was locked inside one of her wardrobes watching her get sodomized by another man. Inside that wardrobe, there was a strong smell of dead stink bug covered by some terrible high-fashion perfume bought at a discount in some duty-free shop. And there was a crack, between the salt-worn wood, through which I could observe every passage. Watching him, the other one — I think his name was Antoine, or something like that — taking you from behind, gripping your hips, your skin stretched and yet flaccid, almost tearing it away, your makeup smeared, holding your mouth half-open with his hands, his fingers between your teeth as you clenched them every time he, the other one, pushed deeper inside you and brought his tongue close to yours, but without touching it. He did not kiss you, unlike me.
Unlike my suffocated mouth, which bit the tight metal mesh imprisoning my snout, while I trembled to feel even a particle of your breath and waited for my turn, hidden there, voiceless among the evening dresses. I knew my moment would come, right after Antoine had gone. Then our cuddles would arrive: you slept only with me, kissed only me, loved only me. It must be said that for quite a long time, ever since I met you, I had thought we had some sort of exclusivity. I had never been remotely able to imagine going to bed with another lady. Total fidelity is in my nature, and little by little, I had come to terms with jealousy. At first you did not let me see. You left me at home, alone, for your “free evenings.” I trusted you. To me you were like a dogma, and I went on believing in you even when I found your phone open on the dating site, in the “seeking young males” section. I made a huge effort. I avoided embarrassing questions, pointless arguments. I did not judge you; I understood you. I set all my instincts aside. It was enough for me to have you near, to know that at least twice a day you took me walking along the seafront. It was enough for me not to see, not to hear, to pretend not to know. But with Antoine, you had not been able to resist. He was handsome, I knew that. He had probably been chosen first at the stone cottage, and without any vaguely divine misunderstanding.
His lifeguard-tanned muscles; he was certainly much younger than you, and satisfied your searches on the apps in every possible way. We met him that morning too, shortly after breakfast at the bar. Apparently, he worked at a beach club not far from there. Summer was now winding down and the season had not gone very well; almost all the restaurateurs were complaining about the low turnout, as were the other shopkeepers. That small seaside village had known great splendor in the Eighties, but now it reflected, in every way, the decadence of the very society that had once made it somehow alive. You could see it in the “FOR RENT” signs in front of the holiday homes, in the half-dusty windows of the boutique hotels, in the semi-abandoned open-air cinema, patched up by the municipality as best it could for the season, screening only shit films. And you could see it in the couples, always dressed as if the middle bourgeoisie still existed. In the evening they tied sweaters around their necks, while the rich, the real ones, passed offshore on their yachts; you could glimpse their lights, their sewage drifting toward the shore, where, before the return to school, a few rare teenagers still endured in some rare temporary yet definitive summer love, summer-house style, like a Guadagnino film but straight, or at least a little less gay. Good Antoine was hidden among the umbrellas. Besides being a lifeguard, he also owned a couple of shares in the beach club. The concession had been renewed for another ten years, so he had secured himself a seasonal job that, despite the lean times, allowed him more or less to do fuck all from autumn to spring. He probably spent the rest of the year at the gym picking up depressed women. He whistled, a macho whistle, to get himself noticed, but you had already seen him moving among the deckchairs and sun creams like a barracuda. His mere presence made your hands tremble, made your cunt wet. I could sense it, with my infallible nose, from the damp smell coming from your underwear, beneath the tight dress, a sort of cheetah-colored pareo. That morning you had no intention of swimming; the veiled sky left little room for any real burst of sun, so you had not put on a swimsuit.
Underneath, you were naked, and your hard nipples pressed against the fabric covering them, at least partially. “Madam! Good morning! Have you recovered from last night?” They addressed each other formally, perhaps out of respect, given the age difference. Looking at him more closely, he must have been around forty, give or take, though perhaps it was simply some perverse little game between lovers. You sometimes did it with me too, calling me by other people’s names, or by nicknames you made up on the spot, while undressing to come to bed. “Antoine…what are you saying? How dare you?!” She played the fool, the lady, and yet when it was just the two of us she had never seemed so stupid to me. She found me funny with my little whiskers; often she laughed just by looking at me, but I had never seen her behave like such an idiot. “May I offer you a coffee?” Only a few minutes had passed since Maurice’s cappuccino, and I truly hoped, with all my heart, that she would refuse that invitation. I felt something growing inside me, something repressed, something uprooted, a feeling I knew I had possessed since birth, but for some reason had forgotten, or at least thought I had. My aching teeth clenched. Bitter drool ran along my gums. We sat down at the kiosk table. Rich people who docked with their yachts often stopped at that beach club to refuel, so it was a lounge kiosk, with unbearable high-class aperitif music playing all day. I focused on the next table. They must have been two of those rich people who had docked — or rather, one of them certainly was: an obese old man in a polo shirt. The girl with him was very young, very blonde, with long crossed escort legs. She sipped an iced shaken coffee while endlessly scrolling through ridiculous TikTok videos on her phone, and with one heel she stroked the knees of the obese rich old man, moving upward under the table until she reached his balls — or whatever remained of his gangrenous testicles. The obese old man stared at the horizon with an absorbed expression. “Madam, do you have plans tonight?
I would like to see you again…you owe me a second round. You have not yet had the honor of hearing my full repertoire!” I looked at her, the lady. I looked at her with the saddest, most scorned expression I knew, but my face was always the same. All my emotions remained unexpressed on the outside. They stayed crystallized in my brain, in my suffering heart, which was beating wildly. The sand beneath me was beginning to burn. She turned toward me only for a moment, then placed a hand on my head and resumed the conversation with the tanned lifeguard. “I thought it was only for one night. Don’t you brag to every woman that you never grant encores?” I wanted to stop every single word coming out of her swollen lips, but I could not. I did not know how. All I could do was make a few sounds, a few incomprehensible whimpers. “Well, madam, after last night I was forced to reconsider…in an entirely exceptional case, I am ready to play you the encore!”
Among her pre-mortem hobbies, besides painting and yoga, the lady had also developed a passion for opera, and Antoine, as an attentive Latin lover, had memorized certain details: the records and DVDs of La Bohème, The Barber of Seville. While fucking her with me locked in the wardrobe, he had managed to acquire some culture. They avoided kissing in front of me. I prayed to every possible God that Antoine would disappear, that he would die that day, perhaps that a storm might break out and, while securing the beach club, an umbrella would spear him, possibly through the heart, or through his ego, or his beauty, or his genitals: wherever it would hurt him most. He went back to work, with the promise that he would get in touch around a certain time, when he finished his shift. I spent the rest of the morning walking with the lady. Unexpectedly, we changed our usual route, turning toward the shopping street. At first I was pleased; I had the chance to sniff new situations. But shortly afterward I realized she had not changed street for me. She had done it for herself, as always. We went into a clothing shop. With a dreamy air, the lady tried on a series of dresses. She chose a couple; only that evening would she decide which one to wear. She also bought a black thong. On that there was no doubt: she would put it on while waiting for Antoine to ring the doorbell, enter the living room, and tear it off her. I had to assist her. She asked me for various opinions — “do you think I’m sexy enough?” — while the shop assistant offered me some water to cool me down. We got home around lunchtime. We ate the same basmati rice and the same tuna in oil together. In my dish she added a few drops of vitamins and half an antibiotic pill, which they prescribed me only in summer, for mosquito bites. She cared a lot about my health. Then we lay down on the sofa. I tried to rest, but the sound of the lady’s hairs being torn out by the wax would not let me close my eyes. “You know, my love, I wanted to apologize for last night…I didn’t mean to shut you in the wardrobe, or put the muzzle on you, but you know…you were making too much noise…there are neighbors, people on holiday who start complaining at the slightest sound…I’m really sorry…it’s just that I had never seen you so agitated before, you even peed on the carpet…is it because of Antoine? Don’t worry about him. After all, I’m an old woman, alone…but love is something else…I love only you. If it weren’t for you, I’d already be dead and buried. You are the son, you are the husband, you are everything I never had.” She held me tightly against her. “Tonight I’ll leave you in peace, I promise, but you have to promise me you’ll be good.” I wanted to ask her why, why do this to me? But once again I stayed silent. I let her file my nails and comb me.
My nature was too good, and the owners of the stone cottage in England had also told me that my parents, in turn, had been of too good a nature like me: “they let people do anything to them.” The wait was beginning to weigh on me, and already in the early afternoon I became restless and started pacing back and forth through the apartment. I went in and out of the terrace. I did not care about the mosquitoes biting me. The sun had filtered through the veiled sky and the rays of light burned on the floor, while I looked down between the railing. The sea hid between the roofs. I thought about how much I would suffer if I threw myself from that third floor. I probably would not die on impact, but I would certainly suffer less than I was suffering in that moment, waiting for Antoine. Toward evening, the lady was finally ready. In the end, she had opted for the long emerald-green dress instead of the short bright-yellow one. It was much more elegant, perhaps a little less sexy, an altogether unusual choice for an evening of anal sex. She prepared a bowl of meat and vegetables for me. She opened a bottle of white wine. A message arrived. It was him. Five minutes and he would be there. I looked at the bowl.
The lady’s meat and vegetables were my favorite dish, but now all I could taste was the acidic flavor of my drool corroding my teeth, the pupils of my eyes dilated, bloodshot, my fur standing on end. I knocked the bowl over, sending it crashing to the floor. “My love, what are you doing? Don’t you like your dinner? It’s your favorite dish.” She moved me, by force, onto the sofa, near her handbag. She started cleaning up my food in a hurry, cursing me and forgiving me at the same time: “look at this mess, bastard, now stay there, my love, stay there quietly, please, you promised me.” And I did stay there, for quite a while, but I was not fucking calm. I watched them licking each other between one glass and the next. The bottle was empty, and the lady had already taken off the long emerald-green dress. Leaning against the table, she was letting Antoine touch her. With his fingers, he had moved her thong aside. I did not care much if the lady was getting fucked like a bitch. What I cared about were feelings, and it seemed to me that they had them, or at least that something was beginning. My filed nails were dug into the sofa, scraping. To restrain myself, I hid inside my lady’s handbag. Inside that handbag, I felt safer, and if only I had been able to close the zip, perhaps I would have managed to bear it.
But I kept seeing and hearing everything, smelling the odor of coitus, of betrayal. Crushed between mascara, keys and cigarettes, I began to understand myself, to remember what they had made me forget. “Look at your Yorkie in the handbag, he’s too cute. Let’s get in front of him. Let’s show him how you fuck!” The lady laughed while Antoine, wrapped around her, shifted her weight in front of me, onto the carpet beneath the sofa. He laid her down while remaining inside her, and began to mount her. I had that bastard’s ass in front of me. I tried to free myself from the zippers of the handbag, to cover my eyes, my humiliation, but wherever I turned I came back with my eyes to his balls, bouncing with every thrust inside my lady, to his face turning around to see if I was watching. I began to scream with all the voice I had in my body, to spit drool, to tear with my nails.
“Shut up, you little shithead!” he snapped, trying to hit me with a slap. “Keep going, don’t listen to him, I’m almost there!” The lady was about to come and Antoine was so satisfied, he kept going, sweaty, and turned toward me with his grin, his testicles, which I lunged at, biting them hard, until I tore them away, until I felt his miserable blood gush out, and the lady screaming, “STOP! STOP, PLEASE!” But I could not.
Sometimes too much love breeds hatred, and seeing Antoine run away trying to hold his testicles in his hands, I realized that I too, like them, was a beast. But now the lady was with me again, she was mine again, and besides being her dog, now I was also her man again.
Domestic Humans
© Alessio Clinker 2026. All rights reserved
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