Needless to say, Cyrus Jones could not manage to get any more sleep after witnessing the raccoon carrying off his jockstrap boyfriend into the dark woods like some demented King Coon and Fay Wray, if Ms. Wray had been a jockstrap who had once been a real person.
Cy spent the hours before dawn berating himself for not keeping a better watch on Ry. How had Ry, with the limited mobility of a jockstrap, gotten out of the house and into the grubby paws of a neighborhood raccoon? The answer came soon enough. Someone must have tossed Ry into the garbage. That fact horrified Cy to an even greater degree. "Poor Ry," he thought. "It must have been absolutely terrifying."
He told himself Ry would understand. He had been so tired, although he still couldn't believe he had been so drained that he'd slept most of the night on the living room sofa.
As soon as the sun rose, Cy dressed in his best hiking sneakers and headed toward the walking path through the stand of trees that passed as a woodland and raccoon preserve in the neighborhood. He hadn't gone far when he found Ry. The condition of the jockstrap distressed him.
The jockstrap fluttered by a single strap from a branch in a small shrub. One strap appeared to have snapped. The worst damage had been inflicted on the cotton fabric forming the protective pouch. Besides one gaping hole in the front of the pouch, a large gash had also appeared in the fabric. Cy retrieved the jockstrap, plucking the mangled construction of plastic and cotton from the branch.
"Ry, speak to me," Cy implored. "It's Cy. I have found you."
As he listened, he heard an indistinct mental whimpering from a traumatized Ry. During his ordeal, he had been convinced the beastly captor meant to tear him to shreds. A doctor with time for a clinical diagnosis would likely have immediately detected all the signs in the unresponsive jockstrap of the sufferer of post-traumatic stress disorder.
Cy cradled the cotton pouch in one hand and stroked the fabric with fingertips from his other hand. "It will be all right, Ry," he promised and insisted he meant it this time.
Ry shivered and whimpered more. Cy cringed when he detected the jumbled thoughts. Cy blamed him and resented him.
Cy tried not to begrudge the jockstrap its feelings as he regarded the damage to the jockstrap's flimsy body. "It's mostly superficial," he thought to reassure the jockstrap. "A little thread and a needle..."
Ry groaned.
"I just mean I think I can fix you right up," Cy said, although he debated the wisdom of taking needles and thread to the jockstrap in the wake of the recent ordeal.
Although Cy eventually did himself proud repairing the damage, Ry remained mostly silent and unresponsive.