The Trial But With Pig TF
This one starts out kinda dark, but ends up in a happy place. You may recognize a few friendly faces along the way. I'm so, so sorry, Franz.
"t is an essential part of the justice dispensed here that you should be condemned not only in innocence but also in ignorance."
--Franz Kafka, The Trial (the one without pig TF)
"Life, although it may only be an accumulation of anguish, is dear to me, and I will defend it."
--Mary Shelly, Frankenstein (also unfortunately without pig TF)
"Do you have any questions before we begin?"
"Um, yes. I'm not ... really sure why I'm here?"
Without looking up, the fat man answered, "You're here because you broke the law." Eye contact was a foreign concept to this person. He hadn't even extended enough courtesy to stop placing documents atop the Burj Khalifa currently overflowing from his inadequate "Outgoing" basket. "You wouldn't be here if you didn't break the law."
"Which ... law would that be, exactly?" Josie tried to hide her nervousness. She didn't know whether it would hurt her case or not, but she felt it certainly couldn't help. She also secretly didn't want to give the bureaucrat any sort of signal that she was guilty. First she needed to figure out what she was not guilty of. She had always had a sort of guilty conscience. Meaning, in her case, her conscience defaulted to the assumption that she was guilty of whatever the case may be, even if she certainly wasn't. Once during jury duty she felt that the prosecutor was interviewing her for the position of defendant, as little sense as that had made.
"No idea. That's not my department."
"Oh." As if that settled it. "It's just that I'm not sure if I can be sentenced without knowing what I did."
"You can."
"Oh," she repeated. She stared at the white tiled ceiling, yellow blotches indicating there was a leak in the ceiling at some point in the last decade. "And what exactly is the sentence ... punishment?"
"Execution."
He wasn't serious, she realized that immediately. "I'm sorry, what?"
"Just kidding. Minimum 45 years, maximum 125. That's all."
"... What?"
He finally decided to make eye contact, but only to get across the point that he didn't intend to repeat himself. She had heard him correctly.
"Um, are you 'just kidding' again? About the last part? Maybe?"
"No."
"Oh." The word was becoming very familiar to Josie.
"Processing is straight down the hall, third door on the left." He motioned towards his door and out of his concern.
"I can't ... Wait, please." The dismissive motion made Josie suddenly very afraid. "There has to be something else you can do? I'm going to live the rest of my life in jail without knowing why?"
"If you would like to know the grounds for sentencing, you will have to contact the Department of UCMJ Affairs."
"UCM ...?"
"J." The man finished the acronym for her. "Uniform Code of Military Justice."
"Wait, isn't that like courtmartials and stuff?"
"'And stuff,' yes."
"But I was never in the military?"
"You'd have to take that up with them." He returned to shuffling his papers with the air of a master craftsman tuning a woodwork device he'd worked diligently on for a large portion of his life.
"How would I go about--"
"Room 8402-C. They're out the rest of the week."
"So the earliest I could see them would be Monday?"
"No. Next week is the start of their telework week. There's a pandemic on, you know."
"So they're off for a week and telework for the next week?"
"Yes." Under his breath, he muttered the words, "Lucky bastards."
"How long do I have before I ... have to report in ... for jail or whatever?" She was starting to lose it, if she had ever had it.
"Due to the severity of the crime? Immediately. As in now."
And thus "it" was lost. Tears began to flow.
He sighed. "Okay, look. That's the way these things go, okay? I'm just doing my job. If it were up to me ..." He stopped what he was about to say just before he made an admission of guilt that may one day place him in the seat she now occupied. "I'm not the one sentencing you is what I mean. You can also appeal the decision to the compound management."
"O-Okay. How?"
"Down the hall, fourth door on the left."
"Right past the ...?"
"Sequentially logical third door on the left, yes. You won't be able to enter that room, though."
"Why can't I go there?"
"Because it's the FOURTH door on the left. You are only allowed to access the THIRD door on the left."
"What's going to happen to me ... in the third door on the left?" Everyone knows what's in Room 101, Winston. It's the worst thing in the world.
"Your ... sentencing will be carried forth. Immediately."
The blood had already drained from her face. She was pretty sure her sinuses had fled the vicinity at this point.
"There is a ... procedure."
"Sentencing ... procedure?"
"No. I mean, yes, there is, but that's not the procedure I'm talking about. Normally these things are cut and dry but ... exceptions can be made."
"They can?"
"Yes. There's a procedure. A different procedure. Volunteering for the procedure is really your only way out of ... it."
"I won't be ...?"
"You won't be. No. It's not a very pleasant experience, I'm told, but it's your only other option. I'm sorry."
"I guess that's ... Okay, let's do that then. What is it?"
"The government has embarked on a few new areas of experimentation that aren't, strictly speaking, legal in the traditional sense of the word. But volunteers are the exception. You waive your human rights because you won't be ..." He stopped himself before he finished the sentence. "Well, like I say, it's your only other option."
She nodded. It had to be better than life in prison, right?
"Agreeing to waive said rights is, of course, an admission of guilt. But that hardly matters at this point, right?"
"Right?" Josie wasn't sure if she were asking the man a question or merely confirming his.
"If you're amenable to that arrangement, then I'll need you to sign here." He produced another form, seemingly out of the black matter nothingness that made up the majority of the universe. He seemed to be a sort of wizard of bureaucracy, some sort of supreme being able to conjure forms from realms mere mortals could only begin to fathom. He pointed to the bottom of the form, to a blank line that now represented the sum totality of Josie's future existence. She reached out to pick up the pen attached via a string of small silver beads to the top of his desk. The string seemed important. He wouldn't want people stealing his pen while they were on the way to face the end of their existence as a human being. Her hands were shaking too badly to legibly sign her name, but he didn't seem particularly concerned. The name was as unimportant to society now as it had been when she walked into the room. "And date here. And initial here. And here. And here. And here."
Josie did as she was told, as she was apt to do. She was the type of person who'd always acquiesce rather than force an argument, even when she was signing her life away. Her parents had constantly chastised her for the trait, even though had ingrained the docile future housewife-to-be behavior into her. But it was no more than they chastised her about every part of her life.
"I've been told that there's a way to stop it." The man sounded genuinely sympathetic. "Maybe even reverse it. If you can prove your innocence."
She finished the form and placed the pen down, its chain jingling like it was attached to an iron ball, a tiny, hollow finality that echoed more than it should. And then she was out of the office, down the hall, and casually injected with some sort of viscous orange fluid just as she was on the way out the door.
She wished she could've taken the fourth door on the left.
"Bull. Fucking. Shit."
"No, that was pretty much what happened." Josie normally had a hard enough time clipping the little sensor tags on underpriced sweaters as it was. God forbid a master criminal absconded with an always-low-priced-for-today's-thrift-smart-Kmart-shopper shirt. "I got poked, went home, slept, and came to work. I didn't even have time for breakfast."
"Bull fucking shit," Sabrina repeated. Josie's coworker had a way with words that few starving minimum wage workers could match. She was a Shakespeare paid $7.25 an hour. "I mean, getting poked and going home sounds like a great Saturday night under normal circumstances. But, I mean, they can't do that, right? I mean, right?"
"They can."
"How the fuck is that even legal?" Her coworker was attacking the sensor tags with a zeal Josie no longer felt capable of. Perhaps she was being more animated to show concern for her friend, or at least pretending to do so.
"It's the government," Josie answered. "It's legal if they say it's legal."
"What are you going to do?"
"Try to put in for overtime and maybe make it to the appellate system on my next day off."
"'Maybe?' What do you mean, 'maybe?' You're gonna go down there and I'm going with you. Tomorrow. We're taking the day off."
"No, we aren't."
"We aren't? Why are we aren't-ing?"
Josie tossed the Christmas sweater aside. She was fairly confident its services weren't going to be called upon in March. "We are we-aren't-ing because you have three kids and they barely let you take time off when you're mom died. And if we both take time off Ron will get pissed and I'll have to sit in his office and listen about work ethic for a company that's not going to be in business in six months. I rather turn into a ... whatever. And I'll lose my job and my shitty apartment I pay too much for because my asshole ex-boyfriend said we'd always be able to afford because we'd always be together and he'd get a job at Steak-Out even though his music career was bound to pick up any day now and then we'd be set for life and live in Malibu and ... and ..."
Josie's hands were shaking as she tried to pick the ugly Christmas sweater back up. She rubbed her thumb across the soft fuzzy ball atop Santa's hat as he stared in pure euphoria in response to Josie's misery. She felt Sabrina's hand against her back. "Josie ..."
"Th-They said I wouldn't even be ... human anymore. What does that even mean? Like that thing on the television? The flying snake thing they shot down a few years ago? Or one of those weird animal cults out west or ..." She lowered her voice as a fellow employee passed by. Not Ron, thank God. A dark-haired lady she didn't recognize. Why were they even still hiring people at this point? There were fewer and fewer of these stores every week.
"Just ... next day off, okay? Promise me you'll go talk to them. And I'll call you whenever I'm on break." Josie started clipping on the sensors again, silently apologizing to St. Nicholas that she'd delayed in her task. "Okay? Josie?"
Josie nodded weakly.
Two hours later, Josie stopped by her locker on the way out the door. She grabbed her coat and turned to leave when the new employee bumped into her. Only "bump" wasn't the right word. She had intentionally slammed into her, only to then exclaim, "Bitch, watch where the fuck you're going!" She roughly shoved Josie off of her, nearly causing Josie's purse to slip off of her shoulder.
"What? I didn't--"
"Didn't watch where the fuck you were going?"
A deep baritone answered the thought-provoking question. "Is there a problem here?" For once in her life Josie was happy to have her manager around. Ron to the rescue.
"No problem ... as long as this bitch watches where she's walking."
"Get out." Ron's had a surprisingly authoritative voice for someone working as a manager at a failing department store.
"I was going. Jesus!" The strange lady turned to leave.
"No, get out. Out out. You're fired."
The lady looked like she was ready to assault someone. "But I just fucking started here!"
"And now you're fired. Goodbye." No speeches about company values and the importance Kmart, Inc. placed on its valued team members?
"Whatever." She turned to Josie, gave her the finger, and smiled. "See you in the parking lot, bitch." Then she tossed her red vest on the floor and was out the door.
Parking lot? Was this high school? Was she about to be in a fight?
"Josephine? Everything okay?" Ron asked.
Josie was still in shock. This entire exchange had come out of nowhere and had concluded in the course of thirty seconds. It was only slightly less jarring than hearing what sounded like actual concern from her supervisor. "I ... guess?"
"Good. Do you need someone to escort you to the bus stop?"
"I, uh, think I'm okay. Thanks." Was the strange lady serious about a confrontation?
Ron nodded. "You're scheduled for tomorrow at 7 A.M.?"
Josie only nodded.
"Be here at 6." It wasn't a question.
"Okay." She shuffled towards the door, not waiting on her coworker's escort.
"And Josie?"
Josie paused, one hand on the doorknob. "Y-Yeah?"
"Kmart insists on high standards for its employees, particularly in the area of ... hygiene." Ron cleared his throat. "Don't show up tomorrow smelling like a homeless shelter, okay?"
What the hell was he talking about? She showered before every shift. Maybe he was just in a shitty mood over the outburst?
"Yeah, okay, no problem."
As she walked out the door, confused about that last little exchange, one odd thought popped into her mind. The dark-haired lady had smiled at her just after she had shot her the bird. Not sneered, smiled. It had been a strange smile, perhaps even a little sad.
Josie stepped off the bus, trying not to make eye contact with some of the other passengers who sneered as she walked by. On the way home she could tell what Ron was complaining about. Maybe she had accidentally skipped her deodorant this morning or something. By the time she had climbed the stairs to her fourth floor apartment, she was sweating buckets and had to admit to herself that she smelled pretty bad.
She muttered a "Fuck" as she unlocked the door and stepped inside, flipping the light on and setting her purse on the counter. "I can't be getting sick. I CAN'T be getting sick." She stood staring at nothing for a while as the door swung closed behind her. It was because of the shot, right? It had to be. They said she would be giving up her human rights because she wouldn't technically be ...
"What in the hell is happening to me? Ow!" She looked at the back of her hand and noticed she had scraped herself while scratching an itch she hadn't felt until now. Her fingernails weren't growing sharper like some in some shitty 80s werewolf flick, but they did look a little darker. Looking at the spot she had scratched revealed some fine hairs were growing from a few of her fingers.
Sometimes when you think you've hit rock bottom, Billy Mayes appears from a trap door and yells, "But wait, there's more!"
"Oh, Jesus. Not a rat. Just don't let it be a rat." She hated rats, and there were enough of them already in her apartment complex. One occasionally showed up in her bathroom. She'd named it Tom, after Tom & Jerry. By the time she'd remembered that Tom was the name of the cat, the name had already stuck.
Tom was thankfully absent as she stepped into her bathroom. The shower had been a mess when she and Jono had moved in, but was in fairly decent shape after she spent most of one of her few days off cleaning it. Josie peeled her sweaty clothes off, wrinkling her nose at the smell before stepping into the shower. She hesitated for some reason before turning on the faucet. She then spent an entire hour scrubbing herself clean and inspecting for any other changes, relieved she didn't find any. Happy to be clean and still a human being, she stumbled into bed and was asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow.
Her alarm went off at 5:30 A.M. She didn't even bother turning it off on days when she didn't work. She'd gotten so used to getting up before dawn that it came to her naturally now. She'd come to appreciate any of life's constants, such as waking up at an unholy hour, maintaining a crap job for a dying retail chain, and the noises of her neighbors fucking loudly in the middle of the night. Maybe not that last one. It had been a while since she'd had any, and she felt a little envious. Maybe one day she'd knock on their door in just her bathrobe and see if they were interested in a threesome. They seemed nice enough.
What the fuck was THAT? Josie had come from a very strict family. Her father had been a second generation immigrant from an even stricter family, and her mother was from more of the same. They hadn't talked to her for a year after she moved in with Jono. She'd always been pretty conservative, sexually speaking, and definitely wouldn't consider banging a pair of strangers.
She rubbed the sleep from her eyes and made herself focus on getting ready for work. She stepped into the bathroom and reached for her toothbrush when she started to notice things were amiss. Very, very amiss. Yes, amiss was definitely the word. Dark hairs had sprouted on the back of her hands, her knuckles, and even sparse ones on her forearms. She brought them to her face and examined them closer. Her nails looked like she had applied some lightly faded polish the night before.
She looked up at her mirror in disbelief, as if asking for some measure of sympathy from her own reflection. She found none, but did manage to discover some other changes. Faint hairs had grown down her sideburns and even a few on her upper lip. This happened as you got older, right? It was normal and certainly not because of any mutagen applied in the name of a barely functioning country rapidly being overtaken by fundamentalist conspiracy nuts. She grasped one of the hairs on her lip and tugged on it, revealing her next discovery. Her teeth seemed more pointed, and perhaps not the shade of white she was used to. They weren't yellow, but she had always taken pride in her perfect teeth and she knew that word couldn't be applied to them any longer.
She took some solace in the fact that at least her incisors weren't larger. Tom wouldn't be finding a kindred spirit any time soon.
Her eyebrows were maybe a little bushier, but no big deal. Lifting her arms, she noticed a lot more hair in her pits than she was expecting, but that was easily remedied as she ran her electric razor across them. She spent a few extra minutes going over her forearms as well. Her legs were in the same shape, but she didn't have time to tend to them if she was going to make it to work by 7:00.
Or by 6:00. "Oh fuck. Oh fuck fuck fuck." She had completely forgotten Ron had "asked" her to come in an hour early. She rubbed on some deodorant, brushed her teeth, and was quickly dressed and out the door.
It was about 6:45 as she walked in the door. "Good morning, Ms. Sung." Ron was there at the door to greet her, because of course he was.
"I'm so sorry, Ron. I'm so sorry."
Ron whipped out a notebook that seemed to be surgically attached to his hand. "This is your ... first infraction?" He seemed surprised, and perhaps upset that he hadn't been able to use the words "second" or "third." "Let's make sure there isn't a second, hmm?"
"Sure thing. No second."
"Your shift, Ms. Sung. You may start it. Now."
She nodded and went to her locker to get her crimson vest, appreciative that there wasn't a strange woman assaulting her this time.
Sabrina was becoming the one bright, shining light of any sort of human sympathy in Josie's life at this point. It's so strange when one finds someone they enjoy working with because you'd likely be seeing that person more than your own family. Not that Josie really had much of a family these days.
"Hey, baby, how you doing?" Sabrina stopped and stared at Josie as if she had shown up to work in a scuba suit. "Girl, what the hell happened to you?"
Josie was taken aback. "What the hell happened to what? What?"
"You look like hell, baby. You make my Darius look groomed, and he's sixteen." Josie wasn't sure what that was supposed to mean exactly. "You need to take care of yourself better."
"It's been a weird morning. Can we get to work?" The plastic sensors weren't going to clip themselves, and the cotton Santa was probably getting impatient at this point.
"Yeah, okay." Sabrina resumed folding shirts. "Ron give you a hard time for showing up late?"
"I'm not late! I'm late for being early! How the hell does he get to change my shift like that? Why is he picking on me so much?"
"Ron is always looking for a reason to be Ron. It's in his nature as a shitbag. You watch Squid Game yet?"
Josie got to work, happy to give her mind something to focus on, even if it was an incredibly boring task. "I still don't even know what that is. I took a shower and hit the hay as soon as I got home."
"Shower, huh?" Sabrina made an obvious show of not making an obvious show.
Josie was aghast. "Yes! Shower. I took a shower. I did. For an hour. With soap. And water. Why is everyone picking on me?"
"Damn. Maybe something's up with the water? Like maybe a dead fish fell into it? Or a dead buffalo?"
"It can't be that bad!" Josie sniffed at her arm.
"Like you ran the entire way over here. In August. Through a farm. Seriously though, maybe it's the shitty city water. You should get out more. Go visit your parents out in the country? How are they doing?"
"They're far away from me, so they're doing great in my opinion." Josie's hands were shaking again. They always seemed to do that when she was on the verge of a completely neurological breakdown. "What's going to happen to me, Sabrina?"
"Shush, it'll be okay. You're off tomorrow, right? They'll check some computer screen, see you didn't do anything, and give you an antidote or something. It's gonna be fine."
"Yeah." Josie tried to sound more confident than she felt. "Sure. Great."
"Great. You'll see, baby girl."
At the end of her ten-hour shift, Josie made a beeline for the door. For one, she needed to take her vest home and wash it, along with the rest of her clothes, based on the dirty looks the customers were giving her. Second, she wanted to get away from Ron and the rest of her coworkers as soon as possible. Something was happening to her, obviously, but she hadn't had much time to inspect for changes during her break. Not with other employees in the room, albeit on the far side and giving her dirty looks. Was it really that bad? As she punched her employee code into the clock-out device, she noticed more hair on the back of her knuckles, and her fingernails were had become a darker, dirty shade of off-white. She pretended not to notice Ron's "Josie, could I talk to you for a moment?" as she ran out the door.
When she arrived home she immediately stripped out of her clothes and ran to the bathroom, shivering as the air touched her sweaty skin. It hadn't even been that busy of a shift, so why was she so tired?
Reaching the mirror, she let out a gasp. It was worse than expected. Way worse.
Her sideburns had tapered down to a bit of scruff growing along her jawline. A line of fine brown hair started at her collarbone and ran down to her bush, which was bordering on obscene at this point. She ran her fingers through it, wincing as a razor-sharp ping of pleasure trickled through her. No time for that. Her legs looked like they'd never had a shave, and a few hairs were even growing from her big toe, the nails of which were matching her fingernails.
She picked up her electric razor and started to work. Shave. Then shower. Then sleep. Then get this shit sorted. It helped to put these sorts of things into a list.
Josie woke to the sound of her alarm, feeling more tired than when she had lay down. This was the second day in a row that she'd actually needed her alarm to tell her to get up. Today was the day. She'd have a friendly conversation with a friendly, understanding government representative, get the friendly antidote, and get on with her friendly, shitty life. She was even smiling as she pulled out her most professional attire. Then she was out the door, careful not to even so much as glance at herself in the mirror. She just didn't want to know. The route was all planned in her phone. This would all be a bad memory soon. Maybe she'd even laugh about it one day. "Funny story! I almost turned into a GERBIL last year! Can you believe that?"
"Oh. Oh fucking no."
Standing outside of the government building, Josie fumbled with her phone and called Sabrina. There was no answer, so she sent her a text. She needed contact with a friendly person. The message read simply, "They're closed!"
How the hell could they be closed? It was Tuesday. Josie knocked on the glass door until she finally managed to flag down a security guard, who let her know that there was no government person available in the building.
"Wait, no one is in the building?"
"No government person." Her blank expression indicated to the guard that she had no idea what that meant. "No government person means no contractors can be in the building."
"How does that make sense?"
"It's in the rules."
"But, no, how does that make sense? Everybody stays home if--?"
"It's in the rules."
"When will there be a government person in the building?"
"Tomorrow, probably."
"I have to work tomorrow!"
"Me too, lady." Then he closed the door, went back to his computer, and resumed watching a handsome young fascist in a clean suit lying to a gullible audience in a nasally voice.
Josie walked away in a daze, trying to figure out what she was going to have to do now. Her next day off wasn't for five days, and that's assuming Ron didn't decide to make her work on the sixth. She supposed she could go home and try to sort this out over the phone, but knew before the idea was fully cemented in her brain that there was no way that was going to work. It took six hours on the phone to get your car insurance straightened out. It would certainly take longer to see about returning to the species listed on her birth certificate.
As she walked back in the general direction of the bus stop, she became aware of two things. One, she smelled like a football locker room. Two, she hadn't eaten anything since lunch yesterday, nearly 24 hours ago. She walked towards a local barbecue joint she visited frequently, but stopped when she got close enough to smell it. It just smelled horrible, like roadkill. Offensively odorous.
McDonald's it was, then. The line wasn't too long, and the smell of greasy french fries covered up her own stench. She wondered if perfume would help, although it was outside of her budget and she'd probably have to shower in the stuff. She was thankful that Big Macs still smelled like Big Macs as she ordered three and an equal amount of large fries.
Back on the street she was again assaulted by the stench of the barbecue stand. It smelled like someone was burning hair or skin or ...
Or her. "Oh. Oh fucking no."
Back home she began devouring her hamburger, relishing the taste of its 90% salt makeup, as she fired up her shitty computer and sought to learn everything she could about pigs. There had to be some kind of easy indicator. Dogs barked, cats meowed, mice fucked all the time. What do pigs do other than oink and roll around in mud all day. And WHY do they roll around in mud all day?
Because they don't sweat, Google answered. And Josie was certainly sweating, enough so that she flung her soaked blouse on the floor next to her red vest, laying where it was so fervently discarded the night before. Pigs don't sweat, and Josies certainly sweat, so ...
"Okay. Thank God. Not a pig. Really worried there for a second."
Unfortunately, she had few other leads to go on. What animals smelled bad and were hairy? Literally all of them. "I mean, yes, except the fish ones. And the bird ones."
She wondered why she couldn't be one of those as she dug into her second box of fries. Flying would at least be useful, provided she didn't get shot by a neighbor. But they didn't even seem to be the crazy kind, just the horny kind. She realized it had been a few days since she had heard them aggressively fucking on the other side of the wall. She missed it, actually. She grinned wickedly as her hand drifted between her legs. There were very few times she missed Jono, and even fewer things she missed about him, but his dick definitely came in handy.
She felt a dampness between her legs and stood up. "Okay, no, not the time for that." She wasn't an animal. Animals went into heat, and she wasn't an animal. Not yet, anyway.
Sighing determinedly, she decided she couldn't put it off any longer and walked into her bathroom, stripping out of the rest of her clothes along the way. She kept her eyes closed as she came within sight of the mirror, slowly opening one, afraid of what she would find.
It was basically more of the same, just ... MORE of the same. More hair, especially on her sideburns and neck. She definitely didn't look like someone that had shaved their entire body the night before. She lifted her arms to look at the forest growing in her pits, but groaned at the smell. It was eye-watering. The treasure-trail had become a treasure-interstate-highway, more thick, more dark, more everything. She followed the trail with her eyes as it drifted lower on her body, but took a sharp detour as she saw that there were indeed some entirely new additions. Okay, there are the normal two. Four, six, eight, ten, twelve. Josie had a dozen nipples, each ringed by fine hairs.
"That is fucking gross. That is so fucking gross." She hesitated to touch one of the new ones, but reached up to the original pair. "Couldn't give me any more up here, could you, mad scientists?" Josie had always been flat-chested, now she was flat-chested six times over. She felt like screaming at someone. A government someone, or a security guard someone, or a Ron someone.
Remembering work, she was happy to flee from her reflection back to her phone and smiled in relief as she saw she had missed a call from Sabrina. She called her back and was overjoyed to hear her answer.
"Everything go okay, baby girl?"
"No! No, it definitely didn't go okay. They weren't open! They weren't fucking open!"
"It's Tuesday!"
"It's fucking Tuesday! And the guard said it was because some asshole wasn't there so no one could be there and then I had to go home and Joe's BBQ on the corner almost made me throw up and I ate way too much McDonald's and the Internet doesn't know what the fuck I'm turning into and--"
"Okay, hun, breathe. You gotta just breathe. Sit down and breathe."
"I don't know what to do and I'm freaking the fuck out, literally!" She realized she was openly sobbing.
"Breathe, baby, sit down and breathe."
Josie slid to the floor. "What am I gonna do?" She was angry at herself when she realized she was crying.
"It'll work out! You can go back next day off."
"That's in a week! At least! And it's getting worse every day! I'm all hairy and I fucking stink and I want to fuck my neighbors and I've got twelve nipples and--"
"Holy shit, girl. That's weird and all, but that sounds like it could be fun, yeah?"
"No! It's not fun! Having twelve nipples is not fun! What am I gonna DO?"
"I mean, you could ... Josie, listen. Fuck Kmart. Fuck this job. Quit, right now, and go back to the government people tomorrow. You can always find another shitty retail job."
Josie lightly banged the back of her head against the wall in defeat. "I can't! I can barely pay rent now. I can't find a job that fast, and the paycheck wouldn't be in before the end of the month anyway. Ron will let me keep my job even if I turn into a mouse or something, right? God, I don't even know what time I'm supposed to be at work tomorrow. Are you still there, can you check?"
"Yeah, hold on." There was a pause as Sabrina looked at the work schedule. "Next is midnight shift."
"Midnight shift?! First he wants me in at 6:00, then third shift? God fucking damnit, Ron!"
"God fucking damnit Ron," Sabrina confirmed.
"Wait, okay, that's not bad. I can go back to the stupid building tomorrow and be back home in time to shower and shave the rainforest my pussy has turned into."
"Come on, you know I don't like that word."
Josie ignored her. "No, this works great. This is great!"
"Um ..."
"'Um' what? What 'um?'"
"It's third shift today. Now. Like in a few hours."
"No! What?! Bullshit! I thought it was tomorrow!"
"It's tomorrow in a few hours."
Josie screamed in frustration, dropped the phone, and starting rubbing her eyes with the palms of her hands. She stopped when she realized the motion caused her to be able to smell her armpits easier. She could still hear Sabrina on the other end of the phone, asking if she was okay. She held the phone up to her ear, only then realizing that they were slightly longer and pointier.
"Baby girl, are you okay?"
She sniffed, wiping snot on the back of her hairy hand. "I'm still hungry."
"Baby, I'm sorry."
"You're talking really loud."
"No, I'm not."
"You are. Or maybe I have super-hearing. My ears are bigger."
"Oh, baby, I'm so sorry." Sabrina was a genuinely compassionate person, and Josie never appreciated it more than this moment. Being called "baby girl" constantly would've normally seemed creepy, but she was so genuine that it felt almost motherly.
Josie played with her left ear while holding the phone to her right. "It's weird, I think the right is growing faster than the left. I wonder why that is."
"Josie, you need to get ready for work if you're coming."
"I don't want to have dog ears."
"Josie ..."
"Especially my right ear. That's one of my favorite ears." She sniffed.
"Josie, quit the fucking job."
"No. I'll be there in a minute. I'll get there at 11:00, maybe the night manager will let me go home early."
"I'll stick around until you get here, okay?"
"Thanks. Thanks, Sabrina. Goodbye."
"Goodbye, love."
Josie dropped the phone, lifted her hairy arms, and sniffed her pits. It was bad, but a weird part of her liked it and it made her feel very warm between her legs. She needed a shower but didn't have time and didn't see the point anyway. She'd just smell like a pig in an hour. Josie frowned at the thought. No, not a pig. She'd smell bad, but not like a pig. She was not turning into a fucking pig.
Josie hopped off the bus and began the long trek across the parking lot. During the ride, a child had actually pointed at her and called her smelly.
"Not smelly," she mumbled to herself. "You're smelly, you stupid, smelly child."
True to her word, Sabrina was waiting for her outside the building despite the cold night air. The woman was a champion.
Sabrina ran towards her and started to give Josephine a hug she very much needed right then, but stopped as she got closer. "Oh, baby." She pinched her nose.
"It's not that bad!"
Sabrina was quiet.
"It's that bad?"
"It'll get better. You'll get it sorted out. Quit. This. Shit. Job. Just go home. I'll go tell Ron."
"Thanks, Sabrina. I mean it. You're a good friend." She reached out for a hug, hoping her friend would relinquish. She just needed some bodily contact.
Sabrina held her breath and returned the hug. "It's okay. It's okay. It'll be okay. Josie, what the fuck are you doing?"
Josie realized she was lightly but intentionally rubbing her chest against her friend, her nipples throbbing with an electric thrum. "Oh, God, sorry. I didn't mean to ... Fuck, everything is so weird right now."
"I know, just don't do that. You start acting weird, it's not going to matter if you want to keep the job or not. Besides ..." Sabrina hesitated.
"Besides what?"
"Besides ... Ron."
"Ron's still here?!"
Sabrina nodded.
"Oh my God, does he go home? Does he have a home? Why doesn't he have a home?"
"Just try to stay away from him, okay?"
"Does he sleep in the mattress section or something? Seriously!"
"I have to go. My kids have probably destroyed the house by now. I gotta get back. Quit the job, Josie."
Josie nodded. "Okay. Maybe. Yeah. Thanks, Sabrina." Josie took a deep breath and walked through the door, hoping the "Employees Only" sign would still apply to her after this shift.
Ron was waiting on the other side of the door because of course Ron was waiting on the other side of the door.
"Good evening, Miss Sung. All ready for your shift?"
Josie nodded. She tried to say something, but the words didn't come out.
"You're here early. Hoping to get off a little early?"
She nodded, although it was more in response to the words "get off" and definitely not in the way her manager meant.
"Let's talk in my office for a minute." Ron led her to his "office," more of a broom closet that sufficed for whatever paperwork it was Ron needed to do at the end of the day. She took a seat in the uncomfortable red chair across from his desk. He was quiet for a long while, but finally leaned forward.
"Your vest is wrinkled."
"I'm sorry."
"Your clothes are filthy."
"I'm sorry."
"You smell like a brothel."
Josie didn't know what a brothel smelt like. Sex and perfume? That didn't seem so bad. She was still so fucking wet. "I'm sorry."
"This isn't like you." He paused, as if waiting for another "I'm sorry." When one wasn't offered, he continued with an unexpected question. "What are you on?"
"On? What do you mean, like ... drugs?" She wasn't on drugs. She was turning into a pig, or a rabbit, or something. She needed to be fucked, she couldn't stay still, she couldn't stop sweating even though it was cold. But she wasn't on something. "I'm not on anything."
"Miss Sung." He paused again, giving her some time to offer some other explanation, but none was forthcoming. "Kmart is a good place to work."
Josie nodded. Kmart was not a good place to work.
"I mean, we try to take care of our employees. I try to take care of my employees." Was he about to blackmail her into fucking him to stay quiet? Part of her hoped so. She'd fuck even Ron at this point. What the hell was happening to her? "There is a program that can help."
Josie was strangely disappointed that he seemed genuinely concerned. Maybe Ron wasn't too much of a loathsome prick. "I need ... to cum." Ron raised an eyebrow and Josie hurriedly added "Come ... to, um, ask if I can take a few days off. I need to take care of something. Please? Please. Please."
"Josie, what the fuck are you doing?" She had been rubbing her nipples through her "Always-Friendly" Kmart vest. Her breasts felt like they might have swelled a bit. She looked down and noticed hair trailing between her cleavage that definitely hadn't been there since she'd left the house. "Miss Sung?"
She stopped what she was doing, and tried to feign off what was coming before he said the words. "No, I ..."
"You're fired."
Josie was panting like a dog as she stood in the parking lot. She hoped she'd find Sabrina still standing around, but she was long gone. She just couldn't catch her breath, although she wasn't sure if it was out of shock at being fired, fear of how she'd pay her bills, relief at not having to work third shift, or the now constant fire burning between her legs.
"Go home." She nodded to reassure herself that she had some plan of action, even if it was routine. "Just go home. It'll be okay. I'll be okay. It's okay."
By the time she reached the end of the parking lot, she was sweating profusely, which only caused her to shiver more in the cool night air. Perhaps she was running a fever. Maybe this whole thing was a fever dream and she'd wake up tomorrow and be back to her boring impoverished life. Maybe life would throw her a fucking bone. Maybe.
"Bone." That word could also mean "fuck." Or could be associated with food. Either was good at this point. She wondered if she'd be morbidly obese by the time this was over. Would a noose even fit over her neck?
She stopped walking as she realized what she had just thought. "No, Jesus Christ, stop that." She wiped a drop of snot from her nose with the back of her hand, trying not to think of how it seemed flatter than before she left the house. But the thought was there, the old demon that always reared its head whenever things got really bad. She'd had friends that had done it. She had attempted it once, but her mom had found her with the pre-Jono douchebag boyfriend's gun to her temple and had somehow talked her out of it.
Maybe Jono had left his gun before she had dumped him. Things were just going to get worse. Maybe it would be better to ...
"Stop. Fucking stop. That shit leads nowhere. Go home. Go to sleep. Getting fired could be the best thing. The fucking government place will be open tomorrow for sure." She nodded, tried to smile, and kept walking.
She remembered a trick someone had once taught her when she was feeling down. There was a time in her life when she didn't feel this bad, and there were times in her life when she felt worse. It stood to reason that the pattern would continue and she'd feel better at some point in the near future. Presumedly after she was no longer a pig monster. Even though she was totally not going to be a pig monster. Anything would be better than that. Things always got better.
"Hey, baby, got what you need."
God damnit.
She turned around. Whenever Sabrina called her "baby," it was a term of endearment. Sort of a motherly nickname that made her feel good. The man leaning against the lamppost probably meant it in an altogether different way. Josie picked up her pace. The bus stop was on the other side of the block. She told herself to just pretend she didn't hear him and he'd go away.
"Baby, I know what you want. Let's talk a while, sexy."
Or not. "Sorry, I've got somewhere I need to be. Maybe someone over at Paddy's is looking for a good time." Paddy's was the shittiest bar she knew, and it was just up the street.
"Nah, baby, there's a good time waiting to happen right here." She felt his hand on her ass before she even realized he was standing so close. The fact that her butt jiggled faintly made her groan inwardly.
"No, seriously, no. Have a good night." Leave it to a run-down retail store to be in a shitty part of town.
"Nah, I insist. So does my friend here." He grabbed her hand and forced it against his crotch. True to his word, his friend was indeed quite insistent, its impressive length feeling like a small log against her hand. For a second she thought about taking him up on his offer. But her strict mother had taught her a few things, such as not to put up with this shit.
"Fuck. Off." She pulled her hand away, and turned to run. Fuck, why didn't she carry any mace?
"Nah," he repeated as she grabbed her by the shoulder and pushed her against the wall. This time he reached into his pockets and pulled out a knife. "I've got another friend who's got some insisting in him, too." The lowlife definitely hadn't earned top marks in grammar. His knife was soon at her throat and his hand was pulling at her clothing. "Make a sound, I'll fucking kill you."
Her eyes darted around. There had to be a way out of this. There was always a way out.
While she was searching for an outlet, she felt the knife back away from her skin. "What the fuck?" He backed up a step, but still held onto her tightly. "What the fuck? You a dude?" Josie glanced down at the hair on her chest as the thug sniffed the air. "What the fuck is that smell?" He finally got a good look at her face, and must have seen something he didn't like. "Jesus Mary Joseph."
There was always a way out. She slashed him across the face with sharp, hard nails she didn't even realize she had. It was enough to cut his skin. No, not just cut. As he stumbled backwards, shouting in pain, both of them realized he now had three sharp gouges in his cheek that were vomiting forth blood. If she had aimed for his neck, he'd be dead by now.
"Fuck." She coughed, phlegm rising from the back of her throat, making her next word sound almost like a grunt. "Off."
"Bitch!" He turned and raised his knife, but stopped in his tracks, nearly stumbled, and ran away.
She was panting as she watched him go. Being a monster had a few advantages. She started to wipe a string of drool from her mouth, stopping when she realized she had blood and pieces of flesh on her fingers. Wiping her hands on her now-useless Kmart vest, she felt her teeth with her other hand. The man must've been freaked out when he saw her much larger canines. Maybe she was turning into a wolverine. Maybe even the Hugh Jackman kind.
Josie tore her vest off and used it to wipe the sweat from her brow before tossing it to the sidewalk. She bent over, hands on her knees, laughing hysterically although she wasn't sure why. She slowly started off in the direction of the bus stop just in time to see it pull away.
"Fuck!" Last bus of the night. Yet another reason she hated third shift. Even after firing her, Ron continued to ruin her life. It was a thirty minute walk back to the apartment, but the neighborhood got better a few blocks along the way. Despite how much she was shivering, she welcomed the walk. She had some thinking to do.
Josie walked in the front door at around 2:30 in the morning. She'd never been so happy to see this shithole. She held her breath as she stripped off her sweat-soaked clothing and ran to the couch, wrapping a heavy blanket her grandmother had made eons ago around her as she fell onto the cushions. She began rocking herself back and forth, trying to warm herself up, occasionally rubbing her feet to try to warm them. After about thirty minutes she was no longer shivering, although the hysterical laughing had returned in force.
She was giggling so loudly that one of her neighbors began yelling at her through the wall, which only made her laugh harder. Maybe she was turning into a hyena. That'd probably be worse than a pig, right? Aren't those weird looking? And they eat dead stuff? Her mirth was finally halted when she oinked. Not a laugh, or a chuckle, or even a hiccup. She had literally just made an oinking sound.
She stood up, dropping the blanket to the floor. "I am not going to fucking oink. That is not going to happen." Releasing the heavy comforter from around her sent a wave of repressed musk flowing around her. Do pigs have musk? What even is musk?
"Bed." She could get in three or four hours' rest, then catch the earliest bus back to the nondescript government building and get this fixed. She walked down the hall, definitely noticing a bounce in her chest that she'd desired for so long, although this definitely wasn't worth the price. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes before she returned to what was becoming her least favorite spot in the whole world in front of her mirror.
It was about what she'd expected, but worse. Her body was now almost completely covered in a thin layer of hair, thicker on her chest, thinning around her sides before thickening again on her extremities. Her nipples, the standing army of them, had grown longer, well on their way to becoming teats. The hair surrounding them stopped at her areola, which were now darker and as round as a soup can. She was probably pushing a C-cup at her top set, her next set barely extended past her chest, and the remaining ones flush with her skin.
She felt her face with her fingers, noticing that they were indeed capped with a thick keratin. They weren't quite claws, not quite hooves, but somewhere in between and were filthy with grime, their off-white color now almost yellow.
Her nose was definitely flatter, nostrils flaring as she touched them, although thankfully her face hadn't started to grow into a muzzle. Her lips seemed plumper--COULD you put lipstick on a pig?--and she gasped as she peeled them back to examine her teeth. Her top canines were more pronounced, and the bottom row even larger, and all of them were tinged yellow. She looked like she hadn't run a toothbrush across them in years, and in truth she couldn't remember the last time she actually had. Her chiny-chin-chin had grown semi-sparse hairs along with the rest of her cheeks and her eyebrows were starting to meet in the middle. "Why do pigs have to be so fucking gross?" She vowed when she turned back she would eat nothing but bacon every morning to get some measure of revenge on them, but the thought started making her feel queasy. The final touch was her now permanently dilated eyes, her irises giving way to her pitch black pupils.
She rubbed her forearms across the top of her head, wiping away the sweat. (Pigs don't sweat! The Internet said so!) Doing so, she noticed just how thick her armpit hair had become and how much worse she smelled as she raised her arms. "Ron was right. I fucking reek." She briefly contemplated starting to shave, but she knew it would take at least an hour and would probably all be back in the morning. There wasn't even much point in showering.
She sighed and resumed her inspection with the part she had been putting off, the damage done below the waist. Her legs were worse than her arms. She could still easily see her pale, sweaty skin, but there was more hair there than she had ever seen on a man. At least it felt soft to the touch and strangely warm. Her toenails were extremely long now, growing out about an inch and were almost entirely black and yellow. Were they going to become full hooves? Would she even be able to stand on them? And what was between her legs ... "Bush" didn't describe it anymore. It was a dark mass of hair and extended just as thick onto the top of her legs, thinning as it wrapped around her waist. It was also probably the part of her with the most offensive odor. She ran her fingers through the hair on her sides and unceremoniously began probing the inside of her ass, groaning when she felt how thick the hairs were around her anus. Her other hand completed the circle around her waist, drifting across the soft hairs before she lightly touched her mound ...
And realized this was a horrible mistake. She squealed. There was no other word for it. Once the floodgates had opened, there was no stopping it. She fell back on her cushioned ass, rubbing herself with both hands, tongue lolling from the side of her mouth. This wasn't supposed to feel this good. There were spots in her eyes as she humped against her hands, squealing again as her claws poked at her soft inner flesh. Was she even going to be able to get herself off with these things?
"Shit!" She stopped her ministrations and began digging through the cabinet underneath the sink, looking for a little black bag that contained her source of salvation. She tossed out of date cleaning supplies and Drano bottles out of the way until she finally found it. She fumbled with the zipper before simply tearing the bag open with her teeth, turning it upside down and letting fall ...
Nothing. "Where the fuck IS IT?!" Her vibrator was missing. Where was it? It wasn't like she brought it outside of the apartment. No one had even seen the damn thing except for ... "Oh my God, Jono, you absolute sack of human feces." He had actually gotten upset that she owned one once. The audacity of a man thinking a woman may have tended to her own needs once in a while. He must have tossed it in the dumpster after their last fight. She cursed herself for not watching him more closely as he was packing his things.
"No no no nonononono!" She'd have to make due because there was no stopping this now. She slumped back onto the floor, rolling in her own sweat like a ... Well, like one of those, yes. She fingered herself with one hand, much more carefully this time, while her other ran across her rows and rows and rows of teats, gasping in sharp bursts at the wonderful pleasure they emitted. Maybe it wasn't all bad. These things felt wonderful.
Something was wrong, though. Something other than everything about her life the past few days. She rolled onto her hands and knees, thrusting back against her hand like it was the spiral-shaped cock of a boar. She had found out that little tidbit yesterday about the male pig's member. She found it disgusting before, but now it seemed like something she was very much willing to give a try. She should try to find a farm, hop the fence and ... No, that was a thought she wasn't going to begin to entertain. She was a human, sort of. But, Jesus Christ, what would it feel like? That weight pressing down on her, the stench of a filthy beast, his balls--those were huge!--slamming against her hairy ass, coming and coming and ...
Squeals, oinks, grunts, and everything in between flew from her mouth as she came. There were no words, just near-endless waves of unstoppable, horrible, joyous orgasm. She'd also read a rumor that pigs orgasmed for half an hour, which sounded torturous until she began to experience something like it herself. She never wanted this to end, up until the point where she began praying to whatever pagan god would hear her that it would stop. Her mind began to shut down. She ceased to exist as a person, becoming just an unenviable pile of sweaty pleasure. And when her orgasm finally died down, it flowed directly into another one, and another, and another. Finally, after what seemed an eternity it slowed down and stopped. It hadn't been thirty minutes, but it had certainly been five or ten. If she graduated to the full half hour she didn't think she'd be able to stand it.
She smiled stupidly as she rolled back onto the back, her drooling tongue hanging loosely until it grazed the top of the cold linoleum. She realized she smelled twice as bad as before and the mirror had actually clouded over with the amount of heat she must have been generating. Her sweat had puddled on the floor, so much of it that it had even spilled over into the carpet of the bedroom.
"You didn't deserve that," she apologized to the carpet. "I love that carpet. That carpet is like family to me." It was entirely possible she was not entirely back to full mental acuity. Her fingers twisted a few of her nipples, relishing in the lazy after-haze of the most intense sexual bliss she had ever felt. She looked over at the clock and groaned as she realized it was nearly 3:00. She gradually pushed herself to her knees, nearly falling over as her hands slipped a few times in the pool of sweat and drool and cum. She glanced over to the shower, promising that she wouldn't neglect it forever, but she barely had the strength to stand up and waddle over to the bed.
She had made it halfway before she squealed for the third or fourth time that night, a sharp pain between her legs forcing her to stumble and barely catch herself on the edge of the bed. It wasn't over.
"Oh God, shit, again?" Her body demanded more attention, more sweat, more sex, more everything. "No, not again, I need to sleep, okay?" Her hands disagreed as they dove between her legs again and she let forth another squeal that earned her a loud "Shut the fuck up over there" from the tired neighbor on the other side of the wall. Fuck him. She'd had to put up with his sex noises a hundred times, he could deal with it for one night.
And it would indeed be one night. One long, uninterrupted night. By the time she had finished and her body allowed her to rest, the sun was just peaking through the blinders. Delirious from the experience, she attempted to crawl on her hands and knees towards her bed, but made it only a few feet before she slid to the carpet. The words "family" and "carpet" escaped her wet lips before her eyes surrendered their losing battle and she slipped into oblivion.
It was an oblivion that lasted three and a half minutes. Her alarm blared. Josie would never be free from the iron-and-plastic grasp of Kmart's work schedule. She feebly waved her arms about, trying to snatch the phone from whatever hell it was beckoning. Above this however, two thoughts were chief in her mind. First, "I'm a pig." Second, "I need to go to town and not be a pig."
With a Herculean effort and an even larger groan, Josie got to her feet, took a few steps towards her closet, and promptly collapsed. She decided her strategy of crawling really was ahead of its time and slowly moved towards her dirty clothes pile on her hands and knees. She found a pair of sweatpants and a large, baggy hoodie. She was pleasantly surprised that they still fit fairly well, although certainly a bit tighter. Her shoes, however, were another matter entirely. They simply wouldn't stretch around her swollen ankles and she certainly couldn't cram her longer toenails into them. A pair of overstretched hiking socks would have to suffice. She threw on a hat and wrapped her face in a scarf to keep from having to provide awkward explanations as to what phylum she was a member of.
She was so tired, but she had to make this stop. The pleasure from last night (or from five minutes ago) was indescribable, but her life was being ruined and she had to make this stop. She was panting as she walked down the hallway, though whether from exertion, lust, or nervousness she couldn't tell. She paused to pick up her purse as she opened the door, but decided she could barely keep track of herself. She'd leave the apartment unlocked. It wasn't like anything else could be stolen from her.
No purse meant no bus card. No purse meant no money for a cab. Josie was barely stringing coherent thoughts together and was surely running a fever. But she had walked these roads enough times to know the general direction of Joe's BBQ and the government facility was just up the block. The mere thought of barbecue caused her to fall to her knees and retch what little fluid was in her stomach into the gutter. She was pretty sure she was apologizing to the people around her as she did it, even though the people around her had decided to not be around her as they crossed the street to get away from her.
She knew if this continued she'd end up attracting the attention of the police and probably end up in a mad scientist's lair. Maybe he'd be cute and would be nice enough to bend her over the counter and fuck her brains out, all in the name of the advancement of science of course.
Focus. Her vision was a little blurry, but she knew this area. There was a long alley that would take her most of the way. It was a little seedy, but she had it on good authority that no rapist mugger would be interested in her. After that, a small park and then she'd be in front of Joe's ... She almost started dry-heaving again as the acronym started to form in her mind.
She managed to make it down the alleyway, only stumbling five times. Other than that, the only event of note was when a homeless person started to ask her for money, only to stop when he decided she must also be homeless and he was wasting his time. As she walked out of the alley and into the park, she kept adjusting her scarf, trying to find an optimal position between hiding her face and collapsing from heat exhaustion.
People gave her a wide berth in the park, the Red Sea parting to make way for the horrible monster. Was she closer to Godzilla or the Black Lagoon thing? Were there pig monsters in the old black-and-white movies? Were there sea monster pigs? Josie rubbed her eyes, nearly poking them with her extended nails. Focus. No more nonsense. Stay in the moment. Make a good impression. Don't act like a weirdo animal-freak. There have to be cures for this sort of thing, so go get one.
She was surprised when the door to the facility opened, and even more surprised to find a security guard sitting behind a desk. The room was sparse. No chairs to lounge in while you waited. No television spewing the Two Minutes Hate from Fox News. Just an ordinary looking man with a funny mustache sitting in a blue uniform that looked like something a cop would wear on an old 70s movie.
"Can I help you?" The man looked bored, but he didn't look terrified, or disgusted, or angry. Maybe the disguise was working.
"I need to see ..." Fuck. Fuck fuck. Who did she need to see? Someone in the mutant animal division? "Um, I-I need to ..."
The guard leaned forward, looking directly into Josie's eyes as if looking at his reflection. "Could you remove your mask, please?"
No no no, he can't see me like this, no one can see me like this. "I'd, um ..."
"This is a federal building."
Josie realized he had a gun. Why hadn't she noticed before? "Okay." She squinted her eyes, not wanting to see the man's reaction as she pulled the black face mask from her face. She could feel that there was snot literally dripping from it as she did so. Maybe closing her eyes was a good decision: she couldn't see how disgusting she had become, she wouldn't see the guard's revulsion, and as a bonus she wouldn't see him draw his gun on her just before he shot the pig monster before him.
Instead, in a still-bored voice he simply said. "Down the hall, have a seat in one of the chairs. He's at lunch, but he should be back pretty soon."
Her eyes went from closed to wide open in astonishment in between the space of a panicked heartbeat. Why wasn't he freaking out? "I'm sorry?"
The guard was already back to browsing Youtube as he repeated himself. "Down the hall, have a seat in one of the chairs. He'll be back soon." He pressed a button, and the door behind him made a surprisingly loud buzzing noise as it opened.
"Um, thanks?" She walked through the door and down a very nondescript hallway. Did this type of thing happen frequently in this place? Animal monsters showing up at regular intervals? Was she going to see a lobster person sitting patiently in the seat next to her?
Nothing but two empty chairs, the type you'd often find in a grandmother's home. At least they looked comfortable. She took a seat in the closest one and began putting her mask back on, adjusting her shawl as she did. Now that she was sitting in a closed space, she could smell herself again. Please, please, please let this person be used to this sort of thing. The guard certainly seemed to be. She examined her hands as she waited, rubbing the hair on the back of her knuckles as she flexed her fingers. They seemed stiff and a bit sore, like she was experiencing carpal tunnel. She knew that wasn't what it was, but one debilitating condition could certainly be better than another.
The heat was returning, because of course it was. She was, after all, a rutting animal in heat. She rubbed her legs together, but stopped when that seemed to make the hotness between her legs worse. She suddenly realized how thirsty she was. Maybe she should ask the guard for some water, or try to find a restroom or water fountain. She also noticed how incredibly sleepy she was. It had been almost 24 hours now, and there had been quite a bit of ... physical exertion.
She was startled awake by the sound of the door buzzing and opening. How long had she been out? Mere seconds, surely. There was a short, bald man entering the hallway carrying a McDonald's bag. He was saying something to the guard, although she couldn't make out what. Why couldn't she be turning into something with super-hearing? Do pigs have good hearing or bad? The man chuckled at whatever it was the guard was saying, made eye contact with her, and strode down the hall.
"Hidee. Cum own eein." What the fuck had he just said? Was that English? It took her brain a few minutes to process his accent, a syrupy Southern drawl honed like a cherished family heirloom and refined through several centuries of proud incest. He began punching a six digit combination into a keypad next to the door that surely led to his office, then cursed when the button beeped twice with one press. This seemed to be a practiced annoyance. He entered the code again and held a card to the reader whose glowing red light turned green as he opened the door.
Josie rose to her feet, her body groaning in protest at the movement. She followed him in and sat in the dingy brown leather seat across from his desk that he motioned her towards. He dropped his golden arches bag on the table and pulled out a Big Mac and some fries. Was he actually going to eat in front of her as they discussed her horrible transformation into a whatever-the-fuck?
"Name?"
"Um, Josie. Josephine," she corrected herself. "Sung."
He clicked away on his keyboard with one while shoving fries into his mouth with the other. With his mouth open he said simply "Chung?"
"Sung. Um, like past tense of 'sing.'"
"Gotcha." More fries, more clicking, then he gave a short nod. "Yep, here we go. Whut keen Ah doo far yee?"
Change me back into a human fucking being, please? "Um, I was recently given a ... sentence, I guess? A misunderstanding, really. The man at the other building said that I could have my case examined and get an antidote to this, um, procedure."
"I'm sure he did. Pig?" Was he insulting her. No, he was asking if she was turning into a sow. After Josie nodded, he said simply, "Yeah, they go with pigs a lot these days." How often did this sort of stuff happen? There were a few more clicks, every one of which mattered more to Josie than almost anything else that had ever occurred in her life. "Looks like everything is pretty cut and dry. Doesn't look like there's anything that can be done."
What a passive statement. "Nothing that can be done" instead of "Nothing I can do." He'd no doubt had this conversation several times before.
Josie was shaking. "There has to be a mistake. I don't even know what the ... What I did. Does your ... file or whatever even say?"
"Oh, yeah, I mean, it's all right here. You're getting off easy, really. Says here that there's usually a death penalty for entering ..." His eyes danced around the screen, his hands busy unwrapping his burger. "Room 419-0241-B of this particular military base. Highest security room in the building. You picked a good'un."
"A MILITARY BASE? I've never been on a military base! I mean ... Wait, what's even in the room? I deserve to at least know what was in the room I didn't infiltrate, right?"
"Human waste disposal center."
That didn't sound good. "Like, what, a morgue or incinerator or something?"
"Lavatory."
Thirty seconds ago, rational thought had at least been tangentially present on the planet Earth. She was at least somewhat sure of this. She may have been turning into swine, but she felt sure the Earth was revolving around a celestial ball of burning gas and that the laws of Newtonian physics were still present in the universe. Now she wasn't so sure. "There's a death penalty for breaking into a ... bathroom?"
Another nod. "Highest security room in the building," he repeated. "If there's nothing else ..." He pressed a button underneath his desk and an audio speaker from underneath it crackled to life. "Josh, Miss Chung is on her way out the front door."
"No! Wait! You're turning me into a fucking freak because I broke into a bathroom?"
"So now you're admitting you did in fact infiltrate Room 419-0241-B." It wasn't a question.
Tears started falling at last. She didn't get up and leave the office. She couldn't have stood up if she tried. She stared vacantly at the man in front of her, whose tone of apathy was almost awe-inspiring. She must have been delaying his next appointment. Or his Facebook time. Gradually his face shifted to something bordering neutral, if certainly not sympathy. She realized he must have taken her vacant stare as pleading, rather than simply the absence of all sapient thought.
"Sorry, I mean, there's really nothing that can be done. It's all right here. Like I say, you're getting off easy. Charges are ..." He moused around the screen a bit. "Criminal trespass. Infiltration of a government facility. Bypassing security on a government facility. Criminal trespass while bypassing security during an infiltration of a government facility. Do I need to go on? There are several pages ..."
Josie started to ask if those allegations weren't all the same thing, but decided against it. "Which government facility is this again?"
"Have you infiltrated more than one?"
"No, I mean ..." Shit. "I haven't infiltrated ... bypassed ... trespassed on ANY government facility. But which one did I ... not trespass on?"
"NATO Allied Command Ramstein Air Base."
Isn't that a band? "Where even is that?"
He had to consult the screen again. "Ramstein-Miesenbach. Which is ... in Germany."
"Oh. It's just that, sir, I've never actually been to Germany." She'd barely been out of the city.
"Uh-huh."
"And I've definitely never been to Ramstein ... Measelback? Germany."
"Uh-huh."
"And I've definitely-definitely never infiltrated NATO Allied Command Ramstein Germany."
"And yet here we are."
"Right ... So, that's what I'm getting at. I did not actually criminally trespass to the thing I've never been to."
He shifted his square glasses while squinting at the form, still careful to avoid eye contact. It must have been a practiced tactic. "Your name is ... Josephine Chung?"
"Joesphine Sung. Yes."
"Your address is 689 Westbrooke Lane, Apartment Number 405?"
"Yes sir. No elevator, I have to go right up to the top on my own, heh heh ..." Embarrassing small talk was of no use in the face of such unwavering dedication to meaningless government apathy.
"Occupation ... Clerk? Is that administrative or ...?"
"Store clerk. Cashier. At K-Mart."
The heavens must have opened wide their gates, for the bald man finally made eye contact.
"K-Mart is still around?"
"Yes, sir. Ours is. I guess some others. Other than ours, I mean."
"Wull eye bee damned." He locked his computer and turned his full attention to his burger. He had her. He had nailed her to the cross with this brilliant display of detective work. "That is you then."
What was even happening here? "Okay, yes, but I still didn't do any of that."
"And yet your name is ..." His smirk was probably less clever than he'd intended, given the mayonnaise hanging from his lip.
"But ... What?! I mean, that doesn't necessarily mean I did it right? It could be anyone's name on that sheet."
"And yet, whose name is it?"
"Mine, but--"
"Yours. No buts. Have a good day now." He chewed contently. Josie knew that the conversation had ended. The man would not respond to any further questions.
Josie was halfway down the hallway before she realized she had left the room. Her silent contemplation of her place in an uncaring universe was interrupted by the sound of the man laughing. She made the words "democrats", "fucking", and "idiots." And then she was back in the lobby, then out in the street, and back in her odd little version of hell.
HELP! THEY ARE NOT DROPPING CHARGES NEED TO GET HOME PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE
It had taken her five minutes to send the text message. First her phone's facial recognition didn't want to recognize her. Then her fingers didn't seem to trigger the touch pad. Was her fingerprint messed up or something? Is that even how they worked? Pressing the icons with her nose was a stroke of genius. Pigs were supposed to be really smart, right? The last obstacle getting the voice recognition to work, but that just necessitated nose-deleting the odd "OINK" or "SQUEAL" or "GOD HELP ME WHAT DID I DO TO DESERVE THIS". Finally she had a decent jumble of words that would serve to at least ask for some measure of salvation.
Sitting on the uncomfortable park bench, she knew she wasn't going to be able to stay awake much longer. She switched her phone to vibrate and stuck it underneath her shawl right up against her ear. Between the ping and the vibration--and maybe even one of those ancient, rare actual phone calls--it would be enough to wake her up. Surely Sabrina would understand how fucked up she was and would keep trying to get in touch with her if she didn't respond immediately. If not, Josie would probably be arrested for loitering or public indecency or invading a military base in Antarctica or something. Jail would be an upgrade at this point. They had food. And cots.
Again, she was asleep before she realized she was drifting off. She dreamt this time, although she would later wish she wouldn't. First they were serving her at Joe's BBQ. But the smell of pork made her nauseous and the dream changed to them serving her at Joe's BBQ. Literally in this case. She was tied down on top of a grill, screaming as the leering bearded man she assumed was Joe raised a knife above her. Then the grill became a bed, and there was another method of "eating" being involved as Joe licked and slobbered over her swollen cunt. Just as the knife had become a long, swiveled cock she awoke to the loudest car horn ever devised in the bowels of Satan's auto-body.
"You Josie?"
Josie didn't recognize the man yelling at her from his passenger window. Young guy, clean cut, nice car.
"Yes," she answered, although she wasn't sure if that was the correct answer with the way things were going.
"I'm Darius. Sabrina's kid. She's at work, but she sent me to pick you up and take you straight home." That last little bit of information meant it was a direct order from his mom. What was Sabrina afraid that she'd do?
Irrelevant. Salvation. Darius was a handsome kid. Seventeen, eighteen? Old enough to be a man. Josie shook the idea from her head before it was fully formed. Sabrina had always said he was "nappy looking," whatever that meant, but the kid seemed very well groomed. Maybe it wasn't Darius at all. Maybe it was a stranger that would take her to a dead end alley and fuck her in the back seat of his car and she'd squeal and lick his large pig balls and they'd cum and cum and--
Stop!
"You coming?"
Josie nodded, rose to her tired feet and walked to the car, ignoring the honk of the impatient man in the car behind Darius's. She started to open the passenger door, but Darius responded with a "Nuh-uh" and motioned her towards the back. She plopped down in the back seat and the car was moving before she'd fully closed the door. It smelled a little bit of cigarettes, but it was warm and the leather was soft. Josie found herself wondering if they made leather out of pigs, but stopped when she felt herself getting carsick. She was soon nodding off. She fought off the sweet oblivion for two reasons. One, she didn't think it would be entirely polite. Politeness was, after all, of paramount importance when one was turning into livestock.
Two ... something was happening. She could feel her guts roiling like she was carsick, but it wasn't just that. Her feet and hands were cramping, her clothes felt tighter, and her nipples felt like they were on fire. She had no doubt she was going into heat like the animal she was, but there was something else going on underneath that.
Darius mumbled, "Jesus," and opened all four windows. Suddenly the car wasn't quite as warm anymore as the cold air entered. She thought about asking him to roll them back up, but realized the smell emanating from her must have been so bad that the kid would rather catch pneumonia than deal with it.
Her last thought before she fell asleep was that she couldn't blame him. Thankfully there were no dreams this time, just the comforting rumble of the old car, the bumps on the road, and the subtle throbbing of her clit.
"Here we go. Time to hop out."
How long was she out? Thirty minutes felt like thirty seconds, but she was just happy to be someplace safe for a while. She looked around, confused as to where she was until she saw the stairs of her apartment and the odd white van that she just now realized had been parked outside for a few days.
"Thanks," she muttered, her dirty hand on the door handle. Sabrina and her son were lifesavers. She hoped she'd be able to see her friend again.
Something was stopping her from getting out of the car, and she could tell Darius was getting impatient, jumpy even. The next words from Josie's mouth didn't originate from synapses firing from a brain that had spent millennia evolving to become the height of blind evolutionary achievement. She was speaking from the heat between her legs, the burning throb in her pussy.
"Um ... Do you want to come upstairs?"
Darius stopped tapping his foot on the floorboard. His face went from impatient to confused to cautiously polite again. "You need help getting up the stairs?"
"I need help ... with something else." Jesus, Josie, how old was this kid? Old enough. She leaned towards him, pushing her arms together against her chest and pushing her breasts together, displaying her newfound cleavage to the virile prospective mate behind the steering wheel. She hoped he wouldn't see the sparse, course hairs between her tits. "You could come inside for a while?" She swallowed. This wasn't like her, it wasn't her at all, but she needed a dick right now more than she needed sleep and a shower. "I need you to come inside." She hoped he picked up on her incredibly clever double-entendre.
His response was instead, "Bitch, get the fuck out of my car. What the fuck?"
Her face turned red. Had it been pink before? "Please? Please, God, please come upstairs and--"
"Get the fuck out of my car!" His hands were on the clasp of his seatbelt. She'd really fucked this up.
"O-Okay. Sorry. Okay." She fumbled with the handle again, tripped over the side of the car and found herself sprawled on her hands and knees on the cold pavement. God it felt good to be in this position. She raised her ass and looked over her shoulder, hoping he'd change his mind when he realized what a good little subservient mate she'd be. Instead, he floored the car without caring about the still-open door and was out on the street before stopping to look at any incoming traffic. Then he was gone.
She stood up slowly, sobbing as she did. "Why is this happening? Jesus, what do I do? What do I do?"
Josie turned to head towards her stairs, but noticed someone in the white van. She could smell a weird scent coming from the person inside and felt strangely certain that something bad was about to happen if she didn't get away. She turned and ran towards the stairs, gasping like an asthmatic as she took the stairs two at a time. She was proud she made it to the top before falling on her face, then threw the door open and slammed it behind her, thankful she had forgotten to lock the door. She slumped to the ground, fetid hot breath escaping her lips as she tried to slow her heartbeat. But it wasn't stopping, it was speeding up. Was she really so out of shape now that three flights of stairs had utterly conquered her?
No. Something else was happening, and she was pretty sure she wasn't going to like it. She squealed as her face erupted in pain. She clawed at the bridge of her nose as her nostrils started flaring much wider than she knew they should ever be able to. She tried to make it to the couch, crawling on all fours like an animal, sobbing all the way. She'd managed to make it halfway before the pain in her feet and hands became too much. She heard a tearing sound from her dirty socks, which had somehow survived walking all around the city. Flopping onto her ass, she saw her dirty yellow toenails ripping free from her socks, her feet swelling unnaturally along with the rest of her.
She took off her beanie and shawl, tossing them aside before tearing her shirt apart with her sharp claws. She glanced at her chest, swallowing some strange sense of pride as her breasts jiggled in an altogether unfamiliar way. She was less pleased when she felt other things jiggling just below them, the heat in her nipples growing painful. She fought out of her sweatpants, tossing them aside and gagging at the smell that was unleashed from between her legs. There was so much hair there now, she couldn't even see her labia, but her clit was swollen to the size of the tip of her pinkie finger, back when she had a pinkie finger. Wait.
She brought her hands up and saw that her little finger was shrinking along with her thumb, sliding to the sides of her hand even as her pointer finger started to swell and the other two grew closer together. Soon she wasn't able to separate the middle and ring finger. She felt uncharacteristically upset that she'd never be able to flip someone off again. The fingers were still separate entities, but she just couldn't move them apart.
Something similar was happening to her feet, her baby toe sliding back towards her ankle along with her big toe, whose descriptive adjective was becoming less accurate. She noticed more hairs had grown from the toes that were still where they were supposed to be, and an altogether distinct unpleasant smell coming from her feet.
She was panting worse than before now and her lips were drier than they'd been since this all started. She licked them, trying to provide some kind of relief, but her tongue felt like sandpaper. When was the last time she'd had anything to drink? She touched her tongue with her finger, tasting the dirt she must have picked up between riding buses, sitting on park benches, and stumbling through back alleys. She began to tug on her tongue, feeling that it extended a few inches further from her lips than she was used to. It felt stronger as it pushed back against her fingers, rubbing against her more pronounced canines.
Other things were growing stronger as well. She rubbed her arms, feeling corded muscle starting to form there. Her calves felt the same way as she traced through the hair on her legs. They'd need to be stronger to carry the extra weight of her ...
She squealed, oinked, and squealed again as she saw them. Her breasts had grown larger, maybe around a D-cup now, but below them she was growing more. Her teats stopped aching as breast flesh pushed out. They were small, but the ones at the bottom just on either side of her hairy cunt were still being pushed down by the weight of all the pairs above them. Her chest was fighting for space between an even dozen pairs of breasts. She had trouble leaning forward, and knew sit-ups would have to be dropped from her workout routine. Already the pain was beginning in the small of her back as they swelled to around B cups, battling for space as they did. She rubbed her topmost pair with her awkward hands--paws? Hooves?--feeling a tightness forming in her back as her muscles strengthened. Her extremities had thankfully stopping aching, but as she examined her hands for any more changes she saw the black hair on her forearms had become so thick and the muscles still swelling on her arms now they looked like they belonged on a rather hirsute male gym-goer. Why couldn't pigs be cuter?
There was more hair everywhere now. Her legs, her arms, the thick black tangle between her legs, and no doubt the itching between her ass cheeks signified a further growth down there. A mass of it covered her belly and she traced the treasure trail running all the way to the nape of her neck, being extremely careful to avoid touching her swelling nipples. At least her tits had stopped growing. Things seemed to be slowing down now. She was thankful that she hadn't gotten fat, just chubby around the waist and thighs. The pain was gone, just the maddening throb between her legs.
And the smell. It was worse than ever. Before she could compare it to a football locker room. Now it was stronger than that, with an undertone barnyard scent that she'd only experienced once when visiting a friend's farm. She needed to wash off as soon as possible, but found herself frowning at the idea, like it was something strange and offensive to her. She held her breath and slowly raised her arms before sticking her nose in the forest growing from her pits and took a tentative sniff, which quickly turned into an ugly snorting sound. It smelled like it could peel the paint off the walls, a thick sweaty musk that made her gag seconds before something strange hit her brain and she found part of herself wanting more. She took another stiff, moaning in equal parts discomfort and a strange, renewed lust. It smelled terrible, but suddenly her pussy was weeping and she started sweating worse than before.
She couldn't put it off any longer. She didn't want to. She needed this, now. She deserved it after what she had been through today. She tentatively touched the new nipples she had worked so hard to avoid, moaning and panting as she mouthed the word, "Yes." It was like her chest now contained twelve clits. What would the real deal feel like?
Her hand, if it could even still be called that, hovered over her pulsing cunt. Why was she hesitating? She had nothing else to do this afternoon, right? Maybe giving in to the pounding lust tearing away her like barbed wire through her belly was speeding up the changes? Maybe if she could resist she would slowly turn back to normal?
"And maybe pigs fly. Heh." She turned her hands over, staring at the dark hair running from the back of her hands, thickening further as it crept up her forearm. "Not funny." As if in agreement, the pain in her midsection intensified. She struggled to remain sitting and let loose another startled squeal. She was getting used to those now. She started repeating to herself, "You're not an animal. You're not an animal. You're not an animal. You got this." The pain was dying down to merely a burning sensation, radiating along with her heartbeat down her thighs and bellow her portly belly. She realized she was panting now. She raised her arm to again wipe the sweat from her brow, but stopped when she realized the more she smelled herself the worse it was getting.
"Okay then. Goals. Get up. Shower. Pass the fuck out." She nodded, as she looked to the hallway leading to her room. "Goals." Steeling herself, her legs straining with effort, she started to rise. She got as far as moving one of her legs into a position to begin standing when a sickening pleasure poured through her body like molten gold. She began squealing, grunting, weeping, calling out the word "No" over and over as she fell back onto her side, clutching her midsection. She had been craving release so bad that the mere act of shifting her posture sent her over the edge into orgasm.
Her eyes became heavy, but she fought off the urge to sleep. If her body was going to put her through this, it damned well owed her the courtesy of remaining conscious to experience this. Pink swirls appeared on her peripheral vision. She just had to wait it out, right? Then she'd be able to think more clearly and figure out what her next move was. But it wasn't stopping. She stared at the clock, counting the minutes as her climax only intensified. It was too much. She rubbed her thighs together, trying to provide any sort of comfort from the horrible burning sensation, but the movement only fanned the flames.
"Fuck it!" One hand flew between her legs, rubbing the thick hair on her labia and inner thighs. She was cumming without a say in the matter, so what was the point in denying herself what she really wanted. "Fuck it! Fuck it fuck it fuck it fuuuuuck!" She awkwardly rubbed the lips of her pussy like a virgin unsure of what to do. Her hands just didn't work the way they used to, but her larger fingers were proving to be a blessing as she pushed the two that remained inside. The burning intensified for a moment, then gave way to maddening pleasure. She was like an animal in a heartless experiment: hit the button and get a prize. Don't hit it and the pain will continue. So be a good little piggie.
Thinking of that word made her climax even harder. Perhaps she was a pig. Nothing but a stupid, fat, smelly animal that was only good for fucking. In that moment, that was what she wanted. Just to cum and fuck and eat and cum and fuck and fuck and fuck.
She was squealing and grunting so loudly now that she knew it was only a matter of time before someone called the cops. She rolled onto her back, running her remaining hand up from her front, coarse palms running over her inch-long teats. Her tongue lolled from her mouth, drool soaking into the carpet. What was the point in decency now?
Her eyes drifted back to the clock as she struggled to remember how numbers worked. How long had this been going on? Not long enough. "Please ... *OINK* ... Yes, don't stop. *SNORT* Yes, yes, yes." Her body happily complied. She buried her fingers inside herself until she felt the short stub of what used to be her thumb rub against her large clit. She was swimming in a sea of pink fog now, unaware of anything other than the horrible, ever-increasing pleasure coursing through her. She buried her face in the crook of her elbow, realizing that the motion brought her nose close to her armpit. She took a deep breath and realized she loved the smell--for now at least. She ran her tongue through the thick hair, relishing the taste of sweat and salt. She was so filthy. Just a filthy fucking animal getting off to being a filthy fucking animal.
But it could feel better, right? She nodded and smiled in answer to her own question, and tried to get to her hands and knees. She wanted to be bent over like a rutting beast, but the act of pulling her hand away from her cunt was unthinkable. She settled for rolling onto her stomach, squealing loudly as all twelve nipples rubbed against the carpet. She lifted her hairy ass off the ground, pumping her cunt and fumbling with her clit. She imagined herself in this position as a boar approached her, its heavy balls slapping between its legs as its dripping cock presented itself from its sheathe. She'd found a picture of a pig's penis online--strictly for educational purposes of course--and found them strange and disgusting. Now the idea of a boar's spiraled dick making its way inside of her caused her to cum again.
"Yes, yes, oh yes!" She spread her legs wider to give easier access to her dripping pussy, loving the feel of cool air between her hairy cheeks. She probably had more hair between her ass than most human women had on their cunt. The thought disgusted her, and the disgust made her love her body even more. The room was reeking by this point, and she couldn't get enough of it. Fuck the shower; she never wanted to be clean again.
She felt her stomach turning somersaults as she felt the main event approaching. Please God, she thought, don't let the neighbors hear this. She began rubbing her clit more frantically, desperate to claim every last ounce of maddening pleasure her freakish body could produce. She rubbed her torso against the floor, brushing her nipples against coarse carpet. She wanted everything firing on all cylinders now.
Finally it happened. Words failed her. Thoughts were impossible. Nothing existed other than the insane, screaming orgasm that radiated through every part of her body. Her eyes went wide, her pupils dilating. She screamed in wonderful agony as hot, smelly breath escaped her lungs. She was pouring fluid from every inch of her body, but the waterfall from between her legs was bursting from her like a firehose before settling into a trickle down her thighs, only to ramp up again into another burst of juice from her reeking pig cunt. Her voice became raw as she bellowed, grunted, and squealed.
Slowly, the pleasure receded after nearly twenty minutes of continuous orgasm. She hoped she'd be rendered completely batshit insane, never having to worry about human worries again, but she feared that sapient thought was slowly returning. It was several moments more before she realized she was weeping. Great job, she thought. Lying on the ground in your rat-infested apartment crying and masturbating. It couldn't get much ...
"Wait." She sighed. "Stop before you start." There was no further use in feeling sorry for herself. Every muscle protested as she pushed herself to her hands and knees. It took several more minutes before she was able to stand completely. Everything ached now. She started the long march down the hallway. Her shitty little double bed was calling, and unconsciousness would be a blessing given the recent changes.
Before she had taken a few steps, her phone started ringing. She spent a few moments looking for it, then fished it out of her sodden sweatpants. It was Sabrina. Picking up the phone was easy, but actually using it was another matter entirely. Her fingers had barely been able to work the touchpad before, but seemed entirely useless now. Yelling "Siri, answer the fucking phone" didn't seem to work either, although she wasn't sure it was because her voice had changed or the fact that it only worked about half the time anyway.
She cursed when the phone stopped ringing before she could figure out how to answer it. She continued trying to get it to unlock when Sabrina texted her. The message read simply:
"My son told me what you said. Don't ever talk to me again. We're through."
Josie felt her heart fall to the floor and shatter into a thousand flesh-rending pieces. She was utterly alone now. Even Tom had decided to abandon her. She could always try calling Jono, but he would likely refuse to even answer the phone. He was a loser anyway.
But he had a big dick, answered a little voice in her mind. She shook her head, trying to banish the idea. He might answer the phone and she was sure she could convince him to come over. When he did, she'd have his pants on the floor and his cock in her slavering maw before he'd closed the door. Then he'd breed her on all fours in the middle of the ...
She grunted loudly and balled her hands into fists. No, god damn it. No. You're in control, she told herself, knowing it was a lie even as she thought it. Now go the fuck to sleep. She walked down the hallway, flexing her strange fingers as she did. Now that the change was over, she had came, and her mind was once again capable of coherent thought, she couldn't believe what she was feeling before. She most definitely did NOT want to be this freakish animal she was becoming, no matter how she had felt when her fingers were inside her moist ...
"God damn it, stop!" The exclamation was directed at her reflection in her bathroom mirror. It answered with a revelation of abject horror. "Oh God, no. No no no. It's really ... I'm really ..."
A pig. She was a pig. Or at least close enough. She'd hope that maybe she was wrong. Maybe she was at least transforming into something cool, like a wolf, or a badger, or a labrador. Sure there was the squealing and grunting, but lots of animals probably made those noises. But as she stared at her reflection, the upturned nose on her sweaty face--even now dripping a string of mucus--confirmed what she feared was happening.
She was swine. A sow. Livestock. Bacon bits. She closed her eyes and fled from the reflection, tripping over her ungainly feet and thankfully landing with a loud crash onto her bed. She was asleep immediately.
It was daylight when Josie finally awoke. According to the clock on the nightstand she must have slept entirely through the night and half of the day. She was famished. Of course you are, she thought. You're a pig. But a pig with a clearer head and less severe muscle aches. She rose to her feet, noting that the sheets were soaked with sweat. Why was she still sweating? It wasn't even hot. She stumbled towards the mirror, scratching the inside of her hairy ass as she went. Maybe she didn't look as bad as she seemed last night. Maybe she'd be able to leave her apartment, make some new plan, figure something out.
But her reflection immediately put a stop to that. She'd be arrested on site.
"Okay. Deep breath. Inventory." The word conjured up images of placing cheaply-made plastic goods on shelves as she smiled at the fuckstain customers despite the horrible circumstances to which her life had been reduced. "You're good at that, remember? Or were, at least."
She decided to start at the top and work her way down. Her hair hadn't changed, although it remained the last recognizable reflection of the human being she had once been, albeit her ears now poked slightly through her locks. She ran her fingers through it, and nearly screamed when large portions of it fell out from the motion. It seemed even that wasn't going to remain for very long.
The first thing that jumped out at her while examining her face were her eyebrows, although the use of the plural term was becoming inaccurate. They nearly met in the middle, although they thinned a good bit just above the ridge of her nose. They were thicker than she remembered, and the sparse hairs on either end of them now met her hairline on either side of her forehead. Fuzzy hairs drifted down the line of her jaw, although she was thankful she wasn't sporting a full on beard at this stage. A few straggly hairs were growing here and there from her chin, her upper lip, and even some on top of her nose. Her nose itself hadn't magically changed overnight into something less ugly. She could see several inches into her sinuses as she brought her face closer to the mirror, and black hairs were threatening to be exposed to the daylight. She snorted in response, hot stinking breath fogging the mirror. She waited for the fog to dissipate, giving her a break before she explored further.
Opening her mouth, she saw her canine teeth were definitely sharper and much wider. They had also become a sickly shade of yellow-white. Her childhood dentist would've been ashamed. "Turning into a pig is no excuse for poor dental hygiene, young lady." She stuck her tongue out and gasped at how long it had become. It extended a good three inches longer from her lips than she was used to. She retracted it just as it threatened to start drooling.
She ran her fingers down her neck, grimacing at how strange the digits had become. But it wasn't their turn to be grimaced upon. Plenty of time for that later. The hair on her neck was thinner on top, growing thicker towards her collarbone before it thickened greatly on her torso. A line of black hair ran the entire length from her neck to her crotch. Your cunt, the little voice reminded her. You like that word now. She ignored the thought and tried to focus. Her breasts had grown even during the night, sitting around a DD cup. All the years of handling plastic-wrapped women's undergarments had left her a fairly good judge on cup sizes. She started to lift them with her hands, very slowly and careful not to brush against her thick nipples. She didn't want to start down that road again. They had a heft to them she wasn't used to, and she was surprised at the amount of sweat that accumulated under them in the crevices where one pair ended and the next began. Two-inch long hairs surrounded her teats, with more encircling the rest of her flesh before thinning around her sides before thickening again as the hair connected to her armpits. Her areola were now taking up roughly a third of the breast, nearly as round as a CD. The nipple itself was nearly an inch in diameter and twice that in length, ugly teats that belonged on a barnyard creature.
Josie held her breath as she lifted her arms. There wasn't really any point. The smell seemed to have a texture, like it was a physical presence. She gave up on avoiding it and took a deeper whiff. The normal smell of extreme body odor mixed with a not-altogether-unpleasant barnyard stench. She hoped she was just getting used to it, rather than actually starting to find it acceptable. She could feel a wetness in between her legs that increased the longer she breathed in the scent, so she decided to finish her examinations and move on. Her pits had more hair on them than she'd had between her legs before all of this had started. It was a thick mass of black hair occupying the space of a table coaster. She dropped her hands to her sides, groaning when she saw that the hair peaked through the space between her arm and side even when her arms weren't raised.
Back to her chest, she observed how the hair thickened in between her six rows of breasts, turned into a neat line down her belly, until it grew thick again around her naval. The ten teats below her original breasts were the same length and width as her original pair, and she was fairly disgusted when she saw small breasts were developing just beneath them. Her second pair were a solid B-cup on their own, although the others were just beginning to extend from her torso. If they were all going to grow as large as the two up top she wouldn't be able bend over without toppling forward. They were already jostling for room. The lowest pair were barely visible as they stuck through her thick bush, and their added weight pulled her labia lower than they should have been. Her nipples had changed from a dull brown to an angry crimson, and the areola surrounding the new teats were already wider than her originals had been.
Her gut was spilling over her waistline a bit, but she was thankful she wasn't becoming obese. Her bush was a mass of dark hair, completely hiding her labia. Her nether lips themselves seemed to have slid further between her legs than she remembered, and she hoped they weren't going to move any further. The voice inside her head informed her that then her pig cunt would be in the perfect position to be mounted by a big, horny boar. "Shut the fuck up," she responded. The thick, wiry hair extended all the way to her hips as she tugged lightly at the soft, inch-long hairs. But her hands were too close to her pussy now, and she needed to move on as quickly as she could.
Said hands were as good a place to continue as any other freakish body part. Her index finger was the most normal, and that was using the word liberally. Its only disfiguration was that it was swollen half again as large. Her other fingers had it much worse. Her middle and ring finger were fused together, although they were still distinct enough to show that they were indeed separate digits. The skin between them was firmly connected, something that must have happened as she slept. No more flipping Ron off behind his back. Her pinkie and thumb had moved closer to her wrists and had shrunk a good bit, each maybe an inch shorter than they had been before. Her fingers as a whole were still somewhat flexible, but moving them too much quickly made them tired and start to cramp. She would still be able to pick small objects up, but their deformity would make interacting with anything much more difficult.
Besides these larger changes, the rest was much less severe. Thick black hair grew on the back of her hands and on the first knuckle of her fingers. The other bones in her fingers were thankfully devoid of hair, but were now adorned by dirty yellow fingernails that clacked audibly when she touched the bathroom counter. They looked like she had been digging in the dirt, although it must have just been the accumulation of grime for the back alleys she had taken recently, like she had become a magnet for filth.
Her arms were relatively unchanged except for more hair and a bit more muscle definition. She flexed her biceps and noticed a bulge there that she was very unfamiliar with. She wasn't going to be winning any bodybuilding competitions, but she looked like she had been hitting the gym for a few months. Other than this, there was just more inch-long hairs, thicker on her forearms, lighter on her biceps, and then thickening again around her shoulders.
Her legs were more of the same: more hair, more muscle, more horrible. The hair was uniform in its thickness from her feet to her knees, then grew gradually thicker as it reached her midsection until it was lost in her bush. Her feet looked so much like her hands that they had become particularly unnerving. Her large and pinkie toes had slid much further back, closer to her ankles than being in line with the others, and her third and fourth toes were now also connected.
Almost done. Turning around, she examined her back in the mirror. More thick hair grew down her spine, spreading out around her shoulders and only growing sparsely around her sides. Love handles had appeared that definitely weren't present yesterday, accentuating her overall chunkiness.
As the hair trailed downwards, she found herself groaning audibly, although she stopped herself just before she could feel the sound threatening to turn into a grunt. Her ass was covered in the stuff. It was much thicker, almost two inches long, and disturbingly soft to the touch. It was not quite fur, but was certainly thicker than most of the rest of her body. Steeling herself with a sigh, she placed both hands on either cheek and started to bend forward. "You gotta know, so just do it." Her anus was almost entirely covered up in black sweaty hair and was closer to her tailbone than it had been. Speaking of which, she was thankful to whatever god was still paying attention that she hadn't started to grow a curly tail, although the fact that she hadn't was probably further proof that her mutations weren't finished. The last casualty of note was her pussy, which had followed along with her anus, sliding much further between her ass cheeks. She released her hold on her cheeks when a distinctly unpleasant smell began to make itself known. Her cunt had started to leak again, excited to be examined and shifted into such a position.
"And you're done. Okay. Not too bad. Invitation to the Miss America pageant is probably already in the mail." She closed her eyes, squinting back the tears that she would not allow to appear. "Okay. Fuck it. Do normal stuff." She nodded. "Time to go watch TV, drink some coffee, and try to maintain your tenuous grip on sanity. Normal morning routine." She briefly contemplated hopping in the shower, but didn't see much of a point to it.
Walking back to the living room, she noticed a letter had been pushed under her door at some point during the night. She picked it up off the floor, and felt an immense welling of pride when she only managed to drop it twice with her fumbling, awkward fingers. No envelope, just a folded piece of paper addressed to her. Her heart continually withered the further she read.
"Miss Sung. Recently, your neighbors have complained about strange noises and smells coming from your apartment. Your lease at Wyndham Heights prohibits any pet ownership. Failure to comply WILL result in violation of your lease and could result in eviction or legal proceedings. In addition to this, your rent has been overdue by two days now. Due to your exemplary prompt payments in the past, some leeway has been allowed, but payment in full is expected as soon as possible. Your time here at Wyndham Heights has been entirely devoid of any transgressions up until now, and we hope you can address these issues in order to maintain a family-friend blah blah blah fuck you blah."
She'd added that last bit, but knew everything she needed to know from what preceded it. There was no way she could pay her rent. Her final work check would have to be mailed to her, and that would take forever given the company's typical slowness. She couldn't run out to check her mail every day or she'd attract too much attention, especially if the changes continued.
"Okay ... shit." She couldn't worry about it now. She was turning into a pig, and thus she was allowed a day of sitting in front of the television and using as little of her brain as possible. The universe owed her one. She poured some grounds into the coffee maker, flopped on the couch, turned her television on, and started browsing YouTube. Her recent studies into all things porcine had left a very specific and unusual list of recommended videos. "Okay, yeah, fuck it. Let's meet my distant relatives." She started watching the first one, a video which promised adorable and hilarious pig antics. She didn't think they were either adorable or hilarious given her current predicament, but she did have to admit the animals had a certain pleasantly absurd cuteness to them.
She flipped through a few videos, breezing past the ones detailing factory farming practices, and finally landed on one about wild pigs roaming the hills of Japan. She found herself nodding off until the video displayed a large boar, grunting loudly and stamping his feet in challenge to something that looked like a robotic wolf. Her eyes went wide as she saw the animal's balls bouncing between his rear legs as he paced back and forth.
"No. No no no. Change the fucking channel." She fumbled for the remote, cursing loudly as she dropped it. Reaching over to pick the remote off of the carpet, she caught a whiff of herself. "No no no, stop. Stop!" The camera on the video switched positions, and she now had a full view of the animals rear haunches. She allowed herself to fall to the floor, posing on her hands and knees in a way that was becoming uncomfortably common to her. "Oh yeah. Oh fuck yeah. No! No no. None of that. You don't want to get fucked by a whatever-the-hell-that-is." She glanced at the sliding glass door that led to her pitiful balcony. Maybe some fresh air would help. Or maybe she could jump over the railing and the fall would be enough to kill her. She wasn't sure which was preferable, but first she just had to turn off the damned TV and ...
Another grunt from the animal on screen that turned into a snort and then a squeal. Josie grunted along with it, feeling a wetness start to trickle down her hairy thighs. "Stop. Stand up. Stop. You got this."
Her determination remained rock solid for a mere twenty seconds. Before she was aware of what she was doing, her hands were between her legs and she was screaming and squealing and cumming. It was not going to be a productive day.
And so it went for over a week. Her every waking moment was either spent eating, weeping, or fingering herself to a screaming orgasm, with the latter winning out more and more as the days went by. Josie had discovered however that turning into a freakish sex monster wasn't as carefree as one would originally suspect.
For one, there was the matter of nutrition. Pigs apparently aren't as slovenly as their bad reputation indicates. It's not that they eat all the time, it's that they will eat all the time if food is constantly provided to them. Good for fattening them up before they hit the dinner plate. Bad for Josie.
For Josie, food was definitely not being constantly provided. She had run out of food by the third day. She considered using a grocery delivery service before remembering she had exactly thirty-nine cents in savings.
The problem with nourishment was greatly exacerbated when, in an effort to drive his destitute tenant away, the landlord had cut off Josie's utilities. Josie had believed that she had known what being thirsty was like at various points in her life. She had not. The lack of food was horrible. The lack of water was catastrophic. It had taken less than 24 hours for Josie to resort to drinking from the toilet. Maybe dogs and pigs have that habit in common. She had started with the water in the tank, but by the fifth day she was desperately swallowing large mouthfuls from the bowl. She successfully fought off the urge to vomit after the first time, but by the end of the fourth day she was eagerly licking the inside of the rim for any stray drops.
Her other utilities had also been suddenly discontinued along with the water supply. The lack of electricity gave her enough of a justification to eat everything perishable from the refrigerator. Said perishables only consisted of half a gallon of milk and some bluish-white broccoli she had forgotten about weeks ago. That went into the trash, but was fished out and devoured days later when her hunger had really set in. Her sole remaining companion was a box of Kix cereal she hadn't even remembered buying. By the time she had finished it off, she had decided her options were to leave in search of food or to stay and perish of starvation. She wasn't sure at this point which option was least preferable.
With the electricity being deprived, other amenities followed suit. The lack of air conditioning started off as an annoyance, but quickly turned into another life-threatening situation. With the heat came more sweating, which meant a loss of her body's water retention. It also meant her ever-present barnyard smell only became worse, which only heightened her libido and increased the frequency of her neighbors screaming about the smell. Sex was now her sole remaining comfort. No, that wasn't true. It was all that mattered now. Her body demanded it with nearly every waking moment. There wasn't much else to do anyway, other than sobbing in the corner, exploring for more tasty toilet water, or sleeping on her sweat-soaked mattress. Over and over again, thoughts of ending it all crept forward from the darkest parts of her mind. "Not yet," she replied to the old demon's summons before giving into another sobbing fit. "Maybe tomorrow. But not yet."
By this point she had received three letters warning of her coming eviction, with the last promising it was the final notice before the authorities would intervene. Josie was making plans for her next course of action when the fourth letter arrived. She groaned in frustration as she noticed it slipping under the door, although she put off inspecting it until she completed another three hour long masturbation session. When this was finally finished, she picked up the letter in one shaking, clumsy hand while licking her own cum from the other.
Something was off with this one. There wasn't an envelope, just a folded piece of paper with the word "READ" written on the side that was facing up by an angry black permanent marker. Wiping the sweat from her eyes, she unfolded the letter. The message was a little more helpful, but no less direct:
"OPEN ... YOUR FUCKING ... PURSE!!!!"
Josie stared blankly at the door as if it would provide some further explanation. When it declined to do so, she stood up and immediately fell down again as the room began violently spinning. She was getting weaker every day now. She stumbled to her feet, this time going much more slowly and pausing with her eyes closed as she leaned over the counter, giving her room plenty of time to stop spinning. When she was satisfied that her vertigo was more or less manageable she pushed a few discarded cereal boxes and empty grocery bags aside before she finally located her purse. Carrying it over to the couch, she unceremoniously dumped its contents on the floor and rifled through them, proud of herself that she was using her hands to do so rather than fulfilling her brain's demands that she merely root among its contents with her snout.
There was another letter, this time written in a much more sympathetic tone. The first three words caused her to weep. It read:
"I can help."
Josie fell into a hysterical sobbing fit. This was the most joyous sentence she had ever beheld. Shakespeare, Yeats, Dickinson? Fucking amateurs. After being alone and forsaken by literally every human being she had come in contact with over the past few miserable weeks, she was simply unprepared for someone professing what she wanted more than anything--help.
The letter continued:
"I know what's been done to you. It was done to me too. I work with an organization that tries to help people like you. You're no doubt afraid of leaving your apartment, but I can help get you to friends, relatives, wherever you'd like to go. I know you're wondering if you can trust me. You can. And I imagine you don't have a lot to lose at this point. There is a strip club down the street from your apartment complex. You need to meet me in the parking lot after dark but before it closes. I'll be in a white unmarked van. I know this sounds sketchy as fuck, but there's a reason we pick spots like this. I'll stay in the area as long as I can, but tonight is the last night I can stay. I know it can be hard to make it outside depending on how severe the changes are. But I'm afraid you'll have to handle getting here on your own. I hope you're in a condition where that's still possible.
"If you decide not to meet with me I completely understand. I hope you'll decide to meet me, but if not I wish the best for you. But please please please believe that we are the best chance you have right now. I really hope to see you soon."
The letter was signed simply with the letter "L". It was appended with:
"P.S. - Sorry for Kmart. I hope I didn't bump into you too hard, but I have to look as unfriendly as I possibly can. If you meet with me I promise you can punch me on the arm or something as payback. :)"
Again, Josie looked at her apartment door for answers. Again it shrugged and walked away. Or maybe that was just the room spinning again. Sorry for Kmart? What did that bit mean? How did this get in her purse in the first--
"Oh my God. Holy shit. Oh my God." The new employee. The one that bumped into her as she walked out after quitting. She must have done it on purpose so she could slip this note into her purse.
Josie read the letter again, then again, then again and again and again. She was halfway through it the fifth time before the familiar sharp pain in her cunt rudely informed her that break was over and it was time to get back to her job of fingering herself into a squealing, pathetic mess.
Or maybe there was something else she could be doing. The sun was going down, and Josie had a decision to make.
It took nearly ten minutes to squeeze into the same dirty pair of sweatpants and baggy shirt, due in equal parts to her fatter legs and ever-increasing vertigo. She didn't bother with the hat and scarf. It was dark out, and if she was arrested and thrown into a zoo it would still be a marked improvement from drinking out of the toilet. They'd have food at the very least. And maybe Internet.
Josie was halfway down the steps before she realized she hadn't shut the front door. There was no slow look over her shoulder at her apartment, no tearful goodbye at the place she had inhabited for a good portion of her adult life. She had a blue and yellow elephant plush her grandmother had given her when she was seven. That was about the only thing she'd miss. That and Tom maybe.
"Fuck that place." The words were out of her mouth just before Josie tumbled down the remaining half a dozen stairs. She was on her feet almost immediately, more scared of attracting attention than having sprained anything. "Right. Here we go." She groaned audibly when her hoof-feet made a clacking sound as she slowly made her way across the parking lot.
The place wasn't far. She'd seen it a million times. She'd suspected that Jono had as well, although he was also probably familiar with more than just the outside of the building. The man had loved his long midnight walks. She'd pretended not to notice the smell of cigarettes and Jim Beam that permeated the bedroom as he made his way back in, shaking her awake and asking in what passed for romance where he was concerned if she'd perhaps like to fuck.
Again, the knife in her belly as her cunt answered that: Yes, she very much would. She tried to push the thought aside, but it was a losing battle. She roughly leaned back against the brick wall of an alley, rubbing her teats through her sweat-soaked shirt, crying out in anguish and frustration when she forced her hands away and continued her forced march in the direction of the strip club.
Maybe there wouldn't be a white van in the parking lot. Maybe the bitch had already left. Then she could go inside, hop on the stage, raise her pig cunt and squeal until someone fucked her. She smelled terrible and was probably barely coherent, but the site of a dripping hairy pussy would surely get the message across. "And then they'll arrest you, dumbass."
Fine, her cunt answered. Then some handsome jarhead cop will cuff you, throw you in the back of his car, and fuck your brains out.
"No, he won't. He won't. That won't happen. Be quiet and let me think."
Think about what? We both know what we're really thinking about. What we really need.
"No. Stop."
You're delirious.
"Yes, I am! No shit. I'm talking to my vagina. Thank you for pointing out the obvious."
At least stop behind the dumpster up ahead and finger me. You owe me that at least.
"I owe you exactly ..." Josie never finished the sentence, busy as she was rooting through said dumpster for anything to eat. The one and a half stale Wendy's fries she'd finished from a brown paper bag were the best meal she could ever remember having.
Well done--
"Stop before you start. You have needs, I have needs. I need calories like you need ..."
Her vagina smirked at her. At least, that's what she hoped the winking motion it suddenly made was. Yes? it playfully asked. Go on. You were saying something about needs?
"Stop before you start. Jesus Fuck, I'm hungry. I'm hungry and I'm crazy and I'm talking to my pussy. I'm hungry and I'm crazy and I'm talking to my pussy. I'm hungry and--" Josie stopped as she realized her deranged refrain was starting to turn into a song.
Her no-longer-really-feet were aching as much as her cunt when she finally arrived at the gentleman's club, the neon lights twirling in the air as her vertigo ramped up. Several of the gentlemen were outside, laughing at one of their fellow-gentlemen as he was regurgitating the night's festivities into the gutter. Josie urged herself on, the throbbing of the bass from the shitty speakers inside the building reverberating through her body. She almost came just from the vibrations.
But then she was in the back of the parking lot, and there it was. The van was plain, probably fifteen years old at least. Dirty white paint was peeling off the hood and a small crack that would probably never be fixed drifted lazily from one corner of the windshield to another. It was the same one she had occasionally seen at her apartment complex. Not the most glamorous vehicle; Josie supposed that was the point.
The driver's side door flung open so quickly Josie jumped backwards, tumbling on her ass and letting forth a squeal that she hoped would be drowned out by whatever shitty Kesha song was blaring from the club. A figure wearing all black hopped out of the van and moved towards her. Josie was afraid she had made a horrible mistake and she was about to be thrown in the back of the van and driven towards some laboratory where she'd be dissected, or perhaps turned into a skin suit for Buffalo Bill. However, she was relieved to find that the figure was indeed the woman who had bumped into her a million years ago when she was only partially a porcine department store sales representative.
"It's okay. I'm sorry. It's okay." The concern on the woman's face was in stark contrast to the sole memory Josie had of her previous behavior, but she appreciated it much more than being slammed into and called a bitch. "Thank God you made it. Let's get you inside. We need to get moving as soon as we can." The stranger held a hand out to help her up. Josie reached for the hand, but ended up merely grasping the cold night air as the woman and her immediate surroundings seemed to double, then triple. The music was swiftly being replaced by a piercing whistle as Josie tried not to pass out. It wouldn't make for a good first impression.
The woman stepped close enough that she was able to make out Josie's form in all its depraved splendor. "Holy balls. You've had a day, haven't you?" She leaned forward, holding her breath as she tried to help Josie to her feet. "Come on, let's get you in the van before you pass out. Can you do that?"
Josie was snort-weeping as she nodded, but somehow managed to make it to her bare feet with the stranger's help. "Thank you," she mumbled. "You nice. Nice-nice."
"Uh-huh," her nice-nice savior replied as she threw Josie's arm over her shoulder and tried to shuffle her towards the passenger seat as swiftly as she could. "Jesus, why do they always have to smell so bad?"
Josie stumbled again, but the short woman was surprisingly stronger than she looked and managed to drag her the remaining few feet. She leaned Josie against the van, supporting her with one shoulder as she threw the door open.
"Please don't be?" Josie wasn't sure what she was asking. Was she drunk? Did starvation feel like being drunk?
"Please don't be what, hun?" the lady asked.
"A serial killer. Please?"
She laughed. "Okay, deal. No being a serial killer. Put one foot here and then sit down. You're almost home-free."
"Don't wanna be home-free," Josie responded. "Home sucks."
"I imagine so, yeah. There's a bag of curly fries and some cold fruit in the floorboard with your name on it. Don't step on it and it's all yours, okay?"
"I had dumpster-fries. They were nice."
The lady fumbled with the seatbelt as she strapped Josie into the passenger seat just like her mom used to do for her when she was five. "Were they nice-nice?"
Josie nodded. "Nice-nice. They weren't curly though."
"Pity. Be right back."
Josie didn't remember the stranger sitting down behind the wheel or starting the car. She definitely didn't remember devouring the promised food, yet all of these things seemed to have happened without her knowing. "What?" she asked.
"'What' is probably the most coherent thing I've heard you say so far," the stranger responded. "Feeling better? Your blood sugar is probably fucked. When was the last time you ate?"
"I ate from the dumpster."
"Yeah, we covered that bit." The lady laughed. "Sorry, the sheer absurdity of my job sometimes abruptly makes itself known to me sometimes." Josie only nodded as she started to drift off. The woman kept looking nervously in her rearview mirror. "I think we're gonna be okay. Honestly, they've never once followed me all the way outside of the city, but I always think I'm about to be in a car chase scene when I pick somebody up. Are you doing okay?"
To answer the question, Josie showed the nice-nice lady her mutated hands, wiggling what passed for her fingers back and forth in demonstration of just how not-okay she really was.
"Right. Sorry. We're going to get you some help. Some help and some food. You have family? Somewhere I can take you?" Josie shook her head. "Significant other?" More head shaking. "Friends?" Even more. Josie was feeling more depressed with every shake. There really was nowhere she could go.
"That's fine," the stranger said. "I've got somewhere you can use to get back on your feet. So to speak. Just lay back and rest for a bit, okay?" Josie noticed that her seat was already in a reclining position. The stranger must have done it for her when she sat down. If this lady was a serial killer, Josie was glad that she seemed to be a considerate one. "Get some rest and by the time you wake up I'll have you all the shitty fast food you could ever want, okay?"
Josie whined and closed her eyes.
"And please don't throw up in my fucking van, okay?"
Josie replied with, "No promises. Will try not to."
"Great, Josie. That's all I can ask for."
Josie forced her eyes open as she heard her name spoken by another person for the first time in what seemed like a long while. "Who are you?"
"My name's Lydia. I used to be a rat. Get some sleep."
Lydia was true to her promise, and had provided a banquet of Taco Bell, KFC, and Jack-in-the-Box. She claimed that the mountain of food should keep her happy for a while. Josie rose to the challenge and had nearly devoured the lot of it within the space of half an hour. Lydia didn't seem particularly surprised. She had probably seen this type of behavior before. Still, she seemed relieved when Lydia stopped eating halfway through her third burrito.
"Better?"
"Yes. Sorry. I must look like a--" Josie stopped just before she said the word. "Well, you know. The three-letter P word."
"Sorry it had to be fast food, but we need to keep on the move as much as we can. Got a ways to go yet. But hopefully it was better than dumpster fries."
Josie didn't get the reference. "Dumpster fries?"
Lydia glanced at her passenger. "Oh, you don't remember that bit?" She giggled. "That's probably a good thing."
"What's a good thing? What are dumpster fries?" Josie had a feeling she'd rather not know the answer and decided to switch topics. Small talk was vastly stranger for her given the circumstances. "How long have you been doing this?"
"Being a runner for mutant animal people?" Lydia laughed. "Wow, that sounds even weirder out loud than it did in my head. About a year now. Year and a half maybe."
"What's the weirdest thing you've seen? Me?"
Lydia shook her head "Nooooo. You're not even middle of the road. I picked up an anglerfish guy once."
"What?! You're shitting me." She took a long drag from her straw. She'd never been a big soda person, but she'd never been a pig person either.
"I'm shitting you. No, it's mostly what you'd expect. Rats. Dogs. Ferrets--those are my favorites. Very twitchy, in a good way. And, yeah, pigs. Basically the animals you'd expect to see in a sad Sarah McLachlan video. Lab experiment animals."
Josie choked on her soda. "Wait, back up. There are other pig people?" The hot, needy feeling between her legs had been absent for some time as Josie had engorged herself, but it was quickly making its presence known once again.
"There are other pig people. Their DNA is supposed to be similar to that of humans. A guy just got a heart transplant from one. We're one step closer to the dawn of Man-Bear-Pig."
The words "man" and "pig" caused both of Josie's hands to slip between her legs. Her heart began pumping faster and her tongue hung from her mouth a bit. Had it grown larger? She couldn't remember. "H-How many, um, pig mans? Pig men."
Lydia sniffed, no doubt aware of the chemical reactions that were occurring in the seat next to her. "Okay, no. None of that. No more than you have to, okay? A cop seeing you monking off in my van is attention we do NOT need."
Josie forced her hands away, and stared out the side window. They were passing cacti. Where exactly were they going? "Sorry. Sorry. But you don't know what this is like."
Lydia barked out a laugh. "Ohhhh, yeah, I do. I really, really do."
"What? Oh, wait. Right. You were a rat? What does that mean exactly?"
"It means I was a rat. Not for long, but for long enough. The sex was fucking insane, but other than that I wouldn't recommend the experience."
"What happened?"
"Long story-short-time, I guess. My mom's cancer treatment bills were piling up. Yay, corporate-run American health care. I ended up volunteering for an experiment because I needed some cash to help with the payments. The result of the experiment ended up with me growing fur and a tail, hiding in an abandoned shopping mall, and having a rat guy fuck my brains out for several hours. Lots and lots of Fritos were also involved. It was a weird day."
"Oh shit. Wait ... But you're back to normal now?" If Josie's heart was racing before, it was rocketing to the moon now. "That means--"
"There's not a cure. Sorry. I hate this part. Everyone always jumps to the same conclusion at this point. Understandably so, of course."
And now her heart had crashed into a fiery heap. "B-But, I mean, you're ..."
"I know. But that was because of that particular experiment. They were changing people, but the formula or procedure or whatever-the-fuck was designed to only be temporary. Yours isn't."
"But how do you know that? It could be."
"It isn't. Nobody I've ever picked up has turned back. I think what they put me through was kind of a precursor to whatever they're doing now. And I imagine it costs a lot more money to design a virus or whatever it was that would change you back at the end of the trial." Lydia placed her hand, palm up, on Josie's knee. It took Josie a moment to realize that her host was offering her hand in sympathy. She hadn't known Lydia for very long, but Josie knew she wasn't a huggy-feely type of person. The gesture was strange, but appreciated. Josie slipped her ugly hand in Lydia's, realizing how sweaty her palms were. Did she ever stop sweating?
"So," Josie finally said quietly. "There's no going back. I'm stuck like this."
"I'm so sorry, Josie. I really am."
Deep down, Josie knew this was going to be the case, and chided herself for allowing for any type of hope to peek its head into her fucked up existence. "Why? Why did they do this to me?" Josie told herself she wouldn't cry, but realized she already was. She also realized Lydia was pulling the van to the side of the road. After putting it in park, she leaned over and hugged Josie, patting and rubbing her on the back consolingly.
The gesture broke Josie entirely, and she wept horribly for nearly ten minutes, Lydia comforting her the entire time. "It's okay. It's okay. Get it all out, girl. It's okay." Josie's sobs were interrupted by more of that horrible, guttural grunting and oinking she had come to despise.
Finally, Josie had no more tears to shed. "I'm sorry. I fucking stink."
"It's okay. You don't fucking stink."
"I do fucking stink." She pulled away as Josie handed her a wad of Burger King napkins to wipe her eyes with. "Shit, I'm sorry. We're supposed to keep moving. You didn't have to stop."
"Yes, I did. You needed me to stop. And that's fine."
"But the whole 'low profile' thing ... A white van on the side of the road looks kinda weird."
"Fuck the profile. This is about you. Are you going to be okay? This is perfectly normal behavior for a perfectly not-so-normal situation."
Josie nodded quickly. When had her hands started shaking? She sighed and turned to face Lydia. "Thanks. I'm sorry, but thanks. Thanks for--oh Jesus Fucking Christ!"
Lydia looked around frantically, no doubt suddenly afraid that the FBI had appeared. "What? What? What's happened?"
"Jesus, I snotted all over you!"
Lydia looked down at her shirt, now caked in the unmistakeable slime of pig snot. "Oh. Yeah, you certainly did. Holy shit, I thought you saw a helicopter or something."
"I mean, all OVER you!"
Her savior looked at Josie as if just noticing she was transforming into a pig monster. "Are you fucking kidding me? Dude, I don't give a shit. No shits. None of them. You scared the hell out of me."
"But, it's all over your shirt." Now it was Josie's turn to meekly offer over a handful of napkins.
"It's okay. Really. It happens. You think this is the first time? It's not even the first time I've had pig snot on me. You should see ferret snot. Yuck."
"But it's a pretty shirt." It was a pretty shirt. "I ruined your pretty shirt."
"Dude, I have a washing machine. Don't even worry about it. Don't even. This is--"
Abruptly, Josie began hysterically laughing. She paused for a moment when a look of confusion passed over Lydia's face, the expression of which had Josie's laughter bubbling forth again even harder. It was unstoppable, and apparently contagious as Lydia soon joined in. The sheer absurdity of the situation could only be laughed at. It was the only sane response. Josie barely noticed the oinks and snorts that accompanied the laughter.
Lydia was still laughing as she pulled back onto the road. Neither of them stopped for a long while.
"Sex machine, ready to reloooooad, like an atom bomb." A pair of tone-deaf voices rang through the grimy van.
Somewhere along the ride, two strangers ended up becoming friends who both apparently shared a great love for singing along rather poorly to classic rock. Making the best of a bad situation had been something Josie had become an expert at over the years. Maybe those years had been leading up to preparing her for dealing with all of this.
Josie's life now consisted of sitting in the passenger seat, talking to Lydia, and passing out on a mattress in the back of the van. Lydia seemed to not require sleep at all. Josie wasn't sure how long they'd been traveling, but the sun had come up and down at least twice. They stuck mainly to back roads when possible, although the latest leg of their journey had them traveling down a quiet highway in an arid part of Utah. She hoped being turned into a pig and leaving her life behind wasn't some elaborate ruse to get her to join the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
The next song to come up on the radio was something by Journey, and neither woman seemed particularly pleased to hear it. Two hands, one normal, one freakish, reached to turn down the volume at the same time.
"No, I got it." Josie awkwardly grasped the knob and turned the sound down. "I guess I need to figure out how to use these things if I'm going to ... you know, live with them and all."
"You'll get used to them. It'll take a while, but you'll get it. I fucking hate that song."
"Same." Josie hummed along to the tune of Freddie Mercury's opus, but the words "sex machine" reminded her to ask a question she had been putting off. "Why a strip club?"
It took a moment for Lydia to understand the question. "Oh, you mean why pick you up there? Fuck, we need gas. I think it's less suspicious, in a weird way."
"How is that?"
"Your hormones are all fucked up right now. Mine certainly were. Sex was all I could think about. I figure it seems logical that someone going through what you're going through would gravitate towards any place remotely sexual. It would seem pretty understandable to any government-type watching you, and they might not pay as much attention to it. At least not until you actually walked in the front door anyway. But it would be normal given your heightened libido, and hopefully they wouldn't expect someone like me to be waiting in my shitty getaway van."
"That ... oddly enough makes sense, I guess."
"I thought so. Go me, huh? I have good ideas every now and then. And, I mean, good job on the libido thing anyway. That's a bonus, right? Pigs and the half-hour orgasm thing, that's gotta be a big upside to all of this, right?"
"It's ... Yeah, it's incredible. I mean, don't get me wrong, I'd love to be normal again--not have trotters and smell like a barn--but I'll take the good with the bad." Josie felt the hairs on the back of her hand. "Not like I have a choice, anyway."
"The sex was crazy good when I was a rat-thing. I miss that. There was a guy there with me, and I'm really happy he was. Oof. Just ... oof."
"Yeah. Oof."
Lydia was quiet for a moment, lost in some rediscovered memory. "He was a nice guy. I think we would've hit it off. Even after the weird change thing. Wish I got his number." She blinked and shrugged. "Life is stupid."
"Yes, it is. Hey ... other question?"
"Shoot."
"So, I asked this before but it was more in a life-falling-down-around-me kind of way, but I genuinely need to know: Why? What the fuck is the point of turning me into a pig?"
Lydia sighed. "You sure you wanna know? It's way dumb and way infuriating."
"Wait, so you mean, there's actually a reason?"
Lydia nodded. "Military contracts. It all kind've boils down to military contracts and the stupid way they work."
"I mean, I kinda figured something like that," said Josie. "But why pigs exactly? I'm not exactly set out to be the new frontrunner for the super-soldier race of fighting patriot-pigs. Wouldn't they want sharks or alligators or something for that?"
"It's not how it works. The government wants data for a host of animals. Right now it's mostly lab animal guinea pigs--although come to think of it, I haven't picked up any of those--but I'm sure it'll branch out eventually. But even that's not really the point. The point is what the point is with everything: money."
Josie wasn't following. "How much money is there to be made in turning people into livestock? And, like, why let me go if that's the case? I talked to a government rep and he seemed more interested in his lunch and making fun of AOC than in locking me up in a cage somewhere."
"He doesn't care. He doesn't have to. Whoever it was. The government contracts a company to do a certain job. In your case, the job was to turn you and who-knows-how-many others into animals. They want to see how the process works. They probably monitor it through nanomachines or a transceiver or whatever. We can find that out soon, and get it out of you if that's the case."
"But, then, like, why aren't they following us in a black helicopter right now?"
Lydia shook her head. "Sorry, I must not be explaining this well. The private company that does this type of shit does it and crosses it off their list. They're done. They get paid to do one job, and after that they are done. They don't get paid to do any more than they were contracted to do, and they don't care if none of it makes sense when the work is finished."
"I still don't get it."
"Look, say they contracted Company A ... I dunno, make a toaster. No, wait, how about they contract them to make the springs on the inside of the toaster. They do that, and that's it. There's no toaster. There's no toast. There's just the springs. They don't give a shit about the end results, just the part they were contracted to do. Even if there's no toast at the end of the process, they don't care. They weren't contracted to make toast. They were contracted to make springs. In your case, they were contracted to turn you into a pig. The injection or formula or whatever they did was made by a private company that then hands the product over to whoever injected you."
"None of that made any sense."
Lydia smiled. "Good, you're getting it! It doesn't make sense. At all. If you expected some kind of grand conspiracy, there isn't one. They don't give a shit because they're not paid to give a shit. The government just takes the data and does whatever they do with it, but that isn't even the case really. Nobody on the receiving end of the contract even cares. If they're receiving data from your transformation, there's nobody reading it. It's just happening, and whoever thought up the dumbass project in the first place probably now works for a different company. The wheels are spinning, but there's nobody driving. Completely meaningless."
Josie's mouth was evidently hanging open, as she felt the need to wipe the drool from her lips.
"I told you," sighed Lydia. "It's frustrating and dumb. And it's a multi-year contract. For the next decade, they'll be doing this shit to other people and there's really nothing they'll get out of it. The contract itself literally started on a golf course. Maybe after ten years somebody will realize that it's completely pointless, but by that time they'll have ruined the lives of plenty of people. Not that they give a shit."
"How do you even know all this?"
"There's a guy, a benefactor. He's on the inside. Very high up. He's the one who pays for all of this, the van and the treatments and the cloak-and-dagger shit. And what's even better is it's not like it's a big secret. They probably know about us, but nobody gives a fuck. They're done with you as soon as they poke you with a needle."
Josie rubbed her temples, or tried to anyway. She'd lost count of how many times she'd banged her pseudo-trotters on her forehead. It turned out having your fingers horribly mutilated was something of an inconvenience. It's true what they say, you don't really appreciate your opposable digits until they turn into hooves. "So the shit about Germany ... that was a ruse?"
"Germany?"
"They said I was being charged for a crime because I broke into a bathroom on a German military base."
Lydia made a "humph" as she pulled onto an exit from the interstate. "Maybe. I've never heard that one before. It's usually someone who actually committed a crime. Something minor, smoking pot or stealing groceries. And it's usually people too young to know that they aren't exactly going to be locked up for the rest of their lives if they take prison over the injection. Mostly uneducated college kids that don't know how to lawyer up. I had a guy one time, another rat, super nice kid. He got kicked out of college for asking a dorm RA to buy him beer. That's it. No crime, other than being a dumbass college kid. So they turned him into a rat because he thought he was going to get the electric chair or something. But in your case ..." Lydia hesitated.
"In my case?"
"In your case, they were probably telling the truth. It was probably an honest clerical error. Somebody with the same last name as you, or maybe someone who didn't even exist at all. The base might not even exist. It's just one of those things."
"One of those things?!" Josie was furious. "I'm a fucking monster! I can't stop sweating, I smell like unwashed ass, I masturbate to Animal Planet ... They RUINED my LIFE! It isn't 'one of those things!' My life isn't 'one of those things!'" She knew before she was finished that she was being unfair. Aside from Samantha, Lydia was probably the best friend she'd ever had, and she'd only known her a few days.
"I'm sorry, muneca. I didn't mean--"
"I ... know. I know. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have--"
Lydia braked a little too hard at the red light. Josie let out an oink. "Yes you should! You should have! Fucking get angry! Get furious!"
"What?"
"Hun, stop being a wallflower. Yell. Rant. You deserve the chance to get angry." Her mother had always told her not to show anger, especially around a man.
Josie sniffed and wiped her nose. "I don't do that. I don't really get angry."
"Josie, you are one of the brightest people I've ever met and you were working at fucking Kmart. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but I'm guessing every shitty decision you've ever made was because of somebody. I could write your life story just by guessing, you know? You're parents were assholes, yes?"
Josie nodded.
"Assholes, yes, confirmed. They probably wanted you to go to school, become a doctor. Maybe something even shittier, they wanted you to just be quiet and demure and marry a rich white businessman. Am I close?"
Another nod.
"So something must've happened along the way to interrupt they're little plans. I'm guessing that 'something' had a cock and balls?"
More nodding. "Jono. He was--"
"He was another asshole. So you ended up at Kmart to pay the bills because Jono sure as shit wasn't paying them. And I'm guessing somebody walked all over you at that shithole job, too, right? That douchey manager, Rob, or Ron, or Rog or whatever."
"Ron."
"Too many Jonos and Rons in your life, babe. And then you signed your humanity--sorry, I know I'm being a bitch here--away because you broke into a building when you most certainly didn't break into a building."
"They said they'd lock me up," Josie whispered. "Or worse. I thought they might kill me. Please don't yell at me."
"See? That's my point. That right there. I shouldn't be yelling at you. You should be yelling at me, or that asshole, or that one." Here she pointed at the two drivers on either side of them. One was wearing silver sunglasses and had a "Let's Go, Brandon!" bumper sticker. The other one looked like he was having a bad day and taking it out on whoever was on the other end of his cell phone. "You are fucking smart, Josie. A lot smarter than me, and I'm a fucking Super Einstein."
"You really are."
"I really are. Am." Lydia held out her hand again. Josie didn't hesitate to take it this time. "We could use someone like you."
"What? 'We?' You want me to drive around in a van and pick up hamster people?"
"Fuck no, that's my job and I really like it. For some reason. But you can definitely help in some way. We're well funded, there's not going to be a shortage of people needing help, and, again, you're a smart person." Finally the light was green and the van was moving.
"I always," Josie interrupted herself with a loud snort. "Ugh, fuck, I hate that fucking noise. I always wanted to be a nurse."
"See, that would be great! You'd be a good one. And we already have one that could show you the ropes. And hooo-lee fuck, you'll like her. I like her so much that I hate her. I mean, you won't be able to attend night school or anything. I guess online classes are a thing now. But we--you--can figure it out."
"Could I ... Could I come with you? On these pickups? Not always, but sometimes?"
Lydia made a hissing noise through her teeth. "Maybe. But we tried that once and there were complications with two animal people in a van together."
"What kind of complications?"
"Muneca, if there was a pig guy in the back of this van right now how do you think you'd both react?"
"I'd be fucking his brains out."
"You'd be fucking his brains out. You really, really would."
"I really, really would. I'd have him in the backseat, plowing into me from behind, screaming my name until he was hoarse. I'd having him cumming all over my--"
"Okay hun, that's enough. We're on the same page here. See what I mean?"
"Yeah. Sorry." Josie blew hot air through her nose and tried to get her urges under control. It had been a few days since she'd came, and it was getting harder and harder to ignore. "Fuck. Hmm. Wait, what about you?"
"I would not, no. I would not be fucking a pig guy in the back seat. No offense to the pig guys of the world. My days of mindless animal sex are behind me, sadly."
"No, I mean, the constantly horny thing. Has anyone you've picked up tried to force themselves on you?"
Lydia sighed. "Yeah, I mean, it happens sometimes."
"How did you react?"
"Tazing of the balls, usually. Or simply punching them. It's amazing how many confrontations can be stopped before they start by applying a direct punch to the nutsack." Lydia smiled. "I want that as a quote. On a t-shirt. Why? Have you been thinking about fucking me in the backseat all this time?"
"No. No, you ass." Josie was laughing. "You wish. I mean, you're hot and all--"
"Fuck right I am."
"But my type have swirly dicks and bristles. Apparently." Josie paused as an awkward silence filled the van. "That was a joke. Sort of. I guess. Fuck, this is all so weird."
"But you're rolling with the punches. The large, extremely weird punches. You're a hell of a lot tougher than you know, Josie."
"Huh." Josie didn't believe it, but the fact that Lydia apparently did made her feel a strange sense of pride. "Lydia ..."
"Yep?"
"I'm hungry. Sorry."
"No problem, nothing to apologize for. I could use something, too. There's not a lot on this road, though. Not for another hour at least. But I gotta stop and get gas. I can pick up something. How do you feel about gas station candy?"
"There isn't a person alive who is not a fan of gas station candy."
"See?" Lydia giggled. "Now you've got something to put on a shirt, too."
Lydia pulled the van up to a mom-and-pop station just next to a larger Raceway.
"Why this one?" asked Josie. "Seems kinda run-down-ish."
"It's very run-down-ish," Lydia confirmed as she threw the lever into park. "But they also have surprisingly good deli food. Like the kind that doesn't make you immediately spew it back up again. And pretty rockin' milkshakes. What do you want? Also, you should hop in the back."
"In the back? Why?"
"Because you're a pig-woman in a parked vehicle in plain daylight. Don't exactly want to attract attention, hun."
Josie looked over her shoulder at the back of the van. It was the first time she'd ever really paid any attention to what was back there. Usually she was out like a light as soon as she hit the mattress. There wasn't much to speak of. Faded pink curtains covered up an open area bereft of a back seat. The mattress itself looked like it would barely qualify for something you'd find at an older couple's yard sale.
"I know, it's not four-star. I can't really pick up a new mattress in between runs. It may smell kinda funny, but ... I mean ..."
"So do I." Josie wasn't even upset at the admission. "It's fine. I just ... I really don't want to sit in the back of the van like I'm some sort of ... I just really don't want to sit in the back of the van, okay? Please?"
Lydia sighed and looked around. "Well, all the traffic seems to want to wait to stop at a bigger station anyway. I guess it's fine, just ..." She reached behind her and pulled out a blue quilt, then handed it to Josie. It was surprisingly soft. "Keep this on you in case someone shows up. Roll over on your side, act like you're asleep. And the taser is in the driver's side door in case something really bad happens."
Josie smiled. She hoped it didn't look as goofy as she thought it probably did. "Thanks."
"I spoil you."
"You really, really do."
"I really, really do. What do you want to eat? They have surprisingly good ham sandwiches, but I figure you aren't going to be very interested in that. BLT?"
"Bacon is also pig."
Lydia blinked. "Fuck, it is, isn't it? Why didn't I know that? Turkey?"
"Turkey is good." Josie spread the quilt over her, bunching it up around her shoulders in case she needed to hide behind it. "And a Zero bar would be good."
"What the fuck is a Zero bar?"
"It's like a Three Musketeers, but with white chocolate and it tastes way worse. I really want one for some reason."
"Jesus, yuck. Okay, and a milkshake?"
"No milkshake. Need to watch my girlish figure."
"Understandable. I'll be back in a second." Lydia hopped out of the van and walked inside the dingy station.
Josie snuggled up under the blanket, slightly upset with herself that she was still sleepy. But soon she started to heat up and the stabbing pain between her legs began to make itself known again. Despite the fact that it had been a few days since she'd had any alone time herself, her body was aching for it like it had been years. Was it going to be like this forever? Was it some sort of heat cycle? Did pigs go into heat?
Distracted by her thoughts, Josie didn't notice a trio of kids had walked up and began playing basketball a scant twenty feet away on an ancient goal. She didn't pay it very much attention until one of the boys failed to catch a pass and the ball ended up slamming into her door, causing Josie to let out a startled squeal. The boy ran up to retrieve the ball, and Josie quickly made to cover her face. Unfortunately she still hadn't grown used to grasping anything with her pseudo-hooves and the quilt seemed to be caught on something under the seat. It was all the time the kid needed to look through the window and spot the monster sitting in the passenger seat.
"Holy ... Hey, guys, look at this."
"Oh fuck." Josie continued struggling with the blanket, desperate to cover up as the other two kids ran up to the van.
"What is it?"
"A pig I think."
"Weird looking pig."
"It's fucking huge."
"Why does it have a blanket on it?"
"To cover it up. That thing is ugg-lee."
"Shit, I don't think that's a pig. I think it's a lady. Hey! Lady! Are you a pig?"
"Holy shit, you're right! That's the ugliest thing I've ever seen!"
The trio laughed. Eventually one made a snorting noise, which only increased the laughter. In moments, all three of them were snorting. Josie finally managed to extract the blanket from whatever it was hung on and quickly covered her face.
"I told you! I fucking told you! That's a lady."
"No way. Imagine looking like that your whole life."
The trio began snorting and one even pulled on the door handle.
"Go away," Josie muttered under her breath. "Go away go away go away please go away." Josie wasn't sure what scared her more, the thought that they'd attract even more attention or the fact that they were right about everything they were saying. She was a pig, she was ugly, and she was going to have to live what was left of her life looking like this. "Please go away. Please--"
"HEY!" Lydia made her presence known, like Zeus appearing on a mountaintop. "Huey, Dewey, and Fuck-Youey! You have until the time I finish this sentence to get the fuck away from my van or I will personally bury the lot of you in the fucking smoldering ruins of whatever shithole trailer you crawled out of! You hear me! I will fucking crucify you!"
The trio scurried off, all mirth quickly fleeing before the appearance of the avatar of fire and obscenity that was Josie's only friend in the world. Josie stared blankly at Lydia as she sat her food on the hood and started to pump gas, cursing under her breath the whole time.
Josie started having a mild panic as Lydia opened the door and crawled behind the wheel. "Can you believe the fucking CHUDs these hillbilly cousin-fuckers try to pass off for human children around here? You'd think--" Lydia noticed Josie's breath was coming in and out in increasingly shallow hisses. "Hey. Hey, it's okay. It's just some kids." She pried Josie's paws away from her head. Josie hadn't realized she had moved them there. "Breathe, okay. Like this." Lydia started taking in large breaths in a slow manner while affectionately rubbing Josie's thick, stubby thumbs. "You're hands are cold. You're okay. Yeah? You're okay."
Josie nodded, feeling her heart start to slow down to normal. But with her physical torment over, it was time for the mental anguish to take its place. "They said--They said--They said I was--They said I was a--"
"Shh." Lydia pulled Josie into a hug. Josie hoped she wasn't going to get snot on her friend's shirt again. "They're just kids. Sort of. Mostly they're semi-feral, sewer-dwelling, inbred little gremlins. It's okay."
"They said I was a pig. They're right. I'm a pig, aren't I? I'm a freak. I'm an animal. Why?"
"Shh. It's okay. You're not a pig. You're not a pig."
Josie struggled out of the embrace. "Yes, I am! I literally am! I'm a fucking pig!"
Lydia stared at her strange companion for a moment before smiling. "What were we just singing along to a minute ago?"
"What?" Josie couldn't process the question. "Queen? I think? Who the fuck cares, I'm a--"
"You're not a pig. Pigs don't know all the words to 'Don't Stop Me Now.' Okay? And they don't have the voice of a siren goddess like the both of us have. You're not a pig. You're you, and that's more fantastic than those little fuckstains will ever be able to achieve in their sad little lives." She reached forward and wiped a string of drool from Josie's face. "You're perfect, except for you really need to work on downgrading your saliva production. It's like a faucet sometimes."
Josie wasn't sure whether she should be laughing or crying. Instead, she unconsciously responded with a simple, "Fuck you too. Your driving is balls."
Lydia pointed a finger. "Ah-hah! See? That's the spirit. Besides ..." She tossed a bag of Fritos to her friend followed by a turkey sandwich, then placed a large milkshake into the cupholder near her. "You've got a milkshake. Life isn't all that bad if you've got a milkshake. It can't be. It's not allowed."
"I said I didn't want a milkshake."
"You have no choice in the matter. I am forcing this frozen dairy treat upon you. Moo-hah-hah." Lydia did an intentionally horrible super-villain laugh. "Besides, they didn't have any Zero bars. I asked and the guy had never even heard of them."
"They're real. They're kinda gross, but they're real."
Lydia started up the van. Josie was happy to put this place behind her. "I know they are, muneca. I know they are."
"Do you ... Do you really think I can help? As a nurse's assistant or a whatever? Even like this? I can barely wrap a quilt around myself. Do you think I could be any good at it?"
"Yes. I think you can be good at anything."
Josie appreciated the lie.
The last leg of the journey was several miles along a dirt road leading way into the desert. Lydia joked a few times that it was the perfect spot to hide Josie's body, but dropped the joke when she saw Josie didn't find it particularly funny. Josie knew Lydia meant her no harm. In fact, Josie trusted her more than anyone she'd ever met in her life, despite only knowing her for a short time. Her unease was less to do with Lydia's intentions or honesty and more to do with the uncertainty of what was to come.
The desert area was completely devoid of hilly terrain, so their final destination was in view far in advance of when they actually arrived. Josie squinted at the shack and frowned. Even at this distance, she could tell it was a ruin. At one point it might have barely served as a shelter for some of Josie's fellow porcine livestock, albeit those of a less bipedal variety. Now it was so dilapidated that a medium strong wind would probably knock it over. Josie figured that this wasn't the final destination after all, but a holdover for the next stage of her journey. Her suspicions were confirmed as she noticed another van--seemingly identical in every way to Lydia's--coming from the other direction.
"Oh, sweet," Lydia exclaimed. "They're on time for once." She cleared her throat nervously. "Um, so usually I have a little more time to do the whole goodbye bit. But, yeah, this is where we say adios."
Josie's heart skipped a beat, then skipped another for good measure. "Wait, what? I thought we were going on to ... to wherever the hell we're going?"
"Sorry, kiddo. I've got another pickup to make and I'm late as it is. Young kid, first year of college, got turned into a ... Fuck, I don't even know. I usually look these things up. She's got family that are probably worried shitless right now, and it's gonna be a pretty far trek to get her where she needs to go. I can't even stop anywhere overnight. Gonna be chugging shitty gas station coffee all night."
Josie felt like she was losing her best friend. "Who is meeting us?" She corrected herself. "I mean, who is meeting me?"
"Our nurse. You'll like her. Everybody likes her. You'll be in good hoof-hands. And ... Hey. Listen."
Josie made eye contact for the first time since they started approaching the trailer.
"If you decide to stay ... and, please please please, decide to stay ... We'll see each other again, yeah? We can sing shittily along to 80s hair metal all day."
"I thought you sounded pretty good."
"I do. I've got a tremendous natural singing talent. You, on the other hand are tone deaf and can't carry a tune to save your bacon. Pun intended."
"Fuck you, I turned into a pig! I've got a new mouth to get used to, bitch! You try singing with bigass pig fangs."
"Oooo," Lydia mocked. "Watch out. There's that assertiveness thing showing up again. Looks like the transformation may be growing you a backbone along with a curly tail. Keep it up and we'll definitely have government helicopters after us soon enough."
"Hmp." Josie couldn't keep from smiling. She was never good at acting offended. The game was up before it even started as she giggled, which caused a loud snort to unexpectedly erupt, which set both women to laughing maniacally.
An awkward silence soon followed, finally broken by Lydia saying simply, "You'll be okay." She unbuckled her seatbelt and started to hop out of the van, slowing down when she realized Josie wasn't following suit. Instead, Josie was staring mournfully at her door handle, sniffing as she was unable to wrap her fingers around it to open the door. "Ah, shit," Lydia said. "You'd figure I'd be used to people needing help with that by now. I gotcha, one sec."
Lydia walked around to Josie's side and opened the door. Josie stepped outside, breathing in the open air for the first time in a few days. She didn't notice just how much the inside of the van smelled of pig until she was standing outside of it. Lydia laughed again. "Pretty soon you'll thing blah blah thing no what no what thing no please what."
Josie looked confusedly at Lydia. "What the fuck did you just say?"
"Laugh laugh no please no no no no laugh."
And then Josie was falling, the air growing thick and soft as cotton as she landed in the dust without even feeling it. The world was turning pink, dozens of miniature suns appearing in the sky. Lydia was screaming something, hovering over Josie and holding her hand. A large shadow of someone several feet taller than Josie appeared, yelled something at Lydia, to which she responded loudly. She was probably cursing. She was always cursing. Then the shadow was taking Josie's shirt off, touching her wrist, and pouring something down her throat. Lydia was fanning Josie off, screaming loudly all the time.
What in the fuck is going on? Josie wondered. A third voice made itself known, this one older and more baritone. The large shadow was saying something back. Then the three were talking at once, until the smaller shadow responded much more loudly. The other two quieted down and seemed to be somewhat relieved. Lydia continued fanning Josie, who could finally make out the word "Okay" just before her vision went dark.
Josie awoke to madness. She was in chains in a cave staring at shadows on the wall. There was a line of blue shadows waiting to address her, all of them rough outlines of animal people.
The first in line, a badger Josie was strangely certain, stepped up to the outline of a podium, cleared its throat, and immediately said, "You've been a tremendous disappointment to us both. You know that on some level, obviously. You've probably told yourself it wasn't true. It is. It always has been. Tremendous, tremendous disappointment." It shrugged, picked up a sheet of paper it hadn't carried to the podium, and shrugged again. "That's all I've got to say. It's the only thing worth saying to you. You don't deserve anything else."
The blue badger left the stand and vanished into nothingness. Josie shook her head and tried to turn away, but discovered she no longer had a neck. She no longer had an anything really.
Meekly, a shrew leaned over to the podium as though she didn't want to fully stand behind it. She was a lighter shade of blue. It was as if she wasn't allowed, like it wasn't her place. She meekly said, "I agree. Nothing more to add. You're a disappointment." She screamed in the loudest voice Josie had ever heard the exact same three sentences, then disappeared along with the badger.
Up next was the weasel, who merely asked her for money. When Josie said she didn't have any, the weasel dropped his pants, wagged his dick around, and was gone. Josie asked for the dick to return, although the weasel connected to said dick wasn't required to attend. There was no response to Josie's request, probably because Josie had no voice, as she had no mouth, as she had no being, as she had no her.
Next on the stage was a chicken, who merely said. "There there, it's all gonna be okay," followed by "Fuck you, never talk to my son again." A smaller chicken was suddenly standing beside the first, content to simply nod along with the first. Both soon vanished.
After that was the blue rottweiler, who opened up a blue folder and read her blue performance review. "You're skills at folding clothes have steadily improved over the years. We feel this is going to lead to a big green checkmark in next fiscal year's portfolio. You smell like a barn, however. Do you have any questions? Do you have any questions? Do you have any questions?" She didn't have any questions. The dog nodded, denied her a raise, and disappeared.
Next up was a blue vulture who asked if she wanted to make America great again, then disappeared before she could answer.
Finally, a donkey took her place behind the podium, but only said, "Oh, good, look who's awake! We were worried for a second there. How are you feeling?"
How was she feeling? How the fuck was she feeling? Josie suddenly had a body again. It was a gross, human-pig hybrid body, but it was a body and it was her fucking body and it had a voice and she was going to use its voice. This was how she was feeling.
Josie cursed. She cursed and continued cursing. But to call it cursing was to do an injustice to the sculpture Josie was creating. It wasn't cursing. It wasn't even art. It was Creation.
Gods were born that day, springing forth from the forehead of a stone-faced diety above them all who could only bow reverently in Josie's direction. These gods sang in voices that shook the heavens and formed the land itself. On the high notes, mountains were created. On the low notes, the depths of the seas were formed. The song gave birth to angels, who split into factions and battled themselves, all while the universe shuddered and violently vibrated to the symphony of profanity Josie was conducting, a masterwork engraved in golden letters with the words "Soli Josie Gloria." The angels reconciled, uniting and embracing their creators before joining in the chorus. Finally all Creation--all of Josie's Creation, for She was its Goddess and its Master--erupted into colors no mortal eyes would ever be worthy to look upon, swirled together into one brilliant gem and was handed by the stone-faced god to the One Above All, Josie Sung, Mother of Glory and Singer of Life. Lydia had once asked the goddess to be more assertive, back when she was just a mortal retail clerk. The goddess has become assertiveness itself. She had become everything.
Then the cave was gone, replaced by a blue room. Why was everything always blue? The shackles had fled as well, leaving in their place a softly beeping hospital monitoring device. The shadows had all disappeared, save for the last, the donkey lady. The creature was no longer made of blue nothingness, but was covered in scruffy gray fur adorned by a white labcoat. In its hands it held a clipboard, although she didn't hold it for long as it soon clattered loudly to the floor.
For a long moment, the only sound was the chirp of the machine next to Josie's bed. The quiet reverence was broken by the loud, violent sobs of the donkey lady, who had chosen this moment to devolve into sheer misery. Josie was so confused. Had she been dreaming? She was certainly awake now, judging by the sharp sting of the IV hooked into the crook of her elbow and the rumbling of her stomach. Did she have a catheter? But if she was awake, why was she witnessing a donkey loudly sobbing and exclaiming in a barely audible voice, "I just wanted to check your vitals!"
"Oh shit. Oh fuck." Josie was sure of very little, but she was certain that the donkey lady wasn't the intended target of her symphony of profanity. "Oh God, I didn't mean you. I didn't mean you! I'm so sorry! I didn't mean you!"
The donkey sobbed harder, moaning about how she even brought Josie a cup of pudding before falling into Josie's arms and begging forgiveness for whatever sin she had committed. Josie patted the back of her surprisingly soft head and assured her that she didn't do anything wrong and that she was a good girl. Josie was becoming more and more certain she was in truth not in this room at all, but was surely in a padded cell somewhere smearing her own excrement against the walls.
Finally the donkey slowed her sobbing and leaned back. "It's okay. It's the medicine, I know, it fucks with people. I just ... I never heard anything like that before. It was beautiful and terrible and wonderful and I never want to hear anything like that ever again. I was afraid. Hi. I'm Haley."
"Um, hi Haley. I'm so sorry. Am I alive? Am I alive and insane?"
"No. I mean, yes to the alive part, no to the insane part. You're just kinda coming out of a chemical hangover."
"Okay. Thank you. Again, I'm so sorry. Why are you a donkey exactly?"
"Um, that's kinda a long story. Jesus Christ, this must be so weird for you right now. Sorry, this isn't usually how these things go. You passed out getting out of Lydia's van. It's nothing to worry about at all. Your body was just kinda fucked up. That's the medical term we use on medical stuff: fucked up. Too much sugar, not enough vegetables, and too much turning into a pig. I'm not making a lot of sense right now."
Josie looked at her hairy arms, still covered in a layer of sweat and grime, and remembered that, yes, she was in fact transforming into a pig. "No, you're ... actually doing fine. That makes a lot of sense. Wait ... You said 'turning?'"
"Huh? Oh, yeah. Yes. 'Turning.' Present tense. Not 'turned.' Sorry. You're not done yet. You're still in the microwave, medically speaking. Um, sorry about that. That's probably not something you wanted to hear. Jesus Fucking Christ this is not how I wanted this to go. What's a 'rancid fire hydrant cunt?' That doesn't even make sense. Is that a thing? I'm still kinda in awe here."
"I'm so sorry. You aren't a ... fire hydrant. Nor a cunt. You're a ... Why are you a donkey again?"
"Because donkeys rock ass! I love them. I finally got the chance to be one and I jumped on that shit. I joined a weird religious fundamentalist cult thing. I mean I'm not religious, but it allowed me to become a donkey and I REALLY really wanted to become a donkey. Since I was like a kid and all." The donkey lady, whose name was Haley apparently, retrieved her fallen clipboard with a reverence due to the body of a martyred war hero. "Oh, I don't mean to, like, offend or anything. In case you're religious, I mean. Are you religious? I don't know why I just asked that question."
Josie got the feeling that now that Haley had semi-recovered from Josie's four-letter onslaught that she was returning to her normality, which was apparently extremely scattered-brained and more than a little adorable. "I'm not religious, no. I'm seriously awake?"
Haley the donkey nodded. "Seriously, yeah. Surprise. Welcome back to prolonged bouts of consciousness. A lot of people would probably consider that a good thing. Or a bad thing, depending on your own particular philosophical leanings. I'm a Taoist. And a Gemini. Go with the flow, y'know? Anyway, yeah, so I joined a cult but they were MASSIVE racist fuckwits and I got out. I'm sorry, I shouldn't curse ... Yeah, wow, nevermind, I guess profanity isn't really much of a concern after all of that. There was also something in there about wishing for my being anally raped by a tree stump?" Haley shook her head. "No, sorry, getting back to not being me being dumb. Um, so, yeah, I got out of the cult and decided to help people who were kinda forced into this situation. Like you! Hi, you!" She waved.
Josie resisted the urge to wave back. "Haley, right? Haley, you may be the most interesting thing that's happened to me in the past month, and that's saying a fuck of a lot. But, I mean, no offense intended because you're kinda adorable but you chose to become a donkey woman?"
"No offense received, and thank you. Yep! I took advantage of religious weirdos as a means to an end, that end being that I'm a donkey hermaphrodite now. Which I kinda always wanted. Yes, it's weird, I know, but I'm weird and that was irrelevant information and ... Back on track, right. Yes, I wanted to be this. A lot of people do, actually. More than you'd think. My girlfriend wanted to be a cow. Well, I mean, not really all the way a cow. She just wanted horns, but I ROYALLY fucked her and she's like a major cow now. Like a super cow. Not to be insulting. Also, I didn't literally fuck her fuck her, I mean, that came much later with the girlfriend thing. This is also information you didn't in any way ask for. Sorry."
"That's fine." There are cow-people too? "Please tell me if it's none of my business, but why a donkey?"
"I could name reasons off on my fingers, but I only have three. I just really, really like donkeys. Most people who voluntarily change don't choose barnyard animals. We're not the most popular choice."
"Yeah, I guess not. I can't stop getting upset by how rank I smell now and I don't think I'm ever going to get used to that."
"Oh, it's fine. My girlfriend smells like a cow in heat. Pretty much because she's kinda a cow in heat. Most livestock people stink. Except for me. I smell like peaches! Because my shampoo smells like peaches. Which is great, if you like peaches. Sorry, I tend to ramble. You probably figured that out eight rambles ago. Shit, you're probably still exhausted. I'll get out of here and let you get some sleep."
"No, please don't." Josie realized she was strangely disappointed by the thought of Haley leaving. "I'm actually wide awake for the first time in forever. I have so many questions, though." None of said questions were remotely important, but Josie was just happy to be having an entirely meaningless if bizarre conversation with a talking donkey. "What do most people who volunteer for this insanity turn into? Like, if they have a choice."
"Cats. Fucking EVERYbody wants to be a cat."
"Cats are ... um ..."
"Cats suck."
"Cats smell like cat pee."
Haley's mouth hung open as she plopped down on the bed, careful not to land on Josie's leg. "Oh my God, I love you already. Like, I want to hug you right now. Yes, they do! They smell like cat pee. Like fucking cat pee. We are going to be such good friends! We already started to bond about mutual hate of cat pee!"
Josie laughed.
Josie's first shower in weeks was a religious experience, even if the animal part of her mind was telling her Haley's borrowed peach shampoo would alter her scent and make her less likely to attract a mate or to sneak up on unsuspecting prey. Right now, Josie's unsuspecting prey was the tray of fruits and vegetables that contained vitamins her body desperately needed.
The good news was that she was alive, recovering from starvation and subsequent junk food coma. The bad news was Haley was sure the change was not yet finished. Josie couldn't imagine how much more she could change, although Haley's form certainly was further along the animal spectrum than Josie's. Josie supposed she still had a ways to go if she was to reach that level of circus freak.
Josie sighed and corrected herself. She wasn't a freak, she was the victim of a runaway military industrial complex and unchecked late stage capitalism. She was working on pitying herself less and looking at her options for the future more. Today was going to be an interesting one anyway.
First, she was mobile. Josie was free to leave her room, albeit with the help and supervision of her equine nursemaid. At first, she had slept over half the day, but her body recovered quickly and she had become insistent that she move around more. Haley only semi-reluctantly acquiesced, and began showing Josie around the complex. It was small, and currently Haley and Josie were the only permanent residents. It served as equal parts nursing station and hideout, although who they were hiding out from was still unclear. Haley had echoed Lydia's comments that the government barely cared about them. After people were changed, whatever contractor was hired to do the work had fulfilled their end of the bargain and ceased to care about them, especially with their mysterious benefactor making sure any unwanted attention stayed off of them. There was, however, one thing he couldn't cover for that was something that could bring federal law enforcement after them in a bad way.
Said thing was the second of today's momentous occurrences. Their new guests had arrived under cover of night. Haley informed Josie that she had actually met one of the pair, although she was too occupied with vomiting a milkshake into the desert sun to receive a proper introduction. Haley had also said the pair wouldn't be staying long, as they were pretty much always on the move. Evidently one of the pair was one of the earliest victims of the program that turned people into ... species-challenged people. Josie only vaguely remembered hearing about a flying monster and kidnapped scientist that had been shot down over Atlanta. Apparently reports of their demise were greatly exaggerated.
Upon arriving in the small garage where the pair awaited them, Josie wasn't so sure if the woman wouldn't have been better dead. She was ... wrong. Everything was just wrong. She made Josie look like a supermodel. Josie's mind had a hard time processing exactly what she was looking at. With her admittedly narrow exposure to animal-people, Josie originally tried to think of what animal exactly their new guest was, only to come to the realization that she must have been several animals mixed together. She was such a mix of various species that it was hard to tell where one ended and another began, a horrible combination of animals, many of which Josie didn't even know the names of.
The first thing that stood out was the sheer size of the monster. Most of its body was made up of a serpent's tail that wagged back and forth in midair, searching for the perfect opportunity to eviscerate Josie where she stood. The tail was easily four times as long as the rest of the creature's body, making it look larger than it actually was. Combined with the flaring hood around its neck, it indicated it was some sort of cobra.
The second aspect that jumped out were the wings. There were six of them, and the tip of each grazed across the surface of either far wall in the garage. The wingspan must have measured in the dozens. They were beautiful, although that appreciation was secondary to Josie, right after the immediate thought that should she attempt to flee there was absolutely no hope that she wouldn't be pursued.
The rest of the creature was what required the most processing power for her brain to decipher, a task Josie's poor mind wasn't remotely able to deal with. There was horse, lion, alligator, shark, and probably a dozen other species mixed in. Its eyes were the most striking feature, leonine in appearance but definitely arachnid in the number it possessed, six yellow orbs surrounded by a pair of curving horns. One pair of tentacles hovered between its tail and wings, probably aiding its balance. A pair of lion's paws were held aloft in an almost comical pose, like some cartoon monster from an old children's picture-book. The six inch claws extended from its fingers, however, were far less cartoonish. Far, far worse still were the mantis talons that remained reared back, poised to strike at the slightest movement from the creature's prey, i.e. one Josie Sung. They ended in two ridged scythes the length of Josie's entire arm.
The creature's maw was immense, nearly a foot in length, like some sort of alligator, although its teeth resembled something off of Shark Week, designed to tear and maim and disembowel over millions of years of evolution's sickest prank. Drool and some sort of thick mucus dripped from its jaw, its long tongue occasionally licking between its teeth as if in anticipation of how much it was soon going to enjoy its evening meal.
Its torso was dominated by six rows of breasts, the topmost probably derived from the DNA of a well-endowed dairy cow, although Josie felt it was safe to assume that the creature was very much not a herbivore. The rows of breasts indicated the creature was obviously female, although that affirmation was soon thrown back into question by two sets of male genitalia dangling from between its legs, probably belonging to some breed of horse given the creature's legs ending in uncloven hooves.
Surely it would be better to cease to exist than to live out one's days as whatever this thing was. As she continued to stare, Josie was suddenly afraid that would soon find out what nonexistence was really like. The creature began circling Josie and Haley, the latter of which reassuringly took her companion's hand, grasping it tightly with two strong, hoof-capped fingers and a thumb. The monster's eight feline eyes were emotionless, devoid of human intelligence and replaced instead with pure animal savagery. Only that wasn't quite the word. She didn't exude savagery, she exuded cruelty, the malice displayed by a housecat that has caught a rabbit it doesn't intend to eat, just to torture. The monster's movements simultaneously mimicked a spider approaching a captive fly in its nest, a lion stalking a gazelle, and a dozen other scenarios that had played out since the dawn of carnivorous life on the planet.
"It's okay," Haley whispered. "She has good days and bad days. Just stay still."
The beast's jaws opened, revealing row upon row of teeth which Josie assumed must belong to some kind of shark, drool and slime dripping to the cold concrete. Its mantis talons pulled back, ready to skewer at a moment's notice should any quick movement be detected. Its cobra's hood fanned out like something out of a 90s dinosaur movie as it lowered its head.
Worst of all was the noise that issued forth from its large maw, a cacophony of roars, growls, hisses, and gurgles that blended together to attempt to form some semblance of language. "Run ... Run now ... " The command ended in an almost pleasant purr. "Kill you ... Killllll ... I ... fen-essss-trate ... you."
What?
"That's not what that word means." A human man with a short beard and longer ponytail suddenly appeared at Josie's side with all the panic-stricken alarm of a sleeping basset hound. It had been a while since Josie had seen a normal person. Normalcy had vacated her life weeks ago. The man cleared his throat and continued. "I think you meant 'defenestrate.' Meaning 'throw someone out of a window to their death.' Given we're in a one-story building, that would be hard to do. But, yeah, you just insinuated you were going to perforate Ms. Sung to more easily be ripped out of a notebook. I don't think that's what you were going for."
The monster's eyes shifted to the new arrival, sizing up the new prey as he approached. Then suddenly it hung its head, dropped its various talons and tentacles to the ground, and let out a piteous sigh. "God fucking damnit, Mark."
"Sorry," said the man, then added reassuringly, "It was spooky up until then, though. Probably not the best impression, but better than the last dozen attempts."
At this point, Haley began laughing and shaking her head. "Like I said, good days and bad days. She does this every time. Originally we tried to dissuade her, but nothing ever seems to work. It's not funny anyway."
"Then why are you laughing?" retorted the horrible amalgamation before crossing its feline arms over its six breasts and sticking her tongue out slightly in what was probably intended to be a raspberry. "Fuck you, ass. I am entitled to a joke every now and then. I earned it when I got turned into a zoo."
Josie finally found her voice, although it was meek and barely audible. "I am so fucking confused right now."
The man cleared his throat again. "Um, hi. I'm Mark Cornell. This is my wife Candice."
The chimera waved a paw. "Hi. I also get called Subject C1-001, but only by an artificial intelligence that sounds like Burt Reynolds. Sorry for the joke. It's been a long day. I'm not going to eat you, by the way. Unless you call me Candy. Then I really will fucking devour you." She then turned to Haley even as she started grooming her lion's paw and casually asked, "Is there beer? I could really use a beer."
"I am," Josie responded to no one in particular, "in no way less confused."
"Be confused later," the monster named Candice replied. "First comes beer. Haley?"
"I'll get you a beer," replied Haley. " I was heading that way anyway. I want some Pop Tarts. Does anybody else want Pop Tarts? Josie? Mark? Candice, can you eat Pop Tarts? Please say yes, that would be horrible if you couldn't. The Instacart lady was supposed to pick up the strawberry ones, but Food Land didn't have them. Fuck Food Land."
Halfway through Haley's bemoaning, Candice turned to her husband and asked, "Can you grab one? If we wait on her we'll be here all day."
"What do I get in return?" Mark smirked.
"I'll love you forever."
"You'll do that anyway," he replied, opening the garage refrigerator and returning with four beers, which he handed out to the attending members of what Josie felt must be the oddest gathering in history.
The conversation that followed was one of the strangest occurrences in Josie's life, which was saying quite a lot these days. Candice and Mark were scientists working for a company called Rocket Air-something. After stumbling into a conversation with a CEO and another official and overhearing information she wasn't supposed to hear, Candice and Mark had been abducted. They were led to believe that they had been put into suspended animation for thousands of years after the world had ended following a nuclear war. An insane AI--which Candice assured Josie was actually very nice once it quit its job--had set about to repopulate the planet using DNA from several species. It reasoned that it could accomplish its goal of introducing said species back into the recovering environment if it simply spliced Candice's DNA with that of several other species at one time, rather than cloning one animal at a time. Mark was able to outsmart the AI by telling it that he was late for a meeting. Josie wasn't quite certain on that detail. They then had escaped from their captor by bursting through a skylight, romantically embracing their deaths in a radioactive wasteland rather than starving to death alone in a steel coffin.
"Only, yeah, we didn't." Candice was finishing her tale. "It ended up all being a lie. They must have wanted us to think there was no point in escaping to make us less likely to try to escape. When we broke out, it ended up that the nuclear holocaust hadn't happened after all. You probably figured that part out, though."
Josie spoke for the first time in half an hour. "That is ... That's just ..."
"Fucked? Yeah, believe me, I know. But, hey, being a pig doesn't seem quite so bad anymore now, right? I've got it way worse, kiddo. Being part animal isn't that bad. I'm a dozen of them, and I get along okay. Wish I could open beer bottles, though. But, I mean, yeah, no offense, but being a pig probably wasn't your first choice. That's an animal I'm happy I didn't end up being. I've got enough ..." Candice waved at her strange body. "Stuff in here." She paused. "Wait, I don't have any pig, right? Honey, do I have pig in me?"
"I don't think so," Mark replied. "I don't think you have pig in you."
"I don't think I have pig in me." Candice nodded. "Its hard to keep it all straight."
"Another?" Mark asked. Candice nodded, and Mark dutifully poured another bottle of beer down his wife's crocodilian maw.
"Thanks. Jesus, Haley, couldn't get anything better than this horse piss?" Candice swallowed the entirety of the cheap beer in the space of a few seconds, then wrapped a paw around her husband's shoulders and brought him in for a hug. "Thanks, baby." The affection displayed between the two was bizarre, but there was little doubt that the two loved each other a great deal.
Mark didn't even wipe the slime off of his shirt as the embrace finished. Instead, he merely said, "Go ahead. Ask the thing."
Josie blinked. "The ... thing?"
Mark and Candice both replied, one finishing another's sentence in a way that seemed natural and frequently occurring.
"The thing--" Mark began.
"Everybody always wants to know," Candice finished.
Truth be told, there was one thing that jumped out. Josie cleared her throat. "You two are ..."
"Married," Mark replied. "Well, I mean, there's not a lot of priests that would join together in holy matrimony the two of us."
"That's true," Candice jumped in. "After all, no ring will fit on any of my fingers and he's too broke to afford one. And you may have noticed, but Mark's really weird looking. Not like me, I'm fucking adorable. Also, Mark, since when did you want a priest?"
Mark didn't answer, but addressed Josie. "So the next thing you'll be asking is ..." He trailed off, waiting for Josie to ask the expected question.
"You two are still ... um ..."
"Intimate?"
"Intimate." Josie hoped she wasn't going too far, but this must be the question that everyone always asked.
"Yes," Mark confirmed.
"Um ... how?"
"There's a process."
Josie quickly changed the subject. "One thing I don't get is how you got away? The news said there was a jet and you were shot down and died in a field and--"
Candice nodded. "It was pretty great really. It's my favorite part, other than when SMILES--the stupid robot thing--started freaking out. I knew we needed to get away quickly, but when I heard the jets approaching I figured we were pretty much fucked. They must have been monitoring the entire escape, because they were on top of us really soon. I scooped Mark up and we flew away from the heart of the city and dove into a pond just on the outskirts of town. I figured it was the fastest way to get out of the open. Before we hit the water, I kissed Mark goodbye in case we were going to be shot to pieces. Seemed like the thing to do at the time. But they must not have seen me. I guess we got lucky. We hid down there for a day, then flew away and found a cave. We were contacted by the guy that pays for all of this." Candice waved around at the interior of the building. "We still move around a lot, because I'm still kinda wanted by the law and you may have noticed, but I'm kind of ... a lot to take care of now. Honey, remember when you finally got to go to the store and buy me tater-tots?"
"Yes, dear."
"I like tater-tots."
"But," Josie continued, "you were down there for ... a whole day? You can breathe underwater I guess?"
"Yep! Salt or not-salt. Salamander gills."
"But, I mean, he can't, right?" Josie addressed Mark. "You don't have salamander gills?"
"I do not, in fact, have salamander gills," he confirmed.
"So why didn't you--"
"Oooh!" Candice had become strangely enthusiastic. "Oooh, oooh! This is the best part! Evidently I'm capable of converting water into oxygen so well that I was able to produce enough for Mark to breathe, too. We shared air that way. We literally kissed for a whole day to stay alive. It was THE most fucking romantic thing ever. Ever ever. Wasn't it, babe?" The question was a harsh one, giving Josie the impression that Mark's answer to her question was very important.
"Yes, dear. It was the most fucking romantic thing ever."
Candice nodded and gave a toothy smile. "Good boy. Anyway, so yeah. That's our story."
Josie finished the beer she had been nursing throughout the tale. "Wow. Okay."
"Not so bad being a pig now?"
"I guess not. How did you know you could breathe water in the first place?"
"You learn these things being an animal scientist. And an animal animal scientist. I'm part shark, too. Duh-duh." Candice mimicked the first few notes of the theme song from the old Jaws shark movie. "Pretty much got the breathing underwater bit down."
"Do you ever, like, swim in the ocean?" Josie had no idea why that particular part of Candice's strange anatomy was so interesting to her.
"Fuck no! Underwater? God no. I'm scared of seaweed."
Josie blinked. The idea of the upbeat monstrosity before her being frightened of anything suddenly sent Josie into a laughing fit, which was quickly answered by a loud braying noise from Haley, and then a amalgamation of screeches, snarls, and roars that sounded almost like laughter coming from Candice. Mark was content to merely smile and rub his eyes.
Josie knew it was time. Haley confirmed the suspicion via additional bloodwork, but Josie hardly needed it. Tonight she was going to begin the final stage of her transformation.
"It was likely put on hold because of your insufficient vitamin intake. Too much fast food, not enough leafy greens and vitamin C. We've seen this sort of thing before. It's never had any additional adverse effect, though. No just kinda the next step in becoming the new you."
Josie frowned. She knew it was coming, even before Candice and Mark had left for their next adventure a few days ago. During the time since their departure, Haley had begun showing Josie around her medical equipment, the inside and out of EKG machines, defibrillators, and infusion pumps. Josie was thankful she hadn't needed any of those, although when she made the comment Haley paused before nodding her head. Her donkey benefactor evidently felt her patient was better off not knowing just how much danger she was in when she had arrived.
The operation of the machines was much easier for Josie to understand than what they were supposed to monitor, supplement, or prevent. Haley said that bit would come in time, and that Josie was already more familiar with the equipment in a few days than Haley had been after graduating from nursing school. Josie was happy to hear this, especially because Haley seemed completely incapable of telling a lie.
None of the equipment was present in the small room Haley led her to. There was only a freshly-cleaned mattress on the floor, a pillow placed neatly on top of it, and a duffle bag laying next to it.
"No bed," Haley responded before the question was asked. "You'll want to be close to the floor. Don't want you falling off of anything. This one is more than likely going to be the most intense of all your changes thus far."
Josie nodded. She couldn't imagine anything being as intense as the last time she had changed.
"I'd, uh, stay in the room with you through the whole ordeal, but, um ... you'll be kinda ..."
"I'll be asking you to fuck my brains out."
Haley started to give a vocal answer, but just nodded her head. Whenever she did so, her long ears would flap back and forth. Josie never got tired of this, although for the first time she didn't laugh out loud at the sight. She cleared her throat and said, "Um, in the bag you'll find some ... uh ... acute-re-mints."
Josie looked at Haley, confused for a second. "Accoutrements?"
"Yeah. Wait, is that how you pronounce it? Jesus Christ, why hasn't anybody ever corrected me?! But, um, by accou- ... by 'accessories,' I mean, you know. Some things to maybe help you get through this."
"You mean, what, pain killers or--"
"It's a bag of dildos. Just like my old boss. That was a joke, he wasn't literally, okay, I'll stop that train before it leaves the station. They're all new, obviously--that'd be gross, huh? I figured you might like to take a nap before it happens ... Shit, I forgot the blanket."
"I'll be okay," Josie replied meekly. "I think it's gonna start pretty soon." Already sweat was beginning to dampen her forehead and the room was started to smell like ... Well, like me, she thought. "And you're pretty sure I'm not going to change all the way?"
Haley shook her head in an exaggerated way, her ears flopping in a more horizontal direction this time. "Nuh-uh. We've never seen anyone change all the way into a complete animal. There's not any money to be made in formulas that turn people into pigs. We've got enough of those in the country. Did you see Food, Inc.? I went vegetarian after that one. Fuck, I hate it when vegetarians have to tell you they're vegetarians. I try not to do that. Also, I'm a donkey. We don't eat meat. Just grass and Pop-Tarts. Anyway, you'll be 100% you afterwards, just ... y'know."
Josie knew. She sighed and examined what was left of her thumb and pinkie finger.
"I'll be right outside," Haley reassured. "Well, not, like, right right outside. Down the hall. I've got a sudoku book. A red one. None of this is relevant. Just yell if something feels really wrong. I mean, I guess that's hard to tell given the circumstances. But I'll be down the hall."
"Okay." Josie stared down at the bed. "Thanks, Haley."
Josie was then assaulted by a seven foot tall donkey woman, nearly crushed in the strangest hug Josie had ever received. Then Haley walked to the door, pausing to ask if she'd like the light on or off.
"On, I guess. Better to get used to what I look like sooner than later."
And then her donkey friend was gone and Josie was alone with her mattress, her thoughts, and her body. Pain was beginning to radiate up her spine, down her limbs, and in her forehead. She supposed she should open the duffel bag before things got too ... distracting. Haley was true to her word; the bag was indeed full of sex toys. Josie laughed when she realized all of them were shaped like horse phalli. Haley seemed like she was probably a fan of that shape. One had a suction cup that would enable her to use it without using her hands, which she very much appreciated. Her hands were next to useless now, and they certainly weren't going to get any better. She started to stick it to the floor, then realized it would probably be better against the wall. That way she could feel like she was getting fucked on all fours like a--
Josie swallowed. Here we go, she thought. Her thoughts were taking on a more sexual bend. She decided she'd better disrobe completely. She slipped her sweatshirt over her head, thankful that it had been washed since she had first arrived. As she removed it she was hit with the same musky smell emanating from her pits. She tossed the shirt into the corner and noticed her breathing had quickened. It felt like the bottom of her stomach was falling out and her head was beginning to swim. The hair on her chest was starting to thicken.
She felt like crying, then swore at herself and told herself that if she could handle Black Friday sales she could sure as fuck handle turning into a pig. Her hands began to cramp and she quickly dropped to the mattress and forced her sweatpants off of her legs, discarding them just as a new sensation hit her. Her new teats were something she was perpetually ashamed of, something that always reminded her how much of an animal she had become. All twelve stood at attention now, swelling to hardness before continuing the lengthen past what she was used to.
"Oh my fuck, that feels good." Josie smiled. If she was going to become a freak, she might as well enjoy it as much as she could. She rolled onto her stomach, rubbing her swollen teats against the soft fabric all at once. She let forth a deep grunt as she raised her ass into the air. She was getting wet just from the position. Her original pair of nipples were nearly three inches long now, and perhaps an inch wide. Perfect for a suckling litter of piglets. The ones along her ribs were just as long and getting longer. As they finally slowed down, the skin beneath them started to expand into familiar shapes. Jesus, was she really going to have six pairs of breasts? They continued expanding, her breath coming in faster all the while.
"Not so bad. Not so bad so far." As if in answer, her hands chose that moment to begin cramping painfully. She fell onto her side, her growing breasts wobbling and rubbing against each other as she wrapped her hands around her sides. She didn't want to see what was happening there, but there was no point in putting it off. Bringing her hands to her face, she was just in time to see her thumb and little finger slide backwards towards her wrist even as her other fingers grew outwards and became encased entirely in keratin. She had hooves now, completely useless things that she'd have to live with for the rest of her life. They weren't even good for--
Josie squealed as her pussy sudden clenched, expanded, and clenched again, grasping out for some unknown lover she had long been denied. She rubbed her wrists between her legs, trying to cause some sort of stimulation, some way of quelling the growing need she had to have something hard and warm inside her. Even that was denied her as her cunt slid further between her legs, closer to her anus. Her labia puffed up obscenely, drooling juice as a tapered hood formed around her clit, giving her the pussy of a sow.
Her breasts had continued growing, the bottom pair now sliding between her legs as she flipped onto her back, rubbing her teats with what used to be her palms. If she couldn't touch herself, she could at least do this. They were getting large now, much larger than she'd ever wanted, and her new pairs were catching up with her original. Her top pair was past any bra she'd ever put on the shelf, maybe a G-cup or larger. "Fuck, they all can't be that big, right?!"
Josie screamed and squealed as her legs cramped worse than anything she'd ever felt before, the balls of her feet stretching, the tendons in her feet lengthening as her leg completely reshaped into more feral shape. She was amazed at how much hair was growing on her legs now, and quickly confirmed the same was happening all over her body. Her skin was still visible underneath it all, but there was so much of it now that it was hard to tell if she should think of it as hair or fur. "God, please, no. Please stop! This can't be me!" The smell emanating from her was so thick now she could taste it, the strongest waves of musky heat emanating from between her legs as the mattress was becoming quickly soaked.
By the time her legs stopped cramping, her tits had finally stopped growing. Her fears were confirmed as each pair had become as massive as her originals, fighting for room on her torso. They were packed so closely that the hairs now covering them shifted through sweat between each pair, each nipple standing as proudly erect as Jono's cock after he'd been back from the strip club. The thought of dick soon had her tongue hanging limply from her mouth, her eyelids drooping as her eyes became unfocused, her pupils nearly encompassing the white of her eyes. She needed a cock inside her. The rubbery one stuck to the wall would have to do.
Josie was delighted to find that she could indeed still stand on two legs, although the way her legs bent now was going to take a lot of getting used to. Gravity pushed her many rows of breasts down now, each pair pressing into the one just below it until one of her lowest breasts slipped between her legs. She doubted she'd be able to bend over now. There was just so much of her. Her entire front was one big erogenous zone, and she couldn't deny that she loved it.
Slowly stepping towards the phallic object that had become her heart's sole desire, Josie slipped on the sweat emanating from her feet and fell onto her hands and knees. She instinctively slid forward, raising her ass into the air again and began begging and screaming for Haley to come back into the room and fuck her. She squealed loudly, nearly coming from the sensation of all twelve teats pressing into the cold floor. God, she was sweating everywhere now, the smell worse than ever before. She smiled, breathing deep and relishing in her own scent. What was it the Bible said? She was an unclean beast, and she was beginning to love it.
Josie raised herself back to her hands and knees, swinging her enlarge ass around closer to the rubber cock sticking to the wall. Finally lining herself up, she began easing backwards, but stopped as her face started to erupt into agony. Her sinuses were stretching along with her nose and jaw, pressing forward into a muzzle. Her bottom canine teeth pressed further from her lips, growing at an angle that would put them outside of her lips even if her mouth was closed. The tusks pressed against her lips just enough that drool steadily dripped from her maw. She knew she'd be drooling this way for the rest of her life. "Of course I will. I'm a stupid, fat, disgusting ..." She was smiling as she said the words. Why did this feel so good? She ran her tongue over her new tusks, drool and snot pouring down her lips as her nose started to become upturned, her nostrils opening wider until ...
God, if she smelled bad before it was so much worse now. She could smell everything so much clearer now, herself most of all. Was this what she smelled like to Haley or Candice? How could they stand it? No locker room or barn could ever compare to the rancid musk wafting from her pits, in between her legs, and dripping down her lips. Finally her muzzle stopped growing, with her brow sliding forward just a bit as well. She brought her sweaty hoof to her forehead and felt her thick eyebrows, now meeting in the middle completely. Why not? The caveman look felt right at home with every other disgusting change tormenting her body.
And. She. Loved. It. The sweat, the stench, the squealing, the slobbering, the hair, the fucking and fucking and fucking. At this moment she wouldn't have traded any of it for her old life. All of it meant she was nothing more than a barnyard animal meant to be fucked. She began to pant out "Yes" between each ragged breath. She looked behind her at her massive ass, perfect for providing cushioning to even the largest boar. It was completely covered in hair now, her skin still visible beneath it but just barely. It was everywhere, sweat dripping from every follicle. She inched backwards, pausing as she saw a small tube of skin raising from just above her crack. "Yes!" She had been strangely looking forward to this part. Her tail grew longer, curling around in a spiral before it stopped extending, a tuft of black hair growing from its tip.
And then it was finished. She was finally locked into the form she'd feared was coming, and now that it was here she couldn't imagine loving her body any more. Two snot-scented tears trickled down the sides of her snout. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. She had won the victory over herself.
Josie inched backwards again, finally feeling the rubber of the dildo press against her cunt. She squealed loudly, grunted, begged once again for her friend to come into the room and breed her like the sow she was. When no answer was offered, she squealed again in frustration before simply impaling herself on the horse cock affixed to the wall. It was a bliss she'd never before known, even as she panted and sweated away in her shitty apartment for a week, masturbating most of the hours of the day. Nothing could compare to this, she was certain of that.
She was very wrong. As she thrust back against the wall, the pleasure only continued to grow until she was begging for release, her ass slamming loudly against the wall. She wailed in anguish as the dildo popped off of the wall, screaming "No!" in a voice barely human, but at this point she couldn't stop her thrusting if she tried. Her pussy clenched onto the hard plastic stronger, milking it for all she was worth. Her climax built and built and built until she was screaming, praising a God she no longer believed in as her orgasm rushed through every part of her body. As it stretched on and on she wondered just how much longer it would continue.
Finally, after what seemed like solid minutes of cumming, she slid onto her belly, wallowing in the soft feel of each of her dozen breasts. If this was what it meant to live like a pig freak, it was worth it. Nothing could ever compare to that. She was overjoyed at the pleasure she had just felt, but was equally glad it was over. Her mind couldn't possibly stand much more of that.
Just as the thought finished, the unbearable pleasure began again. Her pussy clenched again, and she was immediately cumming just as hard as before. She lay screaming and squealing, pleading for it to stop in one breath and demanding it continue with the next. She was right; her sanity was slipping now. Again, after what seemed like an entire minute of nonstop climax, her legs began to kick in reflex as the pleasure slowly ebbed away, only to return tenfold a second later.
She couldn't take this. She imagined this must be like what would happen if every drug ever devised by man were injected into one's body all at once. It just kept coming and coming. Soon she was weeping, sobbing, moaning in abject bliss and horror at a sensation no human being was ever meant to experience. "More! More, oh God stop, more more MORE!" Eventually her mind became incapable of forming words at all. She had entirely forgotten who she was, what she was. The world ceased to be. The only thing that existed now was a white hot burning climax that seemed to never fade away. Her vocalizations devolved into grunting, squealing, and weeping. Tears fell from her eyes, mixing with the sweat and drool that fell from her hairy lips and dripping snout. She needed this to stop.
It didn't. Not until thirty minutes had passed for anyone outside of the room, although an eternity of blissful torment had continued inside of it. Eventually Josie began to black out, only for her orgasm to continue for the few precious seconds that she slipped into unconsciousness, dragging her kicking and screaming back into the material world, or at least what parts of it she was vaguely aware of. When at last the climax died out, Josie slipped immediately into a sleep so deep she felt she'd never awaken from it.
Josie opened her eyes, greeted once again by the blank white ceiling above her makeshift hospital bed. There were no machines hooked up to her this time, nor thankfully any blue apparitions attempting to belittle her being. There was only the quiet scratching sound of a pencil on paper. Josie could smell Haley's presence immediately, the scent of peach shampoo covering up her own distinct but delicate barnyard smell, the scent of male and female animal nestled between her legs.
"I fucking hate this game." She tossed the sudoku book aside and raised her hands in exasperation. "Is it even a game? It's just math, right?" Josie was surprised when she realized Haley was actually addressing herself hypothetically. "Who the fuck does math for fun? Math isn't fun. It's math! It's ... Oh shit, you're awake!" Haley rushed to her side, felt her forehead, wiping some of the residual sweat that still remained from it. "You were kinda gone there. Like gone-gone. Obliterated gone. Guess it's true what they say about pig orgasms."
Josie tried her hardest to focus her eyes on Haley, but was content when her vision had straightened out enough so that there were only three Haleys instead of seven. She smiled stupidly, a string of drool escaping the corner of her mouth.
"Oh shit. Fuck, are you ... you? Why the hell does this always happen to me? Everyone goes all goo-goo eyed and I don't know if they're brain dead or delirious or what. Um ... Do you remember who the president is? That's what they always ask, right? Wait, bad question. Uh, something simple? Do you know your name? My name? Do you know what names are? Oh shit oh shit oh shit, I really fucked this one up. Again. I--"
A long wheeze was the only thing to crawl out of Josie's mouth. She swallowed, rubbing her long tongue across her lips. "Ha ... ley ...?"
Haley started to bounce up and down in joy before realizing her friend was almost assuredly several rungs down the ladder of intelligence from which she had occupied an hour ago. "Oh shit, baby. Yes, it's me. It's Haley. Oh God, oh no, what am I gonna do? We'll take care of you, baby, I swear. Whatever happens, we'll take care of you, even if I have to wipe your ass for you or feed you or--
"Ha ... ley ...?"
Haley patted Josie's hoof and whispered, "It's okay. It's okay. It's okay."
"Ha ... ley ... Shut ... the fuck ... up. Okay?"
Haley's response was quite the opposite, as she erupted into squeals that would give Josie's own a run for their money. "Omigod, you're you! I was really worried right there. Jesus Fuck. Do you want some water? Gatorade? Scotch? That last one's not really a suggestion, although right now I think we could both use--"
"Shut ..."
"Okay, right. Shutting the fuck up now. Sorry."
"Was that ... normal?"
"The squealing, drooling, orgasm-monster thing? Yeah, I think so. Gotta be a definite perk to the whole piggy thing, right? What did it feel like? Wait, that's a stupid question and I don't want to know."
"Can I, like ..." She swallowed and tried to raise up. Haley helped her sit up higher, putting a pillow behind her back. Her breasts all rubbed against each other in a way Josie felt she would very much appreciate for the rest of her life. "Can I do that ... whenever? Like, on demand?"
"Hmm. I think so? That's kinda the norm for pigs. I'm sure it isn't exactly like that for them, but you're still part person so I imagine you get the best of both on-fire-screaming-orgasm-insane-with-lust-for-half-an-hour worlds."
Josie's only response was, "Wow." Haley handed her a plastic up of water with a straw, which Josie eagerly drank. When she had drained the entire glass, she lay back and stared at the ceiling. Haley leaned over her, but Josie had a hard time meeting her eyes. "Um ... I'm sorry ... about, uh, asking you to come into the room and ... um ..."
"Fuck you senseless?"
"Yeah. That."
"It's fine. It's like I told you, most people just kinda go into feral mate-me-senseless mode during the last change. For you it was probably more intense than it normally is." She patted Haley on the arm. "I mean, like, don't get me wrong, you're cute and all but my girlfriend would kill the shit out of me. Out of both of us."
Josie finally met Haley's eyes. "I'm cute?"
"Oh shit yeah you are! The tail and the hoof-feetsies and the floppy ears? I mean, obviously you don't have anything on mine. My floppy ears are perfection itself. The floppiest."
"Thanks ... goofy, donkey lady. I needed to hear that." Josie searched the recesses of her mind for the old demon. But he wasn't there. At least for the moment, he was nowhere to be found. After a few minutes of silence, during which the triple Haleys managed to coalesce into one unified whole, she asked a question that had been on her mind since she had woken up. "Do you think ... there's anything I could learn to do with my hands being ... not-hands?"
Haley's ears stretched higher than Josie thought was possible, her face lighting up like the dawn of a new day full of joys unexpected but so very, very much welcomed. "You mean ...?"
"Um, do you think I can still help out around here?"
Josie soon realized that Haley's back-breaking hug from before was not a one-time occurrence.