FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Note: This is in my "Dorin-thinks-military-contracts-are-bad" universe (the one that started with Lateral Move), and is a sequel to the cleverly-named The Trial But With Pig TF. It probably isn't necessary to read that one first, but it couldn't hurt. If you like it, or this one, please drop a note below. This one is a (hopefully) humorous one, but does deal sometimes with mental health issues. It doesn't end on a sad note. I know you guys scroll to the bottom first to see if it has a downer ending. Don't deny it. You think I don't see that shit? It doesn't, it has a happy one.

Also, I'd apologize to Clive Staples, but hey fuck that guy.

---

"Years later I smile to think of that journey

"the borders we must cross separately

"stamped with our unanswerable woes

"I who did not die, who am still living,

"still lying in the backseat behind all my questions,

"clenching and opening one small hand."

--Naomi Shihab Nye, Making a Fist

---

Josie couldn't remember how she got here. She couldn't care less. She was here, and so was he, and that was all that mattered.

They'd met after his sister had fallen into the same trap that she had, one of red tape and bureaucracy disguising a pointless government project to create inhuman monsters that would serve the advancement of science or national defense in no way whatsoever. His older sister had been informed that an unpaid parking ticket in front of an important defense facility would result in her perpetual incarceration unless she opted into a trial run for a secret military experiment. With the choice between life in prison or growing fur she had opted for the latter. It was the same entrapment scheme that many others had fallen for, including Josie herself. They preyed on people with no solid future and for whom not many questions regarding their whereabouts would have been asked.

Josie had been extremely lucky--after literally eating trash and drinking out of her toilet, of course--in finding herself here. She was taken to a ruined military radio tower in the middle of Utah and placed in the care of a talking donkey after a life-changing roadtrip with her new best friend, who used to be a rat.

Wait, it gets weirder.

With nowhere to go, Josie had accepted their offer to remain at the site, working with said donkey and her on-again-off-again romantic partner and the group's rehabilitation therapist. Said therapist was a talking cow, because of course she was. Josie had taken on the role of a logistics manager, using an artificial intelligence with a voice that sounded like Burt Reynolds. Her job was basically to locate people who had undergone the experiments, arrange to transport them here to a safe location before or after they had transformed, and establish a place for them to live out the rest of their lives with the privacy and financial stability they may require. She also worked in arranging solutions to any special needs the recently transformed person may have, such as providing uniquely tailored diets, reinforced furniture, and special purchases they might not consider needing. Because of elevated estrus levels for animal-people-hybrids, she had purchased more than a few dildos for other people.

This was her life.

The A.I. helped her in her day-to-day struggles with typing, calendar keeping, and purchasing. It probably could have handled these tasks on its own, but their group wasn't entirely trusting of it, given that it had a historical tendency to turn scientists into large chimera monsters. Josie supposed that was only slightly better than what most people were using A.I. for these days, namely to create unnerving art of porn stars with deformed hands. The irony was not lost on her that she needed the help of an A.I. specifically because of her own deformed hands.

The entire operation--if that is what one could call three women living in the desert with barely enough medical equipment to ensure the safety of their charges--was funded clandestinely. Oddly enough, the military contract that created the animal people was overseen by the same person that funded their dysfunctional little family. They were taking money to help people who were forced to turn into half-animals ... by the person in charge of the project that was forcing people to turn into half-animals. Lydia knew more about how these contracts worked than any of the rest of them, and even she had to admit it made no sense whatsoever. It was never intended to. Lydia was Josie's best friend, and their transport agent, ferrying new arrivals from bad living situations to their strange little clinic, then taking them wherever they'd like to go after they were given a clean bill of health. By the donkey, of course. The donkey was also a doctor. Lydia called herself their "mutant taxi driver," and promised her fares "delivery in ten days or less or your next transformation is free."

Again, this was her life. This was her weird, weird life.

All of this was becoming rapidly irrelevant as Josie felt the touch of a perfectly normal human man's hand on her functionally useless cloven hoof for the first time in nearly a year. He had driven across the country to take care of his recently transformed sister after Josie had contacted him about her arrival at their strange little hideaway. His sister was lucky in that she adjusted fairly quickly to her transformation and that she had a family that loved her and would take care of her. Josie tried to not hate her for any of that. John had stayed with them for a few additional weeks while his sister went through some basic physical and speech therapy. The latter was the more difficult of the two, as she had to learn to speak around her newly pronounced incisors, but even that hadn't been too much of a trial. Still, Haley, their resident donkey M.D., hadn't wanted her to leave before she was absolutely certain there were no undetected medical problems that would lead to much larger problems down the road.

John tried to stay busy during this time, but this was an almost impossible attempt given they were living in what was for all intents and purposes an abandoned concrete building with a few pieces of surprisingly modern medical equipment. With nothing to do, he decided to spend most of his time in their "living room," which was mostly just a tiny break room for the radio operators who used to work here. It was jokingly called the "living room" or "sitting room" because it had its own entertainment center, namely a tiny CRT TV in the corner mounted high to the ceiling and perched on a rickety metal device that seemed about to collapse at any moment. This relic of prehistoric entertainment also had a VCR built into it. Haley had whined piteously for hours when Josie had asked what exactly a VCR was. After being consoled that she was not, in fact, the oldest living thing on the planet, Haley revealed that she had an impressive assortment of video tapes that she had acquired through absolutely mystical means. The picture was terrible, but it was a way to pass the time during the weeks where there was no one for the group to take care of.

Josie had tried to stay away from John for the first several days in which he was staying, though it wasn't because of any reason anyone would consider normal, even their abnormal group. She didn't dislike him, nor was he unpleasant to be around. He seemed friendly, smart, and very willing to help out with any task his hosts might need. He was able to tinker around with one of their window unit air conditioners, and was declared a hero on the level of Lassie or the cop from that Bruce Willis movie when he saved it. After a few days, he had started handling the laundry even without being asked, which was viewed as commendable and appreciated by Josie's roommates and absolutely unforgivable by Josie herself.

This was because, as Josie's own body reminded her at least once every hour, Josie was fairly disgusting. Her transformation had left her looking more akin to a human mixed with a boar than a domesticated pig. She was sweating constantly, even when other people were complaining about the room being too cold. She tended to drool, always had a runny nose, and any room she was in for too long would inevitably start to smell like a locker room after a three day orgy. The idea of someone other than her or her extremely understanding fellow barnyard mutants handling her clothing was panic-inducing. Her clothes were perpetually soaked in sweat and an abundance of less PG-13 fluids, due to Josie being trapped in a perpetual state of heat. Some of these traits were common in individuals who had been transformed--animal odors, heightened estrus periods, that sort of thing. Josie had all of them, ramped up, as Haley put it, to eleven. Josie wasn't sure what that phrase meant, but was afraid to ask in case it would make her friend feel old again.

The first time John had decided to adopt laundry duty, Josie had snuck into the large garage where the washing machine and dryer were located in an effort to sneak her clothing back to her room or murder him and dispose of the body somewhere in the desert. Probably not the latter. She was horrified to discover just as she was sneaking into the large room that John was in the process of pulling her underwear--specifically her underwear--from the basket of dirty clothing. She gave a small panicked squeal at the sight, her short curly tail drooping between her legs as she prepared to run into the desert and willingly die of dehydration as soon as possible. Instead of witnessing the man vomit, however, he simply tossed her unmentionables in the machine as he continued humming a song Josie couldn't make out.

At that point, John took notice that he was under surveillance and greeted Josie warmly as he tossed a house robe that she had worn for more days than she was comfortable admitting into the wash as well. He didn't seem particularly bothered by the smell. What's more, he even apologized in case he was taking too long. He laughed as he said that washing machine manufacturers must intentionally make every device different for the sole purpose of confusing him specifically. Josie smiled, wiping away a string of drool that she prayed he hadn't seen. She said that he really--really, really, REALLY--didn't have to do the laundry, but he merely waved it off and said he was happy to be doing anything helpful for the group after all they had done for his sister.

It was at this point that John committed an atrocity so unforgivable to Josie that he should've been forced to make a public confession of wrongdoing before the International Criminal Court. He had the temerity, the absolute audacity, to become attractive to one Josie Sung. She found him refreshingly normal and cute in the blessedly boring, boy-next-door kind of way. The act of asking him some friendly harmless questions almost immediately escalated to wanting to tear his clothing off and fuck him until he were medically braindead for the next 72 hours.

1. Specifically. Specifically 72.

She had to quickly excuse herself after attempting to thank him again for taking care of the chore, although she was fairly certain by the confused look on her face that her words had come out completely jumbled and nonsensical. She retired to her small room for the remainder of the day, wherein she immediately shut the door, shoved a disturbingly realistic corkscrew dildo into her vagina, and buried her face in a pillow as she proceeded to orgasm continuously for the next two hours. Josie had learned that the concept of a thirty-minute long orgasm wasn't entirely accurate for normal sows, but it was painfully and embarrassingly accurate for her. Multiple orgasms were turned into all-day events, and more than once her friends had to make sure she was still alive at their conclusion. Haley had demanded Josie keep a stockpile of gatorade on hand in a small mini-fridge next to her bed in a plastic jug that she could easily access. Something about dehydration and the desert air leading to heatstroke or respiratory failure. Josie couldn't care less as she squealed and panted and drooled and came and came and ...

Josie cleared her throat, trying to focus on what was happening in front of her. John's warm thumb was tracing the contours of her ugly hoof like he was a nervous prom date. The day following the laundry incident, Josie had said her daily morning prayers to a God she could no longer believe in that no one had heard her orgasmic screaming throughout the night. She then intentionally caught up to John as he was casually observing the ruins of a 1980s-era Ford Ranger that had been in the garage for as long as anyone had lived here. Josie had asked him if he were a car enthusiast, wincing in dread at just how cringey and awkward the question had sounded to her own floppy, hairy ears. John hadn't seemed to notice, only commenting that he thought this was the same model truck his dad had when he and his sister were kids. Josie responded with a non-committal porcine grunt of affirmation, after which she and John shared a silent moment before laughing at how completely awkward their current conversation was. The ice seemed sufficiently broken after that, and John spent a few hours chatting with Josie at a small table in the corner. He spoke about his job as an accountant and how incredibly boring it got. He seemed genuinely interested in hearing about her life before it was turned upside down by becoming a monster, and was kind enough not to yawn as she told him about her amazing career as a department store sales associate.

For some reason they eventually discovered that they both liked goofy horror movies, although Josie admitted that she had squealed at the scary parts even before she became an ungulate. John suggested that maybe they could watch one sometime. He had noticed a few in Haley's collection that were surprisingly okay-ish. The 1990 remake of Night of the Living Dead was suggested, and John was happy when Josie said she'd never seen that one. He said it got a bit gory, but wasn't very scary at all. Josie agreed to watch it with him, although she warned him that he shouldn't be surprised if she suddenly grabbed onto his arm in terror. Or, his leg. Or, y'know, asked to sit in his lap. On the floor. Naked. While doing other stuff. Her eyes grew wide when she gradually realized all of this was said out loud. John only laughed and joked that all parts of him were available at her convenience and that he was looking forward to "the date."

It then dawned on Josie that she had made a horrible mistake. The only place to watch the movie was in the break room. The tiny break room. The tiny, stuffy breakroom. The tiny, stuffy breakroom with little air circulation. Josie had intentionally kept their earlier conversations in the garage, where her odor would be a little more tolerable with the open space and wide ceiling. Sitting with him in a confined space was going to have him looking for any excuse to run away and probably join the military. In another country. On the other side of the world. Even their cow therapist Markeshia was bothered by her smell when they were that close together, although she was much too nice to draw attention to it. Haley of course was as bothered by it as she was by anything, which was not at all.

After a strange call from another friend regarding a very stupid mistake he was about to make, Josie and John began their scary movie marathon with Josie praying all the while that her new friend had perhaps lost his sense of smell during a childhood accident or something. Her nervousness made her sweat more, which made her smell even worse than normal. Oddly enough, John didn't seem to mind. She could tell he had noticed the odor as he fidgeted a bit after breathing through his nose, but he just smiled and pointed out that the ending to the original black and white movie was more meaningful, especially given the time of its release. Still, he said, Romero did a good job with this one, as he did with most of his horror movies. Josie just smiled, happy to be listening to someone talk passionately about something so innocuous. She liked this guy.

A few more movie nights followed the first. Josie and John invited the others, but Josie's roommates always suspiciously had something else going on that night: more tests to run on John's sister, or dissertations to write, or any other convenient lie to allow Josie and John to spend more time alone together. After a few nights, Josie was surprised when she grabbed onto John's arm at one particular jumpscare in Poltergeist III and felt his hand envelop her hoof. He smiled shyly and asked, "Is this okay?" After a quick nod from her, they watched the remainder of the movie while sitting a little closer to each other. Josie thought about laying her head on his shoulder, but decided she had pushed her luck as far as she should.

All of this brought Josie to tonight. Again. She had bid John a goodnight outside of her door, although she had the feeling both of them didn't want the night to be quite over. John finally broke the silence when he said that he wasn't really tired, and that he thought he might take a walk around the compound. The skies above their ramshackle radio tower were surprisingly clear of light pollution, and they both were very fond of taking in the vista of millions of stars twinkling over the quiet midwestern desert. Josie said that she'd love to join him, and before long they were both standing close to each other, their eyes awkwardly trying to simultaneously meet one another's while avoiding doing the same. Josie noticed a moth landing on the fuzzy purple bathrobe she wore most days and gave an exaggerated squeal as she started to clumsily brush it away with her hooves. She was surprised to feel John's hands on her shoulder as he shooed the winged horror away. Her robe had slid off of her shoulder just a bit, revealing the thick black hair that covered her body. Josie cursed the moth and wished it to every hell that ever existed. John simply asked if she wasn't hot in that thing and smiled conspiratorially. Josie blessed the moth and wished it to every paradise that ever existed. She whispered that the robe did get hot sometimes, but she couldn't just go around naked when they had guests ... as much as she might like to. She stepped closer, her chest brushing against him through the fuzzy purple fabric. She couldn't decide if she was afraid of him feeling her hard teats pressing against him from inside her thick robe or not. He was so close to her now, but he could be even closer. She leaned in, closing her eyes as she felt his breath upon her lips.

Her pig lips. Her thick, hairy, disgusting pig lips. She looked away quickly, her floppy ears pinning themselves to the side of her head. She was embarrassing herself, and it was only going to get worse. She'd try to kiss him and he'd pull away and make any excuse to get away from her freakish body. "I'm sorry," she whispered.

To her surprise, she felt his hands upon her sides. He accidentally brushed her fourth set of breasts, chuckling nervously as his hands found a more appropriate spot on her sides. Or was it her fifth pair of breasts? Or the sixth? It was hard to tell.

"Why?," he whispered softly in response to her apology.

She looked back at him, turning her face awkwardly as she tried to maneuver her snout as she leaned closer. And then his lips were on hers, pressing together innocently at first before she felt his tongue slip past them and touch her pronounced bottom canines. The floodgates were open now, and Josie had to resist the urge to throw him onto the ground and ride him until he was screaming her name. She didn't want to rush this. This might be the start of something nice. She hesitated before touching his tongue with hers, not because she didn't want to but because it was awkward how much larger hers was than his. When he seemed to not mind, she leaned closer into him, pressing her swollen teats against him and resisting the urge to simply grind her crotch on his pants. They finally broke the kiss, and she only blushed greatly instead of tremendously at how much saliva fell from both of their lips. She was happy when he just laughed, wiped it away, and pressed his thumb softly to her bottom lip. She took a sharp breath and held it, her dark eyes looking at him unsurely. "T-This ... is okay?"

"Very okay," he whispered.

"I-I mean with me ... like this?" She motioned at her monstrous body.

His response was in the form of a hand on one of her numerous breasts through her bathrobe. She gasped as she felt his lips on her hairy, sweaty neck, his other hand on her cheek, his chest pressed against hers. She lowered her shoulders, slipping the robe from them as it slowly fell open to reveal her beastly form, her army of breasts standing at attention. He seemed surprised at seeing her naked, like he hadn't been quite aware of that unique part of her anatomy. Fortunately, as seemingly all straight men seemed to do, his eyes became laser focused on her breasts. All twelve of them. They were large, around a G-cup if her years as a clothing-folding-engineer were to be trusted, and the sheer size and number of them had them constantly fighting for room. Despite the hot night air, her teats were hard, throbbing along with her own rapid heartbeat as she held her breath. She was so uncomfortable with him seeing her like this, vulnerable in her own self-disgust, but it was also what she wanted more than anything. Her relief was tremendous when he gave a silly boyish grin, his strong hands drifting from one teat to another as if his mind were now presented with more options than he could handle.

She giggled at his stupid smile. "See something you like?" She grinned shyly, her sharp teeth looking simultaneously predatory and adorable. Please say yes, she thought, please God say yes, please fuck say yes.

"Very much." He slowly slid the robe the rest of the way, dropping it to the dusty ground as he took in her hirsute naked form. Josie winced, but for some reason John was not screaming in revulsion. Maybe it was dark enough that he hadn't noticed. Instead, he pulled his own shirt up, laughing softly as he felt her ungainly hoof-hand press against his chest before it was even off.

"I-It's ... been so long." She sighed happily as she felt his hands on her lower back, trailing blissfully lower to the slope of her wide ass, his fingers slipping through the thick bristles found there. "Since anyone's looked at me like you do. Since I've been held. Since I've ... been kissed. Too long."

In response, he kissed her again, breaking away just long enough to say, "That's a shame. You shouldn't have to go one minute without someone holding you. Without someone kissing you."

It was an awful, cheesy line, but it worked. It was hard to tell if he was being sincere. He might mean it, or he might just have some particularly weird fetish and just wanted to bang the hairy pig lady. At the moment, Josie wasn't particularly bothered which was the case. She breathed in his scent, Old Spice and just a dash of a good cologne and his own individual smell she could now pick up from a crowd. It was nice. She could smell herself as well, and for some reason it didn't disgust her the way it usually did. She thought strangely that she smelled nice for once, like Haley's cheap peach shampoo rather than a filthy beast. "Oh my God." She giggled like a schoolgirl. "This is so nice. This is like a dream."

His lips were close to hers again. His breath smelled nice, like mint and cheap beer. "Yes," he whispered. "It is."

She kissed him again, pressing her body as close as she could. "I-I never want this moment to end. This feels so--"

"No," he interrupted as he started to lean away. Suddenly, all affection, all tenderness seemed to desert him. "I mean ... it is."

She pulled away so she could look into his eyes, her thick brow furrowed in confusion. "W-What?"

The sorrow in his eyes was genuine. Oh, no. No no no. "This is a dream." He stepped away. "I'm very sorry." He was no longer smiling, as his mouth seemed to have disappeared. A blank visage stared back at her, a face devoid of eyes or nose or mouth or any other feature whatsoever.

Josie was bewildered, shaking in fright for a moment before her body went still as the dreadful realization dawned. She dropped her hooves to her side in frustration as she stared into a now starless sky. "Ohhhh ... GOD ... fucking--"

---

"--damn it!" Josie woke in her sweaty bed as she did every morning, rubbed her eyes with the back of her useless hooves, and again screamed to the ceiling, "God fucking DAMN it!"

She kicked the sweat-soaked sheet off of her body angrily. The same dream. Again. John hadn't kissed her that night, nor had she rode him senseless under the desert sky. He had just bid her goodnight after excusing himself halfway through their first movie, quickly escaping her smell. He had left the next day with his infuriatingly cute squirrel sister. She was so proud of herself for overcoming her "struggle" in transforming into a cute, strong, smart bundle of annoyingly adorable joy. Like she deserved a fucking medal for discovering how to live as a squirrel. Not for the first time Josie thought, Try having to become a smelly hairy pig monster, you joyful little fuck with your bushy tail and bright, happy eyes and your brother who cares about you and who never called me back even though I gave him my number and he said he would and, and, and ...

"He never called me back," she groaned as she sat up, wincing as her dozen large breasts fought for room on her torso as she rose. She looked down at them and whined. He never called her back. She couldn't blame him. Who would have?

And so the daily routine began. She hoped the others were done with the shower. It was designed to be a communal shower for the military personnel once stationed here, though of course they took it in turns. Or at least they did now that apparently Haley and Markeshia were taking a break. It was less a shower and more of a closet in which someone had seen fit to install a drain, a showerhead, and tile flooring. Like everything in this place, it was cobbled together into something resembling a livable abode, either by Haley herself or the shady government people who now paid for the place or the military operatives who used to work here. There was a curtain separating it from the rest of the bathroom, so that one could use the shower while another used the sink, but Josie wasn't comfortable until she had the whole room to herself. She just didn't want her friends to see what she had to go through in her morning routine. And she definitely didn't want them to see her naked.

"Not that I do either," she moaned as she rose and took her first steps of the day, shuffling sleepily on her foot-hooves the two steps necessary to reach the door to her tiny room. The motion sent her avalanche of breast flesh bouncing before she reached the bathrobe hanging on a hook on her door. She slipped it on, strapping it tight with its velcro strips to try to provide some support for the damned things. She thought about ordering some bras, but how would that even work? She'd have to loop them through each other or something to cover her assortment of tits, and she'd still feel constricted. And it would probably make her sweat even more. She supposed she should be thankful that the large bathrobe covered her fairly well; Markeshia had to wear a mumu that would make Homer Simpson proud.

She opened the door and shuffled down the hallway, still attempting to rub sleep from her eyes with the back of her wrists. Her odd roommates were nowhere to be seen and the door to the bathroom was closed. Josie sighed and leaned against the wall awaiting her turn. After a few minutes of hopping from one hoof to the other in Josie's own specialized pee-pee dance, she lightly rapped on the door. The shower wasn't running, so whoever was inside was probably finishing up.

"Just a minute, almost done!" came the voice on the other side of the door. It was Markeshia. Good. Josie felt bad as she sighed in relief that it wasn't Haley. Josie was in one of her "gray moods" that threatened to spill over into black, and Haley had never had a moment in her life when she wasn't chipper. It wasn't a day for chipper. Josie couldn't deal with chipper right now.

The door swung open, warm steam and a pleasant soap smell emanating from the room as a mumu-adorned bipedal cow creature stood smiling before her. "Morning, sleepyhead! I saved you some hot water. Sleep okay?"

Josie didn't know why, but she suddenly felt like crying. Something about someone genuinely inquiring about her wellbeing just made her feel bad today. She needed her medicine. She started to lie about it being a fantastic, glorious morning but a lump caught in her throat and she found herself shaking her head honestly.

Markeshia's ears folded to the side of her head and her smile vanished. She made a small sympathetic whine and stepped closer to hug Josie, but the pig woman stepped away. "Want to talk about it?" she asked.

Josie shook her head. She didn't want to talk about it. She never talked about it.

Markeshia had gone through a transformation similar to Josie, although the circumstances were very different. Unlike Josie and most of the other people their group sought to help, Markeshia hadn't been transformed due to the government project. She had volunteered for a minor transformation at a religious fundamentalist cult masquerading as a clinic for body modifications. Said cult was funded by the same person that now funded Josie's own small organization, for reasons she couldn't begin to guess. It was here that Markeshia was unlucky enough to meet a certain bipedal donkey--at that point still a nurse--on one of her more absent-minded days. Which were all of them, really. Markeshia had only wanted horns, as she had maintained a childhood infatuation with a certain cartoon cow-lady that once served as the mascot for an expensive line of dairy products. Instead, she had made the mistake of asking Haley why she had willingly chosen to become a half-human, half-donkey hermaphrodite, at which point the absentminded nurse had accidentally administered her with the entire formula rather than just a small portion. It served to transform her much more than what she had asked for, and even much farther beyond what any of the other nutjobs at the religious community would consider "normal" for human-animal hybrids. She was basically given an overdose of the formula instead of a small sample of it. Markeshia had come to terms with the transformation surprisingly well and had even started a relationship with Haley for a time, although it was probably more an arrangement of convenience as Haley felt terrible about her mistake and Markeshia, like Josie, was now horny 24/7.

Markeshia's attire covered up a body that was only slightly less deformed than Josie's. She resembled a half-human cow like a rejected character from an old Ninja Turtles cartoon. Snout, horns, tail, everything one would naturally expect to find on an unnatural creature. She was larger than Josie, even though Josie had become quite tall after her transformation. Haley still towered over the both of them. But the most unusual feature on the friendly cow-woman were four pairs of beach ball-sized breasts with four long teats apiece and a slightly larger udder dangling nearly to the floor. Every step she took was more of a waddle. Josie could certainly sympathize with the inconvenience, though she knew Markeshia had it worse than she did, at least in the walking and boobs departments.

Still, Markeshia had eventually gotten used to her body, and had even used the challenge for her own personal betterment. While Josie was earning her doctorate, Markeshia embarked on a period of self-education of her own, eventually earning her degree in rehabilitation therapy. She had a hard time learning how to walk and manipulate objects with her hoof-hands, but had finally mastered her strange new body and the challenges it presented. She had used this as motivation for learning how to help others adapt after their own changes. She had also developed a bit of a speech impediment with her new muzzle and tendency to interject cow noises in her speech, particularly when she was excited or distracted. This led her to also earn her certificate in speech therapy, and she now aided others through the same recovery process she had undergone. She joked that the word "decision" was the default mortal enemy of every newly-transformed person.

"It helps, you know," Markeshia said in a soft tone. "Talking about it."

Her words brought Josie back to the present. She pushed past her friend gently. "It's fine, I just ..." She smiled her fakest smile. "Just need a shower and some caffeine, you know?"

Markeshia didn't buy the excuse any more than Josie did herself. "It's just that lately you've seen more ..." She sighed, although it sounded eerily similar to a moo. "I'm here if you need me, kiddo. Okay? I always am."

Josie hated being called "kiddo," even though she knew her friend didn't mean it in a condescending way. Josie was twenty-two, hardly "kiddo" territory anymore. Markeshia was older, probably in her mid thirties. Haley was ...

Josie didn't know how old Haley was. She doubted Markeshia did either. Probably no one did. She suspected Haley was some sort of cosmic being in disguise as a donkey mad scientist. She probably had existed long before this universe came into being, and was only pretending to be a mere mortal farm animal mutant in order to ramble on about her mundane high school experiences. Also to cause evacuations of small cities while attempting to make popcorn. As far as master plans went, it was an odd one, meaning at least some of it was likely true.

"Thanks," Josie mumbled. She cleared her throat with a piggish grunt. "I ... gotta get ready. Got a new arrival today, right?"

Markeshia's ears lifted, her large eyes going even wider. "Shit! Almost forgot. The kid, right?"

Josie nodded. "And his mom. Youngest person we've ever had by a long shot, I think. Think it was just a straight up freak accident that he was changed, like a barrel of mutant-goo fell off a truck or something. He got lucky, he could've turned into Ben Affleck. I think that's the same origin story."

The cow woman smiled warmly, probably thinking it was a good sign that Josie was telling jokes. "Well, we'll help him out either way. I'll go make the coffee." She hesitated as she started to turn away. Her ear twitched as a drop of water fell from it. "I'm glad you're here, Josie. I don't say that enough. We couldn't do this without you, babe." Josie knew Markeshia was trying to cheer her up, though the cow woman didn't know quite how. Josie appreciated the attempt.

She smiled and nodded without making eye contact, then pushed the door closed with her cloven hoof. Time for her least favorite part of the day.

Josie disrobed and hung her bathrobe-slash-uniform on the back of the door. She walked to the toilet to do her morning business. Afterwards she closed her eyes and steeled herself as she prepared to meet her own worst enemy. Not the word "decision," but her own reflection.

A pig stared back at her. There was no other word for what the creature in the mirror was. Josie supposed that wasn't true. "Freak," "monster," and "abomination" were certainly also apt descriptions. As she finished the thought, she glanced into the shower through the reflection, wanting to see if he was there. He wasn't, but she knew he was somewhere close by.

Not John, or her ex-boyfriend Jono, or her father, or the government stooge who had condemned her to this fate. Another "he." Far worse than any of the others. That "he."

Josie returned to her examination. It was a daily ritual, though it shouldn't have been. She was more-or-less used to her body's appearance now, or at least as used to it as one could be. There was no point lingering on it, and it just put her in a bad mood, but she couldn't help it. Maybe that meant she wasn't quite as used to it as she thought. Or maybe she was hoping that she'd wake up one day, look at her reflection, and be surprised to find she was back to her old self, though it was a stupid idea even as she entertained it. She only knew of one person to turn back to normal, her best friend Lydia. And that was because the formula she was administered was a trial run designed to turn her back to normal after a day.

Whatever. No point in putting it off any longer.

Josie leaned forward, taking in every gross detail. Her body was covered from head to hoof in thick black hair, bristles that continued to disgust her every day. For a while she had shaved her armpits and legs, just in an attempt to feel somewhat normal, but that had taken an hour and the growth was back by the end of the day. She shed everywhere, thick black hairs sticking to her bedsheets and her office chair. She had learned to clean the toilet after every time she used it, using her ungainly hooves to wipe it down with her washcloth after she used it in the shower. Her roommates shed as well, but they were lucky to have pretty fur while she had thick body hair. It was at its thickest on her belly, trailing between her six pairs of breasts, on her legs, on her arms, on her pits, on her ... It was thickest all over, really. It trapped her scent, holding it close to her skin until it decided upon the most embarrassing strategic moment when her friends would smell her. She described it as a dirty locker room mixed with an unshowered marathon runner mixed with a pig pen after a hot summer day, and just a touch of the smell of the sex that she'd likely never have again.

Her face was fairly porcine, with only a few recognizable features to show the pretty girl she had once been. Her eyes were still mostly the same, in shape anyway, although her pupils were much larger. Maybe her cheekbones? That was about it, really. She had floppy pig ears (filled with black hair). A prominent snout one would find on any normal swine (filled with black hair). A face with fairly leathery skin (covered in black hair). Her lips were thick, short yellow canine teeth poking slightly beyond them. She never could seem to get her teeth white, even though she brushed twice a day and had tried the whitening formula junk that Haley swore by. Her still-pretty eyes were trapped just below a bushy, thick unibrow that a yellow Sesame Street muppet would've felt ashamed of. She had short stubble across her face and jawline, meeting her sideburns before it joined the growth on top of her head. She missed having hair--real, human hair, the kind she once brushed every day. Her scalp burned more easily than the rest of her whenever she spent too much time in the sun, which was hardly ever these days. Her nose tended to drip, though she'd taken to blowing it every hour at least to try to keep herself somewhat presentable. The drool was annoying, but she could keep it under control if she remembered to swallow more than usual.

And that's just the head, she thought. Her torso was filled to the brim with six pairs of large breasts, each battling for space, the lowest almost hanging over her crotch. There was always a sheen of sweat between them, as the heat couldn't help but buildup under so much touching skin and hair. She chafed fairly easily there now, and so she had taken to using talcum powder like an old man to try to provide some relief. Her nipples could hardly be seriously called that, looking like teats one would find on a perpetually pregnant sow. Thank fuck she didn't lactate like her friend Candice; that was an experience she could do without. Large reddish-pink areolas covered the things. They tended to sag, especially years after the transformation when gravity had taken its toll. Maybe there was some sort of custom thing Haley could ask their government contact about? Josie would be too embarrassed to inquire about it, even though she knew that she shouldn't be. Black hair covered all of them, and was even thicker around her navel, though she could barely see it due to her fifth and sixth lowest pairs.

Her arms were more of the same, though she had packed on quite a bit of lean muscle as part of her transformation. She wasn't sure what the point was of that. She had gained weight, obviously, but it was mostly in the breast department. She had been terrified of becoming obese, but she had learned through Wikipedia that the ideal weight for pigs was actually just chubby, not fattened like what you'd find on a farm. Pigs--real pigs--apparently eat anything that is presented to them, a trait that farmers had bred into them in an effort to get them as large as possible before they sold them to the slaughterhouses. Josie kept a calorie tracker for everything that she ate. She had also switched to a more-or-less vegetarian diet since her friends could only eat non-meat products, although she still had to have a turkey burger or chicken sandwich every now and then to stay healthy. She was more than a little ashamed that her favorite food was sauteed mushrooms now. She also worked out just before dusk when the heat was more or less tolerable--and always alone and "downwind" of her friends. As long as she kept an eye on her intake and kept a schedule of jogging and body weight exercises, she stayed more-or-less fit, although she'd always have a little pudge around her belly and thighs. It was honestly the least of her worries. She was happy at least that she wasn't a depression-eater, otherwise she would certainly have gained a lot more.

Everything else was of course covered in hair. Her armpits were full of the stuff, and she was always careful to keep her arms down. Deodorant helped with the smell somewhat, although she had to reapply it several times a day and even then it wore off quickly. Possibly the worst aspect of her change were her hands, or lack thereof. They'd been entirely replaced by cloven hooves, with barely any mobility left in them at all. If she concentrated she could just barely move the tiny stub that used to be her thumb, for all the good it did. They made everything difficult: brushing her teeth, washing herself, feeding herself. Using the restroom now involved an extra shower to get clean. She'd begged for a bidet, but Haley seemed to think that was some sort of trapeze apparatus and couldn't be convinced otherwise. She had worked with Markeshia for a time to try to recover some mobility, but had given up when they both reluctantly agreed it just wasn't happening. She relied on Smiles--their occasionally psychotic A.I.--more and more to do her job, and her fanfiction had suffered because of it. The keratin on the end of her hooves was a sickly mix of yellow and black, and tiny hairs were even present between the separate parts of the cloven hoof.

Her legs were about the same. The hair was perhaps a little thicker, though that hardly mattered in comparison. Her legs had adopted the odd stance that most animal-people now possessed. Haley had told her the term was "digitigrade," meaning that what used to be her heel was now stretched further away from the rest of her foot while her shins had become a little shorter, forcing her legs into a posture one would find on a four-legged animal. It was surprisingly easy to adjust to, though it seemed to make her swerve her ass to the side a little more as she walked, mocking her gruesome form by forcing her into a "sexy" sway. Her feet were the same as her hands, though the hooves there were much more accommodating and kept her fairly surefooted. After the change had happened she was always afraid she'd topple over, but her new walking pattern seemed thankfully instinctual and her sense of balance was better than when she was normal. It was even strangely fun to watch the way her legs moved now, the way they bent and shifted as she walked. The only part she hated was the ever-present clopping noise her hooves made on the concrete floor of her home, though she'd gotten used to that after a while. After all, counting herself there were now as many as three pairs of hooves clopping down the halls at any given time. Josie smiled for a moment as she remembered when she had first learned which clopping pattern heralded the arrival of which member of their strange trio. Quick, graceful, almost skipping clops? That was Haley. Slow, more deliberate, careful ones? Markeshia. Sad, lonely ones filled with self-loathing and depression? All hers, baby.

Her back was fairly as it was before, albeit with a little more muscle definition and some slight love-handles that she didn't mind that much. The hair was present, of course, and it was probably thicker there than the rest of her, particularly on her ass. She had been "blessed" with more junk in her trunk, though it seemed equal parts fat and muscle in order to carry the increased weight of her breasts. Her curly tail was small and out of the way enough that she sometimes forgot it was there--which was just fine with her. The abundance of hair down her asscrack was another constant chore. She'd been extremely embarrassed when she had to ask Haley to think up a solution to the problems it presented while using the bathroom. The solution, one that Haley was disturbingly proud of, was to attach a beard trimmer with dull "teeth" to a telescoping pole with a velcro strap on the handle. This allowed Josie the wonderful task of spreading her cheeks every other day and shaving away the thick growth for hygienic reasons. Haley had bragged about the design to everyone she possibly could until Josie had threatened to impale her through her asshole and throat and leave her to rot in the hot desert sun in retribution. She'd thankfully gotten the hint after that bit of subtlety. Parts of her best friend's personality had evidently rubbed off on her.

And then there was the front. The worst part. The area between her legs was a mass of black hair, completely covering the skin there. She didn't attempt to trim this bit, as she tried to keep from touching it as much as possible. Having multiple thirty minute long orgasms was as inconvenient as it was glorious, and at the beginning she'd had to let Markeshia handle the new arrivals when she'd made the mistake of getting too close to that part of her anatomy. The thick hair was a mixed blessing. It trapped the scent of the muskiest part of her body, but it also hid what had become of her labia as well. Her sex had deformed into something one would find on a farm animal, and it was a constant source of embarrassment to her. Markeshia had confided that it took her a while to get used to as well, having her lower lips be so swollen and protrude several inches from her body. She couldn't help but squeeze her labia with her legs as she sat, and more than once that had resulted in another hours-long masturbation session that Josie was giving into more and more these days.

Not today, though. Today was a workday.

Now satisfied that she had wallowed in self-pity in front of the mirror for the prerequisite amount of time, Josie sighed and turned to the shower. The handles had been replaced by simple bars that were much easier for Josie and Markeshia to manipulate, and the showerhead itself was surprisingly nice. It had separate settings that sprayed in various patterns, from the normal shower spray to or a more gentler one depending on the user's preferences. Josie's favorite was the one that felt like she was standing outside in the warm rain--something that hardly ever happened in the Utah desert. She was extremely careful to avoid the forceful spray setting, particularly on days where she couldn't afford to spend the entire day squealing away in blissful sexual oblivion.

Josie turned the water on and waited for it to warm up. She stared at the water running down the drain. Something about it made her feel sad, like the few drops were just made to be wasted as they circled the drain. Everything was making her feel sad today. It was like she hadn't--

"Shit! Idiot!" Josie cursed herself as she returned to the sink, careful not to look again at the freak in the mirror. She had forgotten to take her medicine. She had one of those Sunday-Saturday pill organizers that she'd always thought only old people used. There was no way that Josie could open the normal child proof medicine containers, though she was just barely able to open the little plastic coverings on the rectangular box that held her medicine for each day. Even then she'd had to have Haley superglue it to the wall to keep it from sliding off the counter onto the floor. It also let her drop the pills into the palm of her hoof, where she could hold it steady enough to get the tablets into her mouth. She pressed the button with one ungainly hoof and caught them in the other before tossing them into her mouth. She never took water with her medicine, since she produced so much saliva anyway.

She started to turn back to the shower but her eyes remained glued to the plastic container on the wall for some reason. A dark thought passed through her mind that perhaps she should take more of her antidepressants than she was supposed to. Maybe on a Sunday after Haley had filled it with the full weeks' worth. Maybe the solution to her problems was right in front of her all along. Just take them all and be done with it. Stop fucking around. She was just wasting her time and everyone else's by being here. She'd never be good enough. She'd never be--

He was there now. She could see his reflection in the mirror standing just behind her hairy gross body. He was invisible, as he always was, but she could see him all the same. The demon. He was so close now. She could just swallow all of the pills and ...

She closed her eyes, counted to twenty, and controlled her breathing. In through the snout, out through the maw. In through the snout, out through the maw. Repeat. Take your time. If twenty seconds isn't long enough, go to thirty. There's no rush. You're fine.

When she opened her eyes again, he was gone, just as she knew he would be. He'd come back eventually, of course. He always would. But for now he was gone.

"One step in front of the other." Josie snorted loudly through her snout. "Even if it's a hoof. One hoof in front of the other."

Josie turned away from the mirror and everything it represented and stepped into the shower, squealing like the pig that she was when the hot water hit her chest. She gasped at the twelve sensitive spots on her torso and quickly turned her back to the shower when they started to feel a little too nice. Showering was an adventure. Every day, an adventure. Today especially, as they had a new arrival and Josie Sung would have to make an extra effort today not to smell like Josie Sung. She pressed the body wash dispenser on the wall and held the clean washrag that Haley always left for her under it. Some days she just rubbed the wash on herself with her hooves, but that often led to her wanting to rub her skin across other parts of her body and all productivity of the day would evaporate as she went into horny pig mode. She had intentionally purchased the most abrasive, least comfortable washcloths in existence to avoid this purpose. She suspected they were designed and mass produced by a sadist, probably an expert in the art of torture. Or a public defense attorney. They were basically the same thing. Even with the added precaution of the uncomfortable torture device, she was very careful not to touch her teats, her groin, or even the lower part of her belly or upper thighs. That was the "danger zone" as she referred to it. She just let the body wash run down her torso and onto those parts of her body without touching them. She hoped that would get them clean enough and cover up her smell for at least a few hours. Anything to avoid horny pig mode. Once she had given in so much that Haley had to kick the door down and plug an IV into her arm as she lay squealing in pleasure on the floor. She thought that was unusually invasive until Haley informed her that she had been having so many multiple half-hour orgasms that it had been several hours and her friends were growing worried she might be having a seizure. This was an event she had made them swear to never discuss again.

Josie took extra time going between the crevices of her breasts, her pits, her ass, any area that felt particularly icky by the end of the day. Unfortunately she had come to associate the smell of the peach shampoo with self-pleasure, since the use of the former sometimes led directly to the latter. She was "lucky" that today her own ever-present self-loathing seemed to override her libido and she was able to sufficiently lather and rinse herself without too much temptation. She slowly faced the shower head again, holding her arms above her and lightly jiggling her breasts to try to rinse them off as well. She quickly pushed the handle to turn the water off just when the tingling pleasure emanating from her teats was starting to become a concern. She stood still for half a minute, catching her breath and giving herself time to calm down.

Every day. This was her morning routine every day. And she would've been lying to herself if she denied that she enjoyed it a little. Parts of it, anyway.

A soft towel was out of the question, but she wasn't about to subject herself to the cruel and unusual punishment of using an equally abrasive one. She instead used a hairdryer with velcro straps attached that she could slip over her hoof and hold more or less still. She had always hated hair dryers but reluctantly used one now as it was the fastest and easiest way to dry the abundance of hair covering her body. It was also fairly unpleasant, which was a double edged sword in that it temporarily made her forget how screamingly horny she was after stepping out of the tub. She smiled. Maybe Markeshia could take over today. Now that the dopamine the pills produced was kicking in she was feeling a bit better. Maybe a day-long orgasm was what she needed to get over her recent string of gray moods.

She shook her head, her pointed ears flopping against her temples. "Or maybe you can be an adult and go and do your god-damned job." She finished drying herself and was just reaching for her bathrobe when she smelled it.

"No fucking way," she whined. "Already? I just got out of the god damn shower!" A faint sour scent could already be detected by Josie's stronger sense of smell. It seemed like every day her efforts of covering up her smell were becoming more and more futile. Like whatever sick god was taking pleasure in her own misery was deciding that peach-scented shampoo was no match for his own cruelty. She thought about asking Haley to reach out to her government contact to see if there was perhaps some sort of super secret experimental deodorant for pig mutants they were hiding away next to the Ark of the Covenant. But she knew that if she used it she'd probably turn into something worse, like a half-human roach or dung beetle. Or, worse, a chihuahua.

There was a soft knock at the door, and Markeshia's voice intruded into her thoughts. "Josie? About done? Coffee is ready ... and I thought you might need this."

This? What "this?" Josie slid on the bathrobe, pressing the velcro that served to close the front of the garment until she was more or less decent. She pressed the handle of the door and groaned in frustration as she tried to open it. She was thankful that at least no door in the building was able to be locked. Josie would just end up stuck somewhere. The bathroom was the only one that was even able to be closed completely, all the others would open with just a push. Markeshia helped her open the door and held aloft a tray on both of her own unwieldy hooves that contained a spray bottle of perfume.

"It's not bad. It's the stuff I used to use. Not too strong, super subtle. And you said you liked the smell of blood oranges." She shrugged and looked a little embarrassed, biting her bottom lip with her large flat teeth. "Thought maybe you'd want it today with the new arrival. She's going to be a turbo-Karen I'm afraid. And, uh, I mean ..." She let the sentence hang silently in the air, hoping Josie would fill in the blanks.

She did. "Are you serious?! Are you fucking serious?! Through the DOOR?! You can smell me through the door?!"

"Sorry, sweetie." Markeshia's long ears drooped until they threatened to touch her shoulders.

The hairs on Josie's body were standing on end. She tended to show her canines when she was upset, and this was one of those moments. "I just got out of the shower! I literally just got out! Of the SHOWER! The thing that makes me clean and not smell like livestock! What the actual, living, breathing fuck!"

"Sorry," the cow woman repeated. She lowered the tray, likely afraid she had made matters worse by trying to be helpful.

"Why do I even bother? What's the fucking POINT?!" Josie shook her head, not caring as a string of drool slipped from her lip to soak into the robe. "No. That's it. I'm done. I no longer give a fuck. I am now light years away from giving a fuck. Scientists would have to start a new SETI to attempt to locate the fuck I now give. It's galaxies away by now. It's fucking gone. If I stink, I stink. I'm tired of always being this way. I'm tired of being so disgusting and ..."

The tray clattered to the ground, the perfume bottle thankfully remaining unshattered. Markeshia stepped forward and hugged her friend, who ignored the wonderful feeling of the cow's large breasts rubbing against her own. Not for the first time did Josie think about how her life might be easier if she leaned more toward liking girls. "W-Whu? M? What are you doing?"

"It's called a hug, Josie. I thought you might need an emergency one." Her friend smelled pleasantly of hay, grass, and strawberries. Josie almost hated her for it.

Josie's jaw was slack for a few seconds before the first genuine smile of the day appeared on her face. "Oh. Yeah." She returned the hug. "Thanks, M. I ... guess you knew I needed that more than I did. Sorry I yelled, I didn't mean any of that towards you."

Markeshia hugged her even tighter before she let go. "You know we don't care. Right? It's just kinda one of those things. In fact, you're the only person who is bothered by it. If the Karen or the kid are, who cares? I'll hoof their ass out into the street if they say anything about my girl. They should just be happy to be in the presence of a queen. A goddess. Fucking pig divinity." Markeshia smiled. Josie would have been reminded of her mother, if her mother was ever nice to her. "You're a good person, Josie. None of the rest of it matters. None of it."

Josie's lip was trembling, a drip of drool bobbing up and down upon it. "Thanks. I'm sorry, just ... Thanks."

Markeshia nodded, glancing at the tray for a second before pushing it away with her hoof. "Now then! Only one thing you ever need to worry about, kiddo."

Josie's singular brow raised. "What's that?"

"Lack of coffee in your life." She extended a hoof for a moment as if to take her by the hand before dropping it, remembering neither of them had hands. She instead bent her arm at an angle as if to escort her friend to the kitchen-slash-breakroom-slash-theater. "Come on, kiddo. Coffee makes everything better."

Josie giggled as she slipped her arm to interlock with her friend's, then followed her friend into their tiny break room and took a seat as Markeshia poured her a cup using a very long-handled pot. The cup itself was wrapped in the remains of an oven mitt, which provided extra traction for be-hooved individuals as well as kept the sides of the cup from being too hot to their skin. Josie carefully took the cup and took her first sip, relishing the feeling of the neurons in her brain being assaulted by caffeine. The mug was, of course, in the shape of a pig's face. There was a pig cup, a cow cup, and a donkey cup. Haley had trouble finding the latter, which she screamed was borderline discriminatory.

Markeshia put the coffee pot back on the warmer and waddled closer, taking a seat at the small table just across from Josie. Her ears were angled slightly downwards and she flicked her long tongue across her wide nose. Her tail flicked stiffly back and forth behind her. Josie had learned that this signaled she was being apprehensive. "Bad dreams last night?"

Fuck.

Josie shrugged dismissively. "Yeah, maybe. I guess." The beady pig eyes of the mug stared accusingly into her own beady pig eyes.

"Did you, uh ..." Markeshia slid her hoof across the table, offering it to her friend. Josie reluctantly put hers on top. She never would've guessed she would envy someone having fur, but it was now a thought that crossed her mind regularly. "Did you have the same dream last night?"

Fuck.

Josie shook her head and lied through her least convincing fake smile. "Nope! It was something else, just ..." Just what? she asked herself. Think, you stupid silly swine. Think. "Just a dream about ... turtles."

Oh, God damn it, come on.

Markeshia raised an eyebrow, or would have if cows had eyebrows. "You had a bad dream about ..."

Josie nodded. "Turtles. Yeah. Bad dream about turtles."

"You had a bad dream about turtles." Her tone was flat. She was obviously not buying it. Who would? "How is any dream about turtles a bad dream?"

"I ... hate turtles?"

Markeshia gave a single short laugh, though it turned into a low before it was finished. "Bullshit, girl. No one hates turtles. No one, literally no one living or dead. No one hates turtles."

Josie's whisper was barely audible as she repeated, "I hate turtles."

Not for the first time that day, Markeshia simply said, "I'm here if you want to talk, okay? I mean it. Especially if you want to talk about ... turtles. We worry about you, y'know?"

Josie nodded, took one more sip of coffee and pushed away from the table. She suddenly didn't want to be in the room anymore. "Is the lady and her kid in my office? Guess I should get this over with."

Markeshia nodded. "Yep." She slid the pig cup towards herself, barnyard representation etiquette disregarded entirely as she commandeered the caffeine for herself. "Good luck," she said as she took a sip. "This is gonna be a rough one."

"Good. I could use a rough one." Josie blinked. That was a weird phrase. She hoped it didn't sound vaguely sexual. "Can you, uh ...?" She nodded towards the dishes.

Markeshia smiled. "Of course." She shooed Josie away with a hoof. "Go with God, my ungulate sister. Don't say I didn't warn you."

---

One of Four

---

Josie's "office" was more of a medium-sized walk-in closet with just enough space for a desk and three chairs. The paint on the cement block walls was still scratched badly from where they had to tear down the shelves built into the walls to provide a bit more room. Josie had actually relished the task. It made her sweat, which was always embarrassing, but she was actually able to bash the rickety wooden shelves with her hooves. She was having another gray day, and the wanton destruction was quite cathartic. The mini-demolition had also resulted in Josie ending up with her very first work office, which was a welcome relief from her previous job of standing on her feet folding intentionally-ugly Christmas sweaters for ten hours a day. As much as her life had major drawbacks now, she had to admit that aside from her body being what it was, things were better now. No disgusting vermin-filled apartment (although she missed her rat friend Tom sometimes). And no disgusting boyfriend. And no disgusting customer service manager looming overhead. And no disgusting rides on disgusting buses to disgusting parking lots. The only disgusting thing she had to deal with now was herself.

Fuck you, pills, Josie thought as she knocked on the door. Fuck you, work.

"You may come in," responded a voice from inside, generously deigning to allow Josie the permission to enter her own office. She hadn't even seen the person yet and she was already prepared to be finished with the exchange.

Josie pushed the door open. Haley had removed the doorknob entirely so that it wouldn't be as much of a hassle. She squeezed in, with just enough space between the chair the woman was sitting in and the wall to slide by on the way to her chair. Normally people, even those with mobility issues, tried to politely move out of the way and provide her some extra room in the cramped confines of the office. The lion kid's mother apparently felt no such inclination.

"Hi, there! I'm Josie Sung, and yes I am indeed a talking pig. I'll just be going over a few things you might want to know going forward about your son's upcoming unique life challenges. If that sounds like corporate-approved lingo for 'your son's a lion now,' I apologize."

Josie usually used this intro or something similar to it. It was a way to let the newly-transformed know that they were in good hands--or hooves--while also establishing that Josie was a sympathetic human being. Which, technically she wasn't the latter, but it seemed like something a professional would say.

The woman made no response. She maintained a constant scowl of outrage, as if Josie were somehow herself responsible for what had happened to her son.

"Okie-dokie," Josie mumbled as she took her seat. Her laptop was open and already signed in. They had to figure out how to prevent the thing from locking her out after being idle for some time, seeing as how there was no real way for Josie to open it. It took her over a minute to type a simple password or pin code and would frequently lock her out when she hit the wrong key. It also made their guests feel anxious while waiting, which is the exact opposite emotion that Josie wanted to provoke. Fingerprint scanners don't tend to work as well when one doesn't have fingers. They had looked into a retinal scanner, but were too afraid that it wouldn't read her eyes. They still looked more-or-less human, but her pupils were larger so they decided not to test it. Really the computer was mostly for show, as their A.I. could do most of the work itself, but Josie did occasionally want to consult some medical reports that Haley typed up on the same laptop. Six fingers were apparently easier to type with than zero.

Josie was happy to find the kid's file was already open. She could use a mouse, but even that was fairly awkward and the mother looked about as patient as an apex predator being denied a meal. Perhaps she was the one that had been transformed. The ugly scowl was still present on the woman's face, and Josie tried to keep from grinning when she thought perhaps the woman was herself in the process of turning into some sort of vulture or stoat. It was like she was waiting on Josie to make some mistake or say something that would give her an excuse to berate her. It was K-Mart all over again. She ignored the way the woman's nose was wrinkled as if she were trying to stifle Josie's smell. If only that worked, lady, she thought. If only that worked.

The child was the less ferocious of the two, and he was a literal hypercarnivore. He looked to be around twelve or thirteen, although it was certainly hard to tell given his mutation. He was more or less what one would expect to find in a half-human, half-leonine individual. He looked slightly off with his mane just now starting to grow. Josie was reminded of that awkward stage in early high school when boys would start to grow scraggly pubic hair on their face before their parents made them shave it. The kid was probably also at the age where everything they said tended to be infuriating. Josie personally believed that time of their lives was usually between the ages of 2 and 85.

"It's a pleasure to meet you and your son, Mrs. ..." She read the top of the file. "Mrs. Josie Sherriden-Brimsey. Hey! That's my name, too! What a coinci--"

"Perhaps we can cut the niceties and you get to the part where you explain why you aren't going to cure my son." The scowl had become more severe, if that were even possible.

"I'm truly sorry." Josie was fairly convinced that was a lie. "There's no current way to reverse the process. If there were, I'd--we'd--have definitely used it by now. But your son is still young, and with current medical advancements, who knows where we'll be in a few years." That part was definitely a lie. His DNA, just like Josie's, had been rewritten on a molecular level. There was no human being to go back to. They'd have an easier time trying to transform him from a lion into another creature. Maybe a houseplant. "We should probably go over the results of the medical test and some things you might want to keep in mind for the--"

"So let me get this straight ..."

Oh Jesus, thought Josie. Here it fucking comes.

"You shove us in a smelly, dirty van and drive us--"

"Our transport van, yes," Josie interrupted. "Our discrete transport van that we've used to help a dozen--"

"Drive us from Orange County to this-this whatever-this-is in the middle of the Mormon desert--"

"Where your son was able to get a medical evaluation by the world's leading expert on mutate health."

"Jam my son full of who-knows-what types of government-approved chemicals--"

"Sodium chloride and water, yes, like you'd find in any hospital as a precautionary--" Josie had just enough time before the interruptions continued to notice her wonderful guest had used the words "government-approved" as though that were an offensive concept.

"Feed him who knows what--"

"I'm not quite sure what you mean by--" Feed him? Was the kid not supposed to eat? Josie checked the notes quickly. Haley had left a message from Lydia at the bottom of the page. It mentioned that the subject's mother was several four-letter words that Josie was still learning to appreciate and that her professional suggestion was that she be catapulted into the nearest burning celestial body. Another note from Haley was just below: "Medical analysis is concurrent, mother is indeed a C-U-N-"

"And then tell us that you won't help him get back to normal?!"

"Can't," Josie corrected. "Not 'won't'. Can't. I'm afraid there is no 'normal' to get back to. This is his new 'normal.'"

And here it was. Those terrible words that every customer service representative dreaded to hear. Mrs. Josie Sherriden-Brimsey had been preparing for just this targeted, tactical strike.

"I want to speak to your manager."

Josie smiled. She didn't even try to cover up her yellow canines or the drool that threatened to fall from her lips. Let her look at the smiling, hideous pig face. Fuck her. "You already are. Terribly sorry about that, Josie."

"You may call me Mrs. Sherriden-Brimsey."

May. Josie was allowed to address her. How gracious. "I can certainly appreciate how upsetting this unique situation can be. Believe me. More than most people, I can. You may have noticed that I am a human-pig hybrid and may have gone a step further in assuming this was not always the case. So I do sympathize. But maybe we got off on the wrong hoof here. You might be interested in hearing how your son's medical evaluation went?"

"Yes, let's hear that." The woman smiled. Her teeth, in contrast to Josie's, were pearly white and had likely had the benefit of extensive corrective surgery, whether they needed it or not. The hag. "Let's hear about the evaluation the talking donkey was able to perform. I'm sure the literal ass has her share of qualifications."

Josie nodded, pleased that her opponent had taken this strategy. She hated when people made negative assumptions about her friends, but she loved squashing them. "Actually, yes. She does. She has completed doctorates in medical science, master of surgery, pharmaceutical studies, and several biomedical sciences. Half of those she had less trouble earning than learning how our microwave works. In addition, she has completed studies in Ayurvedic and Unani medicines just in the case that our clients may have any religious restrictions on their healthcare needs. She's about a week away from finishing her neurology dissertation, if she can remember her email password." Haley had joked that her ability to grasp more complex medical science was entirely due to the fact that she was a donkey. Josie was never sure what that meant, or whether or not she was joking. Probably not.

"I noticed you conveniently left out that she has no qualifications in administering homeopathic medicine."

Josie nodded again. "That is correct. She also has no experience in magic crystals, healing magnets, or anything else that has no scientific properties whatsoever. We use medicine-medicine here. Sorry if that isn't sufficient. Can we talk about your child's health prognosis?"

The woman seemed very bothered that she hadn't found a fair avenue of further belittlement. Yet. "Proceed."

Checkmate, bitch. "Thank you!" Josie glanced at Haley's prognosis, although she had read it earlier and knew everything she needed to know. "You'll be happy to learn--I assume, anyway--that your child has no worries for the future. We haven't come across anyone before him that has seemed anywhere near as healthy." She smiled at the kid, who seemed about as interested in his new species as he did about anything else in the world around him. "You have good genes, kiddo. Must take after your father."

The woman didn't notice the slight, which made Josie feel uncharacteristically smug. "So you found nothing?" She didn't seem relieved, just annoyed that her time had been wasted.

"Fortunately, no. The biggest adjustment for your son will of course be dietary. If you don't have one already, you may want to invest in a freezer to keep extra meat on hand. He's going to be a picky eater from now on, especially as he continues through puberty. A variety of fowl, fish, and limited red meat is going to be the safest. Sorry to have to ask this question, but are you in a position financially where you can budget in the extra groceries? If not, we have a supporter who can more than help with any--"

"Are we? Yes. Will we? Absolutely not." She crossed arms and leaned back into the chair. Her son continued staring at nothing. Josie could certainly appreciate it if he had chosen to become dead inside rather than deal with his mother. "My family doesn't purchase or consume products injected with bovine growth hormone or preservatives or any of the other leading causes of cancer and autism today."

Oh, Josie thought. This is it. This is what's going to cause me to jump off a building one day. This singular moment. "Rrrrright. Well, I can certainly understand your wanting to eat more organically. If you are in a stable financial place then I think that unprocessed, farm-grown beef, chicken, and fish would absolutely be the best thing for your son's nutritional needs. I'd ask that you stay away from pork, though. That's more of a personal request though. Hah. Hah hmm." Another joke she used, and one that she knew before she said it that would be completely ignored. "Um, there's no reason to think preservatives would cause any complications, Mrs. Sherriden, but there's certainly no harm in taking that precaution either."

"Sherriden-Brimsey." The woman seemed religiously offended. "My last name is Sherriden-Brimsey."

"Right. Sorry." Josie was not sorry. She was having trouble thinking of someone at the moment that she hated more than the human being in front of her. Her parents maybe.

"You are forgiven," Mrs. Sheridan-Brimsey continued. "But you misunderstand. We do not consume ANY meat in my household."

Josie raised her brow. "Oh. Um, that's going to be a problem then. As in, that's not going to work anymore. I can certainly understand wanting to stay vegetarian. I follow that diet most of the time, too. But your son is a carnivore now. He is no longer able to digest anything other than meat. Fake meat products won't work either, I'm afraid. The protein content just isn't there yet. If you're lacto-octo vegetarian then eggs may work, but I'd have to check with Dr. Haley on that. I'd assume it won't work, and he'll probably be sick of eating nothing but eggs for the rest of his life anyway."

"The rest of his life ... before he is cured, you mean."

She didn't mean that at all. "Sure." Something was sitting wrong in Josie's mind. She glanced back at the notes. "Wait ... When was the last time your son ate? After the transformation, I mean?"

"He hasn't," the woman confided. "He's probably starving. The only thing we would've been able to eat on our glorious little journey to this hovel is gas station food, and there's no way we'd ever eat that."

"But gas station candy rocks ass," Josie muttered. "And the transformation happened ..." She checked the notes. "The transformation happened four days ago?! Your kid hasn't eaten in four days?!"

The kid shrugged. "The weird horse doctor gave me some turkey."

"She did WHAT?!" the mother roared, sound and fury signifying nothing.

He shrugged again. "She told me not to say anything about it. Oops."

"Um, getting back on track here," Josie continued, "A vegetarian diet is literally off the menu. Almost certainly. I'm really hoping you guys weren't vegan."

"Absolutely not." The woman was visibly disgusted. "Such a silly fad. We'd never."

Josie shook her head slightly. "I mean, it's not a fad, it's been around forever, but I guess that's good in this case. So vegetarian then? Lacto-octo or pescatarian or ...?"

"Fruitarian."

Josie was fairly certain the woman had just suffered a stroke. There was no way that was a word. There was no way a human being had invented that word. None. "Fruit ... arian?"

"As in we only eat fruit. The way that people have naturally subsisted for the six thousand years our planet has existed."

"There's ... so much wrong with that I don't even know where to begin. I'm not familiar with that diet, except for the obvious I guess. How--When did you ... become interested in that?"

The woman leaned forward. "Since we learned the Truth." Josie could hear the capitalization of the last word as she spoke it.

"The Truth ... about fruit diets?"

"The Truth about what the government does to any non-fruit food products. They control it all, you see. But so far they haven't figured out a way to put any mind-altering substances or nanomachines in fruit. Something about the citrus content prevents them from working. It's digesting only fruit why no one in my family is trans." She slid further to Josie's desk. There was a sort of conspiratorial tone to her words that bordered on friendliness, or at least as close as the woman could likely achieve. "I have some literature on the subject that you'd be very wise in reading, Mrs. Sing."

Josie didn't bother to correct her name. "Literature? On the ... subject?"

Her words were barely a whisper. "Literature written by one very smart man. A visionary. A prophet of the Truth. Have you ever heard ... of Q?"

Josie felt like crying.

"Mom, can we go now?" The lion kid waved his paw in front of his nose. "The pig lady smells bad and I want to go home."

The woman pulled a business card from her table and slid it across the desk. It contained a URL that Josie would never visit and an email address she would never send anything to. Did she just carry these cards around everywhere? "Let's talk after you have time to go over this. It's life-changing stuff. And it goes well with a slice of honeydew."

Josie stared at the large pig plushie she kept on her desk. It had been an ironic gift to herself, something to keep on the desk to illustrate that she understood the absurdity of their lives as animal-people to new arrivals. She'd be screaming into it soon enough.

---

An American Werewolf in Narnia

"Good evening, good evening," said the Faun. "Excuse me--I don't want to be inquisitive--but should I be right in thinking that you are a Daughter of Eve?"

Lucy shook her head. "My mom's name is Marge. Where are the werewolves?"

"I'm sorry," asked Mr. Tumnus. "The what?"

"You heard me, bro. This is a fantasy world, right? One where they apparently haven't invented pants yet?" She nodded to the Faun's lack of clothing.

Mr. Tumnus covered what was between his legs as if suddenly aware of his giant goat balls.

"Where ... are ... the fucking ... werewolves?" Lucy asked again.

"The werewolves? Why, however do you know about them?" The Faun looked this way and that as if he were afraid to be overheard. "They're evil creatures, you know. Servants of the White Queen, that horrible Jadis. You'd never want to meet--"

"Where?" Lucy interrupted.

"Where? Oh! Oh, yes, 'were'. Werewolves, correct. Why would you ever--?"

"Not 'were,' asshole, literally 'where?' As in, 'which direction?'"

The Faun's bottom lip was trembling as if he were suddenly bothered by the falling snow.

"Where ... are ... the werewolves?" Lucy was speaking as slowly as she could. "A cardinal direction, please?"

"Well, I mean, she's in the northeast in her frozen palace. I'd assume that she'd have some--"

"Point."

"Pardon?"

"Point in a fucking direction, please."

Mr. Tumnus pointed. Lucy walked that way.

---

Two of Four

---

Two weeks had passed since Mrs. Sherriden-Brimsey had departed with her son, and during that time Josie had slowly recovered roughly half of her belief in the possibility of the human race having a future. The days between visits were slow. Josie had taken up a few hobbies, spent time playing cards with her friends, and alternated between prolonged periods of depression and life-threatening orgasms. It was less fun than it sounded. At least the weather was nice.

Another mutate had arrived today. Her arrival was unexpected. Lydia had found her through an anonymous tip that wasn't at all very anonymous and had rushed her to the clinic. She hadn't transformed yet, and Lydia was afraid that the change would be a difficult one. The transformation had begun just as Lydia was turning on the dirt road that ran to their hideout. Haley and Lydia had helped her inside and to the medical bed while Josie and Markeshia stood outside the door.

After a few minutes, Lydia joined them. "Whew. This is a weird one. Poor thing." She smiled as she faced Josie. "Hey, you!"

Josie hugged her friend so hard she was afraid she had cracked a rib. She lifted her slightly off the ground.

Lydia was the only normal human being in their little group. She was on assignment more often than not, taking recently transformed people from a bad situation and bringing them here for a checkup before moving them somewhere safe. She had literally saved Josie's life, whether from starvation or dehydration or hanging from a rope in the corner of her room. Josie felt bad thinking that last thought. She supposed that was a good sign.

"Whoa whoa whoa, okay okay." Lydia laughed, tapping Josie on the shoulder like she was forfeiting a martial arts match. "You're getting as bad as the fucking donkey with the hugs. Put me down, crazy bitch."

Josie dropped her and tried to stop smiling like it was her birthday. Lydia was Josie's favorite person in the world, and she didn't get to see her very often. "How long are you staying?"

"Couple of days this time, actually. Was in such a rush to pick up rabbit-girl that I've got some free time now. As long as nothing new pops up." She hugged Markeshia as well, though she wasn't in any bodily harm with the second embrace. "I need a beer. And a fucking girls' night! We doing this shit or what?"

"Fuck yes we doing this shit!" Josie had learned a good many things spending time with Lydia, especially after their first meeting in the parking lot behind a seedy strip club. Lydia had given her cold french fries and a reason to continue living. Among the things she'd learned from her was an appreciation for words that would get her kicked out of church. "Popcorn and beer and bad movies and everything!"

"You been working out, muneca?" Lydia gripped Josie's bicep tightly through her bathrobe. "Wow, look at this! Going to show the donkey who's the baddest bitch around here?"

"You know it!" She'd hug her again if she felt she could get away with it. "Gotta stay in shape, maintain my gorgeous figure. All two hundred fifty pounds of pig tits and sweat and--"

Lydia was about to respond when Haley burst through the door. Haley was perhaps the least transformed of the mutant trio, having maintained three opposable digits per hand. This was likely due to her willingly undergoing the transformation. The donkey hybrid was very tall, especially when one factored in her long ears. She was wearing her usual labcoat. She had likely been one of the first people to have been changed, other than their friend Candice. She had undergone the transformation simply because she thought donkeys were amazing. Whereas lesser men and women had donkeyness thrust upon them, Haley had made the donkey life her own. In her own words, Haley "woke up and chose donkey."

"Ooookay, here we go." Haley immediately seemed to forget what she was about to say, her look of concern fading as her thoughts evaporated as they always did. "Hey, Lydia! Good to see you!" She may have forgotten already that Lydia had helped her to drag their guest inside the building five minutes ago. It was always hard to tell. "What were we doing? Oh! Right! She's changing into a rabbit. Like, right now. Like, the kind that hop. And have ears like mine. Do all rabbits hop? Did I just use a stereotype?"

Lydia sighed. Markeshia shook her head. Josie smiled, then offered, "No, you didn't. It's fine. How is she?" The group usually defaulted to letting Josie try to keep Haley's mind focused. They said she was better at it, though Josie suspected they were just saying that because no one else wanted to do it.

"She's great!" Haley smiled, her blocky teeth practically giving off their own luminescence. "Very nice lady, especially considering the transforming-into-a-monster thing. She's from Milwaukee! That's the place with the beer you like, right Lyds? The kind that tastes like days-old cat urine?"

"I mean aside from her personality." Josie felt like it was like trying to pull a derailing train back onto the tracks using dental floss. "She's changing right now? Is she in any danger?"

"Nope! It's kinda hot in there, though. Fucking AC is on the fritz again. But I was able to get her vitals and draw blood when she got here. Regular old freaky-mutation-change-thingie. Do we have any of that beer? Might make her comfortable. Or me. It also might make me comfortable." Josie was about to interject again before Haley decided to switch gears. Again. "You go sit with her. Please."

Josie blinked. "Me? Why me? I mean, I don't mind but why specifically me?"

"She's freaking out. Understandably." Haley patted her labcoat like she was looking for something. "But specifically with me being a donkey. I think she may be the victim of an ingrained donkey prejudice, likely from some horrible donkey-related trauma as a child. Literally the only reason I can think of. So I'm freaking her the fuck out. But she should have somebody there to hold her hand. Then her hand-paw. Then maybe her paw-paw." She shrugged as she looked at Josie, then repeated, "I'm freaking her the fuck out."

"A-And I won't?" Josie was confused. "You think she's going to be less scared of a talking pig than she is of a talking donkey?"

"Worth a shot. Donkey prejudice can take years to overcome. It's a nationwide problem. Did you know that 'asinine' is a term used for donkeys? Asinine! Like 'equine,' or 'bovine,' or 'porcine.' Fucking literally asinine! That should show you how little regard people have for--"

"Oooookay, yeah." Josie didn't mind being with the poor lady through her change. It wouldn't have been the first time she'd tried to comfort someone while they were going through their transformation. "If you find any of that beer laying around, please save one for me. Or a dozen."

"A million, babe." Lydia ruffled the short bristles on Josie's head. Lydia was the only person Josie allowed to do that. "Save you a million beers."

Josie knocked on the door. The woman inside answered, "Come in," although the sound of her voice indicated she was in considerable distress.

Josie closed the door behind her and waved shyly with her ugly hoof. "Hi there! My name's Josie. Sorry about all of this. Dr. Haley thought you might want some company while you have to go through this. I guess I qualify, barely."

The woman had torn the front of her shirt. There was brown and white fur growing from her midriff. Her clawed hands were tugging on her sweatpants, probably struggling against the hormones running through her system. Josie watched as her front teeth began to extend past her bottom lip.

The soon-to-be-rabbit looked shocked at the sudden entrance of a bipedal pig. "I-I'm Abigail. M-My name ... is Abigail. Abby for short." She was sweating profusely; Josie could sympathize. She kicked a blanket off of the bed. "So hot. I-Is it almost over?"

Josie tried to keep her clopping as soft as possible as she walked to the bed and took a seat in a large faux leather chair. It was probably the only comfortable one in the compound. "Sorry, no. It's just beginning. Usually people have already changed before we can get them here. But it's probably good that you're in a safe place at least, if this has to happen to you. What was the story they gave you? Mine was that I broke into a bathroom on a military base--"

"I-In Germany? With a rock band name? Aaahhh!" Her hands were clenched as claws continued to slide from her fingertips.

"Hey! Me too!" Josie supposed she shouldn't sound so chipper, given the young woman was currently in the process of having her life completely torn apart. "Good to meet a fellow master of bathroom infiltration! Do you, uh ... Do you want me to stay? Thought you might want someone here with you. I can leave if you'd prefer, though. The doctor said everything is fine, you're in no danger of any complications while you change. Other than, you know, changing into a rabbit. Should I ...?"

The woman started to answer, then grit her teeth to keep from screaming as her ears grew to points and began sliding up higher on her head. "No! No, it-it's fine! I'd like somebody here. I-Is it okay if I ..." She extended her hand to Josie. The pig monster felt so sorry for her.

"Absolutely, whatever you need. My hands are kinda useless for gripping anything these days, but they're absolutely perfect for helping people through bunny rabbit transformations." Josie put her hoof in Abby's hand, wincing as their guest couldn't help but dig her claws into Josie's leathery skin. "You're going to be fine, Abigail. You're gonna be fine."

"Abby. T-Thanks. God, this is weird." She tightened her grip, her muscles flexing as they grew stronger, soft brown fur growing down her biceps to her wrists where it merged with white hairs. It was a pretty pattern. Haley must have taken her socks off already, as the pair watched as her feet stretched longer, thick veins protruding from the top as claws pushed from her toes. "I guess you know that, though."

Josie nodded. "Pig or rabbit, it's weird. Do you need help with the rest of your clothes? S-Sorry, hopefully that wasn't an invasive question. They're gonna be pretty uncomfortable in a minute, though.

Abby shook her head. "N-No, I got it." She winced as a sickening crunch could be heard coming from her jaw. She groaned as she tried to pull her shirt over her head. Josie helped as best she could, although she had more than enough trouble dressing herself these days. Abby swore a bit as her ears seemed to get caught for a moment before they pulled the sweat-soaked shirt away. She giggled a little nervously as she looked at her bare chest. Josie was happy she wasn't wearing a bra, as there was no way she'd be able to help her with the clasps. She seemed flat-chested enough that she probably never bothered with one, although Josie was sure that was about to change.

"The fur is ... kinda pretty." Abby groaned. "In a weird way. W-What's that awful smell? God, is that me?"

"No, it's ..." Josie smiled uncomfortably. "Part of it is, I guess. It's mostly me. Sorry about that."

"O-Oh." Abby nodded, wincing again as her jaw cracked and her prominent incisors started to slow their growth. "Good." Her eyes went wide as she said the last word. Josie could see her irises were beginning to turn pink. "I-I didn't mean that, I'm sorry. That came out all wrong."

"It's fine." Josie smiled. The poor woman was transforming into a rodent and was apologizing for a possibly perceived insult. She was nice. "The pants?"

Abby nodded as she started to slide her claws underneath the waistline of her gray sweats. She gasped in shock, then pulled her hand away as if she was hesitant. "C-Could you maybe ...? Whenever I touch anywhere close to that, I ..."

Josie nodded. "Also completely normal. As normal as this shit gets, I mean." Josie awkwardly tried to tug the sweatpants away by pinching the bottoms near the rabbit woman's heels between her hooves. She was moderately successful, although Abby had to help her slide out of them when she had them a bit looser. Her underwear was the last that was left. It was soaked through with sweat and probably other fluids. "Um, what about that?"

"I'll just ..." Abby squeaked as she grasped the underwear by the side of her hips and simply tore it away. She was panting, her eyes rolling to the back of her head as the undergarment came off. Josie sat by her side again and offered her hoof, which the rabbit immediately took.

"Are you in much pain?" Josie asked.

Abby shook her head. "A-A little. In my face. Mostly just OHHHH!" Abby thrust her hips into the air as a tuft of fur had started to gather just above the crack of her ass. "Tail?"

Josie nodded. "Yeah. Tail. Bushy cottonball thing. It's very cute."

Abby's hands now resembled paws, her thumbs sliding further as thick pink pads grew on her palms and fingers. She'd probably still be able to use her thumbs, with Markeshia's help. "I'm a freak," she whispered as she covered her breasts, her claws dragging through the fur on her chest.

"No, hey, hey, none of that. You're not a freak."

The rabbit woman was crying now. Josie wasn't sure if her eyes were turning red because of the tears or because of the change. She started to say something else before she screamed again. By now the fur had enveloped her body, an earthy brown over most of it, a creamy off-white on her belly, feet, and hands. Josie followed her line of sight as the woman stared in horror at her chest. Eight new pink nubs were swelling in two lines down her torso, the lowest appearing on either side of her pussy. Her original pair were growing along with the rest. Abby gripped Josie's hand, her pink eyes searching the pig woman's face for an answer to what was happening. "W-What ...?"

"Um, yeah," Josie answered sheepishly. "That happens a lot. Welcome to the multi-boob club. You get used to them pretty quickly. That's a lie, they kinda just stay weird."

Abby was kicking at the bed as if trying to escape her own body, a string of drool falling from her lips as she panted, a long pink tongue hanging from her lips. Josie imagined the arousal being forced on the girl had just ramped up quite a bit. Individual mounds of soft flesh were starting to swell underneath each teat, her ten sets of tits swelling from A-cups to Bs to Cs and down through the alphabet. "Ohhhh man, that's fucking gnarly."

Josie nodded. It was as adequate a description as she'd ever heard.

The muscles in her legs were massive now, likely giving her the ability to run and leap much faster than she'd ever be able to as a human. Not that the poor thing was probably thinking of the benefits of that as she continued to stare at her breasts. They seemed content to mercifully stop at E-cups, each battling the other for space across her torso in a way Josie still hadn't quite gotten used to.

"Two less than me," Josie joked timidly. "I guess that means I win. Or maybe you do? Golf rules or basketball?"

Abby smiled despite the pain and the maddening arousal that must be coursing through her body. "G-Golf rules, I think. I like golf. It helps me sleep." Her other hand was unconsciously drifting between her legs now. Abby must have noticed and tried to make her hand into a fist and pull it away, but the joints in her fingers didn't seem to work that way anymore.

Josie cleared her throat. "I-If you need to ... y'know ... have some 'me time,' it's completely fine. I can step outside or just close my eyes or something."

Abby groaned as her nose and jaw started to slide forward into a muzzle, tears matting the brown fur on her cheeks. Her ears were over a foot long now and the base of them had slid upwards until it reached the top of her head. They were very cute; Haley would be jealous. Josie was absolutely certainly she would measure their length against their own and would probably pout for a week if Abby's were longer. When she could open her eyes again her muzzle had slid into place. The transformation seemed to have reached its end. "I-Is that okay? Just close your eyes? Okay?"

Josie closed her eyes before covering them with the back of her hairy arm. "Nothing at all to be ashamed of. Do you, girl."

The pig woman kept her eyes covered as the room filled with sounds of screaming and squeaking, moaning and crying, panting and whining. Josie's hoof was gradually going numb as the rabbit woman squeezed it harder and harder. Slick, wet noises filled the room as she touched herself. The entire bed was shaking. Josie was happy she didn't have laundry duty this week. Once Josie heard the door open, one of her friends coming to investigate the sounds emanating from the room. Josie wasn't sure which of her friends it was, but they swiftly made an "Oh" sound before closing the door again.

This was Josie's job now. Holding the paw of rabbit women while they monked off. This is what Josie did instead of folding clothes all day.

After an hour the rabbit seemed sufficiently satisfied and gradually released the deathgrip she had formed on Josie's hand. Josie inquired if it were okay that she open her eyes, and Abby weakly moaned out a yes. The room was rank with the smell of sex, temporarily covering up even Josie's own musk.

"Should I, uh, get you a towel?" Josie asked.

Abby was still capable of blushing through her brown fur. "M-Maybe in a minute? After things ... y'know, settle down there. Jesus Christ, that was ... something." She shifted her legs, a wet squelching sound emanating from between them that Abby winced at hearing.

"How about a blanket?" Josie rose and awkwardly picked up the blanket from the floor as best she could. "You were sweating like a horse there ... orrrrr like a rabbit, I guess. Don't want you catching a cold or something after all of that."

Abby nodded, her ears threatening to flop over at the motion. "Thanks, yeah, that would be nice. Sorry."

"Nothing at all to apologize for." Josie handed the blanket to Abby. The rabbit woman started to spread it across herself, pausing as she noticed her five sets of breasts as if she had forgotten they were there.

"Fuuuuck," she hissed. "So many of them."

Josie just nodded. She wasn't sure what else she should do. She passed Abby a bottle of water and a bag of salted vegetable sticks. "Probably want something light in your stomach after that."

"Thanks," Abby returned. At first she tried to nibble on them but was soon shoveling them into her snout by the handful, chewing them a bit more rapidly than necessary as her pink nose twitched cutely. Her body needed calories badly after the change, especially as she had now become a strict herbivore. Eventually she reached the bottom of the bag and set it aside. "I-I guess this is going to take some getting used to ... Wow, that was like understatement of the year territory, huh?"

Josie smiled. She was glad the girl was dealing with the change far better than she ever had. "You have somebody back home that can help you?"

She nodded. "My old roommate. She's the only one that knows what happened. I can crash at her place for as long as I need. Fuck, she's probably jealous. She's a furry. I guess I'm the real thing now, huh?"

"The real thing," Josie confirmed.

"I hope she has a basement."

"Why's that?"

"For the cage."

Josie blinked. Was she talking about a sex thing? "I'm not sure I follow."

Abby licked the back of her paws, then rubbed them across her snout to try to clean the crumbs from her cheeks. "For the next time I change, I mean. In case I go out of control or something. I figure I'll need a way to keep everyone around me safe whenever I change."

Josie was becoming very confused. "The next time you ... Waaaait, hang on. Did you think ...?" Josie snorted. The sound startled Abby slightly. "I mean ... this is it. You're done. You're not like a werewolf or something. Were-rabbit, whatever. None of us change back and forth. This is the new you from now on." Josie tried not to smile. This exchange was strangely adorable. "Also, you're a rabbit? Who are you keeping yourself safe from? The lettuce in your fridge?"

Abby's expression was beginning to darken, a scared look coming into her eyes. This was the exact opposite reaction Josie was hoping for.

Josie tried to switch gears. "I mean, that and any guy--or girl or whatever--you decide to spend time with when you rock that shit all night long. You're going to fucking slay it, queen." Josie stopped smiling about the time that Abby began to weep.

"I don't get to change back?! At all?! Ever?! I-I'm stuck like this ... forever?" She looked at her paws, an expression of disgust now etched across her face.

"No," Josie answered softly. "No, you don't. You don't ever change back. I'm so sorry." As she looked down at her own deformed body, she realized she wasn't really talking about Abby anymore. "You're stuck like this. Forever."

"I'd ... I'd like to be alone for a minute. Please?" Abby pulled the blanket over her body, trying to hide as much of it from herself as she could.

"Of course. I-I'm so sorry." Josie stepped back, wincing as Abby's ears twitched in her direction as her hooves clacked on the concrete floor. "Take as much time as you need. I'll be right down the hall if you need anything. We can talk later." The rabbit woman turned onto her side and buried her face in her pillow as she sobbed.

Josie stepped outside the room, closing the door behind her. All three of her friends, the only three people Josie would ever really interact with from now until the day she died, were waiting in the break room. Lydia stood as she approached. Seeing the look on Josie's face, she stepped towards her and started to give her a hug before Josie just said, "No." She didn't feel like a hug at the moment.

"Josie, we found some beer," Haley quietly offered. For once, she seemed to have read the room and was making an effort not to be so infuriatingly upbeat. "Um, the Milwaukee stuff? Thought we could maybe watch Princess Bride and have a few while Lydia's here?"

"Abigail can join us later, if she feels up to it." Markeshia smiled as she pushed a chair from underneath the small table, motioning for Josie to take a seat.

The Princess Bride was Josie's favorite movie. The gesture was appreciated, or it would have been if the demon wasn't waiting just outside of Josie's door, staring at her from the end of the hallway with eyes that didn't exist.

"Josie?"

"I think I'm gonna lay down," Josie whispered. "Kinda tired. Sorry if I ruined girls' night." Josie walked to her room, passing through the demon as if he were made of smoke as she shut the door and fell onto her bed. She lay staring at the wall for a long time until she heard the door open behind her. She started to tell whoever it was to go away, but soon felt Lydia laying down just behind her on the tiny twin bed, her arm wrapping around Josie's shaking body. "Don't," Josie whispered. "Stop."

"Hush," Lydia answered.

"No, I mean it, stop."

"Hush," Lydia repeated.

Lydia leaned up for a moment to turn off the light, then held her friend as she cried herself to sleep. She was a good enough friend to pretend not to notice.

---

"But what are you?" said the Queen again. "Are you a great overgrown dwarf?"

"Fuck you too, lady," said Lucy. "I'm 5 foot 5! Where are the werewolves?"

The Queen whispered to her driver. "Who is this? I was expecting the brother."

"My brother's a street performer in Vegas. Dresses up and acts like Elvis, even though he's shit at the act. The werewolves?"

The Queen looked very confused, but then a wicked grin crossed her face. "My poor child," she said in quite a different voice, "how cold you look! Come and sit with me here on the sledge and I will put my mantle around you and we will talk."

"Nnnnno thanks. Appreciate it though." Lucy had to admit to herself, however, that it was indeed cold as balls.

"Perhaps something hot to drink?" said the Queen. "Should you like that?"

"No, because it'll be poison or turn me into a newt or some bullshit. Can we talk about the werewolves?"

"It is customary to drink with new arrivals before discussing matters related ... to werewolves." The Queen took from somewhere among her wrappings a very small bottle which looked as if it were made of copper. Then, holding out her arm, she let one drop fall from it on to the snow beside the sledge. (Note: Sledge? Is that like a British sled?) Lucy saw the drop for a second in mid-air, shining like a diamond. But the moment it touched the snow there was a hissing sound and there stood a jeweled cup full of something that steamed. The Dwarf immediately took this and handed it to Lucy with a bow and a smile; not a very nice smile. Lucy held the drink to her face and took a whiff. It smelled like something she'd pay twelve dollars for at Starbucks and want to throw up afterwards.

"I'm good," replied Lucy, handing what was likely poison back to the Dwarf.

The Queen glanced at her driver, who shrugged back at her. "It is, um, it is dull, Daughter of Eve, to drink without eating," said the Queen presently. "What would you like best to eat?"

"God damnit," muttered Lucy. She wasn't going to get out of this without eating something. "I dunno, lady, some mac-n-cheese?"

Before Lucy had even said what she wanted, the Queen let another drop fall from her bottle on to the snow, and instantly there appeared a round box, tied with green silk ribbon, which, when opened, turned out to contain several pounds of the best Turkish Delight. The Dwarf held the box to Lucy, who looked like she would rather pick up a rattlesnake with her mouth.

"Lady, there is no way--NO fucking WAY--I am eating that. That looks like a can of ravioli fucked a bowl of Fruity Pebbles. Can we PLEASE talk about the fucking werewolves."

---

Three of Four

---

Josie looked over the notes on her laptop. She was able to balance it on her hooves with the assistance of yet another Velcro strap that fit over her wrist. Velcro solved every problem in her life, except for the ones that it didn't.

"She's a ... goat?"

"Sheep," answered Markeshia. "A literal black sheep. I think goats are guys and sheep are girls. I could be wrong about that, though. You'd think that out of everyone on the planet, the three of us would know these things."

"Oink oink," went the pig.

"Moo moo," concurred the cow.

"She's already changed? All the way?"

"Yep!" Haley answered. "Clean bill of health, as usual. I almost want someone to have some sort of health problem from their transformation. Just so I have something to do. Nothing big, just bronchitis or something. Shingles, tops. She even kept her hands this time, lucky thing." She took a long drag from her straw from a styrofoam cup containing ... Containing what?

Josie sniffed. In addition to heightening her ability to detect truffles--Josie assumed--she was able to clearly pick up on the familiar scent of sugary frozen chemicals. "Do you ... Wait, are you drinking an orange slurpee?"

Haley smiled, her rather large teeth as infuriatingly white and perfect as ever. "Fuuuuuck yes I am!"

Markeshia raised a hoof like she was interrupting class. "I was actually wondering about that myself."

"Why in the hell do you have an orange slurpee?" asked Josie.

"Because it's delicious?" replied Haley. "Why in the hell don't YOU have an orange slurpee?" She held the drink in question out to Josie as an offering. "Would you like an orange slurpee?"

Josie caught the edge of the laptop as it started to slide off of her wrist. The velcro-laptop-project was still in its prototyping phase. "No, I mean where in the hell did you get an orange slurpee? We live in the middle of the Utah desert. The nearest gas station is miles away, and I know for a fact it doesn't have orange slurpees and it sure as fuck doesn't serve them to donkey people."

Haley shrugged like that was the end of the discussion.

"Wait, don't shrug! That doesn't make sense! Are you saying you don't KNOW where you got an orange slurpee?!"

Haley shrugged again.

"Do you--Jesus fucking Christ, it's every fucking day--Do you have like some super power or something? The ability to make orange slurpees appear out of the ether? Are you ..." Josie's ears stood on the top of her head as a horrible realization dawned on her. "Oh my God, you asinine bitch, are you hiding a slurpee machine somewhere in the garage?"

Haley looked terribly offended. Josie was afraid she'd start crying. "I'd never do that! Come on, if I had a slurpee machine I'd share it! It would be OUR slurpee machine. Community-owned. We'd have the world's first Communist slurpee machine. I'd be making margaritas in that shit as we speak!"

At this point Markeshia was laughing and Josie felt it was as good a time as any to jump out of the discussion. She pointed her empty hoof at the donkey doctor. "This isn't over! I will have answers, and you will fucking give them to me!" She spun on her foot-hooves and marched towards her office.

Behind her a large farm animal medical scientist innocently whined, "What did I do?! What did I DO?!"

Josie pushed the door open with her hoof and squeezed into the room. "Sorry about the wait, Ms.--" Josie realized she hadn't looked up the new arrival's name. She plopped down in her chair and slid the laptop on the desk. "Ms. ... Fox. Hmm, not sure if that's ironic or not. How are you adjusting? You finished the transformation before Lydia found you?"

The woman in the seat across from her seemed understandably anxious. She was covered head to hoof in thick black wool and was likely very hot given the dry heat of the environment. Josie flipped her desk fan on, turned it to the highest setting, and pointed it towards the sheep lady, who smiled in appreciation. They'd have to ask if she'd like to shear herself after her prognosis, as awkward a question as that would be. This was another one of those weird thoughts that had become routine to Josie.

"Sophie is fine. Sounds much be-e-a-a-a-a-a-ter than 'Ms. Fox' considering that's not really accurate anymore." There were tears in her eyes. Josie hated this part. It was always so hard to see people dealing with their changes, especially when they cried. It almost always had the same effect on Josie herself.

Sophie interlaced her three large fingers over and over again, fidgeting and probably more than a little uncomfortable. She rubbed the black wool on the crown of her head, her long floppy ears flickering as her hoof-hand brushed across them. Her eyes had those odd rectangular pupils one found on some ungulates that were both cute and disturbing. She was completely naked, and Josie couldn't blame her in the least for that. Aside from her face, there were only two parts of her body where skin could still be seen. Her nipples poked through the wool on her rather large breasts, though they were the same ebony color as the wool itself and were probably not even that noticeable at first glance. Her newest set of nipples sat atop a large udder that covered her privates. She started to cross one leg over another, evidently forgetting about the large fleshy bag for a moment as she winced and put her hoof back on the floor.

"I'm glad to meet you, Sophie. I'm sorry this happened to you, and as you can see I can certainly sympathize. Solidarity in barnyard transformees and all that." Josie was somewhat thankful that she hadn't grown an udder herself, although she had to wonder what it felt like. Pretty nice, if she had to guess."You'll be happy to know that your bloodwork came back just fine. Sheep seem to have good immune systems--who knew?--so that will actually be a good thing for you in the future. I think it's helpful to focus on the positives after such a life-changing event."

"I-I gue-e-a-a-a-a-a-ss so. It's not so ba-a-a-a-a-a-ad, r-e-e-e-e-e-ally. This thing is kinda fun." She lifted her udder before plopping it back down to her seat. She seemed to be taking everything in stride fairly well all of a sudden.

"That's good! I'm happy you're already looking at the more enjoyable aspects of your change."

"I try to be positive. It's kind-a-a-e-e-e-e-eh something I'm known for. Unfortunately."

Josie wasn't sure what that was supposed to mean. "We don't like to pry, so I apologize for the upcoming question, but do you have any arrangements for the future? We have funding for any sort of financial challenges and ways to accommodate any privacy needs that you may understandably now require. It's an odd arrangement, but we want to help in any way we can."

"I think I'll be okay. After the se-e-e-a-a-a-a-ttlement check I should be set for life." She blinked a few times. Her strange pupils and speech impediment made it hard to tell if she was joking or not.

Josie decided to assume she was indeed joking. "Let's put that down as a 'maybe,' then. I'm also very sorry about the speech impediment, but you should have no worries there. The cow lady you may have seen earlier is a licensed speech therapist, and has already had great success in helping new mutates overcome any vocalization hurdles. In fact, you won't even be the first sheep person she's worked with! So she'll have that little annoyance worked out in no time."

"Oh, I don't have a speech impediment." The tone in her voice was very serious.

"Um, sorry, I wasn't trying to be offensive. I just meant to say that we can help with the bleating noises. If you'd like that." Josie paused. "Or, I guess, maybe you weren't even aware of the sounds you were just making?"

Sophie shook her head. "No no no, I was just trying something out with the ba-a-a-a-a-ah thing. Watch, 'baa baa black sheep.' Fine, right?" She had recited the nursery rhyme line without any problem. "'Blah blah blah,' 'rah rah rah,' 'I want to visit Panama.' See, no bleating. But it was convincing, right?"

Josie closed her mouth before she started drooling on her laptop. "Um, yes? I'm ... I guess I'm not sure where you're going with this?"

"I'm a public speaker," Sophie responded, as if that answered anything. "I do motivational speaking for teenagers. Pretty much any agenda a high school is trying to push, I've done it. 'Don't do drugs.' 'Don't drop out of school.' 'Don't have sex before marriage'--Jesus Christ, that's a hypocritical one for me."

"Oh." Josie had no idea what was going on. "I mean, I'm sorry to have to tell you this, but that career path is likely over. The public is still kinda oblivious to the fact that animal-people are out there, aside from an associate of mine making her debut on CNN. But the government played that off as a science experiment gone awry, which, yeah, I guess it kinda was. There are probably less than thirty of us, and most just want to live their lives away from the public. For now anyway. I mean, if you can find a way to keep doing what you enjoy, then that would be great but--"

"Oh no-no-no, I fucking hate it."

"You ... hate it?"

"You think I like telling a bunch of high school kids that condoms don't work? Who would? It's a miserable job. You think I wanted that? Being upbeat all the time? I'm actually a very morose person. And the skits! I have to act out little skits written by people who haven't heard a teenager speak since 1985 where I have to pretend to be 'hip' and 'cool.' They don't even say that anymore! Sometimes they--get this--Sometimes they want me to dance. Literally dance! This whole choreography thing, like any kid would watch that and think, 'yeah, abstinence is definitely the way.' I wanted to be an actress. I think I would've made a pretty good one. I made you believe I was serious with the b-a-a-a-a-a-ah stuff, right?"

Josie made a show of closing her laptop completely and leaning across the desk. "Okay, I have no idea where this is going but it's probably the most interesting thing I've heard in a month. What's your plan then?"

The sheep woman was suddenly animated, her breasts and udder jiggling slightly as she giddily bounced in her chair. "Okay, okay, okay, listen to this. I'm going to sue the people that did this to me. They told me I was going to go to jail for life because I jaywalked to my apartment when I was hammered drunk. Like ANYbody wouldn't get hammered drunk every weekend if they had to do what I do for a living. Then they turned me into a fucking sheep. A sheep! Soooo I sue the fuck out of them."

"You ... you sue them? Who? Who exactly?"

"I sue THEM!" she continued, ignoring the question. "They lied, they turned me into this, and--AND--I could get major sympathy points from the jury if I lean into 'I'm a scared little sheep lady and can't even speak properly anymore.' They know this--they KNOW this. So they'll have to settle. I can get rich, buy a house on the beach, shave all this shit off, and work on my book! It'll be a tell-all on my experience battling a corrupt system that tried to ruin my life but was no match for my unbreakable determination. I was thinking of calling it 'More Cry Than Wool: A Black Sheep's Journey From Sheepdom to Triumph.' Really lean into the sympathy and succeeding-through-adversity angle. And then I won't have to do any more fucking public speaking in front of a bunch of--Why are you looking at me like that?"

Josie wasn't sure how she was looking at the scheming sheep woman, although she could certainly make a guess. "You're going to sue?"

"I'm going to sue."

"You're going to sue the government?"

"I'm going to sue the govern--"

"The government that turned you into a sheep."

"A sheep, correct, yes."

"The government that turned you into a sheep illegally and has spent what is surely tens of millions of dollars covering up almost every instance of the existence of technology capable of turning people into sheep."

Josie watched the gears start to slowly turn. "I mean, yeah? Right?"

"You think they're going to pay out? Rather than, I dunno, for instance, shoot you on sight? Claim that you're an escaped secret experiment that Hunter Biden was working on in his basement? Send their trained squad of hybrid-jackal monsters to tear you limb from limb?"

Sophie leaned back in her chair, her hands fidgeting with her udder. "T-They have a trained squad of hybrid-jackal monsters?"

"Probably not, but do you want to find out? I certainly don't."

"But, I mean ... I-If I go on TV and all. Scream 'h-e-e-e-e-e-lp m-e-e-e-e-eh?'"

"You'll sound like the monster from The Fly. Not the Jeff Goldblum one." Josie sat back in her seat. She was in utter amazement. "I think you might want to table your plan. As good a plan as it was."

Sophie looked at the floor. "Oh."

"Ms. Fox--"

"Sheep. I-I was going to go by 'Sophie Sheep.' Like I changed my name. Like I had come to accept what I am now. And for the book. It sounds better. " She paused, then let go of her udder to rub her eyes with her large fingers. "No, it doesn't. Oh, fuck."

"Ms. Sheep," Josie corrected herself. "We can get you enough money to take care of yourself in a remote location of your choosing. Indefinitely. It won't buy your beach house, but it'll be more than enough for you to be okay for the rest of your life."

Ms. Sophie Sheep slowly dragged her hoof hands across her muzzle, stretching the skin on her eyes and lips in frustration. She was staring blankly at no particular spot on the wall. "I have no idea what the fuck I'm doing," she whispered.

"Aw, no, hey hey hey." Josie stood and walked to the sheep, putting a hoof on her shoulder. "It's going to be okay."

"I wanted to write the book," she whispered.

"You still can! You still can write the book. Just maybe label it as fiction at first, okay? At least for a few years?"

She pulled her hands away, sniffling a little through her large nose as her eyes focused on Josie.

"And hey--With that name?" Josie smiled warmly. "I'll definitely read it. Everybody will!"

"Y-You think so?" whispered the sheep.

"Absolutely! I want to read the first copy."

The sheep woman smiled sheepishly. "O-Okay. Sure. Did you really like the title?"

Josie tried to keep from laughing. "It's honestly the best thing I've heard all week." She patted her on the shoulder. "Everything's going to be fine. No more worrying, okay? Now ... Heeeey, how would you like an orange slurpee?"

---

"Why, he's only a great cat after all!" cried one monster.

"Is that what we were afraid of?" said another.

And they surged round Aslan jeering at him, saying things like "Puss, Puss! Poor Pussy," and "How many mice have you caught to-day, Cat?" and "Would you like a saucer of milk, Pussums?"

"Hurry the fuck up!" screamed Lucy. "That word means something different these days, by the way!" The Queen had told her if she betrayed the big scary cat that she'd meet any werewolf she'd like, even the one that was one of her lieutenants, a large and assuredly sexy fellow named Maugrim. Or Fenrir. Something like that.

At last the Queen drew near. She stood by Aslan's head. Her face was working and twitching with passion, but his looked up at the sky, still quiet, neither angry nor afraid, but a little sad. Then, just before she gave the blow, she stooped down and said in a quivering voice,

"And now, who has won? Fool, did you think that by all this you would save the human traitor? Now I will kill you instead of her as our pact was and so the Deep Magic will be appeased."

The lion roared. "Do not cite the Deep Magic to me, Witch. I was there when it was written."

[Note: This was only in the movie, but it's better than literally any other line in the book so fuck it.]

"When you are dead what will prevent me from killing her as well?" she continued. "And who will take her out of my hand then? Understand that you have given me--"

"Lion-Analogy-Jesus Fucking Christ, can we PLEASE just stab the horribly blatant Allegory and get the Apocalypse started?" Lucy whined.

The Queen looked at Lucy as if she were going to be stabbed next. "I-In that knowledge, despair and die."

Lucy did not see the actual moment of the killing. She was standing on her toes, trying to scan the crowd for any werewolves but was having trouble seeing over the centaurs. It was always the fucking centaurs.

Finally, she saw him and began to push through the crowd as the Queen rambled on about crushing the human vermin and the traitors and the blah blah blah.

Now that she was in front of the Wer-Wolf as they called him she was suddenly at a loss for words. She managed only a meek, "Hi."

The werewolf dismissively glanced in her direction, but seemed far more interested in launching the final apocalyptic campaign when all dark-skinned foreigners would be driven away from their ideal Anglo-Saxon paradise--just as the tale's author no doubt fantasized about as he masturbated frantically. Lucy was uncomfortable about that bit, but there was a werewolf to consider.

"Uh, h-hi?" she tried again. "I'm a big fan. Of werewolves, I mean. Or Wer-Wolves, I'm sorry, I'm not sure what to um call you and uh ..."

The werewolf ignored her while it roared as the Witch spoke about bringing reason and science and all the other evils of the world to Narnia against the wishes of the Cat Emperor across the sea or whatever the fuck. Lucy was still fuzzy about that bit.

She shifted tactics. "Um, heeeeey, I'm kinda new around these parts. Do you know a good place to get a cup of coffee? I'm Lucy, by the way. What's your name?"

A dull, grey voice at which Lucy's hoo-ha became wet replied, "I'm hunger. I'm thirst. Where I bite, I hold till I die, and even after--I'm sorry, what the fuck are you doing?"

Lucy had dropped her shirt to the ground and was struggling to get her shoes off. "You had me at 'I'm.' Take me."

Maugrim looked at the minotaur standing next to him, who only shrugged towards Lucy in favorable appraisal.

"I can, uh, holy hell lady," continued the werewolf as Lucy slipped her pants off. "I can, like, fast a hundred years and not die. I can lie a hundred nights on the ice and not freeze. Or in my tent if you prefer, that's probably nicer. I can drink a river of-of blood and not burst. Show me your boobies--enemies! Show me your enemies." Lucy draped her bra across his muzzle. "Or, yeah, boobs, I guess that works too, boobs works too."

---

Four of Four

---

Josie was just coming in from her late afternoon jog when the heat was only miserable instead of intolerable. Markeshia was waiting for her outside the door to the building. That was new. Josie never wanted people around her after she worked up a sweat, for obvious reasons.

"Hey, M." Josie stopped at a respectable distance away, leaning forward with her hooves on her hairy knees to catch her breath. "Everything cool?"

Markeshia had the fakest smile Josie had ever seen plastered across her snout. "Hey, hun. Yeeeeah, everything's cool ..." She rubbed her own hooves together nervously. "Um ... We've got a new guest."

Josie grabbed a clean towel she had left for herself hanging from their outdoor clothesline. "Oh shit, I thought he was getting here tomorrow. Is he okay?"

"Yeah, wasn't entirely expected. Kinda spur-of-the-moment thing. You probably don't have any notes yet, so maybe you can just kinda ... take a break? Let me handle this one?"

Where was this going? "Um, no? Does he need like immediate therapy or something?"

"Nnnmmmoooo." Markeshia groaned as the word turned into a moo. She hadn't done that in a long time. Something must really have her rattled. "He hasn't changed yet. Probably happen soon though, tonight or tomorrow morning. He, uh ... Hey, how you feeling? You've been looking a little tired lately, want to call it an early night? He might--"

The universe suddenly turned a somersault, twisted in on itself at impossible angles before rearranging itself so that this conversation was now at its center. "He's a pig!" The words were out of Josie's mouth at the same moment she discerned why her friend was being so vague. "He's a fucking pig, isn't he?"

"Mmmoooybe let me just--"

"The FUCK out of the way!" Josie shoved Markeshia aside far harder than she would ever mean to and stomped down the hallway to her room. She had to get ready. Everything had to be perfect. She had to be perfect. Perfect for a soon-to-be-pig mutant anyway.

Markeshia followed at her heels. "He's really not your type! Like really, really not your type! I think he's--"

Josie paused at the door to her room. "Gay? Don't say gay. Don't you dare fucking say--"

"Nnnmmooooo, pretty safe to say he isn't gay," Markeshia replied. She leaned against the wall, as she was suddenly having trouble maintaining her balance on her hooves. "Unless he's super repressed, I hear that happens a lot with these types."

Josie shoved the door closed with her foot. Fuck. Did she have time for a shower? Wait, no, that was a bad idea anyway. She wanted to stink for him. To be a smelly little fuck-sow. HIS smelly little fuck-sow. He wouldn't be able to keep his hands off of her or his dick out of her. This was perfect. This was absolutely perfect. She threw off her soaked t-shirt and jogging shorts and grabbed her bathrobe, cursing as she dropped it on the ground. She awkwardly picked it up with both hooves and slid it over her arms, tugging it down in the front to try to better show off her first row of cleavage. Should she just leave the front open entirely? Yeah, of course she should. Underwear? Who the fuck needed underwear? What even was underwear? It was some sort of cryptid or something.

From outside the door Markeshia whined, "Josie, this is a bad idea. This is a really bad idea."

Josie pushed the door open. "This is a fantastic idea. This is the best idea. This is one of those ideas that comes along once a century. It's ideas like this that got us to the moon, that made us learn to create music, that brought us out of the oceans and made us dream of flying. It's one of those ideas. Get the fuck out of the way, M."

For a moment, Markeshia looked like she was going to physically restrain her. She moved to the center of the hallway, spreading her furry brown arms wide. "Josie, sweety, I'm your friend. It's your friend talking. She is talking to you now. Your friend is begging you to let her do this."

Josie was showing the sharpness of her bottom canines. "I don't want you to do this. Friend."

"I don't want YOOOooou to do this," replied Markeshia

The voice of a donkey echoed down the hallway. "I could do--"

"No!" the pair of them screamed without taking their eyes off one another.

"Josie, please--"

"MOVE!"

Markeshia crossed her hooves across her rather large chest. She said nothing.

Drool was pouring from Josie's mouth. A crazed look was in her black eyes. Roughly six million hairs were standing up all across her body. "Bitch, I need this! Let me do my job. I need to do my job. It's the only thing in my sad, pointless little life that I've ever been any good at, even if I'm not even good at it. I hate myself a little more every day, and this will make that go away. Get. The fuck. Out of my way."

A look of sadness crossed Markeshia's features. She stood to the side. "Josie, don't ever feel that--"

"What's happening?" came the voice from down the hallway.

Josie covered the distance from her room to her office in as few strides as possible. She kicked in the door, only considering afterwards that her first impression on their guest may have been her giving him a heart attack from the sight of a large pig creature kicking in the door.

The man was plain, a weak jaw, balding a bit, and needed advice on how to properly maintain a beard. She didn't care. That would hardly matter soon.

As she kicked the door closed behind her, she heard the voice of the cow moaning, "We are gonna get sued. The clinic is going to get fucking sued."

A much chipper, positive voice answered, "The clinic can't get sued, it doesn't even exist, remember? We're super top secret."

Josie sat down in the chair next to the man, her usual spot behind her desk entirely forgotten. "Hi! I'm Josie! You're--"

Wait. Something was happening. The man was suddenly sweating profusely and groaning, tugging at his collar with one hand and holding his belly with the other. "What's ... happening to me? Feel ... really funny all of a sudden ..."

He was changing. Right now. He was changing right now. This was perfect. God had finally stopped pissing on Josie Sung. He was now shaking the last drops from His almighty dick and would soon leave her alone and go watch TV somewhere.

"I feel so weird."

He was changing. Josie wasn't sure if it was going to be a change in stages like hers was or if he was going to go through one single transformation like the rabbit lady. It hardly mattered. Either way, if her own mutation was any indication, he would have a raging erection any--

A-yup. There it was, present and accounted for.

"I-It's happening, isn't it?" He groaned, gripping his sides and leaning forward so much Josie was afraid he was going to fall out of the chair. "Oh Lord. What am I turning into?"

They hadn't told him. Fine, that was fine. "You're changing into a pig. A pig-person. Like me. Hi, my name is--"

"A pig?!" He held his hands before his face as his fingernails turned dark and began to fuse together. His canines were poking past his bottom lip as his shirt stretched tighter across his chest. Josie had never been more wet in her life. "Why'd it have to be a pig?!"

"I know! That's what I said!" Josie leaned towards him, her cleavage now a mere foot from his thickening, upturned nose. He had taken notice. Fuck yes, he had taken notice. "I said, 'Josie Sung'--that's my name, by the way--'why did it have to be a pig?' Same exact thing! That's so funny we'd say the same thing! I wonder what else we have in common? Probably lots! How's your cock feeling, by the way?" She shook her head. "Sorry, I didn't actually say that. But how's it feeling?"

Judging from the tent still being erected in his pants, it was feeling fine. Thick black hairs were forming on the back of his arms as the sleeves of his shirt started to split as thick muscles formed. Josie couldn't help but whine a bit as she imagined them wrapping around her.

"A pig?" He blinked the sweat from his black eyes.

"A pig," Josie confirmed, nodding. "I kept saying, 'Why couldn't it have been something cool like a wolf or a snake or something.' But, hey, it's not that bad! It's kinda great, actually!"

He was trying to tear his shirt off now, the fabric becoming too constricting across his swelling torso. Without asking for permission, Josie reached forward and helped him pull it aside, tearing the shirt down the middle with her hoof, her palm pressing against his hard chest. He was getting much hairier now. Without thinking, Josie brought her hoof to her face and licked the sweat from it slowly, letting her tongue extend fully outside of her snout to accentuate its size. The man definitely took notice as she swirled it almost entirely around her hoof, imagining it wrapping around his hard cock. Josie's robe fell open, six pairs of breasts falling free, spilling across her lap well within arms reach of the boar before her. His eyes were the size of golf balls as he stared at them.

"Need some help with those, too?" Josie placed a hoof on his knee before sliding it towards his crotch.

"N-No, I got it, thank you." The bottoms of his pants had split now as his legs became digitigrade, his muscles swelling, his hairy thighs twitching over a pair of cloven hooves.

"Are you sure?" Her other hoof had subconsciously moved to her topmost left breast. She moaned as she lifted it, his eyes on her thick teat all the while. "Nothing to be ashamed of. We're both adults here, Mr. ...?"

"Rich," he answered. Josie wasn't sure if that was a first name or last name and couldn't have given any less of a fuck at the moment. He was now a foot taller than he had been when he entered the room. He was pawing at his cock now as it continued to press against the crotch of his pants. Fuck, he must be enormous.

"Yeah, so, being a pig is actually pretty great!" she continued. "Except for the smell. Most people don't like that. You smell fucking amazing, by the way. Want to smell me?" She leaned forward again, raising her arm as she slipped the robe off her shoulder, shoving his nose into her armpit. He recoiled in shock, falling backwards out of the cheap plastic chair. The fall destroyed what was left of his garments and the thing Josie wanted most in the world was now laying at her feet like an offering to a jealous goddess. Her mouth was pouring saliva now as she glared hungrily at it. A foot long at least and still growing. This was the best day of her life.

"I don't want to be a pig!" he whined. God, even when he was whining his voice was so deep and masculine. His hairy balls were like grapefruits now, sliding wetly across the floor as he writhed, trying to keep from pinning his curly tail to the concrete floor.

"It's good though!" She continued staring at his cock as it started to take on a corkscrew shape similar to the expensive sex toy in the box under her bed. "So very, very, veeeery good." She slid lower in her chair, spreading her legs slightly. "Hey! Thirty minute orgasms! Did I mention that? Thirty-fucking-minutes! It's crazy! Good crazy! I have to keep that in check, otherwise I'd lock myself in my room all day and just cum and cum and cum. I'm just a mess! All sweat and stink and juices and--hey! I've got an idea! I don't know if guy-pigs have the whole thirty minute thing too, but I could certainly help you find out! For scientific reasons, obviously. Does that sound like something you may be interested in?"

Here she spread her legs, praying to Sharon Stone that he'd take notice. Her lips were engorged now, sticking past her mass of pubic hair, her sow cunt an almost angry red as it dripped onto her seat. She slid onto all fours in front of him, crawling to him slowly. She dipped her hoof between her legs, sliding it across her cunt before bringing her dripping hoof underneath his nose.

"Want some, piggie?"

The man inhaled deeply, his eyes glazing over for a moment. Got him, Josie thought. He bellowed as his transformation concluded, his snout stretching until his face was barely recognizable as belonging to the human he had been when he walked through the door. His tongue was hanging from his lips, thick drool dripping onto his wide, hairy chest. Josie stood, straddling him on either side of his waist. It was time.

"I-I ..." He was struggling to get the words out. He'd have to relearn how to use that thick pig tongue. Josie was going to help him get started on that in just a moment. "I'd like nothing more ..."

Josie started to lower herself, her cunt lining with his hard cock. It was finally, finally time.

"I'd like nothing more than to fuck you on top of that desk!"

Josie shuddered at the four-letter word, then stood, sliding her arm quickly across her desk. Her laptop crashed to the ground, papers scattering everywhere, her pig plushie sailing across the floor to bounce against the wall.

"Right now!" he roared. "Right now--"

Josie leaned over the desk, thrusting her ass into the air. She raised one leg off the floor and onto the edge of the desk, spreading herself as wide as she could to give him more room. Her cunt was winking now, weeping fluid and praying for him to be inside her. She wanted it from behind. It had to be from behind. She needed it from behind.

"--if I hadn't let the Light of Christ into my heart."

Josie froze, her panting breath pausing for just a moment, though drool continued to pour from her lips. She looked over her shoulder at the creature lying on the floor awkwardly making the sign of the cross with a cloven hoof.

"I-Instead of giving into sin ... would you like to pray with me?" His cock was so hard. It was right there. It was right there. "Please? It would really help me get through all of this."

Slowly her leg was lowered to the ground. She pushed herself off of the desk. She looked to where the stuffed pig lay, staring at her with his dead black eyes, a look of betrayal glowing in the plastic beady orbs. It was going to be the only stuffed pig in the room, it seemed. "I'll always be here for you, Josie," the soft plushie seemed to say. "You'll always have me. And your fucked up pig-dick vibrator."

Josie's inner sow was screaming at her as she walked to the other side of the desk and calmly took a seat. She didn't bother putting her robe back on. It was a shame because she needed to keep it presentable. In a few hours, Markeshia would probably be burying her in it.

Rich or Rick or whatever the fuck his name was slowly rose to his feet, his wondrous erection dissipating quickly as his soul was unfortunately becoming filled with the light of Christ. He groaned as he sat, forgetting the size of his massive testicles as he almost pinned them under his bulk. He seemed to be having trouble with his equilibrium as well as he tried to steady himself by reaching out to the desk. Good.

"Doing okay?" Josie whispered. Her voice sounded like a frog had chosen her throat as its new home. Or a platoon of them. "Need me to call the doctor?"

Rich nodded. "I think so. I was serious about the praying, by the way. But I guess we can talk about that later. Your doctor, is he a Christian?"

"No. No, SHE is not." She couldn't meet his eyes. It wasn't because she was embarrassed, rather it seemed like they were now turning to stone, like the rest of her. "She's an atheist. Like me. And her girlfriend who is standing just outside the door waiting to either placate me or dig me a grave."

The look of horror on his face at the words "atheist" and "her girlfriend" almost made this entire exchange worth it. Josie's cunt disagreed as it started to physically hurt, no doubt angry as its prize had been denied. He started to rise to his hooves but his legs weren't quite ready to support him yet. "I'll be on my way, then. I can't be here with a medical-type like that. Leviticus says that's a sin. Don't know if you knew that."

"I did," replied Josie. "It also says the same thing about eating shellfish. It also says to stone your children to death if they misbehave. 'Don't know if you knew that.' Do you need some assistance finding the door?"

"God will help me find the door, just as He will for you one day. Psalm 23 says he will lead me in the path of righteousness."

"Psalm 137 says 'blessed is he who dashes infants' skulls against the rocks.'"

The look on his face indicated they hadn't covered that one in Sunday school.

He managed to get to his feet. "Maybe so. God works in mysterious--"

"Why?!" screamed Josie. She had practically roared. Her teeth were bared. She wasn't sure at which point she had gone from horny to insane fuck-sow to rejected to catatonic to violently furious, but she had arrived nonetheless. "Why does the mother fucker have to work in mysterious ways?! Why doesn't he work in clear, thoughtful, considerate, logical ways?! Why not have a fucking press conference every Monday morning to get people caught up on what his plans for the following week are going to be?! Why does every little fucking thing have to hurt so god-damned much?!" She realized there were tears in her eyes. "What the fuck did I do to deserve--" She rotated her chair, fetching the fluffy pig off of the ground and holding it against her disgusting, horrid, filthy, worthless sow teats. "You should go now."

There was a knock on the door. Josie didn't turn to look, but she heard Haley's voice say softly, "Sorry, we should've had you change in the med-bay. We should check your vitals. How are you feel--?"

He found his feet at last. "My vitals are fine. My cousin is picking me up in thirty minutes. Hopefully with a larger pair of pants. I'll wait outside." He stepped into the hallway. "Which way is the door?"

"I'll show you out," Haley whispered. The sound of two sets of hooves faded slowly away as they left. Josie hated the sound of hooves on the concrete floor. She hated it so fucking much. She was sobbing now. Why did she think another pig was going to be the answer to everything? Why did she think fucking another monster would make anything better? Why would anything make it better? Why wasn't she good enough?

Clop clop clop and then another one of them was at her door. Another freak. Another monster. "J?"

"Don't," Josie sobbed. "Don't fucking say it. I don't want to hear you say it." She couldn't stand to hear those four simple words that she loathed above all others right now: I told you so.

"I wasn't going to," Markeshia whispered. "I'll ... Do you want to ..." She looked as if she were about to cry herself. "I'm right down the hallway. When you want to talk. Okay? Right down the hallway. I'll always be right down the hallway." She remained a moment longer, then slowly closed the door.

Josie pressed the doll to her face and screamed into it for the next half-hour.

---

Lucy fell on top of the handsome beast, laughing at the feel of his red cock slapping wetly against her leg. She leaned in for another kiss, relishing the taste of his thick tongue against hers.

"Is this what you watn, baby"? he asked, a deep growll rumbling from his hard chessst ass he grabbed his big pp.

O"h, yeah..' very much, whispered Lucy as she fuck this fuk this fuk it whass th piont wis t fkng pint jfadsflkkkjghgadsaglkj

---

Nothing

---

A few hours had passed. Josie had heard the pig-man's cousin arrive to pick him up in his truck. Of course it was a truck. She had sat quietly for a moment, apologizing to the plushie for the slobber and the snot she had inflicted upon it in her screaming session. It seemed to understand, or was at least kind enough not to make a big deal out of it.

Haley and Markeshia had left her alone. They always would. Everyone always would. Eventually.

The laptop was only slightly cracked from where she tossed it across the room in her bout of maddened animal sexual frenzy. She wouldn't tell Haley about it. She'd just rush off to buy her a new one. Anything to try to make her feel better.

The first thing she'd done after verifying it still worked was to open her silly fanfiction and try to write a few more lines. A few more words. Always trying to tell an entertaining story, to try to get a point across even if she wasn't even sure what that point was. Even if there never was one. Especially if there never was one. Sometimes that was the point. The idea had been Markeshia's. Even though they had given up on trying to squeeze any more functionality out of her hooves, she still thought it could be a good exercise to keep her mind busy and learn to use the ungainly things better. Typing a paragraph could take an hour. It wasn't worth it.

She bent down to pick up the rest of the scattered papers, wincing as her breasts mashed together as she leaned over. She rose to her hooves and gathered them, sitting back down with her back still to the wall. Letters about possible new arrivals from their spooky government friend. Printouts of medical records Abby the rabbit-lady had requested. A photo of Mark and Candice on the beach, the latter with her long maw playfully wrapped around the former's head as if ready to devour him. Through it all, they'd maintained a happy, loving, weird relationship that Josie herself would never get to experience.

There was also something else. An envelope. Josie hadn't noticed this. It was addressed to her and must have arrived via drone along with the paperwork sent by their government contact. It was already opened, likely by Haley. She wouldn't have read it herself, but would sometimes open Josie's mail in order to spare her the trouble of doing it with her useless, ugly hooves.

It was from her mother.

Josie instinctively tried to make a fist, wanting to press fingernails she no longer possessed into a human palm she no longer had. It was a pointless gesture. She'd never make a fist again.

Her mother who, like her father, hadn't spoken to her in years. Her mother who, like her father, had told her every day of her life until she had moved out that she was a tremendous disappointment. Her mother who, like her father, had likely never bothered to find out what had happened to her only daughter after she had been turned into a monster years ago. That mother.

She slid the paper out of the envelope and unfolded it. The message was short, concise, and to the point. Both of them were always so punctual. No delays, no greeting, nothing to indicate they were a family. There were just two lines.

The first: "Your father died last night. It was cardiac arrest."

She knew he was in the room without turning around. Sitting in the chair across from her desk. No, not her father, obviously. Him.

Why did all of this happen to me? she thought.

Because it's your fault. She wasn't sure if the answer had come from the man in the chair or if she was answering her own question. You signed the paper. You did this to yourself. You're a freak because you did this to yourself. You're an idiot. So stupid. A tremendous, tremendous disappointment.

It was her own voice, she realized. The demon wasn't that cruel.

From behind her, he coughed politely to catch her attention. She spun around slowly. He was sitting calmly, a sympathetic expression on his face. His eyes were bright and warm, and so very, very kind. His smile was simultaneously pleasant, patient, and resigned. She had never actually seen his face before. It reminded her of her father, then her old boss Ron, then the nameless bureaucrat that had turned her into this wretched thing. "It's time, Josie," he seemed to say. "It's time."

It was the friendliest smile she'd ever seen.

How? Josie thought. I don't have a g--

"You're smart," he answered through unmoving lips. "You'll think of a way." For a split second, Josie thought of her friends finding her body laying blistered and gaunt in the desert sun. It made her very sad. She'd bring them misery even at the very end. "You'll find a way. There's always a way. Always."

Josie looked back at the letter.

The second: "Come home."

Someone was clearing their voice just outside of the door. She didn't know which of them it was. It was one or the other, or both. It didn't matter.

"I'm not an atheist," came Haley's voice. "I'm more of an absurdist. Or a I-don't-give-a-fuck-ist."

"What do you want?" Josie asked. Why did it hurt to talk all of a sudden?

"Some general tso's tofu," Haley answered. "The spicy kind, of course."

Josie remained looking at the letter. It was either that or look at the demon or the two monsters in the hallway, and it was the easiest of the three to stare at.

"You-You still haven't tried the bean curd szechuan," Markeshia objected softly. "I keep telling you, it's the bomb. Like the literal bomb. Back me up on this one, Josie? Josie?"

A tremendous disappointment.

"But I need the general in my life. Like right now." Haley started to step into the room, then pulled her hoof back.

"Halfsies?" Markeshia asked. Her eyes had never left the pig freak's.

"Halfsies," agreed Haley. Josie didn't know Haley's ears could droop so low. "Josie? What do you want? Or maybe not Chinese? It's your turn to pick. We can get anything you want."

Come home, said the letter. Not please come home, not will you come home, just an order: Come home.

"Josie?"

"I don't want--," she whispered.

Haley interrupted before she could get the words out. "We're gonna get the drone to deliver unto us take out. Like mana from the heavens. For all of us. Then we're gonna pig out--no offense--and get shitfaced and watch Gilmore Girls."

"I said I don't want--"

"The three of us," interrupted Markeshia. "As a family. Your weird, goofy mutant family that loves you so very, very goddamn much."

You've been a tremendous disappointment, the letter did not say.

Yeah, Josie thought as she slid the letter into the small trash bin next to her desk. So were you.

Come home, the letter had said.

I'm already home.

And fuck you too.

Josie looked up at her friends. The donkey in the lab coat had a sad smile on her boxy face, her eyes worried but her ears at an angle that indicated she felt some cautious optimism. The cow looked like she wanted to step into the room and hug her friend as soon as possible; as Josie looked up, her tail was just beginning to sway from side to side.

The demon was fading now, although there was a look on his face as he disappeared that was full of hatred unlike anything Josie would ever want to see again. He'd had his chance today, and it hadn't worked. It never would. He would be back. He'd always be back. But not today. For today, he was gone. And he would never, ever get his way.

"Josie?"

Josie smiled. It wasn't a fake smile, nor an angry one, nor a grimace. It was a real smile, the first sincere one she'd given in quite a while. It was filled with yellow tusks and drool and hair and a pig tongue and thick pig lips under a thick pig nose under a thick pig brow. But it was Josie's smile. And it was perfect.

"That sounds good, guys." She rose to her feet, pulling the bathrobe with her as she did. The letter would sit in the bin until she threw it away along with the other trash. It would never be answered. It didn't deserve to be. She walked across the room and into the arms of friends. Her best friends. Her weird, goofy mutant family. Not the family she had been born into, but the one she had found. The one that would always be there, even if she didn't always realize it. The one that made the daily trials bearable. The one that made life worth living.

"That sounds good."