“Afraid, human?”
Ty jumped back. The new voice came from a male, and it echoed in Ty’s head similarly to the family’s thoughts. Though this particular voice was clearer and more controlled, and it also had an edge of determination in it.
Buster the dog stood in his spot, and faced Ty with an expression that Ty found uncomfortably human, even though the dog hasn’t really shifted his face much.
“You can talk?”, asked Ty, in disbelief.
“Why yes. I can,” Ty heard the voice say. Buster’s face was face still unmoving. “Let me guess….you thought for a moment that you couldn’t transform animals? Don’t worry about that, it’s just me you can’t touch. I won’t lie, it’s a little funny seeing that shocked look of yours.”
Ty took a careful step forward for a closer look at Buster. “What are you?”, Ty asked, ideas running in his head. “Did you get the power to wish too?”
“Oh, I’m just a dog,” said Buster. Ty had a feeling Buster wasn’t going to bother with answering questions. “I’m a dog with a family who takes care of him very much, and I love them dearly. And looks like you’ve been pretty busy with them lately.”
The dog glanced over at his former owners. The family was now standing as a bunch of colorful plastic statues of anthropomorphic animals. Any sign of their sexual organs have been removed, but Ty could still hear the family moaning from their sensitive bodies. He smirked, and willingly shut their thoughts off from his head.
“Yeah, sorry about that,” said Ty, giving a brief snicker to himself. “But it’s what I do.”
“You turn innocent people into inhuman creations against their will,” Buster remarked. “I’ll be honest, you're coming off as quite a sociopath.”
“Thank you. Are you some kind of psychiatrist dog?”, Ty quipped. The dog seemed less threatening every second it talked. “Do you appear to kids with horrible childhoods and talk therapy bullshit to them? Because I don’t really need that right now.”
“What’s your name, kid?”
“Ty.”
“Hello Ty,” Buster replied. This time, the dog actually gave a nod with his head, which made Ty chortle. “I’d like to know, why are you doing this?”
Ty was finding this increasingly absurd.
“Because I can,” Ty replied. “I can change any single person in this world, and none of them will notice. They haven’t done much good for me anyways.”
“Or maybe you just haven’t let them,” said Buster. “I’ll be straight with you; you’re ruining a lot of lives with what you’re doing. Now I don’t know much about your life right now, but I know it’s probably not a happy one. But if you’re looking for friends, you’ve got the power to actually make people like you. Hell, you might not even need wishes to do that if you put some effort into it.”
“Yeah, well, having fun is easier,” said Ty. “And I like what I do. It’s hot.”
“So you’re a fetishist.” Buster raised one eyelid. “That does explain some things.”
“I like seeing people turning into freaks,” Ty remarked. “And I’m a fucking god, I can do whatever I want. And yeah, I could turn myself into everybody’s friend and have everyone love me, but it’s pretty boring if I do it all the time.”
“And turning people into things won’t get boring after a while?” Buster asked. The dog noticed that Ty was looking a little annoyed, as if he’d had better places to go at the moment.
“You know, it’s nice talking to you and all, but I’d like to go play some more,” Ty replied. “I know you want me to be nicer and all, but like I said, I’m a god. I can be a good guy any time I want. But right now, I want to mess around. So…yeah. Later.”
Ty turned around and walked away from the dog, thinking of ideas on what to transform the next person he comes across.
“I want you to turn my family back.”
Ty groaned and stopped in his tracks, turning around to face Buster again. The dog was still standing there.
“Yeah, no I’m not doing it.”
“You like to turn people into things, fine,” said Buster. “But you can’t leave these people trapped in their forms forever. They never wanted to be stuck in those forms.”
“Hey, they’re fine with it!” said Ty. “…okay, fine, there’s my foster family and the people in that IHOP. if you’re so annoyed about it , I’ll go back to them and make them like what they’ve turned into. But your family sounds like they love what they’ve turned into now.”
“No, they like it now because you put them in a trance,” said Buster. “They were supposed to be on a vacation to their Aunt Kathy’s, it was supposed to be a fun road trip.”
“Sorry, Buzzer or whatever your name is, but it’s not that fun for me if they change back,” said Ty. “You know, I don’t have to make them statues. If it makes you feel better, I can make some of the other people happy with what they turn into.”
“Ty-“
“ Shit, I can turn your family into dogs too,” Ty went on, and he grinned. “You’ll have a family that’s actually the same species as you, and you might even get to fuck one of them. Here.”
Ty made a wish. Immediately, the anthro-animal statues shrank and morphed into the forms of several very alive and very horny dogs, and the formerly human family immediately started messing about in their new bodies. Ty grinned as he watched a beagle that used to be Alex trying to jump onto a taller greyhound bitch that used to be young Katie. The two parents-turned sheepdogs were mindlessly sniffing each other’s rears, Billy the terrier was bending down to lick his sheathed canine member and Susie, now a fat sagging female bulldog, was doing something similar to her own furry snatch as slobber dripped from her mouth.
Buster didn’t even bother turning his head, even as he heard the family barking.
“I’m still asking you to turn everyone back,” said Buster, his voice ever as calm.
Ty rolled his eyes, and wished again. The dog family was instantly transformed back into plastic, with Alex frozen just as he made it on Katie’s back with his erect rod. Ty looked back at Buster.
“Not gonna happen, sorry.”
“Please.”
“Y’know, you did try to bite my leg off before.”
“Hey, I’m a dog. I’m not perfect,” said Buster, panting. “And you did literally stone up my family, so I apologize if I wasn’t so wonderfully polite.”
“I’ll take that sorry, but I’m still not interested.”
The hot noonday sunlight prickled Ty’s skin. Buster was still panting, and the nearby statues of dogs stayed silent.
“Last chance, kid. You can make sure none of this has ever happened,” said Buster. His round beady eyes were pointed right at Ty’s. “I’ll let you make your family friendlier to you if you want, I’ll even let you change them all you want; for all I know they might’ve actually deserved it. And you don't have to turn back those other people you just mentioned. Just turn my family back. Please.”
Ty was having none of it. He bent down with his hands on his knees, like he was talking to an adorable little chihuahua pretending to be a Tyrannosaur.
“Look, you can talk and all, and my powers might not work on you, but you’re still a dog,” said Ty, “You can’t stop me. You can gnaw me and claw me all you want, but I can slam a car into your stupid little body, and I don’t even have to turn you into anything for that. So how about you leave me alone, do whatever dogs do like…like piss on a statue or something. Hell, do it to those statues over there, I’m sure your family would love getting pissed on right now. Just leave me alone, stop getting in my way, and fuck off."
Ty expected the dog to start snarling and racing up to him with its teeth bared. But Buster merely panted.
Something about the dog’s eyes made Ty uneasy, but as Ty waited for several seconds, he saw the dog wasn’t doing much. Ty just scoffed and turned around, walking towards his next destination.
The outside of the diner was quiet, with only very faint strains of old 50s music coming from the restaurant, and no cars coming down the road. The sun shined on in the cloudless sky, and a butterfly flapped freely through the air, flying over the minivan that was still parked by the diner.
Buster gave out a sigh.
“It’s a beautiful day, isn’t it Ty?”
Ty had just walked up to the bench with the girl-turned-clown-statue, and he turned around. The dog hadn’t budged an inch from his spot.
Ty raised an eyebrow. “…I guess.”
“Birds are singing, flowers blooming, children playing outside. Humans going about with their families in wonderful peace.” Buster gave a thoughtful pause. A bluebird chirped on a tree nearby while its leaves rustled softly.
“You know, on days like these…”
And at the very next second, Ty was flung towards the family’s minivan at the speed of a Japanese bullet train.
He slammed against the car in a cloud of smoke, crushed metal and powderized glass. As the car began to go up in flames, Ty’s bloodied body was pulled from the steaming metal wreck by an invisible force, and smashed against the tree on the other side of the road; fracturing it into a mess of splinters and twigs (and a fleeing bird). And immediately after, the heavily battered teenager was hoisted into the air, and slammed down onto the concrete pavement in front of the diner, then lifted back up and slammed again, and went repeating the painful cycle six more times. And then one more time for good measure.
A huge blanket of dust pooled into the air outside the diner, with the patrons inside finally bothering to look out the window in mild confusion.
Inside the dust cloud, against all logic in the universe, Ty was somehow still alive. He was left lying alone in a foot-deep crater shaped like his body, with quite an amount of blood splattered about like a modern art painting.
Utterly shellshock, Ty weakly lifted up his head, which was now missing several teeth and featured a broken nose, a cracked jaw and at least one skull fracture. His clothes were torn to bits, and his pants were soaked with something that didn’t smell much like blood.
Ty wheezed as he struggled to lift himself up with his bleeding, splinter-covered arms. He squinted through the blinding dust as Buster came back into view.
Buster the dog was floating in midair, surrounded with an aura of fiery green light. And while Ty had been busy lying in pain, Buster had lifted up the wreck of the nearby flaming minivan with his newly revealed powers, and moved it into position above Ty as it shadowed over Ty’s body. The dog’s eyes were glowing with spectral light, and his mouth was curled into the most utterly vengeful snarl.
Another tooth fell from Ty’s mouth as the teenage boy gaped in utter fright.
“On days like these,” Buster reiterated. “Kids like you should be burning in hell. ”