Lucas giggled at his brother's portrait with a dog's head. He thought he'd done a pretty good job so far. He wasn't finished just yet though. He went ahead and drew a slightly thick tail that tapered off to a point behind his brother's body. He even added a few marks to suggest that the tail was wagging.
===
I was mesmerized. I couldn't take my eyes off myself in the mirror. From the neck up, I was completely canine! My nose twitched as I sniffed over myself as best I could. I still SMELLED human, but there was kind of a dog smell mixed in, too. But it was MY dog smell. (I shuddered.) What was I to do? I couldn't let my parents see me like this when they came back. And how would I explain this to Lucas?
I probably would have stood there for the next hour if the tingling hadn't come back. This time it was at the very bottom of my back. My heart sank.
A swelling feeling quickly worked past my tailbone and into my shorts. I tried to crane my neck over my back to see what was going on back there (as if I didn't already know). I glimpsed a thin, tube-shaped bulge. It actually started thicker at the top but thinned to be barely noticeable further down. I felt the fabric rubbing as the bulge worked its way down.
Overall, though, the boxers easily hid the new appendage... until they didn't. Within moments, the tapered tip of a brown tail emerged from one leg of the shorts--and grew a few more inches. That's when I took them off and let them fall down around my ankles. I had to get a better look at this thing.
There it was, dangling behind me, smoothly tethered to my spine. I could feel it hanging there, too. I reached around and gently picked it up. It looked just like the tail on our neighbor's chocolate lab. Or any chocolate lab, for that matter. But this one was mine. I could feel every inch of it. I winced when I pinched the tip with my fingers.
I felt even more vulnerable than I had before. Whatever this magic was, it wasn't just editing my face. This could take over my whole body! What if I turned all the way into a dog? My heart pumped in my veins. And I had more of them now, I thought, as my blood pulsed through the tail. Not every animal even had one of these things! Even some dogs had their tails docked. It was like the universe was going out of its way to make me as inhuman as possible.
Yet somehow in that moment, I started to mellow a little bit. A warm, peaceful feeling came over me as a ran my hands over my soft fur. It wasn't actually that bad so far, you know? I still looked like myself except for a few... parts. And even these changes had been largely painless. And I'm sure there are worse things one can be turned into than a dog. I thought of my brother and how he always loved to play with dogs. Maybe he wouldn't mind if I was this way? And besides, my senses now were basically superpowers.
Comforting myself with my thoughts, I allowed myself to relax. After all, I couldn't do anything about it, so why worry? It felt so nice to let go, I even started to wag my tail. Not just any tail. My tail.