Andy McSean was a simple young man, with simple desires. He wanted to make the world a better place. A happier, more vibrant place. A place where children were free to be innocent. A place where conflicts were short lived, and always resulted in laughter in the end. And so, throughout his teenage years, he had educated himself, studying rigorously, saving diligently, and smiling brightly, all to prepare himself for a career that would allow him to bring his desires into reality.
He was going to become an ice cream truck driver.
And today, finally, he was going to do it. He had bought the truck and ingredients, and filed through all the legal mumbo jumbo and business-related busywork. And now, sitting behind the wheel of his own, personal ice cream truck, Andy gave a happy sigh, and turned on the speakers on the top of the truck, playing quaint old tunes like “Old McDonald” and “It’s a small world after all.” He began his slow drive through Maplewood Park, humming to himself as he looked for his first lucky customer.
As he drove through the park’s wide, paved pathways, he came across a young boy, probably somewhere from eight to ten years old, walking his dog. The boy’s eyes lit up at the sight of the truck, and he started to tug his husky in that direction with him. Andy stopped his vehicle, and opened the side window, as the boy walked up to the truck.
“Hey there, kid!” Andy said with a smile. “What can I get you today?”
“I’d like a chocolate cone!” The boy said.
“One chocolate cone, coming up!” Andy said, stepping out of the child’s view.
Andy opened the freezer, and scooped out a generous amount of chocolate ice cream before placing it on a cone. Andy looked over the cone, its color subtly brighter than other ice creams of its flavor. Not only that, but it also seemed to have a thin, black “outline” along the edges of it, no matter what angle it was viewed from. Andy wasn’t bothered by this however. He had, in fact, made that ice cream specifically to be a little less mundane (not that he mentioned his special recipe to the Food and Drug Administration).
Stepping back to the open window, Andy held out the cone. “Here you go! That’ll be a dollar and ten cents.”
The boy fished into his pocket and pulled out three quarters, two dimes, and three nickels, and handed them to Andy as he took the ice cream. “Thanks mister.”
Andy watched eagerly as the boy took his first lick. The boy’s tongue turned a fire engine red, and grew distinctly longer, a black outline appearing around it. His teeth begn to shift next, becoming pure white, and seeming to join together into a pair of solid white lines in his mouth. This pattern was broken only by his top canines, which grew sharper. With a loud creaking sound, the boy’s mouth stretched out to a pointed muzzle, his nose swelling into a black dot at the muzzle’s tip. The boy continued to lick away, as if nothing was wrong.
The front of his face turned a clear white color, as did his arms and legs (and his belly, but that was currently covered by his clothes), while his back, and the rest of his head, turned black. His eyes turned a bright blue, and his ears perked up into triangle shapes. The same kind of black outline on his ice cream surrounded his whole body, only his clothes lacking it. That changed soon as well, his white T-shirt turning a bright blue as the outline appeared around it.
A bit of ice cream dripped down off the cone, turning white as it touched the boy’s pointer finger. It then began to spread around the finger, then his hand, the down his other fingers (one of which shrank away into nothing, forming a white glove. A second glove formed over his left hand, mirroring his right. The boy’s shoes and socks seemed to fade away, his toes curling to mimic paws as his feet grew slightly wider. His pants, both outer and under vanished next. A black, fluffy tail shot out of his back with a “pop” cementing the boy’s change from human to a living cartoon husky. The boy continued walking his dog, licking away at his ice cream, nobody, not even the dog or the boy himself, acting as if anything was out of the ordinary.
It worked! I took everything Andy had to keep from leaping for joy. His toonifying ice cream had worked, and the from the looks of it, enough toon “logic” had already formed to keep people from finding the change too weird. In fact, nobody had even questioned the idea of the dog boy walking his dog.
Well, nobody on that side of the fourth wall, anyway.