Devon stopped in front of the cage of the highland bull, the shaggy beast walking slowly over to him with large, surprisingly somber eyes. It put its wide snout against the bars, moistening them with a few wet sniffs, as if trying to deduce if Devon had brought it any treats.
“This doesn’t make any sense,” Devon murmured to himself, taking a look at all the myriad cages in this impossibly large space as he tentatively reached his hand inside the cage to scratch the bull behind the ears. “This place is like the Little Pet Shop of Horrors.”
“You have nooo idea,” mumbled a long, drawn out, and surprisingly gruff voice, so close it was as if it had been whispered into Devon’s ear.
Devon flinched, jerking his hand back through the bars of the cage as he looked with wider eyes at the bull. The bull looked up at him, and through its bestial gaze, Devon could have almost sworn he saw a glint of pity.
“Can yooou hear me?” came the voice again, Devon noticing the bull’s jaw moving in irregular motions, as if it was attempting to form human speech and somehow succeeding. “Then it’s already tooo late.”
Devon felt a bizarre tingling pricking through his fingers, notably where he’d made contact with the bull. The pins-and-needles sensation raced up his arm and spread rapidly throughout his entire body, sending a churning sensation throughout his core. It felt almost as if parts of him were stretching, releasing an oddly pleasant tension like the world’s most overdue yawn.
“What’s happening tooo me?” Devon gasped, though his voice sounded slower to enunciate than he had expected. What’s more, it was higher in pitch, and he realized with a wince that he was stretching out the ‘O’ sounds just as he’d heard from what must have been the bull.
“I have tooo get out ooof here!” Devon shouted, his voice already another octave higher, and climbing higher still with every syllable. He could feel his throat growing tighter, as if his neck was slimming down, his Adam’s Apple pushing further into his flesh.
Devon turned and made to run back out the way he’d entered, hopefully finding his friends along the way. However, he nearly tripped as a numbing sensation took hold of his feet.
Looking down, Devon saw his scuffling legs slipping out of his shoes, half of his socks hanging limply as what looked to be malformed human feet slid out of them as well. The flesh was hardening and darkening, shrinking back into what could only be described as bovine hooves. They clopped hard and loud on the dusty, tiled floor of the pet shop.
He screamed, and by now his voice had risen high enough in pitch that his shout came out as a womanly wail. If it hadn’t come out of his own mouth, Devon would have sworn he was listening to a stock woman screaming sound effect from some old horror film.
The unfamiliar sensation of hooves--not to mention the restructuring shape of his legs--sent Devon tumbling to the ground as the forward momentum of his attempt to flee continued. He clattered to the ground, watching his hands’ unable to catch his fall as they too hardened and darkened, the four fingers on each merging into thick, stubby hoof-like digits while each thumb became an opposable equivalent.
“This isn’t real, this isn’t real,” Devon whimpered to himself, hoping against hope that this was all some sick, twisted dream, even if he whispered it to himself in the soft contralto of a woman.
The reason for such feminine tones became all-too-apparent soon after as Devon’s clothes pressed tightly against his body, or rather, his body expanded and pressed against his clothes. The seams of his jeans ripped as his thighs and buttocks swelled with soft, supple flesh, sprouting a thick coat of shaggy fur as they did so.
Even more so than his developing womanly curves, Devon felt a tightening and then a numbness in his crotch before a sharp tugging sensation yanked his male sex inside of himself, inverting itself and reshaping into a feminine equivalent. A tunnelling sensation soon following, tubes forming as old became new, organs shifting and forming into female reproductive systems.
He, or rather ‘she’ now, screamed once more at the alien sensations, even as her waist cinched inwards somewhat, alongside her shoulders. Her face pushed out and formed into a broad bovine muzzle, teeth flattening into herbivorous chompers. Her diet would be strictly vegetarian from now on.
At last, a jiggling, swelling sensation in Devon’s stomach and pectoral muscles caused the front of her torso to expand and push against the floor. Teats formed on a lower bulge of pink flesh as Devon’s nipples grew longer while her breasts grew in, including a second set that was just as large as the first. The pressure grew painful until Devon forced herself to turn over onto her pert rear, her head cushioned by long locks of lengthening fur-hair, as her breasts and udder continued to grow, not stopping until they were each at a massive size.
“Nooo,” Devon whimpered once more, trying to cross her shaggy yet thinner arms across her gigantic chest, with limited success. She even felt a bit of milk seep out of the nipples brushing against her arms.
“At least you’ll be able tooo fully understand me nooow,” spoke that familiar, masculine voice from earlier.
Devon, if she could even be called that anymore, looked up to see the bull in the cage standing up on its hind legs. Muscles formed, bulging as the creature took a more upright, bipedal stance, anthropomorphic features growing more defined by the moment.
What’s more, the door of the cage opened of its own accord, and Devon found herself being herded inside by an invisible force. She struggled against it, but her hooved feet were slick against the floor, and she ended up being thrown inside. At the very least, the now man-ish bull being caught her before she could fall forward again.
“I’m sooorry this had to happen tooo yooou,” the bull man said, helping Devon stand upright again. A part of her wished she could have remained pressed against him a bit longer, a thought which caused her eyes to widen as she viciously attempted to drive the thought from her head. Why had she thought that?! Was her new body affecting her mind already?
“I couldn’t tell yooou before, nooot throoough his spells,” the bull man said. He was quite a bit taller than Devon, she realized. “The glamooor only lets little details slide, and we have tooo be in ooour animal fooorms arooound mundane humans.”
“What’s happening?!” Devon demanded, trying her hardest to keep her eyes glued to the bull-man’s own, and not slide down towards his large, long, enticing--No!
“Dr. Moreau is a wizard,” the bull-man said with a sad sigh. “He sells familiars tooo ooother magic-users. Apparently we help them amplify and channel their magic, somehooow. We all used tooo be human, tooo, and we can still be partially human, as yooou can see, but ooour animal forms help us help them. Sooon, yooour ooother friends will be changed, tooo, and we’ll be sooold oooff tooo ooother wizards and witches.”