The aide pushed open the door to the main office and deposited a thin stack of document on the desk. “Director, those are the reports from the first human beings transformed, and as we predicted the transcripts of the mall employee that tried to draw away the costumers. So far only five were caught in the act but for the end of the week we are positive that every dissident will be relocated to one of our facilities”
“Unfortunate, but predictable. After all the current attendants have friends and family among the potential visitors and they would not be very amused to find one of them as an animal. See that our own workforce subtly replaces the current clerks in the following month, and make sure our future ex-employee are unable to inform the world about the operation. I was thinking about a forced early retirement to one of the affiliated farms, to begin with. I don’t want loose ends, especially now that we will begin to ship the new merchandise, do I make myself clear?”
-------
“What do you think was that all about Taylor? Emily was pretty nervous this morning, has something happened?”
“I’m not sure” The girls just left the store and now proceeded at a slow pace, mainly to check the showcases for interesting goods “I think she was upset that we skipped school today, or maybe she saw one of our parents in the mall previously and didn’t want us to be caught. Nothing else comes to mind”
The main aisle was very different from the opening hours when the two friends traveled it again, if at the beginning a sizable mass of people occupied it now a far more uneven crowd travelled the wide corridor. Every human being now stood with animal features in various stages of development, aside from the men or women that just entered , some with only ears and tails to denote their advancing transformation, while others were much more animal than human, with some advanced cases where someone was already unable to walk upright and moved nonchalantly on all four.
The girls noticed how the behavior of the new visitors was the strangest of them all, at first they stopped and stared bemusedly at the mixed crowd as if something was wrong, in some cases even with a healthy amount of fear, and after a few second they would simply join them in the shopping with no complaints.
Amy and Taylor sat down on a bench near the entrance, amused from the reactions of the incoming costumers, and started to giggle when more than one teenager entered the building only to blush and avert his eyes at the state of undress some shopper preferred, walking around completely naked because they found comfortable only their own fur. One such boy was blushing adorably after he saw a provocative fox-lady winks at him, before approaching her with a cautious and shy smile on his face to strike up a conversation, mesmerized by the large swishing tail behind her.
“Well that was fun. What do you think, shall we return to the onerous task of fill our wardrobes anew?”
Amy’s eyes shined with mirth as she stood up and made way for her best friend “Let’s”