Of course, it isn't long before the store's owner and proprietor notices a 500-pound donkey standing in one of the aisles. The animal brays in a markedly distressed manner as the man picks up and studies the now-empty bottle. Angry at the escape of another genie, the man doesn't even hesitate in his actions, affixing a bit and bridal to the donkey's mouth and muzzle in order to lead the clumsy beast of burden through the narrow aisles. He curses every time the donkey bumps into something and sends fragile bottles and relics crashing to the floor. A blocky hoof stomps on one bottle that survived the fall, shattering a relatively inexpensive potion but still kindling the man's rage. He conjured a whip and stings the donkey's rump to motivate it to move faster through the store.
Once the man has escorted you through a back door and into an alley, he finally addresses the 500-pound donkey in the proverbial room. "Do you know how much a genuine Arabian genie fetches on the collector's market?" He looked at the donkey with an air of outrage and disgust. "Ifrits are a dime a dozen, but a genie! Even if you worked the rest of your miserable life, you'd never hope to repay me for my loss."
The man now enveloped in the hide of a donkey protests with a single loud bray.
The owner simply snaps the air near one of the donkey's oversized ears with the whip's tip. "Shut up and listen," he said. "With those enormous ears, that should be easy enough."
Daniel kept telling himself he would wake soon. The 21-year-old college student had decided that everything — the shop, the genie in a bottle, him turning into a donkey — must simply be a dream.
"Hah! Dream on! You made yourself into a right proper ass, now you can live with the consequences," the man seethed.
Daniel shook his head and tried without success to spit out the uncomfortable metal bit the man had shoved into his jaws. "You'll get used to that," the man said, apparently able to read Daniel's disturbed thoughts without any difficulty.
The man tied the bridle's reins to the heavy trash dumpster in the alley. "Someone will be here to collect you soon," he said as if he disposed of donkeys from his shop on a routine basis.
Daniel, dream or not, was fed up. The man owned a shop. He was a customer. The customer's always right. He protested the man's treatment of him, but the words he thought up so nice and neatly all came out in an ugly, obnoxious bray.
The man snorted. "That's the trouble with people today," he said. "They all have buyer's remorse."
Daniel wanted to scream! He hadn't even bought anything. He had simply been browsing the weird shop to kill some time before he met some of his buddies for a fun evening at the local craft brewery.
Daniel brayed again only for the man to slam the back door to the shop slammed in his face. He lost it at that point, stomping his hooves on the oily asphalt and braying incessantly until the moment a large truck towing an animal trailer pulled into the alley.