He could have checked with nearby farms to see if any of them were missing a donkey. He thought about doing so, for a brief interval, speculating that he could even receive a reward for the prompt return of farm property.
As your former human self, you might even have admired this man, who always had an eye on the prize, for his eagerness to seize an opportunity that came his way.
The man sidestepped the puddle of donkey urine and the droppings, showing a disgusted expression as he noticed them, while he held the rope bridle at the same time he directed you toward the waiting trailer. Rather than taking a chance with some farmer's gratitude, he had already taken in some clues, starting with the rather simple makeshift bridle. Something about such a simple bridle made the man suspect that the donkey wouldn't be urgently missed. Besides, anyone driving past would see only someone loading an escaped donkey into a trailer, which wouldn't look all that out of the ordinary. Any money he could obtain from selling you would no doubt exceed a far-from-certain reward the farmer who had lost you might be willing to pay.
For the moment, you had no idea of the mercenary options being weighed in the man's mind. You felt only a rising sense of panic made even worse by the donkey's mind's damnable placid compliance. When the man opened the gate at the back of the trailer, you were reminded of the stall back in the barn. You didn't want to go in there! Your mind was kicking and screaming in the exact opposite of how the donkey's dull mind was responding without actually reacting.
You brayed loudly. "Stop! Please! You don't realize what's going on!"
The man ignored your sudden outburst, patiently unfolding a ramp that extended to the ground. He already had a plan. Only last week, he'd had dinner with his girlfriend at a little farm-to-table restaurant. One of the servers had mentioned something about needing to replace the aging donkey that they used for some of the heavy labor at their organic farm. He could drive out to their farm, which wasn't that far from the horse ranch, before he had to deliver the trailer to his friend's friend. He smiled at how lucky his day was starting as he tugged on the bridle to encourage the donkey to step up the ramp into the trailer.
You struggled valiantly, but the placid nature of your donkey's instincts defeated you. Despite the physical upset your sustained panic was causing, you were helpless to prevent your own entrapment. Your heart was pounding in your barrel-like chest. The charged nature of what was happening manifested itself in your donkey cock, which hardened and swung free from your furry belly. Even worse, not everything must have exited your system earlier, causing you to dirty the floor of the trailer with more donkey droppings.
"No!" You brayed. He shut the trailer gate, trapping you inside the now foul-smelling confined space.
"No!" You brayed as the man, ignorant of the reality of an awareness similar to his own trapped in the donkey's form, got back into his truck.
"No!" You brayed as he pulled the trailer onto the road.
You continued to bray non-stop, pleading and demanding that someone intervene.
"No!" You brayed as you stared through an open space in the side of the trailer and saw the roadside sign designating your usual exit. Your home and the donkey in your body that now had possession of the medallion were less than a mile away but growing ever more distant as the truck sped past without even slowing down.
"Oh god! No!" You brayed as you realized your doom. You railed against your fate in the only option left to you with a full-throated obnoxious-sounding braying. The universe has conspired against you to bring you into contact with the medallion in the first place, and had added to the insult by thwarting your desperate attempts to restore yourself into what you regarded as your rightful place in the universe.
After a long drive, or so it seemed to you, the man stopped the truck and pulled around back of a rustic-looking farmhouse. To your surprise, you recognized the place as one of those trendy farm-to-table eateries. You had dined in the restaurant on several occasions, most recently with your wife on the occasion of her birthday.
You brayed through the bars of the trailer, still imploring the man to help you, although it was obvious that he would never comprehend you. No human would ever understand the desperation in what sounded like the monotonous brutish brays of a mere donkey. Human conversation dimly penetrated through the din of your braying.
You saw the couple who owned the farm and restaurant standing with the man who had found you by the side of the road as he negotiated a price for you.
You were being sold. You were property to be disposed of by your fellow humans. Your former fellow humans. Now, you were a donkey.
You brayed louder as if increased volume might help them understand you.
Money exchanged hands. You had been sold. "No!" You brayed again. "Please!"
The woman looked at her watch. "Oh, look at the time. It's already 11...time to open for business," she said.
"I'll help get the new donkey settled," her husband volunteered.
Wait! You still had an hour... one more hour before it was too late. You needed to be ready. As soon as they opened the gate of the trailer, you would gallop to your illusory freedom.
As soon as they opened the gate of the trailer, the fucking traitor of a donkey's instinct that shared the body with you stepped obediently in the direction indicated to it by a light touch on the rope bridle.
The two men led you to a fenced corral outside a barn. You saw dozens of free-range chickens roaming the yard of the organic farm.
"Stay and have lunch on the house," invited the owner of the restaurant and farm... and the owner of a new donkey.
The man added the cash he had made to his wallet. They had negotiated a price of $100. The man who sold you had no idea of the worth of a donkey, nor did he care. He was out no expense and had made what, to him, represented a tidy profit.
"A hundred fucking bucks!" Your braying sounded almost demented. "I can pay you anything you want! Please!"
As an affluent, successful man of business and community standing, you had routinely left hundred-dollar tips for pricey restaurant meals.
They walked off and left you standing, braying your distress, to an unknowing world.
You stretched your neck over the top of the fenced corral.
"I've got to escape..."
Then reality hit. You have been here as a customer. You knew you were at least thirty-five or forty miles from your former home. Even if you could escape the corral, you could never reach the donkey in your body in time.
An hour later, after a delicious and filling lunch, the man who had sold you walked over to the corral before getting back into his truck. He looked over at your donkey body as if he had never really paid any attention to the creatures.
You had finally stopped braying as the full horror overcame you.
The sun shone brightly directly overhead, signaling the arrival of the noon hour.
You stood on four legs in a state of numbness that had gripped you after the initial shock. With dumb, pleading eyes, you regarded the man and saw how his expression changed the more he looked at you. He registered a mild disgust for the unpleasing appearance of the donkey with its matted mane, dirty fur, and upright, ridiculously large ears. Even from a distance, the breeze carried the stench that clung to your dirty, unwashed form.
The man nodded in your direction. "Good luck to you," the man said as if actually addressing a fellow human being. "Thanks to you, this has been my lucky day."
It was the last time anyone ever addressed you with anything other a command to compel the performance of some form of labor.
Your neo-hippie owners saw that you had food, water, shelter. They even arranged for basic veterinary care for you when necessary over the decades. But they didn't spare you from the grueling life of a beast of burden. You worked for them by pulling heavy farm equipment and carts day after day from spring to fall. You had access to the shelter of an unheated barn. They let you graze with the other animals, sometimes supplementing your food with hay, straw, or high-fiber pellets. They even had you stand guard duty to protect their small herds of goats and sheep from coyotes and wild dogs.
Once, without pursuing the thought, they even remarked on your verbose tendency to bray constantly in their presence. "It's almost like it's trying to tell us something," the wife remarked, not even granting you the dignity of referring to you as "he." You were "it." You were property.
You never gave up the hope you might come across a second Zulo Medallion. But there's only one, and the donkey who became the man you once were kept that one in a very safe spot for the rest of his life. He never gave you or your unenviable fate another thought but there wasn't a day that passed when you didn't regret walking over to the fence on a country farm and petting the nose of that fucking stupid donkey.