FRIDAY (PM)
Miguel was working late again desperately trying to find this fair. How hard could it be? And yet, even his most reliable contacts seemed to barely pay attention to it if it wasn't right in their hometown right at that moment. He'd been putting in hours trying to collect data on this fair and had been neglecting his other cases in order to do it.
He was panting harder and harder, and drool started dripping off his long flat tongue down onto his papers.
"Rrrrammit!! Ry izzit sho rrrot innere?"
He turned the air conditioner up higher and tried to keep the tongue back up in his mouth. Thankfully, no one had yet noticed that the suave detective was starting to sound like an even less intelligible version of a typical cartoon dog. If only he hadn't gone to that stage hypnotist! Apparently Miguel wasn't the only one with a problem, either: ever since Wednesday evening, there had been dozens of people asking him to find the people who ran that fair. Were they all turning into animals, too? He didn't want to ask, because he didn't want to reveal what was happening to himself.
He'd done interviews and web searches and secret meetings. He'd stayed up all night two nights in a row. He wasn't the most experienced private eye in the world, but he was by no means the worst. He'd get to the bottom of this if it was the last thing he did as a human. And if he succeeded, maybe he'd stay human and get some extra money out of it. His recent influx of new clients seemed pretty desperate.
The light of waning full moon filtered in through his office window blinds, and he had to drop his pencil as a dull ache started in his fingers and toes. He watched as his fingers fattened up a little bit and thick claws formed at the tips. His thumbs weakened just a little and got smaller claws, but at least his hands still seemed usable for now. He didn't have pads yet, but brown fur was already sprouting on the back of his hands. He was relieved when it stopped: if they had turned into paws, this would all have been pretty much over. He had to finish this quick or he'd be down on all fours for good!
He finally had some names and dates, though, so maybe not all hope was lost. He'd even managed to track down the fair itself to another coastal town about 90 miles to the south. Maybe if he could get there by morning, he would finally find the people who worked there, including that hypnotist.
Meanwhile, in a living room across town, Peter and Lauren had lost their battle against sleep and were lying surrounded by newspaper clippings and mobile devices. There donkey appendages twitched, but neither of them even wake up to notice what was happening to them under the moonlight. Peter's furry face pushed out into a long donkey muzzle, and white fur sprouted all down Lauren's chest and belly. Maybe tomorrow they would be a little closer to winning back their humanity.