Jared realized his new ears were not some hallucination when he tugged at the hairy, upright appendages and felt a sharp, unpleasant sensation. "Oh god! They're real!"
He sprinted the rest of the way to his house, skirting through the backyard and only slowing down when he came to the back door. He paused and opened the door slowly. He really wanted to get to the privacy of his room without anyone noticing. Fortunately, he didn't see any sign of his younger brother or their parents. Relieved, he slid in the door and dashed upstairs to his room, slamming the door closed behind him.
He rushed into his bathroom and stared at himself in the mirror over the sink. He felt a cold splash when he saw his usual reflection altered by the appearance of the two ghastly ears. They looked eight or nine inches tall and, as he stared at himself in the glass, one of them twitched independently of the other.
"What the hell?" Jared cried. The ears were covered with a dense gray fur while more wiry gray-black bristles sprouted from inside them. They looked absolutely positively hideous.
He began pacing, which took him back into his room. He automatically began emptying his pockets, divesting them of his wallet, a set of house keys...and one horseshoe!
"Oh my god." He stared at the curved metal shoe. "Am I getting horse's ears?"
He tugged at them again. "Owww, damn, that hurts," he muttered and stopped pulling at his strange new ears. "How is this even..."
He froze. "Oh no!"
He rushed to his desk and booted his desktop computer. His mind had flashed back to the gaudy piece of jewelry he had just unloaded at the pawn shop. He had been very fortunate to have taken a photo of the object. If the pawn shop hadn't worked out, he had contemplated trying to sell the item on eBay. "Maybe someone knows something about it," he hoped aloud.
He uploaded the image from his phone and drew some instant hits.
There were old tales, many of them considered legends or myths, that had been compiled into entire websites on the mysterious object. He found various names, including the Zulon Amulet and the Medallion of Zulo. "What the hell's a Zulo?"
He dived deeper into the information he was finding. One article warned that the medallion could bring about transformations. That didn't sound good.
A piece of clothing coming into contact with the wearer and the amulet would transform that person into the previous occupant of the clothing's body — be it human OR animal!
"Oh my god! They are horse's ears!"
Once transformed, a person could not change back for half a day.
"A day," Jared mumbled. "That's 24 hours...that mean's I'm stuck with these things for another 12 hours!"
Then he read something really upsetting about the medallion's tendency to get lost or disappear.
"Oh shit!" He had sold the medallion to the guy at the pawn shop. Based on what he was reading, he would need the medallion to rid himself of the horrid ears.
"I've got to get that thing back..."
He stopped speaking suddenly, having glanced in the mirror again.
"My nose!" His nose looked bigger. The tip of his nose looked dark. "What the hell?"
About the same time, he felt a strange sensation as a tail sprouted from the base of his spine and bunched up inside his pants.
"Oh no!" He started to touch his nose, but when he brought up his hands his fingers looked strange. They were growing darker and seemed to be fusing together.
In a panic, he realized he wasn't just getting horse's ears! "I'm turning into a horse! Oh my...Eee..haww!"
The strange, discordant bray alarmed him. He opened the door to his room and dashed downstairs. He had to get back to the shop.
Never having been around equines, Jared hadn't yet realized his mistake. The ears and other features beginning to re-shape his form didn't belong to a horse. They belonged to a donkey. Not even the blurted bray had clued him into the situation.