For Sarah, the morning that the fusion wave struck was normal. She got up before dawn, downing a cup of coffee and some toast before heading out to milk her cows. She'd heard little of the impending Fusion Wave in her rural town, the phenomenon morphing through a longwinded game of community telephone into what seemed like just another natural disaster affecting some coastal city, so she thought little of it. That was, until midmorning, when the bright red light began to fill the sky from west to east. And then it was over, in a flash of red.
Sarah got back up. The force of the wave and resulting merger had knocked her to the ground. However, when she got up, her body felt unbalanced. Not only that, why did she feel like her ears were twitching? She brought a hand to her ears, and at the same time looked down, and screamed. She had cow ears! And not only that, a massive bovine udder between her legs! Immediately the new sensations flooded her brain, feeling her legs press on the warm, pink mass hanging beneath her, its weight threatening her balance and size rendering her bowlegged. She hobbled over to the porch, where she sat, careful not to sit on the sensitive new body part she now possessed. She could not believe how big it was, being about the size of a beach ball. She cried in dismay as her farm animals ran about her, mismatched as she was. Her favorite chicken scampered by, a now more like a strange, rural gryphon than the chicken she was before, the back half of a pig growing out the back of her. She heard her phone ring inside, surely one of her neighbors calling to ask if she was alright.
Once she'd gotten back up and hobbled inside, no small feat with that udder, she picked up the phone, but the only thing she heard on the other end was the terrified menagerie of farm animals. She checked on the caller ID, and hopped in her truck, rushing over to see what had happened to her neighbor, James. When she got there, she gasped. On his porch, she saw him. James...