The next morning, Aidan had to get ready for his classes. After licking himself clean, getting dressed in a new shirt and pair of jeans and relieving himself outside, Aidan opened one of his food-cans into a bowl, filled another with water before consuming his breakfast.
Limited to walking on all fours crossed out using his bike, so he walked to his classes. Through Mark´s wording, he could still sit in his chair and work on his school work normally, and nobody questioned why he walked on all fours. To him, it was normal, and to others, who noticed him, thought he was acting like a normal human. Even his art project was nearly finished at the end of his classes. Another day would be enough for that.
Mark met up with him outside and they headed over to Aidan´s flat mostly in silence. Mark had his fun mentioning he would need to use Aidan´s bathroom again before messing his clothes and begun walking a bit faster. Resulting in Aidan to need reliving himself just before they headed inside. It hadn´t been a lie, and so Mark really used the bathroom in the flat.
An hour of both of them working on homework later, Mark set the next change for Aidan. “I have another idea how you can act up. Aidan, from now on whenever someone mentions the words “Speak”, “Language”, “Explain”, “Answer” or “Bark” to you, you will be forced to bark instead of speaking. That will last for five minutes for the first one of them and add another five for each that followed in that time. But you will speak normal again if someone says either “Stop” or “Silence” to you. And you will not realize you are barking. Also, if I show you to stop with my hand, you will fall silent for a minute.” Mark had an evil smile on his lips after he finished.
Aidan looked at him shocked. Mark wanted to force him to bark? It took him far too long to even let that sink in. Then it plopped into place as he forgot that comment, without a single word of protest.
Mark wasn´t sure if he should be satisfied that Aidan didn´t protest that change, but switching it around more would not help. Instead, he asked Aidan something seemingly unimportant, and Aidan took his time to think of an answer. Grinning, Mark then said: “Can you just answer the question, Aidan?”
Startled that Mark got impatient, and forced by the word, Aidan barked: “Woof woof groof ruff.” He had meant to say “I´m not really sure”, and to him he just said that. He didn´t notice anything out of ordinary with his answer.
Mark started to laugh at him, and Aidan barked some more in protest to that. Still laughing, Mark got out something between it. “Sorry, I will stop laughing, Aidan.”
Aidan looked at him annoyed: “I don´t know what was that funny about that answer.”
Mark had calmed down enough to answer him: “Sorry, it was just that you were startled, not what you said. Has one of your neighbors a dog? I thought I heard some barking while you answered.”
Aidan shook his had no and added: “Woof.” Mark grinned at him again, but before he could say anything else, he said: “Okay, maybe I imagined it, as it has stopped now. Or it was a dog outside.”
“Yeah, that´s possible” Aidan grumbled, still a bit annoyed at Mark.