Lamont, Damon's stepdad, immediately found himself unable to step forward more than a meter or so. It was almost like some sort of invisible wall or forcefield was stopping him from getting closer to Circe or Damon.
"Be careful about the names you call people," said Circe told him with a calm voice and a furious look. "One of them may well become your own."
Seeing her wave her wand again, Lamont found that his clothing had instantly vanished in thin air. It was just gone! One moment, he was standing in his dirty boots, his faded jeans and his beer-stained T-shirt; the next, his whole body was in plain view for this stranger and his stepson to see. Damon gasped.
"WHAT THE FUCK?! You better give me back my fuckin' CLOTHES, bitch! I'm gonna MESS YOU UP!" He lunged forward at her, more furious at his sudden humiliation than scared by whether she had stolen his clothes through real magic or some obscure illusionist trick. He REFUSED to stand her and be taunted by some WOMAN, and an OLD woman at that, doubling up against him with his good-for-nothing stepson. Once again, though, he was stymied by whatever boundary it was that enforced the space between them.
"You neither deserve nor have any more use for them," answered Circe. She raised her wand in a swift motion, and in a single unbroken wave, more than half of all the color drained out of Lamont's vision. He stretched his arms out like a dizzy man trying to stabilize himself as he quickly looked around himself, taking in his faded world of vestigial blues and dull yellows. Damon cocked his head to the side, having seen his father's eyes change from chocolate brown to almost yellow in a moment. The nude man hadn't put himself together enough to comment on this before he felt several points of tingling down his chest.
Lamont's jaw dropped like an anchor when he saw some budding welts sprout down his chest below his nipples. They were popping up in two straight lines from his chest down his belly toward his crotch! He bit his lip when he touched them, not at all ready for the feel of nipples down there on his beer belly. Circe spun her wand in a circle and he gasped to see and feel his dick and balls pull back into his body. He was left padding around on his raggedy bush of pubic hair and then trying to cover his less than masculine nakedness in front of the others, looking around hoping neither of them had seen. Neither of the others were saying a word, but he did see his step-son's tail wagging like Malt's would during fetch. Circe's wand was still dancing like that of a maestro. The next change he noticed looking down was one he wasn't quite sure what to think about: his beer belly was declining, his abs becoming lankier but also noticeably more muscular. On the one hand, he'd been wishing for ages that he could get more in shape without needing to haul his ass off the couch at night. On the other hand, something was definitely wrong about what was happening to him here overall, especially the fact that his manhood had retreated inside him.
Touching part of the space left over from his vanished dick and balls, he noticed a very sensitive opening that made him too curious to resist sticking a finger inside it just to be sure it was there. The former man moaned and rolled his altered eyes back in their sockets, instantly incapacitated by the unforeseen pleasure of being penetrated there. An unsettling moisture materialized from it while Lamont tried to reconstitute himself mentally enough to get his finger out of there and maybe stop embarrassing himself in front of the boy. He finally did and blushed deeply, but lingering tingles of pleasure were coursing through his body prodding him to bite his lip in a tantalizing split between ecstasy and shame. An energetic spasm started churning in the farthest reaches of his lower back, and he turned around to look but couldn't get himself angled around see much before a great discomfort and loud gurgle in his abdomen made him double forward and clutch his gut in pain. It felt like things were slithering around inside him, swelling up and shifting in ways he couldn't really fathom. At last, he ended up falling forward onto his forearms banging the floor and waiting for his agony to stop.
When it did he was left taking deep breaths, looking down at his arms and hands. He didn't know what to think of their newfound thinness or the way his thumbs seemed to have shrunk. His nails looked awkward, too: darker, thicker and rounder as the seconds passed. He tried to ball his hands up into fists one more time in case he could still fight his way out of this, but it was no use. Instead he just looked up helpless at his captor with a pitiful look on his face.
"Your stepson tells me you love dogs," she mused condescendingly. "You may learn to love some of them in a new way after this."
Not wanting to be down for the count yet, he pulled himself up onto all fours, standing on his shorter and cushier fingers and (apparently) his tip-toes further back. Adjusting to his quadrupedal balance fairly quickly, he decided to raise himself up farther and slowly got himself upright again, albeit with a wobbly slant to his stance. He managed to steady himself somewhat, though he had to stay perched on his tiptoes, and even then something felt noticeably off: he was standing on only two limbs again, but somehow three were off the ground! Craning his neck further to look down his back, he cursed at the sight of a lengthy cord of bony flesh dangling down over his bare butt. He raised it up on impulse, then steered it sideways in deliberate experimentation. Intrigued that he had some discretion over its path, he was soon aiming it as gracefully as Circe could wave her wand, tiptoeing around in tight circles to watch it from some other angles. He tried to grab his new appendage, but his changed hands wouldn't grasp it well. The tapered protrusion appeared to be covered in his regular bare skin--if only he'd known that his skin wouldn't be bare for much longer!
"What's really happening to him?" asked Damon out loud, prompting an unanticipated motion in Lamont's expanding ears.
"You'll see soon enough," dismissed Circe, making an ear swivel toward her. Their voices seemed louder, crisper somehow, better than Lamont had heard in years, better than he could ever hear in fact! He raised up a forearm to try to make contact and grazed one of his ears with a paw. It was huge! And way higher up than it should be. His eyes widened, and he almost started pawing at the other before a sharp yank tore through his lower face. His nose moistened, his teeth sharpened, his tongue flattened, and a broadness burgeoned outward in front of his face. He yelped, but at once it was over, and he frantically started fumbling with his paws at his muzzle. A loud crack suddenly rustled his vertebrae and knocked him back down to all fours. He pranced around aimlessly, rearing back up repeatedly but dropping back down on his fore-paws, and eventually just circling around trying to get a decent look at his body. Long gray hairs sprouted across his bare skin, black or brown in some areas and almost pasty white in others. His tail puffed out into a bushy peppered garland as he watched, giving him an easy sense of completion while rudely driving home the point of what he was now.
"Who's the bitch now?" said Circe with the icy disdain of a glacier, drawing his focus back to her. "Not even a dog but a WOLF bitch, a wild animal consigned to the forest, with no more place in the human world tossing your abuse at humans who didn't deserve it. Unlike your stepson here, I can't even stand to have you as my PET."
He barked and growled ferociously, demanding her to change him back but no longer able to form words to do so. He pounced, claws in the air, ready to strike, but was repulsed in midair by the barrier.
"No, I most certainly will not change you back, EVER, and I am keeping your son here with me where his life will be better. You will leave this place peaceably and go into your new life, or I will simply erase your mind so what's left of you will not remember being human."
Lamont's ears flattened upon hearing that ultimatum and he felt his tail tuck underneath him. He backed away in terror, desperate to save whatever part of himself that he could, turned and slinked across the main hall on his paws with some urgency. Damon listened to his dad's claws clicking on the floor to the front door and wagged his Beaceron tail in eager expectation. Finally he found a place where someone wanted him! And his step-dad found a place where no one did.