To give himself another useful option, Merritt transformed himself into a greyhound. It was sort of a natural choice. Being a very slender, fantastic runner, the natural canine analog was a greyhound. And a greyhound had more use than other dogs being able to run 45 miles per hour. There was still another reason why it was a natural choice for Merritt. Someone in his apartment building had adopted a rescue greyhound, a tan colored, sleek, slender dog that people in the apartment complex had all seen multiple times. So, Merritt reasoned that, if they saw him, a greyhound with the same colors, no one would think anything of it.
It was a smooth transformation. Over a minute, Merritt got smaller, grew a tail, his body reshaped, his face became pointy, his nose black and wet, his ears slightly floppy and his body covered over with fine tan fur almost the same color as his chestnut brown hair. He had rested a cheap, collapsible sort of ladder against his balcony railing and it extended all the way to the ground. Merritt the greyhound walked nimbly down it and then sprinted over to a city park, reveling in his amazing running ability in that new canine body. He let pretty girls pet his furry head and his furry ass and rubbed up against their asses. He leaped into the air after frisbees and amazed some of the picnickers with his apparent understanding of their words. As dusk fell, greyhound Merritt jogged back to his apartment complex and took a dump in a flower bed right out in the open before trotting up the ladder to his apartment.
He didn't think any more of it, or he wouldn't have if not for the random . . issues. At first he didn't even notice, but afterward he could see that it must have started before he picked up on it. Things with Etta were going hot and heavy but after a certain time, Merritt had only wanted to take her from the rear. He only realized when she complained a little about it. It had seemed so natural. Etta had such a fine ass. She was always cooing about his but what a fine caboose that girl had. Wanting to give a roundhouse slap to that fine ass while ramming his big dong into her was perfectly natural. But they'd done it every way before that.
That was one thing. There were others.
One morning he walked out of the apartment and glanced down and noticed, uh, it was . . up. Not erect, not even a little bit thicker than just walking around but . . up. He tried to push it down. It wouldn't move.
"What the f-?!
He pushed hard. It was stuck there. It was stuck against his lower abs. What the fuck?! It looked ridiculous. It made him look like a guy with a small one who was erect.
God damn, this was embarrassing. He got a folder and carried it casually positioned in front of him.
This happened that one morning and then not for several days and then happened again one night. He pushed and pushed but it was just-just stuck there, making him look like a guy with a little one who was excited about something.
Then there was the problem with his tongue. A few days after the first humiliating thing with his dong he was on the phone with a secretary of a security firm to set up a job interview. Merritt was ambivalent about taking such a job but he knew he had to at least keep up appearances that he was moving on from the NSA.
He had sent them his resume through an internet service. He picked up the phone to schedule a meeting with their HR department. The phone rang and a secretary answered with a cheery recitation of the company's name.
"Llllwllly lllll lalllll llll lllalll," said Merritt, suddenly frowning. What the fuck?!
He coughed and cleared his throat.
"Llllwllly lllll lalllll llll lllalll," Merritt repeated insistently, angered at his sudden inability to speak simple words.
He hung up with a slam of the phone. "What the hell was that?" he tried to say but could only produce "Llalll lll llell wallll llllalll?"
He sighed in frustration and then noticed that as soon as his mouth was open, his tongue hung down from his lips six inches. His eyes went wide. Seriously, what the fuck was this?
But this, too went away in a few minutes, though it came back a few days later at Starbucks he got to the front of the line and suddenly noticed that his tongue seemed to be folded three times over in his mouth. He covered his mouth with one hand and pointed to another customer's order with the other, one of those, paid and left without saying a word.
Starbucks was the site where the next problem turned up, too. Merritt wouldn't even have noticed it. Everything had been perfectly pleasant, in fact, better than usual. It wasn't the Starbucks Merritt usually went to and this one smelled incredible. The pastries, the coffee, everyone's odd little confection of topping on their coffees. Every one smelled fantastic, overtures to gastronomic wonders.
Then Merritt got to the front of the line and the guy took one look at him and snickered. Huh?!
A swishy guy in the next line whispered to the guy with him, "I've heard of brown nosers but . . ," he nodded toward Merritt and snickered.
Merritt paid and got out of there and only noticed his reflection in the glass front of the bank next door. His nose was black. His nostrils looked odd and his nose was black.
Like the problem with his penis and his tongue, this too went away quickly but came back a few days later. Now Merritt was wondering if there was a problem with the Chronivac somehow. But he turned it on and checked his profile and the greyhound profile but couldn't see that anything had changed or that anything was going on.
But a few days after that, things went further. Merritt was walking on L Street NW, near the convention center to a job interview, dressed in his best snug dress pants and favorite dress shirt and tie. It was hot enough that a suit coat was a bit much. But Merritt knew that he looked great in these clothes and would make a great impression. A few blocks away, he felt a weird sort of tingle all over him, over every square inch of him. He looked down at his hands. They were covering over with a fine, light brown fur that was also peaking out from his cuffs.
Then he felt it on his face. He took two quick steps to stand in front of the glass storefront of an empty shop. Merritt watched in horror as fine brown fur grew across his face to completely cover it except the end of his nose which had turned black and moist.
"No! No! What the fuck is doing this to me?!"
And as he spoke he saw, in his reflection that his canine teeth were now twice as long as before.
He looked over his shoulder at the building to which he'd been walking. It was just a hundred yards away. But he couldn't go there to interview for a job now. Not like this, not like some-some ridiculous combination of dog and man.
He waited a minute, hoping all of this would change. But it didn't. He pulled up one pantleg till it showed calf above his sock. That calf was covered in a coat of light brown fur. The ends of his fingers no longer had nails but a dog's claws instead. Merritt gingerly reached one hand down the back of his pants. His trackstar, ballet dancer's ass was a tight and round as ever. It was also covered in a complete coat of fur.
Merritt waited.
And he waited.
Nothing changed.
"Dammitt!"
For whatever reason, this change wasn't fading away like the others.
Merritt felt humiliated. It was one thing to change yourself. It was another to lose control and have this done to you against your will.
He waited several more minutes, back to the traffic of people on the sidewalk. Finally, he just didn't want to wait any longer. If some people saw him on the sidewalk looking like a total freak, then fine.
Merritt stepped out and decided to go back to his car by going past the convention center. From a hundred yards out he saw a lit sign over the main entrance.
FURRY CON DC!
"What the . . ?"
He squinted as he kept marching along in his trackstar's glide of a walk. He didn't even know what that was. But as he got closer, he quickly figured it out. There were men and women normally dressed but just as much in bear suits, in ape suits and especially in dog suits. The lines stretched out into the road. As Merritt approached the nearest of the half dozen lines, a couple normally dressed girls pointed at him and clapped.
"Woohoo! Anthropomorphic dog businessman!"
Everyone seemed to look his way. Many of them clapped or cheered.
He wanted to just keep walking but they didn't part or get out of his way. They all seemed to want to inspect him. Several told him how good his makeup was. One girl took his left hand and then shrieked at how perfect his furry hands were, perfectly normally shaped but covered with fine brown fur and with dog claws at the tips. They were complimenting Merritt and asking him questions. They asked his name but he wasn't about to ever tell them that. They asked where he was going to be inside, which display? Was there a company that did his fur? Where could they get that for themselves? Where'd you get that? Where'd you get that?
They were so insistent, Merritt told them, "This is just me," as he finally found a seam in the group and slid through. Behind him a few called out about how great his teeth were and someone pinched his ass. He had just as much trouble at each successive line. He was fawned over for what terrific fake fur he had when the reason it was so terrific was that it was real. In the third or fourth lines, a gay boy pulled up his pantleg revealing his fur covered calf. An impressed, "Oooooooo!" came from the onlookers.
"Hey! Don't do that!" Merritt quickly pushed it down.
"Didja see those crazy teeth?"
"Show us your dog teeth again!"
A heavyset girl behind him grabbed the back of his shirt and pulled up briefly revealing, as the cloth billowed up and then to one side with a slight breeze, that his back was also just as perfectly covered with shiny, light brown fur.
"Oooooooo!"
Merritt frantically tucked his shirt back in and just as he did, the last thing happened. The crowd of furries in line were rushing at him now, so none of them saw it but Merritt felt it. The already snug seat of his pants become much more uncomfortably so and just as there were so many voices in his ears, asking him this, telling him that, he felt the seam at the back of his pants rip slightly at just the spot where the pressure was greatest.
Amidst all the cacophony of voices in his ears and hands grasping at him, he suddenly felt distinct relief. Ahhhh. His two foot long tail was now out a small hole at the back of his dress pants.
More and more of these furries were heading toward him and Merritt just couldn't take it. They were fawning over the same situation about which he felt humiliated. He pushed away from some and with just that separation came a recognition of his tail.
"Look! He's got a perfect tail, too!"
"Who did your tail? Tell us!"
Merritt couldn't take any more and simply broke into a run. He managed to get through the last line without directly knocking anyone over and sprinted away from them and around a corner, whipping his new tail to turn even tighter. Some furries tried to run with him, filming him as they went but he quickly left them in the dust.
He made it to his car and jumped in with no one noticing. He drove the several miles to his apartment also without anyone noticing that the motorist next to them was an anthropomorphic dog with a fur covered face.
Merritt got home and pulled a baseball hat over his head and marched to the door looking down and absolutely refusing eye contact. Inside his apartment, he angrily tore off all his clothes. He was naked Merritt but with a coating of light brown fur, dog claws at the ends of his fingers and toes and a tail out the top of his ass.
He turned on his laptop but had a very hard time typing with his new fingers. When he finally got to the Chronivac page listing the status of his profile, despite his dog features it said that he was normal Merritt. It said that nothing had been done with his greyhound profile.
"Fuuuuuuuuck!" he shouted. He didn't know what the hell to do.
And it was going to get worse.