The next thing Charlie knew, he was being awakened by the sound of rustling metal. He was about to use the necklace to speak, but figured it was safer to hold his thoughts just in case. The top of the stable door swung open, and that's when Charlie was greeted by his own, human body leaning over the lower part of the door, silhouetted against the evening sky.
The figure flicked the overhead lights on. The harsh fluorescent lighting revealing a burly, handsome man dressed in the smart dress uniform of the M.P.D. The uniform, that it'd been Charlie's pride to wear just days earlier.
"Well, well, Captain Isaksson, look at the state of you now!" said Charlie's former body smiling at him and speaking in a perfect replica of what had previously been his gravelly bass. "I'll bet you wish you'd never strayed into my shop now, don't you?"
Charlie, gazed in awestruck horror at his former body, quickly coming to the realisation that the man in front of him, could be none other than the shopkeeper that he, Dale and the rest of his team had been hunting when they'd been magically transformed into animals.
"What the fuck!" said Charlie through his necklace. "How'd you get here? What's going on?"
"Now, now don't get riled up." continued his doppelgänger with the handsome smile that had been his until a few days ago. "After all, animals in petting zoos are supposed to be docile."
"What do you mean?" said Charlie. "This isn't a petting zoo."
"Are you sure about that?" said the imposter with a wave of his hand.
Charlie was about to reply but was distracted by a moment's dizziness. It passed quickly but with a sinking feeling he realised, he could no longer remember being taken to the T.A.F.H. facility. Conceptually, he knew it had happened but the memories were fuzzy, like something he'd imagined. Instead he now had a crystal clear recollection of having been brought directly from the M.P.D. headquarters to the city farm's petting zoo in a trailer with a smelly horse called Dale. No, not a horse, he reminded himself. It was Dale, his former team mate. A grizzled officer of the M.P.D. who was supposed to be human like him, right?
Charlie felt confused again. Had he had a team mate called Dale? It was hard to remember. He knew that he'd been a human before, but Dale in his trailer? He was just a regular horse wasn't he?
"You crazy old fuck! What have you done to me. Why can't I remember what really happened today?" Charlie shouted, or at least tried to shout through his necklace as he stamped his hooves in the hay anxiously.
"I can see you're confused but don't worry, it'll all be over soon." said the magician with another wave of his hand. "Now, tell me, can you remember who you were with when they brought you?"
"Of course I can" said Charlie, through the necklace. "it was um..." he thought for a moment. "It was a horse called Dale."
"That's right" said the magician, waving his hand again. "And what are you?"
Charlie stamped a hoof angrily, furious that this imposter had impersonated him. "You know exactly who I am! My name is Charlie and I'm an alpaca. No, fuck! I meant to say, I'm an alpaca..." Charlie's eyes widened in terror as the realisation hit him that he appeared to have been rendered magically unable to explain his predicament. He tried one more time. "I used to be an alpaca at a petting zoo but now I'm an alpaca..." but the words died out feebly as he realised it was hopeless. He was trapped, and he knew it.
"Correct!" congratulated the magician inhabiting Charlie's former body. "You're an alpaca, and as far as the rest of reality is concerned, you always have been."
The imposter in Charlie's human body flicked the stable light off, plunging the despairing Charlie into semi-darkness. "Now, I have some errands to run so I'm going to have to leave you here for now. Don't worry though, they have lots of other friendly animals here. There's a nice horse next door called Dale who you can make friends with and I heard there's a male alpaca over the other side of the stables. I bet you'd like to be introduced to him, hey?"
Charlie shuddered at his situation as the magician waved his hand one final time before swinging the top section of the stable door closed. A feeling of dread settled over him as Charlie felt the magical thought-to-speech necklace vanish into thin air from around his neck leaving him trapped as a perfectly average, female alpaca in a petting zoo. Even if someone was to work out what had happened and find him, he couldn't explain what had been going on now. As he bedded down in the hay for the night, Charlie could only pray for some kind of miracle solution to his situation and that the magician would be captured soon.