Jesse can only stand in shock and disbelief. Only hours ago, he and Josh were two young men just wanting to have a good time. Now, Jesse had no idea where Josh was or what was happening to him. Images of his friend behaving a beast and betraying his humanity made Jesse want to throw up. Jesse too was now a donkey, a beast. He couldn’t speak and without hands or feet, he couldn’t write.
It can’t be possible; this isn’t supposed to happen to people like me … like us. This isn’t supposed to happen at all!
Unfortunately, Jessie knows the error or his ways. He started to change when he wanted a life of being able to do whatever he wanted without consequences. Now, he had that life in a sense but at a terrible cost. Then there was Melinda; the young woman Jesse had just met. There was much he wanted to know about her. Now, it all seemed meaningless.
Jesse could smell Melinda’s scent, now that of a female donkey, not at all like a human woman yet oddly alluring. Jesse felt his body respond to the scent in a way that felt natural to donkey instinct that seemed to come out of nowhere; it disgusted his human half. Unfortunately, his human half was weakening. He felt images of mounting the female flood into his mind, of defending his female against any jack foolish enough to challenge him.
No, don’t give in. If you act like a donkey, you are a donkey.
The young man realised how humans take consciousness and reason for granted. For near every action there was always a desire to justify it. For a human to act purely on emotion or instinct was unnatural enough that some would consider such an act one of insanity. To a donkey however, there is no other way.
Jesse feels a desire to act upon his instinct growing, gnawing at his human mind, and trying to push it aside. He hears the other donkeys bray and smells their scent. He brays, knowing this is his voice now. He feels his tail, an appendage humanity lacked. Now, having one felt as natural as having arms or legs.
I won’t give in. I’m a human, not a donkey. Jesse’s body however has other ideas. He feels his donkey-hood respond to the images of lust. No, that’s not a female donkey, that’s Melinda, I can’t do this to her.
Now fighting it, Jesse closes his eyes and feels the sweat pouring down his head and all over his body. He brays without really knowing it. The sound comes automatically, one of many actions Jesse fears will become automatic, as through a type of programming. In a sense, Jesse feels like a robot or other machine. The instinct emerging in him seems more as the instructions coded into a machine. Said machine knows no other way and is perhaps incapable of knowing any other way. For a machine, attaining the consciousness and/or free will to break free of its programming is a dream, something that seems impossible. Now, for Jesse, it seems the donkey form this island has forced upon him will draw him into that struggle. He can’t help but wonder how long it will be before everything he does is little more then an instinctual reaction.
He opens his eyes and looks at Melinda. She is standing there, sweating and obviously afraid. Her tail covers her private parts, or more so, what to a human are private parts. To a donkey, they’re another body part. Privacy is an idea beyond their new forms. Urinating, defecating, and yes, even fornicating are all actions performed wherever and whenever. The urge to mount her grows stronger; Jesse tries his best to combat it with human thoughts.
The square root of 256 is sixteen. One eighth of 1000 is, um, come on Jesse think, you’re good at math; you’re still good at it even if you’re in the body of a jackass. Right, one eighth of 1000 is 125, yes!
Math, something alien to a donkey but integral to human civilisation. Jesse wants to tell Melinda to think human thoughts, but knows that his voice would betray him. He feels angry, betrayed and even framed. Certainly, Jesse wonders, fate meant more then for him to live life as a donkey. He refuses to give in and become a statistic, one whose entire life people will later summarise by warning their children not to end up like him. He feels angry enough to use his hooves and powerful hind legs to bash in the heads of those that did this to him, Josh, Melinda and the countless others.
No, that’s how an animal would react. I have to fight it, think how a human would react. I … we have to escape and tell the police or someone. They must be taking us somewhere; there will be humans all over the place!
He turns to Melinda, who brays at him. Jesse controls himself, not just for his own sake but for hers as well. If he can resist the urges of the beast, then he hopes that she will as well.
We will get out of this, get help and be human again. We won’t give into this. I will show Melinda who I am and this donkey isn’t it. I will get to know her as a human, not as some disgusting sexual thing.
Jesse however, cannot help but wonder how Josh is doing and how much of Josh remains in that donkey. Josh was always a dreamer, someone a little more willing to try new things. Jesse wasn’t surprised that Josh had become a good artist with the imagination the lad possessed. Now however, with hooves in place of his hands, Josh couldn’t draw. Jessie worried that this would break Josh. Jesse remembered the fear on his friend’s face as the chances overtook his human body. Jessie could only pray that those changes had spared Josh’s mind.
Melinda is silent for the rest of the trip as Jessie closed his eyes, thinking of equations, puzzles, anything to keep the human part of his mind active. He pushes out any thoughts of lust in hopes that the longer he holds out, the better their chances of rescue.
The boat stops some time later and several humans herd all of the donkeys out from the holding area into the warm sunlight. One of them makes a snide remark to Jesse, inquiring if he enjoyed the company of the female. Jesse knows the man probably thinks he did not understand the remark. Jessie however heard and understood every word. He resists the urge to attack the man as the he and the humans lead Jessie and the other donkeys to what appears to be a market of sorts.
Fear overtakes Jessie; he knows what will happen next. If he cannot get someone to know the truth about him and the others, he’ll soon be on his way to some farm, doomed to live out his life as a beast.