Ty considered Dustin's fate for a moment. He sat on the edge of the tub and replayed the incident in his mind over and over. The transformation. The shrinking. His apparent arousal at said shrinking. The power he had felt for the first time in... ever.
He should have felt dirty. Felt guilt. Not joy and excitement.
Something else needed to be done.
Dustin... Ty reached out, extending his will. He felt a strange sensation of being close to the ratified Dustin, deep in a cement cistern. Felt his fear, his panic. Smelt the awful stench of waste around him.
Ty focused himself. Dustin will live forever as a rat, he willed, no harm will come to him. No death. No physical pain. Only the unending misery of his new life and knowing what he used to be. Constant fear. Horror at every turn. Trapped.
It's permanent, he continued. He will always be a human trapped in an animal's body. I won't be able to change him after this.
Ty felt a sudden burn across his body. For a moment he felt Dustin lock into his new form, no longer able to be changed. By anyone. Or anything. Forever an immortal human mind trapped in a rat's body. A slave to instinct, a blurred fractured soul, always afraid.
Ty collapsed to the floor and gasped. His cruel wish and the finality of it had been powerful. But now it was done.
Ty felt no guilt as he got dressed in his room and walked downstairs. He smirked.
* * *
Dustin, alone in the sewer, felt a final terrible tingle. For a moment, his human mind screamed in terror. Something was wrong. Something terrible. Then, he felt dizzy, then, he felt a little less human. Then, he remembered the face of his mother and his father, he saw everything he knew, and he felt... something else. Another presence in his mind. The rat. His host. The rat wanted to eat, breed, and survive. Dustin tried to fight it, tried to hang on to himself, but it was a lost battle. His mind splintered, tore itself apart, and Dustin lost control of himself. He was still in there, just on the verge of being in control, almost, but not quite strong enough to keep the rat from taking over totally. But not enough to be in control of the body. It was maddening. Sickening. And Dustin screamed again and again. No! He was human! HUMAN! Help!
...The rat wanted to find food.
Dustin screamed inwardly, trying with all his might to take control of the body. Trying to move limbs he was no longer in control of. Feeling every thought and impulse of his host animal. But he couldn't take over. The attempt exhausted him, and he felt sadness at the loss of his age, his human body, and now control over his body. Could he over get control back? Every human sensibility felt disgust at his surroundings. As the rat pounced on rotted garbage Dustin felt like he might puke. But his stomach wouldn't let the rat puke. And then came an overwhelming sense of dread. He wondered... how long did rats live?
Over time, as the days went by, Dustin's mind fractured more and more. Any hope that he could gain control faded... as did his will to fight. And yet he couldn't switch off. Wanted to. Couldn't sleep, even as the rat slept, trapped in an unending personal hell. Worse than death.
And as days turned to weeks, and weeks to months, Dustin suffered more and more, yearning in constant sorrow for a little humanity in a shape that offered him none. He went insane, locked in madness.
And as months turned to years, the rat grew bigger and stronger, aided by immortality. And the bigger it became, the more it could beat competition. To food. To mates. The rat ate, and fucked, and killed others. It grew and grew more and more bestial as time went on. And the human mind inside, deep inside, still felt pain. A loss it barely remembered but couldn't shake.
* * *
Back in the present, Ty walked into the kitchen.