I woke up with a jerk on my spine that told me that all this, unfortunately, was not a nightmare. That thing - my tail stuck out of the hole in my pants. It was degrading that I felt relieved it was no longer trapped in there.

I licked my nose, and thankfully didn't feel the need to pant more. I was breathing more softly now. I was no longer stressing about if my classmates were going to discover what had happened, or how mom and dad were going to freak out. It was almost... unsatisfying, if that even made sense, that I'd gotten here without some major scene.

But here I was. Awaiting something to happen to me. Seeing Jackie... that was going to be me. That's what was going to happen to my body too. And how long was I going to be in here? Was I going to be trapped here for months as they analyzed what was happening to me?

I pressed my palms against my face. My eyes were now dry from all the crying I had done earlier. At least this had all gone better than I feared it would. And at least I wasn't going to be living under the constant stress of hiding what was happening. They were going to figure all this out. They were going to change me back. They had to. Everything was going to be alright.

Everything was going to...

I paused in my thoughts. I had been wagging my tail. As I'd relaxed, it had just started happening. Just like my tongue. And then I licked my nose again.

"Auugghh!" I groaned.

I looked next to my bed, where I found a pile of folded blankets - from my bed at home. I found other things of mine - my laptop, some games, a book - and a paper bag bearing the name of a local burger place, Burger Works. It was thankfully still warm, and I eagerly took advantage of the distraction. And the food.

I loved Burger Works, but it was a bit on the pricey end - something that we only did on my birthday. My mom had spoiled me. Seeing that she'd gotten all of this gave me a spark of joy after all this grief.

As I started eating the burger however, I could feel the powerful smells permeate my nose. It smelled sooo, sooo good. That's what that was. I really was forming a dog snout like Jackie was. But gosh, I couldn't ignore the fact that it was the best Burger Works I'd ever had. My tail started to wag enthusiastically. I almost gave into the feeling and wagged it willingly.

I slowed down in eating, both to conserve the burger, and... I just couldn't stand that I was thinking these things. I did not want to wag the tail. But my enhanced senses... they made the burger smell and taste so good...

I had been so focused on the likelihood about whether or not I was going to turn into some mutant that I hadn't considered that any of these changes would feel good. I dared to think about, acknowledge the sensation of my tail. It... it did feel good. Or maybe I wanted to wag it because I already was feeling good. I was going to be stuck with this thing... for a while at least. May as well get used to it...

I intentionally wagged my tail. It didn't feel repulsive. In fact it felt relaxing. It didn't feel like something was controlling me anymore. It felt natural to wag it. It was part of me. I'd given into it. Into panting my tongue and wagging my tail. And I realized painfully that I would be unable to stop.

The fries, shake, and the rest of the burger though, were definitely tail wag worthy. Sure enough, I only finally stopped when my hunger was satiated. I turned around to look at it. It looked like the fluffy tail of any dog - and it was sticking out of me.

"If you're going to stick around," I said to it, "you're going to need to learn to behave yourself."

A bathroom adjoined the room Jackie and I were in, and I took the opportunity to get the burger grease off my hands, after which I put my blankets and pillow on the cot. As soon as I pulled out my laptop and sat down on the cot, my tail immediately did not behave itself, and I had to mess with it for a moment to find a position that felt comfortable. At least I wasn't sitting on it.

I scrolled through stuff online for a while. There wasn't any breaking news about a bizarre transforming plague. I looked up as the door opened, and my Mom and Jackie's Mom entered the room, now masked and with gloves.

"Hey," Mom said, "how are you feeling?"

"Well... still afraid. But Burger Works makes everything better."

"I'm glad that they let me bring you all of your stuff," Mom said. "Dad got back to me that the risk of transmission is probably only through saliva or blood."

"Oh darn," I said, "I was planning on bleeding on you."

Mom briefly expressed disgust at the joke. My attention was taken as I glanced over to the divider between me and Jackie.

"Please Jackie," her mom said, "you can't sleep forever."

I heard muffled cries of frustration.

"Jackie, you need to eat."

"I don't feel like eating anything again," she said. "Everything smells weird now and everytime I open my eyes... I see that stupid thing between them."

Mom and I glanced back at each other.

"I'll be here tomorrow morning," she said.

"Okay," I said. "If it's difficult though, you don't have to -"

"If I could Matt," she said, "I would not leave this building. But they have stupid rules in place. I want to spend every moment with you that I can."

A chill went through me as I felt the undertone of that. Every moment. You don't know which one will be the last....

Jackie's mom gave up on getting her to talk, and I said goodbye to her and my mom. I could see them talking through the window in the door. Jackie's Mom was visibly frustrated.

I heard Jackie's cot creak.

"You are too upbeat about this."

"What?" I asked. I stood up.

"You're making me look like some melodramatic idiot," Jackie said. "We're facing the reality that we could be nothing but pets in a few weeks. But because you're cracking jokes and playing the tough guy card, I'm just a whiny child. Or... or a yappy puppy."

I pushed at the divider, as it was made to fold inward and collapse. Jackie sat on the side of the cot, her hand hanging down limply.

"No one ever said anything like that," I said.

"Of course not," Jackie said. "It was all implied."

"Hey I'm terrified," I said, "the only thing that made me relax was food."

She finally made eye contact with me. Seeing that dog nose on a face I knew so well was extremely strange.

"Augh," she said, "I'm sorry Matt. You didn't do anything wrong. This just... this just sucks."

I grabbed my cot and pulled it closer to sit on. "I can't believe that all this crap is happening to someone I know... and to one of my friends."

"It started after our game," Jackie said. "I... I brought our game of Uno Dare with me, and I looked through the cards again. I was bored, and I was trying out all the dares."

"And you started panting like a dog," I said.

She nodded. "I guess... with us both having this treatment as kids, this was some sort of catalyst to start everything."

She licked her nose. She groaned.

"I hate this thing," she said. "Especially because they told me that because of how it changed, I actually need to keep licking it... to keep it wet."

I felt my nose. It didn't feel any different. Yet.

"Yeah...," I said honestly, "I'm not looking forward to that."

"And I'm not looking forward to... a tail."

"It's annoying," I said.

We were both quiet.

"I'm afraid...," Jackie said, "of... of if they can't help us. Of if we do literally turn into dogs. But I'm also afraid of any alternative that's not being fully normal. What if they are able to keep us from becoming fully dogs, but we're locked into place here? You with a tail, me with this gross nose and weird ears?"

"I... I don't want to think about it."

"Well we can't really avoid it," Jackie said. "I don't think they have any idea what to do. I think that they're putting on airs. There's a reason why my mom left this place years ago. No one communicates with each other. No one knows what's actually going on outside of their department, so they'll make crap up."

"Well..., I said, trying to sound hopeful, "I think that they'll try their best to fix this, even for the selfish reason of keeping the company from completely going under."

"Oh it probably will anyway," Jackie said, "the suits don't care about us and all the people that will soon be like us. They're not meeting with researchers, they're working with lawyers. They're going to hide behind a brick wall of paper work and save their own behinds."

"Well," I shrugged, "if... if we aren't able to set things back to normal life... at least there will be other people -"

"Other dogs."

"Other people, I insisted, "like us."

"How comforting," Jackie said, "millions of us. All freaks. Look me in the eyes Matt. Do you think an employer will want to give me a job with this face? A guy want to go out with me? Do you think anyone in a class, or even on the street will want to be anywhere near me?"

"We'll have to learn to live with it I guess."

"Learn to live with the certain hate towards us?" Jackie said, "the disgust at these inhuman creations of science? We'll be all alone."

"No we won't," I said firmly. "We have our families. Our friends aren't going to just toss us aside either. And then there's still all the other people like us that we don't even know about yet."

"Yeah," Jackie said, "I'm sure that our friends will not feel uncomfortable at all around dog boy and dog girl. Not to mention the fact that all my dating prospects just went up in smoke."

My tail pulled up against my body. "So. I'm not one of those prospects."

Realization hit her. "Well, um -"

"Yeah, I see," I said. "You're getting upset that no one will want to be with the ugly dog person, while at the same time going 'eww, it's an ugly dog person.'"

"I'm not.... I think you're a decent guy Matt, it's just...."

"Just what?"

She sighed. "You can be kind of annoying sometimes. You seem like you're desperate for attention."

"Well maybe I wouldn't be trying so hard if everyone wasn't ignoring me," I said.

"They ignore you because you're being annoying... whatever. Why do I even care about all this? I'm going to be eating out of a dog dish. It doesn't matter whether I have friends or not."

"And that's why I haven't asked you out," I said, "because you're complaining about everything. You never have anything happy to say. You're cute, but everything that comes out of your mouth makes me freaking depressed."

"Can I help it if everything in the world sucks?" she threw up her hands. "Besides, just the other day you were making such a big stink about what stinking game we wanted to play. And you do that every time."

I groaned, and pulled the divider back between us.

"See you when we're walking on all fours," I said.

Simmering with anger that I'd just burned the bridge of ever wanting to go on a date with Jackie, I decided to calm myself down with the internet. The internet was not good at that.

Jackie's words, though I didn't like how depressing and fatalistic they were, seeped into my brain as I got in bed later. Even if my dad, and other people at the company wanted to fix all this, would the company be able to function enough in this continuing landslide to save us?

Were they going to have to say they're sorry that they failed, and then put a leash on me?


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