No way José

The rain teemed down in a torrential downpour unlike anything José had ever seen. The visibility had been reduced to almost zero. He slowly drove down the country road on his way home from a hard day’s work. His boss was always yelling at him and his salary was lousy. These combined with the work not being particularly enjoyable made him hate his job.

Because his pay was so low, José was always looking for deals and ways to make a ‘quick buck’. He was the kind of person who would do almost anything for money. It wasn’t that he was a bad person or that he had no morals, it was simply that he was often desperate for the cash. He had asked his boss for a raise more then once as his performance had justified it but he was always turned down.

As he neared his house, he saw something lying on the side of the road. He was naturally curious as to what it was and slowed his car down and stopped on the side of the road just behind it. He got out and walked over to it and saw that it was a dead raccoon. It’s body appeared to be intact, it had probably only recently died.

He felt bad for it, but also had an idea. He looked at it’s tail and noticed that it was completely intact. This was an opportunity he had been waiting for! He had been working on making a coonskin cap at home and all he needed to complete it was a tail. He smiled and quickly ran back to his car to get his knife from the trunk.

With the knife in hand, he ran back to the raccoon’s body and knelt down to hold its body up by the tail to cut it off. As he did so, a very bright flash of lightning was immediately followed by a thunderous crash of thunder. He ignored it and brought the knife to the base of its tail. Before he started cutting, he heard a very strange voice.

“José, please stop. Please don’t violate my body,” it said. José couldn’t tell where the voice was coming from or if it had even been real. He shrugged his shoulder and started cutting.

“José! I told you not to violate my body!” the voice again said, this time it sounded loud. José stopped and looked around, desperate to find the source of the voice.

“Who are? Where are you talking to me from?” he desperately asked as he looked around in fear.

“I was that female raccoon whose body you are about to cut up. Please do not violate my body like this.” The voice said. José frowned and looked under the tail of the body to see that it was indeed a female.

“This is crazy, I am imagining this! And even if I’m not, you’re dead, what do you care? I need your tail to complete my coonskin cap!” José defiantly said.

“If you cut off my tail and use it to make a cap, you will regret it. I am not threatening you José, I am simply warning you. Leave my body as it is and go home. Don’t make what could be the biggest mistake of your life!” the voice begged. José simply smiled, laughed and resumed cutting the tail until it had been completely detached from the body. As he stood up and walked back to his car, he heard the voice make one last plea.

“I’m sorry you wouldn’t listen to me José. I only hope you do the right thing and bury that tail before its too late. Please, for your own good!” the voice pleaded before trailing off and disappearing. Unfortunately, José was arrogant. He simply shook his head and put the knife back into his trunk and the tail into the back seat before getting back into the car and driving off.

As he drove off, he saw something strange in his rearview mirror. A bright light seemed to emanate from the raccoon’s body. A few seconds later it seemed to be gone! He ignored it though, assuming that it was just his imagination and that the poor visibility had hidden it from view.

Twenty minutes later, he finally reached the apartment complex that he lived in and pulled into it and into the parking lot before parking. Parked, he retrieved the tail from his backseat and walked across the lot and into his apartment.

His apartment was small, but it was the best his meager salary would allow him to afford. As he walked into the apparent dripping wet from the rain, he took his coat and boots off and put them away before walking into his bedroom. The coon tail was the last part he needed to complete his coonskin cap. He opened his closest and retrieved the rest of the cap he had made from the shelf and put the tail up to it. He grinned gleefully when he saw that it fit perfectly. All he could have to do would be to wash it off and sew it onto the cap and he would be in business.

He decided to take a shower before he did that. He was cold and dirty from the rain and wanted to get cleaned up. He had been forced to work the late shift that day and it was nearly 11:30 p.m. anyway. He quickly disrobed and stuck his clothes in the clothes hamper. Before he got into the shower, he had a strange desire to touch the coon tail. It seemed to be calling to him somehow. He walked over to the tail, picked it up and held it in his hands and petted it. It felt very soft to the touch and made his fingers tingle. He wasn’t sure what to think of it and though about the warning the voice had given him but shrugged it off and put the tail back down before walking into the bathroom to take his shower.

***

After finishing his shower and getting dried, he put his bathrobe on and walked back into his room. He was getting tired and decided to go to bed when he noticed something odd. He had placed the tail beside the cap but they were not touching. Somehow, they had moved and the tail was now touching the cap in the exact spot it would be touching it when he sowed them together. He walked over to the cap and lifted it up. Surprisingly, the tail had not only moved but was now attached to the cap!

“What the hell is going on?” he asked himself. He petted the hat and noticed that it felt warm. The whole situation was very bizarre and again he thought of the warning the voice had given him. As he pondered the warning, he again heard the voice.

“Put it in José, put the cap on” it said in a very soothing tone. He thought he was going crazy. Not only had this tail attached itself to the cap by itself but also a voice apparently coming from nowhere was telling him to put the cap on. He looked at it, pondering what to do.

“I’m probably going to regret putting this thing on, especially if that voice was real but what the heck.” He said to himself as he slowly raised the cap up to his head and put it on. It felt warm and soft on his head but nothing seemed to happen. It was actually a bit anti climatic, he had almost expected it to come to life or something out of a horror movie to happen. It felt so comfortable that he decided to leave it on as he slept, nothing seemed to be happening anyway, so by his logic it wasn’t as if it would hurt him.

He was feeling very tired and yawned deeply before pulling his bed sheets down, crawling into bed and closing his eyes. As he started drifting off to sleep, he felt a bit itchy, but disregarded the feeling as his imagination.

***

He awoke the next day feeling very refreshed which was odd for him. Usually he had to drag himself out of bed and hated mornings. But something was different about this morning. He could hear birds chirping outside of the window and the sun was shining. A beautiful breeze blew threw his window, carrying a rich and pleasant array of scents with it.

The air seemed much richer then normal and even sounds seemed louder. Oddly, neither bothered him. In fact, both seemed perfectly natural. He sat up and stretched before getting out of bed. He walked over to his dresser and looked in the mirror. He still had the coonskin cap on. He noted that his face looked odd somehow, he had a fully-grown beard but the color was ‘off’. His normally black-haired beard was a light gray color with some black mixed in. He stroked the hair with his right hand and noticed how soft it felt. It didn’t feel like hair at all and actually felt more like fur!

“Okay, that’s a bit weird” he said to himself. It was then they he noticed something even stranger. Around his eyes was a Very light coating of black fur, almost like a mask. As he reached up to touch it, he noticed that the nails on his fingers looked longer, sharper and were much darker, almost black. Last night, he knew that he had to cut his nails and that he needed a shave, but this was ridiculous! His arms felt itchy, whatever was happening was spreading! He quickly threw his bathrobe off to find another surprise. The normally thick black hair on his arms had been replaced by the same grayish black fur that his beard had become and it seemed to be getting thicker! He looked up at and touched the cap.

“This thing must be causing this somehow!” he yelled. As he was about to throw it off, he noticed another problem. He felt odd ‘down there’ and had been feeling odd since waking up. The mirror didn’t go below his waist so he stepped back and looked down to see what was wrong. What he saw scared the heck out of him. What was down there was definitely not what was supposed to be there. Be blinked his eyes and shook his head hoping to clear his head, hoping that somehow what he had seen was a hallucination. When he again looked down, he realized that it was not a hallucination. His manhood was gone, replaced by something that looked unmistakably female! Having fur growing on his face and on his arms was bad enough, but losing his manhood threw him into a fit.

Realizing that the cap was probably causing the changes, he quickly lifted it off of his head, hoping that somehow doing so would reverse the changes. He waited and waited but they did not reverse. His heart started beating very quickly and he started sweating. He wanted to panic at what was happening to him!

“This is why that voice told me not to cut the tail off! Why didn’t I listen to it, Why?” he bewailed. A million thoughts ran though his head. He had to call someone or at least do something! As he moved to run out of his room, his chest felt very itchy. He could only watch in horror as the black hair on his chest fell out and was quickly replaced with a pelt of grayish-black fur. He petted the fur in disbelief and felt even more panicked. As he did, the fur on his arms grew thicker until it had become a pelt not unlike that on his chest.

“Oh my god it’s spreading!” he yelled. He was terrified, it felt as if the more terrified he became, the faster the changes happened. But it was impossible to calm down, what was happening to him was horrifying! He started breathing deeply and whimpered. Unfortunately, doing so only furthered to hasten the changes. The fur on his face further developed, the light mask around his eyes got thicker and darker until it was a thick pelt. He felt a sudden sinking feeling as he began to shrink. Before his eyes, the world grew larger and larger! His face and ears felt strange, it was as if a force were pulling on his mouth and physically moving his ears while warping them! He tried to call out for help but his voice had changed and only animal like sounds emitted from his forming muzzle!

A warm overcame his hands, feet and legs as the fur spread to them. Black fur grew on his hands as his fingers became more nimble and his nails lengthened into claws. His feet underwent similar changes, as his toenails became claws. Each of big toes shrunk to became longer and more nimble as the rest of his toes did. As he had shrunk down to nearly the size of the raccoon whose body he found, he felt a tingling at the base of his spine. He turned his head to see a long, bushy black-ringed gray tail grow from his spine. It looked very much like the raccoon’s tail that he had cut off. As the final changes completed, his spine, neck and hips adjusted to a shape and position more fitting for quadrupedal movement. Standing on his hind legs, José confirmed not only that he a raccoon but also a female one!

Climbing up onto her bed to get a better look at herself, José could only stand there in disbelief! She wasn’t human anymore. She was a furry little animal! She wasn’t sure how to react; she wanted to panic and run, to get out of the apartment. A raccoon didn’t belong in here she belonged outside! She shook her head in disbelief; she was already starting to think like an animal! She had to get help; had to call someone, had to do something to keep herself focused.

She jumped off of her bed and ran out of the room towards the kitchen to get to the phone. She had hopes that she could call someone and that they would be able to help her. When she got to the kitchen, she jumped up onto a kitchen chair and then onto the kitchen table and walk towards the phone. She was glad that she didn’t have a wall mounted phone, as it would have been impossible to reach in her current form. As she was about to lift the receiver up, she realized something. Who was she going to call and how was she going to communicate? She couldn’t speak like this, and if the person on the other end heard the sound of a raccoon calling, they’d probably call animal control. That was the last thing she wanted, if animal control was called, she’d end up being caught and dumped off in the middle of the forest alone, definitely NOT something desirable.

She then thought about her computer, sure it barley worked but she could still e-mail someone to ask for help. She’d probably be able to operate the keyboard with her paws, it might take longer with her smaller paws but she could still do it. As she pondered that, her stomach began to growl. She was getting hungry! For the time being, telling someone about this didn’t seem important, she had to get something to eat!

She seriously doubted that she could open her fridge but she felt that she would be able to open the closets. She hurriedly jumped off of the table and ran over to the floor level closets. When she opened them she saw a few bags of cookies, some bags of potato chips and instant coffee. She had no idea if a raccoon could safely eat any of these. Although even if she could, she doubted they would be all that good for her. She then turned to the fridge; maybe she could get it open. She knew she had a cold pepperoni pizza in it and some hot dogs that she could probably eat. She walked over to the fridge door, stood on her hind legs and grasped the handle with both of her paws. She took a deep breath and pulled on the handle as hard as she could. At first it only seemed to have moved a bit, but with some additional effort, she was able to get it open a tiny amount that was enough to push it open the rest of the way.

With the door open, she climbed up into the second level of the fridge and went for the pizza box. There was still half a pizza in it and it smelled delicious. She could tell just how much stronger her sense of smell was and was eager to satisfy her hunger. She maneuvered around the box and careful pushed it out of the refrigerator and onto the floor. Fortunately for her, it didn’t go flying open. With the box on the floor she jumped out of the fridge and shut the door. Instinctively, she sniffed the box. She could smell human scents on it and wonder who they belonged to. Again, she shook her head when she realized that she was letting her animal side get a little too much control. She knew that she had to stay in control, she had to be able to tell people who she really was. If she were to let this body win out she would be in serious trouble.

With a little bit of effort, she got the pizza box open and surveyed the pizza. It was cold but it still smelled great. She grabbed a single piece and slowly lifted it to her mouth and took a bit. Her taste buds were almost overwhelmed with a flurry of taste much greater then anything her human sense of taste would ever have been able to give her. She quickly gobbled down the piece in her mouth and took another bite and ate it and then another and another until she was left with just the crust. With a grin on her face, she quickly gobbled down the crust. She finally felt satisfied.

“Well, one good thing about this body, it takes a lot less food to get ‘full’” she though to herself as she closed up the pizza box. She was unsure how she was going to get it back into the fridge, but elected not to worry about it as from her point of view she was going to get help and whoever came to help could do it. With her stomach full, she made her way back towards the living room to try to use her computer to e-mail someone to ask for help.

She walked into the living room and over to the computer. She looked up at it some a sense of awe. She contemplated just how she was going to operate it in this form. She could probably reach the keyboard if she stood on top of the chair, but would she be able to see the monitor properly? Her eyesight wasn’t too bad in this form, although it wasn’t quite as good as her human eyesight had been. She hoped it would be enough and climbed onto the computer chair and stood on her hind legs in front of the computer. With her right paw, she reached over and turned the monitor on. Its display lit up and the desktop became available. She looked at it with some confusion; the display seemed to make little sense. She looked at the icons on the screen and pawed at them, hoping to elicit some kind of response. When nothing happened, she became frustrated and started typing randomly at the keyboard. She couldn’t seem to understand why nothing was happening to her. That was when she realized what was happening. She was having a great deal of difficulty concentrating and she was starting to lose her mind. She closed her eyes and shook her head. She breathed deeply and over and over again said her name in her mind. Despite what had happened to her body, she was still herself, no himself! She knew that she had to ‘pull it together’, lest she completely lose herself to this body and lose all hope of ever regaining her human form. With a deep breath, she opened her eyes and focused on the screen. She looked at each and every icon and searched for her mail program. As she found it, she moved her right paw to the mouse to move the mouse pointer to the icon.

Just before she double clicked, she heard a strange noise coming from her room. Instinctively, she sniffed the air. She could smell what smelled like another raccoon in there. Something about it seemed familiar somehow, like she had seen it before. Her curiosity began to override her despair to e-mail someone about her current ‘problem’ and she jumped off of the chair and ran to her bedroom. When she arrived, she saw something completely unexpected. Standing on her bed was the same raccoon from the previous night removing the tail from the cap and reattaching it to herself. This seemed impossible! That raccoon was dead, how could it be doing this? She was about find out the answer when the animal finished attaching her tail, made sure it worked and looked at her and shook her head.

“I tried to warn you José but you wouldn’t heed my advice” a voice said, it was the same voice from last night.

“Who said that?” José thought.

“I said that. You see José I wasn’t really dead. I was only pretending to be dead as a sort of test to see how you would react to finding me like that. I was projecting my thought to you, just as I am doing now. Unfortunately you failed the test,” she said.

“And this is my punishment?” José asked as she stood on her hind legs and ran her paws down her belly. The raccoon jumped off of the bed and walked over to José and looked her up and down.

“In a sense. You see José; I am understanding and benevolent. I know that your life isn’t all that great and that you sometimes have had to do things like what you did to me in order to get by. I know you hate your job and that your boss treats you badly. I am not an ordinary raccoon, I have the ability to mimic death and even transform other creatures into this species.” She said.

“So what are you going to do to them me then? Are you just going to leave me like this to fend for myself? How can I possibly survive like this?” José asked.

“No, José, I am not going to leave you. You see, I watch over this area and have done so for nearly a century. I am going to take you in; you will become like me. You will retain your intelligence and memories and will be able to live a very long life once I complete your transformation.” She answered.

“What do you mean by take me in? What if I don’t want to? And how can you be over a century old?” José inquired.

“I am no ordinary raccoon, I am more of a guardian of this area. I have chosen to take this form. How I became the guardian of this area is a long story but I used to be human like you. A wizard saw the path I was on and changed me into this form. But he too was benevolent and wanted me to learn from it and to save others from going down the same path. He allowed me to keep my intelligence and memories and gave me a very long life; I could very well live for thousands of years. He also gave me the ability to change others as I have changed you. I see potential in you and want a companion of sorts. Actually more then a companion, I want a daughter and you reminded me a lot of the type of person I was before I was changed. This is why I choose you. Together, we can be guardians of this area and help a lot of people.”

“I guess it sounds okay, although it’s all a little confusing. What do I have to do?” José asked.

“Just walk closer. You need to understand that you will become a baby. Think of it as a new beginning. My milk will give you these abilities. But in order for it to work, you need to allow me to finish the transformation.” She responded.

José took a minute to think. It seemed she had little choice but to comply with her. She didn’t like the idea of having to forage for herself and simply being a ‘normal’ animal with an animal intelligence and lifespan. Her life really wasn’t that great and she seemingly had little to lose. She nodded her head and walked over to the raccoon. The raccoon smiled at her and closed her eyes and gently hugged José. José felt the world get much bigger again and watched as the raccoon got bigger and bigger until she was 3 times her size. With a smile on her face, the raccoon picked José up and cuddled her. José felt hungry and her instincts were telling her that the female could satisfy that hunger.

The female climbed up onto the bed with José and lay down on her side to allow the baby to nurse. As José moved closer and found a nipple and began to suckle, the female petted the light fur on her head.

“Welcome home”, she said.