African Transformation

Written by Arian Mabe (Amethyst Mare)

Maybe it would have been different if I only had not leaned over the barrier, greedy fingers outstretched towards the quivering, curious nose of the giraffe that was, in all fairness, only interested in me on the viewing platform simply because I may have had food for it. The branches hung in its shelter, which boasted a raised platform for the public to gawk and stare from, but had already been stripped bare by a skilful, invigorating tongue.

Could you imagine what a man could do with such a tongue? I shuddered at the thought. Skilful indeed... But that is not the purpose of this story that is both a tale of woe and joy rolled into one confusing bundle of emotion.

For, as soon as my fingers brushed the spot between the giraffe's curved nostrils, soft and brown, everything changed.

I should have known that there was something instantly wrong but I was too caught up in stroking the massive animal, running my fingers up to prod curiously at its horns. If I had been paying just a little bit more attention, however, I would have noticed the muscle mass disappearing from my lower legs, becoming slimmer and lengthier, my head rising even as my spine elongated itself in preparation for what was to come. The giraffe licked my hand curiously, curling its tongue between my fingers, and I raised my hand all of a sudden, blinking in slow confusion at just how thick and unwieldy my fingers appeared to have become. Had my hands always been such a dark shade? And those little hairs...

“Jeremy!"

My wife's shout, thrumming with horror that should only really be seen on the big screen, caught my attention but I could not even turn to look at her. Rooted in place, I gasped for breath, my face seeming to bubble and writhe as if something alive resided beneath the skin, bulging out and out as it stretched and moulded itself into a new shape entirely. There was no stopping it as my ears migrated swiftly to the top of my head, drawing themselves into delicate petals, the spot between them itching as something bony grew from the fabric of my skull.

There was no running and yet every fibre of my being screamed at me to run, eyes wild and wanton as my gut churned, bones cracking into a new shape. But it was not truly a new shape, after all, and perhaps only the one I should have taken all along. It's hard to tell now what should have been but I can be content with what is even after the traumatic change.

The platform grew slippery, shoes splitting as my feet sucked in to cloven hooves, so small in comparison to the sizeable animal that I was to become. It had holes in it – a grate – and I grunted as my legs went in all directions, back rounding even as it grew into the typical, sloping back of the animals that I so admired. I moaned plaintively for my wife, hiding in the doorway with wide, horrified eyes, but it was an animalistic sound that came from my lips and not something that should have ever, not once, come from a human being.

But I wasn't human anymore. My shirt ripped along with my jeans, the tattered shreds of undergarments caught in the railings as I tried to cling to them with hands that were more hoof-like than anything else by that point. Terror wrapped around my heart, an iron fist that I could not release, but all I could do was pant heavily as I grew taller and taller, tongue spilling from between my narrower mouth and lips in a slick, black curl.

Yet I could not stay on the platform forever as my horns brushed the ceiling and it gave way beneath me. Surely falling to my death in an almighty scrape and clatter of metal, I howled, air rushing by my half-human, half-giraffe, body as I braced for impact. And, yet, the impact that I feared never came, my hooves lightly touching down as I lowered my head, growing heavy swiftly as it stretched out and out and out, my neck elongating as I became far more giraffe than human. But that was the way it was meant to be.

The base of my spine tickled as brown, patchy spots covered my body from head to do, hair scraping down the back of my neck in short bristles, yet that was no hair growing there but a tail that sprouted forth and swung merrily, thwapping my own buttocks with a ropey slight. The tip bristled into life as a cluster of hair: a built in fly swatter. Dimly, I was aware of the people who had been up on the platform with me screaming, another giraffe peering curiously into the 'house' to see just what all the commotion was about, but I was already too far gone to care one bit about those human ways.

My humanity drifted from me, fingers that were no longer mine flying to catch it, and I whimpered throatily, making a low, guttural sound in the back of my throat. My genitalia, so small on the body of the creature that I was very nearly become, sucked back into my body, a soft sheath folding down with the sack set further back in a more protected spot. At least, that was what I felt it was for when I later met the female giraffe cows of the exhibit and learned what it meant to be the only bull there in his prime.

Yes... I was the biggest of them all, muscle in all the right places and towering so high that my head was above the level of the viewing platform, broken and gnarled in twisted metal. I no longer even had to stretch and let out a bellow, tail swinging, as I announced my fully transformed presence to anyone who would care to listen. They'd soon meet me, regardless.

As a bull giraffe, I stood firm and wove my neck forward to peer out into my new enclosure, dark eyes gleaming with the muted intelligence of a beast. It was where I would stay, happily fed and sated, for the rest of my life.

And that wasn't such a bad deal.