The Petting Zoo Donkey

Written by Arian Mabe (Amethyst Mare)

“Where are we going?”

Jimmy smiled good-naturedly as his girlfriend towed him down the mown path across the field, a smile on her lips and mischief in her blue, blue eyes.  She clutched his hand tightly in hers, nails perfectly manicured and lips shimmering a juicy pink that had to have come from a new tube of gloss. Cindy was always buying new makeup, a young woman constantly taken in by the next new shade. He didn’t know how she could have so many of them littering her flat, but had little say in that matter.

“Oh… You’ll see!” She giggled, dragging him towards what looked like a shed, set back against the hedge on the edge of the field. “It’s close – come on! Hurry up!”

Sometimes, he couldn’t help but think of her as a child in her innocence and, obligingly, Jimmy picked up his pace until they were nearly jogging to the ramshackle little shed. She always did have one fancy going on or the other, but that was his Cindy for you.

Little did he know that was all about to change.

She hauled him into the shed, demonstrating surprising strength for her size as she kicked the door neatly closed behind him, dust showering him as it bumped into the frame. Jimmy coughed and blinked rapidly as the interior of the shed slowly came into view as his eyes adjusted to the dimmer light.

And there was nothing there. Turning his head slowly from side to side like a lumbering, heavy animal, he tried to stare deep into the corners, thinking himself quite the fool for not spotting whatever was evidently her surprise right off the bat. Surely there had to be something there? But, no, there was nothing bar the pile of rat droppings in the far corner, sunlight streaming in through the cracks between the broken boards to streak the solemn, simply dirt floor in golden rays.

Squeezing his girlfriend’s hand, Jimmy called her attention back to him, but, to his mild surprise, she took her hand from his and claimed it with her own, eyes dancing.

“Are you going to tell me what this is all about then?” He smiled charmingly at her, holding up his hands. “Trust me, I’m all ears.”

She laughed and swung her clasped hands before her like the pendulum of a grandfather clock. Cindy tipped in to him, lips parted, and he automatically closed the distance between them, arms encircling her familiar, sweetly petite frame.

“Just one kiss, sweetheart, to remember me by…”

Her lips pressed to his, a cherry flavoured kiss that he leaned into even through his confusion. But when her lips broke from his, Jimmy stiffened, a ripple going through him from head to toe that was neither a shiver or a shudder of pain, but something else entirely. He’d have to get used to that sensation pretty swiftly if he was to survive.

Legs crumpling, they no longer bore his weight and Jimmy cried out fearfully as he dropped to the floor like a sack of potatoes, kicking and writhing as bone and muscle took charge for him. His mind screamed and he beat at the jerking of his legs,

“Cindy! Cindy, call an ambulance! Cindy, I don’t know what’s happening – help me!”

Cliché and overdone. His words fell on deaf ears and she bounced on the balls of her feet, hair swinging gaily over her shoulders.

“Quiet, little lad, you’re going to love this!”

He choked and hacked and coughed, chest heaving for breath that would never again slip into the same pair of lungs as he’d always had. He rolled onto his back, gaping and moaning in sheer horror as his legs twisted, bones realigning themselves until his arms become but another pair of legs, toes sucking in as his skin darkened and darkened and darkened. Jimmy squealed and kicked out as his spine pushed into a new shape, one that he’d only ever seen on a beast of burden. Only, he couldn’t’ see himself as in a mirror, only feel the grotesque changes as his face bulged out and out and out, skin rippling like clay into its new form. Perhaps, at least to his cheering, whooping girlfriend, who was doing her best impression of a cheerleading routine on the side-lines, it was the form he’d always been meant to have.

He would have begged to differ, if he’d had any say whatsoever in the matter. As it was, Jimmy was forced to watch as his feet became hooves, melding into something hard and unyielding that should never have been placed on a human body. He itched and squirmed, fighting to relieve it, but the discomfort of having his bones cracked into a new body eased as his neck finished elongating, jaw shockingly far out from his barrel chest. The itch was swiftly revealed to be fur spreading over his entire body, a dark grey coat only struck through with a black cross over his shoulders and down the length of his back. Only some would, much later, understand the significance of that.

Fighting himself, Jimmy blinked and wheezed, breath rasping down a much longer oesophagus as he rolled and staggered, somehow, to his hooves. He reeled from his new stature, head set lower than it shoulder have been and standing, quite comfortably on all fours as a furry tail shot from the base of his spine, thin and ropey, and swung back and forth as if it had always been there.

The donkey grunted and swung his head heavily from side to side, dust settling as the changes cemented themselves in his mind, though his humanity was still there, if locked behind a façade that was purely animal. He squealed and stomped, kicking up his heels in anguish, but all anyone would see, if they had been there to observe him, was a grumpy old jack showing his displeasure at something more suited to animalistic wants and needs.

Giggling like a schoolgirl, Cindy squealed and clapped her hands together as the new jack brayed and flicked his tail, her pigtails bouncing.

“What a wonderful addition you will make to my petting zoo!”