by Nisi Shawl
A dog. He was turning into a dog. He looked down at the text message Mom had sent him, early in the morning.
Communed Gran’s spirit at Circe Temple today. Don’t know who hexed you.
It was odd—Granny Delphine usually kept a close eye on family matters, despite the fact that she had passed away nearly two years ago. As one of the most powerful magicians in the world, she usually knew things like who was hexing whom.
Whatever. Granny Delphine had always frowned on his decision to abandon magic. In life, she had been a fickle, hateful, unpleasant old lady—as far as Andre knew, she had started the whole tradition of hexing Andre when she cast a fumbling charm on him at Christmas dinner twenty years ago. She probably knew exactly who it was, and wasn’t saying.
And now he was turning into a dog. He went into the kitchen, rolled up the kiddy pool and put it away. Then he took out the knife and the cutting board, the salt and pepper and rosemary, and made himself a lunch of stir-fried beef and broccoli, with a healthy side of bacon. After he washed the dishes, he knotted an old sweater to the fridge door and rearranged the food inside so that the meat products were at the bottom.
He took two Tylenol to help with the aches and built himself a makeshift staircase up to the sink with a stool and some old computer cases. While he was moving the stool, he noticed that his thumbs felt sort of stiff.
Then he sprawled out on the couch. He was pretty accustomed to making accommodations for strange hexes in his life, but his preparations had still taken most of the day. The sky was already darkening outside, and it was starting to snow. He rested his head on a cushion and pulled his legs up onto the couch, tucking them underneath him.
The apartment was quiet except for the hum of the refrigerator. He was tired, and his body was starting to hurt all over; the pain chewed at him despite the Tylenols. His bones felt like they were shrinking, and his body seemed very unhappy about that. “Don’t go,” said his body, aching. “Don’t go.”
How could anyone hope to live a normal life like this? Aside from hexes, AoA, and his on-and-off temp job at the school board, Andre’s life was empty. He hadn’t gone on a date since he was eighteen, when Nico accidentally turned his first girlfriend’s hair into snakes and then permanently erased her memory to avoid getting in trouble. Since then, he’d had no one else in his life. No intimate other. Not for him.
He was lonely, and there seemed to be no way out of it. Could he ever wish his hex-filled life upon someone else? Could he ask someone to deal with him contracting sneezing curses and toad hexes twice a month?
He’d turned 37 this year.
He slid off the couch and padded to his bedroom. Maybe he’d be able to get some sleep if he propped himself up in bed. It felt like his ribs were shrinking, but his lungs wanted to stay the same size. He lay against a pillow, breathing hard.
Eventually he ended up lying on the floor, in the dark space between the foot of his bed and the dresser. It felt more comfortable than the bed, somehow. Safer.
Ψ
He woke with a start, as if he had caught himself falling. The pain hit him all at once: like someone was sticking hot needles in his toes, his armpits, his eyes.
He glanced at the clock—12:30 a.m. Snow wafted down outside.
Dammit. It was going to take a miracle for him to fall back asleep. He didn’t want to take any more drugs, either, because he was pretty sure the dosage was meant for humans.
He stood, shakily, and went to his computer. Anything to get his mind somewhere else.
Click. Click. Double-click. A red-and-blue splash.
== Welcome to Age of Absolution Online! ==
You have logged in.
His computer chair seemed to have grown taller. It took him a second to remember where he was in the game.
Pinky>> Bruh!
He brightened. At least Saam and Pinky were still awake.
“Hi,” he managed. It was difficult to type; his fingers kept hitting the wrong keys.
Pinky>> We were just about to call it a night, actually. How are you?
“Actually, I’m not feeling too good.”
Pinky>> Everything ok?
“Yeah….Just hasn’t been the best day.”
Pinky didn’t respond right away.
Andre stood Bruhjack up and ran him around in circles, jumping repeatedly. The distraction wasn’t working. His body was stretching, shrinking, and hurting.
Pinky has invited you to join a party.
Pinky would like to summon you to The Forever Grove.
Pinky>> Want to just hang out for a while and chat, then?
Andre felt a warm thrill of gratitude. He looked at the screen, then down at his arms, which seemed to be sprouting a forest of fine brown hairs. Sometimes he just wanted to escape from his stupid cursed life and go somewhere else.
You have joined the party.
Ψ
When Saam and Pinky logged out, Andre curled back up in his spot at the base of the bed and tried to get some sleep. It was 2:30.
He tried again at 4:00, 4:45, and 6:20, and gave up at 7:00. The birds outside were unnaturally loud. He discovered he could swivel his ears to muffle the sound, but it wasn’t enough to let him sleep. Nor was covering his ears with his hands. He still had hands. Sort of.
At 7:15, he noticed that everything in the room seemed substantially bigger. He looked from his bed to his dresser to the doorway, which now looked appropriate for Wonderland.
He stood up, stretched, yawned, tried to take a step, and collapsed. Aside from the disorientation, however, Andre felt very little pain. His legs were long and reedy, almost absurdly thin. Brown fur covered pale, stretchy skin. It felt strange, touching it with his hands, knowing that the legs were his. His feet were withered away into near-nothingness—he could have fit one through a toilet paper roll. His arms, too, were covered in fine brown hairs. His fingers had shortened considerably and his thumbs seemed fused to his palms.
He stood on his legs and arms and walked slowly to the chair, as a trial. Left leg, left arm, then right leg, right arm. That seemed to work. Left, left, right, right. Left left right right. It was like canoeing. He turned around in a circle. Not too bad. He caught a glimpse of his tail, brown and bushy as a feather duster. He seemed to have very little control over it; it moved and oscillated entirely on its own. He spent a couple minutes turning and trying to get a better look at it before he realized what he must look like.
Once he got the hang of walking, it was easy to go faster. He cantered comfortably around the room, then accelerated into a flat out run. He tore through the doorway into the living room, leapt up on the sofa and off again, looped around in a big circle in front of the TV, and rushed back into his room.
His heart pounded. The sensation was…exhilarating. He felt tireless. The pain of the transformation was mostly gone, and nothing could hurt him!
He looked around the room, panting.
And he saw himself in the mirror.
He padded up to it, cautiously.
The dog that looked back at him was almost unrecognizable as having once been human.
He’d known he was smaller, but seeing his head only two feet off the ground was a bit of a shock. His ears had migrated to the top of his head, and stood there like two brown paper triangles. He wiggled them, turned them left and right like radar dishes. His snout was short and foxlike, with long white whiskers. His eyes were big, brown, and lustrous, like a cow’s. Tufts of human hair still clung to his face—he shook, and they went flying.
Looking at himself in the mirror was a bit of a strain on his eyes, so after a while he padded back towards the kitchen. He pulled on the sweater he’d tied to the fridge and eased the door open. Using his teeth to hold things felt natural, as if it were some joyous instinct he’d been trained to repress all his human life. A flood of smells poured out: apples, bacon, blood, wine, rust, meat, mold.
He pulled on a bag of red apples, the smell of plastic strong in his nose. Apples tumbled
out onto the kitchen floor, rolling everywhere.
He spent some time gnawing at an apple, trying to gain purchase on its waxy surface. The taste was intensely satisfying, sour and deliciously sweet. He ate the entire apple, including the core.
He was tugging at the package of bacon, trying to dislodge it from between the milk and a six-pack of Coke when someone banged on his front door, three sharp knocks.
The hair stood up all along his back and the back of his neck. He could smell the person outside the door: it was a smell like cigarettes and leather, intensely familiar. His lips tightened. His breaths made a soft grrrr sound.
Knock knock knock.
He’d forgotten to set up a system for himself to open the front door. Ugh! How stupid could he get?
While he was berating himself, he heard the sound of a key entering the lock, then the click of the bolt disengaging.
The door opened. Nico stood there in his leather jacket.
“Andre?”
Ψ
His brother was tall, bigger than Andre remembered. His hair was mostly shaved, except for a wide strip that ran from his forehead all the way to the base of his skull. He had a tough-but-deflated look, with eyes like a basset hound’s. Ten years ago, people would have crossed the street to avoid him. Now Andre imagined they just snorted at him as he passed.
He shut the door behind him. “Andre. That you?”
Andre narrowed his eyes. “Of course it’s me,” he growled. “What are you doing here?”
Nico looked annoyed. “Mom communed with Gran’s spirit again at the Temple of Circe. Gran acted strange, and now Mom’s almost sure that it was Gran herself that put the hex on you. A beyond-the-grave curse.”
“What?” growled Andre. “Are you serious?” A beyond-the-grave curse was nothing to be trifled with. It was one of the most powerful spells a magician could cast. You had to give up part of your soul for it.
Nico shrugged. “None of my business.” His eyes traced the kitchen floor, where apples and half a pack of bacon lay. “Anyway, Mom says we need to do the counterspell right away. So I’m here.”
Andre’s teeth were still bared. But he grudgingly admitted that Mom was right. With that much power behind a transformation spell, he could be stuck in a dog’s body forever.
“I have to say, though, you don’t look nearly so self-righteous in this form.” Nico rummaged in his pocket, pulled out a cigarette, and lit it. “It’s a definite improvement.”
“Nico….” It was more growl than word.
“Let’s just get this over with. You got distilled water?”
“I’ve got Arrowhead.”
“Whatever.” He pulled a five-gallon jug from its place beside the fridge, not struggling with it nearly as much as Andre hoped. He took a pot from Andre’s kitchen rack, inspected the inside, put it back, and picked up another one. He started heating some water on the stove. “God,” he said. “Why would you want to live a life without magic? Boiling water by hand.”
Andre’s face felt hot. “Some of us want to make something more of our lives.”
Nico choked out a laugh. “And how’s that working out for you?”
He could feel the old anger at Nico building up again. Nico, who had never apologized for what he did. Who seemed incapable of remorse. Who was arrogant, crude, and mean as a snake.
Nico fished a packet of herbs from his jacket pocket. “You’re not still mad at me, are you? It’s been like twenty years.”
Andre’s hackles were tensed. “No. No, I’m not still mad at you for that. But I hope you feel bad for what you did.”
“What did I do? Just a bit of memory modification. She was fine after that. Just forgot who you were. Could happen to anyone.” He grinned his most infuriating grin. “Pity, though. She was a piece.”
Andre’s body reacted on its own. His whole face burned and itched and he chomped down on Nico’s leg, hard. He tasted the iron of blood.
“AAAH!” The packet of herbs bounced off Andre’s head, scattering twigs and dried flowers everywhere. “Get off me!” He shook his leg violently. “I swear, Andre—”
Nico jerked his leg so hard that Andre lost his grip. He skidded across the linoleum, hitting his head on a cupboard.
“Unfrickinbelievable,” Nico said, inspecting his pant leg. “You can go and unhex yourself, asshole.”
“Good!” barked Andre. “Get out!”
“Out!” he shouted, long after Nico had slammed the door behind him. “Out! Out! Out!”
Ψ
He had a hell of a time turning the stove off. In the end, he had to push parts of his self-made staircase away from the sink area and over to the stove, where a careful nudge twisted the gas knob. It had taken the greater part of the afternoon.
Good. Now at least the building wouldn’t burn to the ground. This is why dogs should be allowed in apartments, he thought bitterly.
He retreated to the dark space under his bed, curling up on himself. He had acted rashly, he knew. He’d been angry, true, but he probably shouldn’t have bitten Nico so hard. Maybe the dog transformation was affecting more than his body.
He didn’t even have a way to set things straight. In a flash, he realized how precarious his life had been up till now, wholly dependent on Mom and Nico to provide the counterspells that he should have been able to do himself. He was a real disgrace, a magic-born who didn’t even know the nine basic counter-hexes.
No wonder Gran had wanted to turn him into a dog.
He sat there, processing that, for a long time.
He only came out when the smell of bacon called to him from the kitchen floor.
Ψ
After he finished the bacon, licking the plastic clean of all its delicious juices, he went back to his room. He was having trouble concentrating. He knew that being permanently transformed into a dog was a bad thing, but he couldn’t force himself to be serious about it. There was too much joy to be found in moving around the house.
He hopped from the chair to the table, and picked up the phone. He laid it on the table, and with great difficulty, speed-dialed the number of his supervisor at the school board.
“Hi Nancy,” he said, when the answering machine told him to leave a message. “This is Andre Papakostas, one of your temps. I’ve got to leave the country on short notice to attend to a family emergency, and I won’t be back for a while. I’ll give you a call when I get back, alright?”
He hoped his voice would be understandable.
“It’s been a real pleasure working with you all these years,” he added, as an afterthought. “You’re an intelligent, capable woman, and you shouldn’t let Ms. McHenley boss you around.”
He pressed the red button with his paw and hung up.
Then he went online to cancel his magazine subscriptions.
Ψ
He was glad Pinky and Saam were offline when he mailed them all of Bruhjack’s gold and expensive gear. It was like writing them a suicide note, he mused, the melancholy coursing through his body like poison. They’d go berserk when they found out. But he hoped they would enjoy the gifts.
He ran Bruh to his favorite place in the game, a beautiful cliff overlooking a gaping chasm. At the bottom of the chasm, if you took the time to stop and angle your camera down, was a river, sparkling in the evening light.
He moved Bruh next to a cactus plant with a red flower. He was wearing his level 1 gear, like when he had first started the game.
“/”, “s”, “i”, “t”, typed Andre, prodding semi-successfully at the keyboard with his toe pads. “/sit.”
Bruhjack sat.
Andre took in the scene for a few minutes.
You have logged out.
Ψ
He peed and pooped in the bathtub, because that made the most sense. He portioned out his food carefully to last for the next eight days, holding back the urge to eat it all right away. He couldn’t help finishing the second pack of bacon, though. It tasted as amazing as it smelled.
&
nbsp; He drank from the sink, having moved his staircase back over the course of another afternoon. He raced around the house for the heck of it. He lay in the sunlight in the morning when it streamed in through the window and made a bright rectangle on the couch. He chewed up all his own shoes, enjoying the irony.
The phone rang several times a day. Maybe it was Mom, or maybe it was someone else. But he no longer had the paw-eye coordination to pick up, and on the fourth day he accidentally knocked the receiver off the unit, silencing it completely.
He lost the ability to speak. He’d had the bright idea to try and voice-dial Mom, but his “Mom” was a sound halfway between a bark and a whine. For eight hours straight the voice dial feature asked him to please try again.
He didn’t pay much attention to the date, but it occurred to him one afternoon that it must be Christmas. He ate an entire squash in celebration.
On the twenty-sixth, he lay by the door, head down, tail moving, and waited for Mom. The kitchen was strewn with kale leaves and breadcrumbs and banana peels, and there were green streaks on the linoleum where he’d mashed spinach. The bathroom floor was full of disgusting yellow footprints.
Around noon, his ears perked up. Muffled voices in the hall outside. Footsteps heavy with intent. Soft knocking at the door.
“It’s unlocked,” he tried to say. It came out as a yawn.
The door creaked open, and it wasn’t Mom.
A slightly chubby bald head poked in and looked around. “Hello?” he said. The voice had a nervous quality to it. “Umm…Bruhjack?”
Ψ
They walked around the apartment calling his name, the bald one and a tall, thin girl—the couple that he had known as Saamx and Pinky. He followed them from the bedroom to the bathroom and back to the kitchen. Their voices were blurry, garbled, as if his new dog brain couldn’t quite process the sounds.