Dog Boy

21

There was a very... unclear feeling waking up in my own bed.

I had slept on my stomach - which with my tail in the way, had become the most comfortable sleeping position. I got up on my knees. Looking around my room, I felt like a stranger there. All my possessions that I'd had from my eighteen years of life seemed to belong to someone else - Matt Hewitt, a normal person.

But now I was Matt Hewitt, the dog boy. I got out of bed and stood up, looking into the mirror on my dresser. I felt strangely sickened seeing my reflection. My strange, fur covered body was invading normal reality. This was me now. It would stay that way for at least a very long time - if not forever.

No. It couldn't be forever. I had to believe that they'd find a way to change me back to normal - and besides that... I couldn't change my entire outlook on the future because of Jackie. I... felt really good around her. I felt happy with her. But I couldn't just assume that it was going to lead to a serious relationship. We'd been forced together by circumstance, and I didn't know that it would last.

Despite all this, for now, I could not change that reflection. Perhaps the strangest thing of all, ironically, was how... normal it looked. It felt like I had always had fur, floppy ears, and a tail. They looked completely abnormal, and yet at the same time, when I tried to imagine my normal looking face there, the face staring back at me blocked it out. It was the new normal. It was the reality that I could not change.

In the end, I just had to learn to accept this - I was half human, half golden retriever. It was going to be difficult, but I didn't have cancer, I was healthy... and I didn't look hideous. I looked strange, out of the ordinary - but I had that caveman brain impulse that told me that I was looking at a dog, and dogs were friends.

I licked my wet snout, and let myself pant, smiling slightly. Panting still helped me relax. I wasn't sure if I could ever feel comfortable visibly panting in front of other people... but I at least didn't want to be ashamed when doing it while alone. 

I took a deep breath, and let my tail wag as well. It had been tugging on my mind, itching to wag. And gosh... it felt good. I liked this additional way of expressing my emotion, the way it just subconsciously made me want to grin. I knew it was the canine instinct that had crept into me... but I also knew that I'd always felt okay with panting. And I did remember... I'd had a habit of shaking my butt as a kid as well - that Mom and Dad had repeatedly gotten on my case about it... just like the panting.

It was hard to know where original, human me ended and dog me began. Maybe I'd never been fully normal... fully human. Maybe I'd always been destined to be a dog boy.

I stopped panting, and stared at that dog boy in the mirror. 

"That's me," I whispered to that foreign reflection. "And I can't change that. I've always been a bit of a dog boy, and I'm going to accept who I am."

My reflection stared back. It was mine. That reflection was me, Matt Hewitt. I smiled. That canine-like face smiled back. It was my smile. And I accepted that. 

I licked my nose again, and wagged my tail, keeping that determined smile. I would face the outside world at some point, but at least here, by myself, I was going to let myself be happy in spite of what had happened to me.

No... not in spite. In acceptance of it. Accepting that I liked some of this in part, and I wasn't going to fight it. Not anymore.

It was nearly ten o' clock, and after several days of not showering, not since I had grown my fur, I needed a shower. Walking across the hall to the bathroom, I found a pair of clothes folded on the counter, a nicely made hole in the pants. Next to it was a bottle of shampoo with a sticky note attached.