Dusty

        "You dirty, greedy bastard!" my wife yelled at me the second I stepped into the house. "You asshole!"

She was standing in the foyer, her eyes red and still wet, her mascara already dried in dark lines that made her look like an extra in The Crow. She was waving a folded piece of paper at me as she shouted.

"You're just gonna cut me out, just like that." 

"Yvette," I said.

"Don't you dare fucking 'Yvette' me. I helped you build this company. The only reason I'm not in the offices now is because I needed to step back while my mom was dying of cancer. I can't believe you'd use my mom's death and my grief as an excuse to freeze me out of my part of the company. God, what a bastard."

I wasn't sure how to respond. I knew she was right. The trouble was she wasn't supposed to know until all the paperwork was finalized with the board of directors. And my attorney was supposed to send all papers to my P.O. box, not our home address. But somehow one letter had slipped through. Probably that new admin who just started last week, I figured. 

"Well, I've got a surprise for you too, Raymond. Did you ever wonder how I still look so young even in my forties? Huh? Did you ever think about that? Or maybe how I'm never, ever sick? Well, the truth is that I'm a witch. My mom was too, and her mom before that. We  go all the way back to the Dark Ages, and probably before that, but there aren't any written records to verify it."

I smirked and giggled.

"Oh, you think I'm being silly?! Well, it's not all pointy hats and green warts, honey."

"A witch? Right."

I figured if I could keep pushing her buttons I could escalate the argument to the point where I could just leave and spend a few nights in a hotel. 

"Listen, Yvette, if I was living with Jeannie or Samantha, don't you think I would have known it and used it?" 

"That's exactly why we don't make it public, dumbass. Do you think we want to become some kind of tool for our husbands to use whenever it strikes them?"

"Well, good thing it's all bullshit, or I'd really be scared. But I've got the board of directors and the trustees on my side, so it's pretty much a done deal. All I have to do is sign the final papers with my lawyer next week."

"Oh, she said and snapped her fingers. "You won't be there next week to sign anything."

When I tried to speak, I found that I couldn't. Nor could I move. I was stuck. 

"Still think it's all bullshit, Raymond?"

I didn't, not that I could say a damn thing about it. 

"Do me a favor and stay right here, nice and quiet, until I get back. I've got a few things to do and pick up to show you how dangerous it is to piss off a witch with a pedigree like that of my family."

Then she left and locked the door behind her. I stood unable to move or speak and watched the clock in the foyer tick away four and a half hours. 

When she finally returned, it was dark outside, and she had a canvas bag in one hand and two leashes in the other. On the opposite end of one leash was a medium-sized brown and black dog. A mutt. On the other was a black, stocky dog that looked like it might have some Rottweiler and German Shepherd in him.

"Ray, I'd like you to meet King," she said, pointing to the brown and black mutt. He's going to be the new man of the house after you're gone." She motioned to the black one. "And this is Roscoe. I picked them both up at the shelter.

I watched the dogs walk over to me and sniff, then circled me. 

"Anyway, no time like the present to show you the power of a woman -- and a witch -- scorned." 

She dropped the bag onto the floor and it hit with a quiet thud. Then she snapped her fingers again, and I blinked. When my eyes opened again, I was looking up at her, as if she had become some kind of giantess. Even the dogs were bigger, and they and I were looking at each other almost eye-to-eye, though each had at least an inch and a half on me. 

I tried to ask her what happened, but my voice was changed. Instead of words, only barks came out. 

"Surprise!" Yvette said. "Take a look in the mirror." 

I walked to the oval mirror in the foyer. King and Roscoe trotted along behind me. Instead of seeing the body of Raymond Masters, I saw only three dogs. The ones in the back were King and Roscoe. The one in the front was a white and brown mixed breed, what I had once called a Heinz 57, with long, shaggy hair, a thin snout, and dark brown eyes. 

I tried to cry out but only managed to bark again. 

"Still think you're going to be able to sign the papers? With what? Your paw?" She laughed loudly. 

King sniffed all over me again, more earnestly this time, obviously recognizing the newly transformed me as a member of his species. When he finished, Roscoe shoved his nose against my ass as well.

"You do understand the way dogs work, right? They have a pretty strict hierarchy and there can only be one alpha. So, I'm gonna make this easier for you."

She snapped her fingers again, and I couldn't tell at first what she had done. But then both dog's noses moved to my crotch, I learned quickly. They didn't brush against my testicles, but instead, one of their wet snouts actually entered me just the tiniest bit. 

Oh, shit! I thought. She didn't just turn me into a dog. She went and turned me into a bitch dog. 

"Have you figured it out yet, sweetheart? The boys sure did."

I barked loudly several times. 

"Oh, do shut up or I'll whack you on the nose with a rolled-up magazine."

I shut up.

"That's right. I didn't want you to mistake your place in the pack, in King's pack. He and Rosco were already 'roommates' down at the shelter and King had established dominance. Anyway, to keep you from trying to take that role from King, I made you a bitch. That means you're at the bottom. Like I said, it's a pretty strict hierarchy. Your role is pretty strict too, and evolution has dictated it. Basically, you're good for making babies and taking care of them. Unless I have you spayed. Even then, though, you'll be the lowest-ranking member of the pack and will have to play second fiddle to the males most of the time."

I barked again. Just once. I hoped she understood that I meant "turn me back." Even if she did, she ignored me. 

She left me alone with the boys for a moment and went to get something from the bag she had dropped. She returned with a pink leather collar. There was a metal tag hanging from the front of it. She showed it to me. 

It read:

Dusty

I Belong To Yvette Masters

She flipped it over and I saw our home address had been embossed. Damn. 

"Yep," she said. "Goodbye, Raymond. Hello Dusty. Like the color, Dusty Rose, that shade of pink we painted the guest bathroom last year.

Roscoe approached me and licked the side of my face.

"Aw, isn't that sweet? Roscoe said hello. Why don't you tell him back."

I barked. 

"Ah, c'mon. Just give him a nice, big, wet, sloppy kiss with that drooling tongue of yours."

I barked again. 

"I really will smack you with a magazine if you can't be a quiet dog, Dusty."

I shut up. Then I 'kissed' the scary black dog. 

She smiled and fastened the collar around my neck. 

"Now, I'm going to take you out to your new place," she said. "Well, the place all of you will stay at night and when I'm away from the house."

She went back to the bag and returned with a short, pink leash and fastened it to my collar. 

"But first there are two more things I need to do to make this revenge complete. The first, I'll explain. Right now you can understand everything I'm saying, and you can see the same way you did as a human. But that's about to change. That's because even though you're in a dog's body, I'm still allowing you to perceive the world the way a human does. 

"But when I next snap my fingers, you will only experience the world the way a dog does. You'll still be you, and you'll still have all your memories, but you won't be capable of processing human language. Your vision will change to the more limited colors of a dog's vision. The parts of your brain that react to instinct will take precedence over the parts of your brain that react to logic and rational thought. Your world will be one primarily of scents and smells, and your nose will be your new eyes in so many ways.

"I'm telling you this before I do it because I want you to fully understand what I'm taking away from you. I want you to know that if you hadn't been a total asshole to me, you would still be able to think rationally and understand what the humans around you are talking about. But you won't be able to, and you'll remember that it's because you were a greedy, fucking bastard and threw away our life together."

When she stopped, she took a long, deep breath. 

"Well, I hope you're ready."

She snapped her fingers.

The world shifted colors. Every smell in the house invaded my nose at once, and I could even distinguish King from Roscoe from several feet away. She spoke and as she did her mouth moved, but it was all garbage to me. I couldn't make sense of anything she was saying. She laughed and stood up, then she picked up the leashes for the boys, tugged on all three of them, and walked us through the house to the back door. 

In the backyard was a large covered pen about twelve feet by twelve feet. She tugged us into the yard and all the way to the back where the pen was situated in the shade beneath several apple trees that had stopped producing fruit years ago. She opened the door and ushered the three of us inside, then unfastened the leashes from our collars. King and Roscoe immediately paced the circumference of the cage to take it in, and I found myself wanting to do the same, but I stopped short of actually doing it thanks to a lot more willpower than I had expected to have to use. 

She stepped outside the pen and closed the gate, locking us inside. Then she put a padlock on the latch and clicked it shut. 

She spoke again, but I knew better than to try to comprehend. After a few moments, though, she knelt by the fencing and motioned for me to come over. I did. There was no sense in making things worse. 

She smiled and spoke again, her tone as warm as her words were nonsense to me. Then she snapped her fingers one last time. 

I immediately picked up a new scent. It was coming from me. From my crotch in particular. King and Roscoe noticed it too and left the edges of the pen to check it out, their noses suddenly, what the kids called "all up in my business."

No, I thought. She couldn't have. She couldn't have possibly done that to me. Anything but that. 

But I knew better. The part of my instinctive dog brain was already at work confirming what I had already guessed. And when King licked my crotch, my brain almost exploded with the biological imperative to lie down on my front paws and raise my ass to make my pussy more easily available to him.

Only when I saw Yvette watching her with a wicked smile did I find the focus to growl and bark and get out from under his attempt to mount me. 

But, I knew that wouldn't stop him for long. He returned the growl and went back to try again. Roscoe walked to the corner and lay down to wait his turn, knowing his place in the pack. 

The only question was how long I could resist before King eventually found his target and made damn sure I learned my place in the pack too.