It wasn’t supposed to happen like this.

Sarah had just been hired to take over a managerial position at a pharmaceutical research facility. The first sign that was something was wrong was when she was told to ignore some missing funds on her expense forms, which they would fix “later”.

The second sign was that she was not allowed to go in certain areas of the building, even though she was supposed to manage some of those research teams. Again, she was told to ignore those teams and let them function on their own, that she would be allowed in those areas “later”.

Sarah decided not to wait until later; she knew something wasn’t right, and was going to sniff this place out before the feds came after her for whatever was going on.

During the week, she paid extra attention to where the cameras were so she could slip in and out on the weekend without anyone thinking twice about it. If anyone asked, she would just say she had left something in her office she needed to get.

The hallways were bright but empty and the rooms were dark; that meant the only people there were the external guards, as she had hoped. The restricted areas were PIN-number entry only, but she had looked over one of the scientist’s shoulders earlier in the week and memorized the number.

While staying out of view of a nearby camera, she entered the PIN, crept inside, and felt around in the darkness for a light-switch. When the lights came on, she was surprised to see nothing more than what you would expect in an ordinary lab: test tubes, syringes, centrifuges, lab coats, and refrigeration units.

Upon further investigation, Sarah found what she was looking for near the back of the room. There was a doorway that led into another room that looked like a kennel, with walls of cages and sleeping dogs inside. So this was their secret? Testing on animals wasn’t ethical but it wasn’t exactly uncommon.

Casually walking up to one of the cages, her eyes met the dog’s eyes. It took her a moment to realize she was looking into those of a human. Her jaw dropped and a scream found itself dead in her silence as she noticed that what she was looking at was somewhere half way between man and beast. She had seen enough, she turned around and ran.

Suddenly, there was a collision of bodies and then a struggle. Sarah ended up on the floor with one of her superiors twisting her arm and forcing her to the ground. He held a needle in one hand and had an angry frown on his face. His lips quickly transformed into a creepy grin after he pricked a vein in her forearm and emptied the contents of the syringe into her bloodstream.

“Why did you do that? What did you just put in me?”

“Oh Sarah,” he sighed, “I wish you would have taken our advice and left well enough alone. I’m tired of having to keep replacing employees when they decide to bark up the wrong tree. But that is alright because I think you will make quite a lovely edition to our family here.”

He let go of her arm, but Sarah found she could not get up. Her body felt unusually heavy and she found herself having to breathe harder.

“You’ll be glad to know we’ve made a great deal of progress over the past couple weeks, and your transformation should go much smoother than… well… smoother than the last ones went. You see, we’ve been having trouble…”

His voice faded in and out as she stopped paying attention to what he was saying. Her focus was instead shifting to what was happening to her body. A strange tingling sensation that had numbed her arm was not what concerned her; instead, it was the white hairs sprouting from her arm that was causing her alarm. Something also seemed wrong with her hand, but she couldn’t really tell what.

Then the pain came. It was not a sharp pain as much as it was a very awkward feeling underneath her skin in her hand, as if the bones were breaking, growing, and reforming. “There is no way, there is just no way this is happening,” she thought.

She could not believe what she was seeing. Surely her eyes were lying to her as the deformed paw she was looking at could not belong to her. Certainly her arm could not be disappearing under a thick coat of white fur. Her clothing felt tight. “There must be a rational explanation… he must have just given me some sort of powerful hallucinogen … but what were those creatures in those cages…. Nooo!”

There was no more thought… her face was on fire with pain like it was being torn out from her skull. Her skin felt as though it were being stretched and torn.

Instinct told her to get up, to run away. Must get up, get up, get out!

Turning over proved to be a massive chore, as it felt her blood had turned into cement. The feeling was everywhere now, and she could barely manage to even lift her tail.

Her feet ached and felt like her hand had before. The worst of the pain in her face seemed to subside, but she was really only involuntarily reacting to the pain and the new feelings as opposed to actually thinking about them.

Must run, must go, must get away?

The world around her all of a sudden became alive. The room was full of smells and scents that filled her nostrils. There was a smell of a man next to her. The ground felt cold to her paws. The tables had shiny toys on them. There were canine friends nearby.

Meanwhile, the scientist had stopped talking and watched his experiment unravel before his eyes. He was suddenly reminded why he had dedicated his life to becoming a scientist; why he had risked it all for this very moment. His experiment was going to be a success. One day they would give him a Nobel Prize if they didn’t take him away in handcuffs.

He put down the needle and searched in his pockets until he found the collar he was looking for. She was still in pain, but soon that would all be over.

Why hurt? Go away pain and die! Go away and die! Why hurt?

Snapping and cracking into place, her back straightened and her neck lengthened. Breathing became easier as her chest heaved and grew. Her legs arched and her thighs shrank, rendering her once upright stance nearly impossible to ever do again.

Clothes turned into strips of rags, and her shoes peeled off like banana skins. As the transformation made its final changes, the fur filled in all bare spots as if to completely conceal any bit of humanity she may have had left.

Pain went away and died! Wanna play, wanna play, wanna run and play! Wanna lick, wanna sniff, wanna run around and play!

Unlike the others, the doctor thought, he might actually be able to let her outside of this sterile lab and live with him at home to explore the fields and the forests by his house. Surely this is what she would have wanted, whether she had known so or not. He would treat her well.