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He would say that God had given him a tail to keep the flies off, but that he would sooner have had no tail and no flies. _________ George Orwell, Animal Farm

Anyone who has travelled that part of I-4 from Tampa to Orlando - a well-worn trip, it's the quickest way to get to Disney World, after all - has heard the same thing, the same joke, the same comment, in any number of ways: there ain't nuthin out there. This is one of the truisms of the American life: along that stretch of highway it becomes uncharacteristically lonesome, empty, and the discussion becomes why this is so, how odd it is in mechanized, brutalized Florida that suddenly the land goes flat, treed - and green. After the Summer rains... There are two seasons in Florida: dry, and rainy. This is not unusual for some parts of the American South but it is most pronounced in Florida, it makes the culture and the temperament of its people fundamentally different - it's one theory why so much weirdness goes on in Florida, because everyone who lives there has become dazed into a tropical stupor, what Odysseus must have experienced with the Eaters of the Lotus. Maybe. The only thing that can be said for certain is that with the Summer rains that color - the green - becomes almost blinding, a green that hurts the eye, a green that should not exist on Earth, that surpasses the visible spectrum of what humans know to be green...a green that lives, that slavers, that watches you as you watch it, from the safety of a moving car. But as for that part of I-4: perhaps it is too swampy, too sandy, or too expensive - or, maybe, because the Disney Company owns far more than it lets on and that the landgrab they pulled in the 1960's was only the tip of an awful iceberg. One's best guess is one's best guess. There probably is some naturalistic explanation why nothing gets built out there, even if there isn't one for why the dark trees become so impenetrable, furtively seeming to stare at the desperate shine of the headlights on the highway. A long time ago - how long is a long time ago, anyhow? - there were rumors that all kinds of strange things went on in that part of Florida, stranger than the exaggerated bullshit that often plagues the American perception of its peninsular state. There's the persistent story that keeps getting passed around the Internet about how the I-4, as part of the Eisenhower Interstate System, was built over leylines, and if you do a certain ritual a certain way while driving - some nonsense about whiskey, a drop of blood and anointing oil and water from a fountain (found whilst traveling!) mixed in a shot glass and thrown out the window - you'll end up seeing stores by the side of the road that have no earthly business being there, selling items you won't find anywhere else and where the proprietor can be paid only in metal coin. There are ghost cars that come out from the shoulder of the road, and drive for miles following you, and then their headlights go out, and they'd disappear, as if they were never there at all - earnest young men and women at gas stations ask to be driven somewhere, but when they got there, vanish into nothing, right there in the passenger seat... ...or, so they say. There was another story, too, that something truly horrid had been discovered at Disney World by a group of employees, and they had all gone absolutely mad, and kidnapped their supervisor and drove to where now you can see that huge metal pylon with the Mickey Mouse ears, locked her in the car and set it on fire and joined hands to watch her burn alive inside of it - all, each of them, in their mascot costumes, Mickey and Minnie and Goofy and Donald. There exists - so ends the tale - a picture of this, a photograph they took together, black and white, sometime in the late 1970's from the looks of it, and in the background is the car, burning, a great cloud of smoke rising from it and into the Florida sky...somehow Disney got hold of this information, and they hushed the whole thing up, because it would shed terrible light on something truly heinous they meant to keep hidden. All that's left, so they say - is the picture. This is, of course, all hearsay and rumor - the stuff that makes good conversation for a road trip. A road trip, say - from Tampa to Orlando. Some years ago there was a story that gripped Tampa Bay all throughout the late Fall and early Winter - some kid named Oliver had murdered his best friend and then burnt the house down the two of them shared together and then escaped, vanished, despite a manhunt that was documented daily by a local press famished for something interesting that wasn't Rick Scott-related. It was a sensational story and a perfect scandal, completely burying another case similar to it, the disappearance of a twenty-three year old Lakeland man, also without a trace, named Gilbert King. The Oliver story was far more sensational, far more spectacular, involved actual murder and terrified a whole community...Gilbert King was your average (if it could be called that) Florida missing person. From July to August there was mild interest by the media, with little snippets in the papers thereafter, but after the murder of Brett Hampton by Cameron Oliver in Rocky Creek there was simply no room. Gilbert King disappeared and was never heard from again, and there are no real details to put together how or why this happened - one day he was, the next he was not. They found his van, in a culvert off a backroad, the windshield smashed and the airbag deployed, but they never found him, or the people that had called him out there in the first place. There were enormous and disturbing questions that the public and the press never had a chance to explore - but perhaps that's for the best. For all they or anyone else knows, Gilbert King was a cable repairman who had a sister, parents, a probably decent future. He had a life, and then one day, that life, from the face of the Earth, seemed to be no more. Even though, in fact, he still lives. After the Summer rains... The day it happened, raindrops glinted in Gilbert' eyes and he wiped them with the back of his arm, using the other to clean the moisture off of the screen of his phone which he put in his pocket - he wasn't really sure where he was, the GPS told him this was the place, the address that was given to him to come out here and fix this man's cable. He was dressed smartly and professionally for his job, black work pants and work boots, a hat with the flashy blue-and-gold stripes and star logo on it that he had left in his van that day -on the simple rugged button-down, right breast, was embroidered his name: Gilbert. The office had warned him this would be really out of the way: off the I-4, off an exit, through some town, then down a backroad and then another_backroad. Apparently they hadn't heard much from this customer since 2002 or thereabouts - a long time to be satisfied with your cable and your Internet. Nearby to the turn-off to find the customer's house he had passed a handsome farm with a large, antique-looking stable - but it did not have a sign out front and looked, although seemingly well-cared for, like it was not being used. He had trained his eyes on it until it was out of sight - something about it did not sit well with him, how there were no horses or cows in a large open meadow, for in Florida it's a well-known fact that you can let cows graze on property and pay less taxes, but there were...three _donkeys instead, just standing there, standing there and seeming to watch him, their heads moving in unison as he passed by, observing him, never letting him out of his sight until he finally drove away... Now that he was here, there was a faint late morning drizzle around him that did not cast up a mist, but which clung to the air, immobile with no wind...immersed in the rank, amniotic smell of damp Earth. It all gave, with the absent birdsong and the muted insect-noises, where Gilbert was - at the end of a long driveway leading to a large, hurricane-proof brick house that looked unusually old for the area - a sense of eeriness that he did not like. It was though he was - with this, and with the farm he saw, the oddly-staring donkeys, the number of cars that he had passed by dropping off to zero - it was though he was really, actually alone out here. This is the paradox of that part of Florida: you are surrounded by civilization, you are in the midst of one of the most densely populated parts of North America...and yet you often find yourself dangerously, lethally alone. The driveway was paved with brick like the streets of Ybor and it was lined on either side by a dense cluster of trees - what kind Gilbert couldn't tell, but they were old, they were big, they definitely had been there a long time. The property was hewn in by this forest, the lawn which seemed like it hadn't been mowed in a few weeks a flat island amidst the green... ...green. Too green. Weirdly green. Gilbert tried to shake the feeling - this feeling and all the rest that he had, creeping on him now - as he retrieved his toolbox from the back of his van and set off for the customer that had not, for whatever reason, sent out a service request since Bush was still president. He had a job to do and he meant to do it, no time to think about silly stuff now. He was a handsome fellow, with a stubble beard and brownish hair that was trimmed neatly to look professional, tall enough to command a presence in the room but with a gentle aspect to his demeanor that still made him approachable. This was his chosen career and he enjoyed it enough to not want to quit - there were vague dreams, he thought to himself as he neared the front door, about opening a brewery, or doing something wild like moving to Ybor where the streets are made of brick like this house's walkway, and working for a cigar-factory, becoming a torcedor, his passion for a good beer or a fine cigar were just hobbies now, but maybe one day, if he got rich or daring enough... Gilbert shook his head - just a daydream, little else. He pressed his finger to the doorbell, a small plastic button framed in tarnished brass, and his hand dropped to his side as he shivered against a chill that came to him even in the humid, muggy early Florida July - the whole thing was an instinctual action that dulled the realization no sound had been made at all, so that a short length passed before he raised an eyebrow and pressed it again. Again, nothing. "Thing must be broken," he muttered to himself as he set his toolbox down - he rapped with his knuckles against the large, white door, paint peeling in places, but done in some old style that gave it a stately appeal. Still nothing. It was then Gilbert looked up and about him at the house he stood before - he had been ambiently aware the house needed a bit of touching-up, but now up close it actually seemed like it was an early state of dilapidation, as though no one had bothered with home improvement in several years. "Good Lord," Gilbert wondered aloud - but again he shook his head, trying to concentrate, and again he knocked, louder, more forceful this time. He waited - he knocked again. The same result. From somewhere, the only sound, aside from the nigh-imperceptible patter of tiny rain droplets, was the distant roll of far-off thunder. Tired of standing in Summer drizzle, getting wet, waiting on something to happen, Gilbert acted on a rare impulse - he grasped the brass door handle and pushed. To his surprise - the door opened. It creaked on its hinges, a high whine that echoed into the grand parlor it led into - darklit, barely illumed through the large bay windows by the overcast sky above him. Squinting in the half-darkness he stepped over the threshold cautiously, toolbox in hand. It was almost cliché in its appearance: to his immediate left was a faded landscape painting, a tasteful North Florida scene with Spanish moss hanging from oak trees, hung in a massive carved wooden frame, near the landing of a flight of stairs which had a banister so thick you could actually slide down it. To his right, overlooked by a mirror that was starting to corrode was a vast open room, dotted with furniture - a chair, a sofa, another chair, what looked like a baby grand piano against the wall between the two spacious windows, a coffee table on which a small box set - but all covered in white sheets, so that they looked like awaiting ghosts, paused in their haunting rounds, embarrassed to be seen. The smell was immediate and unmistakable, a mustiness that hung in the room, air that had not circulated, although it was not as dusty as Gilbert thought it should have been - there was something latent, too, an acridity underneath it all, and Gilbert came to recognize it as being stale cigar smoke from poor ventilation. The whole effect was that of a stereotypical haunted house, something from a cartoon, a children's Halloween special, and Gilbert wanted to chuckle at it, and prepare for the inevitable fake-ghoul to pop out and scare him and his co-workers would have a good laugh...but he couldn't. He was given the creeping sensation this was no joke, there was no humor or set-up in this, that this was deliberate by a series of odd coincidences. It was too still, too shadowy... Gilbert didn't like it in here. And he was alone. "This is the part where I end up on a meat hook, right?" He said it as a small joke to himself, trying to make himself feel better - and then, louder, calling out: "Hello? Gilbert King, US Cable, customer service check - anyone home?" No answer - but the groans of the wood beneath his feet. The smell of the place was getting to him: that cloud of ghastly must, a kind of morbid stuffiness - an old house that nobody had taken care of for...how long? He paused to scan his surroundings more closely: Everything was neat and orderly for an abandoned house - if this place was abandoned, because he detected a faint...tension, perhaps, an expectation, as if the owners had meant to come back, that this was temporary, there was no sadness or melancholy or aching like there is in lonely, previously occupied spaces. Gilbert was no poet, but he still had the instinct even if he didn't have the words: This was still a home. A home with no one in it. He reached for a nearby switch and flicked it - nothing happened. Again, again, click-flick-flick-click, but - nothing. Gilbert exhaled, wrinkling his nose as a fresh waft of dank must reached his nose - had this been just some kind of bored practical joke? "Is the customer home?" he called out again. And then, despite the absurdity of the question: "If this is a bad time, we can always reschedule!" He wasn't sure what he had been expecting - but no one answered him, his voice had been absorbed into the room. "What the Hell...?" he murmured. "Who calls in a service order and isn't even home?" He frowned, setting his toolbox down by the doorway and taking a few steps forward - trying to make sense of his surroundings. Tired of standing, and still residually damp from the outside, he sat down, gingerly, into one of the covered chairs, the sheet that covered it folding in to accommodate his body. He lifted his arm to look below and study it - no displaced dust had come up from it, which meant that the sheet had been put there far more recently than he had at first believed. He shook his head, feeling discomfited and dissatisfied...this job was getting stranger by the minute. Even though stranger things - not to say stranger places - had happened in his experience, none of them had fully prepared him for what looked to be a set-piece for a haunted house in the middle of nowhere, with no one home and looking like no one having been home for however long it was. He thought of getting his phone out and calling the office to let them know what exactly was going on - or, rather, not going on - and his fingers made it to the top of his pocket... ...when his eyes rested on the box on the covered coffee table. It was strictly against all kinds of protocol - there's a stereotype about handymen stealing and disrupting things that, Gilbert knew, was definitely_grounded in reality - but a peculiar curiosity seized him, and he lifted his eye to smell the musty air once more. There, again, it was: the addictively foul smell of the burnt cigar, at the very end of a deep breath through his nostrils. "I wonder..." he murmured again - reaching for the box. It was a plain cardboard box, nothing at all special about it, a creamy ivory color, with the top bigger than the bottom like what Valentine's chocolates come in. Slowly, cautiously - there was a fleeting notion, a thread from the earlier suspicion this was all some practical joke, that something would fly out at him if he opened it - he lifted the lid. "Huh." Just as he thought, the box was full of cigars - large and evidently rolled by a skillful _torcedor, although unmarked, with no seal or label. "Hmm..." The box itself was unmarked, with no indication what brand of tobacco it was, nor who made it, nor where it came from - originally it seemed to have held twelve, but three were missing, for a total of nine still there. Holding the box still in hand, Gilbert, with a raised eyebrow, considered the evidence: perhaps the absent owner of the house, whoever he or she happened to be, was importing tobacco from somewhere, rolling their own, a dry run for starting a new cigar outfit in central Florida - they had departed for the moment, leaving this in their haste. The connoisseur in him made the curiosity from earlier become irresistible - he had to know what sort of tobacco would be so precious and rare that it be hand-rolled on site. He hesitated, looking around him once more, leaning back to see out the window that there was no one coming - and then, shrugging: "Well, no harm no foul..." Acting from muscle memory, he reached into his pocket to obtain his lighter, an expensive flip-top butane-burner his sister had gotten him for Christmas last year, before taking a cigar from the box which he replaced back on the table - on instinct, held it fast to his nose, inhaling deeply, shutting his eyes to concentrate on the smell...his eyes opened again, pleasantly surprised. "Cubans!" he exclaimed. He had smelt it only one other time - he remembered it well. At a friend's housewarming party two years before, he and a group of other men had gone outside to the patio where they were promised a surprise: De Gaspar's, Hecho en Cuba, strictly illegal and absolutely delicious...a victimless underworld crime committed in secrecy in the Orlando suburbs. Here, the smell was identical - Gilbert's olfactory memory had always impressed his friends - and there was no mistaking it: these were genuine Cubans, premium quality contraband. His eyes lit up - how careless of the owners of the house, wherever they were, to have left it here, probably in an unmarked box to escape attention from someone who didn't know what they were looking for. "Wait a second..." he said to himself, a smile coming to his face. "Now it makes sense." The house was a cover. Whoever owned it, whoever feigned to live in it, was using it to roll cigars, imported Cuban tobacco - probably to sell it on the black market...or, Gilbert wondered, to simply enjoy them in their own time and in their own privacy. But it left him with a dilemma: there was clearly no one home, someone had called him out here by what was seeming with greater certainty by the minute to have been a mistake, and here he had, an unprecedented opportunity, a chance to sample a cigar made from arguably the finest tobacco in the world. Gilbert mentally weighed his options, as he weighed the cigar in his fingers - the lighter had been, after all, in his lap, at the ready. A roll of thunder from outside - closer this time, the storm would be near him soon and it would be wise to stay here, at least for a little while. And so he smiled, a little sardonic, to himself: "Welp, call me all the way out here for nothing - don't mind if I do." Into his fingers at the customary downward angle popped the cigar, into his hand came the lighter - the top flipped, the flame brightened to life, and then with the tobacco lit evenly, Gilbert made the requisite staccato of puffs to start his smoke. He leaned back in the chair - an armchair, probably an antique though it was still covered by the white cotton sheet and he couldn't really tell - puffing, slower now, on the absconded cigar. Gilbert had felt the familiar buzz from the nicotine before, but now, staring straight ahead, out of one of the bay windows where the gloomy Summer's day oozed into the room, he felt... different. That precious odor - that immediate, sharp, pungency of the lit cigar, the burning tobacco - was blown into a cloud that filled his nose, and soon filled his head...as it reached his lungs, he was consumed by a pleasurable lassitude, his mind melting into a sweet lethargy, and he grunted out a long, satisfied sigh. How long was Gilbert in that chair, puffing the cigar, savoring the smell, the flavor, forgetting utterly he was still working, and that he had stolen this from some unseen owner? ...he did not care. The thought occurred to him and it passed from with a flippant little laugh. He felt a stirring, a sudden fullness, in his groin - he fumbled with his belt and his zipper, his head still a dazed cloud of apathy, far past caring that he was still on the clock. His hand dove into his underwear and pressed against his penis, down, further down, to his balls, giving them a healthy, fulfilling scratch. But consciousness - or what passed for consciousness - returned to him in small waves, as he realized, his hand at his testicles, his legs spread in a grotesque display of slothful masculinity, that they felt... ...bigger. A passing spell of panic - the lit cigar dropped from his mouth, to the floor, still burning, as he cupped his testicles in his hand, pulling them out of his underwear, wild-eyed, to check, starting to shake his head in disbelief. The tobacco must have been tainted, he thought to himself - yes, this was just a hallucination, something in the cigar was acting on his brain, this wasn't real, still really bad, but at least it wasn't-- He threw his head back, his whole groin enveloped in a delight that bedeviled him, it washed away his anxiety but it thickened the fuzziness, the growing delirium. The flesh of his fingers could feel the weight, could sense, with his eyes closed, how his testicles swelled, and then bloated, an unyielding pressure that grew, bigger, still yet bigger, until... ...his eyes flew open, a groan of pain escaping him. The back of his hands could feel his penis begin to warm, from the inside, a heat that built until it was too hot to touch - Gilbert threw his hands back, a clumsy motion made clumsier when he struck himself in the face. He made a surprised noise - "Gyah!" - losing his balance, falling out of the chair, thudding to the floor. The heat from his penis dissipated into a dull iciness that tingled all his body's nerves at once, his very flesh become a noxious pinprick, every inch of skin vexed with the insidious sensation of being numb, and yet still sensitive, a purgatory from which he could not escape. His balls, still normal-looking despite their swollen size, became darker - he could not see it, his eyes shut too tight against enfeebled paralysis - brown, then black, toughening until they resembled a fine leather, hanging off of him freakishly, wobbling, jostling, with each of his blind thrashings there on the hardwood. There was a pulling, tugging sensation centered inside his penis, a dull ache, a turgescence that made it grow, bigger, longer, fatter - but subtly, very subtly, almost as though there was some inner mechanism to keep the differences furtive to the naked eye. Not that Gilbert could see it - still awash as he was in his multitude of transient feelings. His ears felt as though a thousand ants were marching across their delicate surface, and Gilbert clawed uselessly at them, as they grew, longer, longer, more pointed, the skin toughening, like his testicles, into a leather...blooming with soft, flattened fur. And now in his undone pants, Gilbert felt something else - a sharp, hyperfocused needling, starting as an irritating, incessant itch, just above his anus...his eyes flew open as it became painful, then excruciating, and then unbearable, desperately flipping over and tearing down his pants to expose the spot to the air, feeling around in vain - it waxed, already damaged, into a focused pinprick, before its dreadful release, a shooting-out, skin and blood dripping in viscera, as his tailbone grew, and then grew again, and though he could not see it the bone became enrobed with flesh, rough hide, plumed on the end. He screamed. An animal scream. A bray. The smell of the still-burning cigar wafted into his nostrils, which flared, flared too large, because now his nose was too large, it was growing, moving, cartilage multiplying at a rate that defied medical logic - a deformity on his face, slow and hideous in tandem with his warped, spasmodic screams that quavered in his human timbre but second by second sounded more and more...animal. At last his nose and face pushed out, out, still larger with the bone, nerves, sinew, all attached to it...Gilbert was in agony that defied mere words, that rang out from his darkening lips in peal after peal of pain, his skin stiffening uncomfortably until it became hide, and washed over with mass-sprout of fur from new follicles. His head - now unrecognizable, wholly bestial, the head of a donkey - jerked up, his spine snapping, curving, body mass reaching a critical weight that tore open his shirt down the middle, buttons scattering to the hardwood. And then and he heard it, he heard it in his enlarged, twitching, swiveling ears, the twisting, the breaking, the reshaping - of his own skeleton, the upright posture of his former human self degraded, debased, inch by inch, into animal, quadruped...jackass. His brain pounded with the notion, mind afire, an extreme compulsion he did not understand and yet understood at once: a beast of burden, a jackass, a donkey - his skin was hide, and the hide was furry, the color of overcast skies, the thundercrash that came nearby and the flash of lightning that blinked in the windows, it was all orchestra and terror to him, because this was him, this was what he was becoming, inexorably, no longer human, but equine. The pulling, tugging sensation in the shaft of his penis renewed and returned, and as he continued to bray, crashing blindly, desperately about the room, slipping awkwardly out of his useless pants and flinging the tatters of his shirt everywhere - he could feel, full-bore, his penis stretch, and lengthen, and lengthen again, a floppy, rubbery mass, larger and larger, thickening, toughening, like the skin on his belly and his arms...he could not see it, but the uniformly pink human flesh was becoming mottled, black, the color and pattern of a barnyard animal, swelling in the middle, graced with the characteristic ring. The rest of his body rippled into his newfound mutation, the immutable chain reaction caused by some arcane taint in the tobacco that he had smoked - fingers fusing, a sting of protest their last sense to the world before becoming one, solid, keratinized hoof, his feet still in his boots shuffling out to follow, the toes merging, the flesh dying, hardening, to become all nail, the way of the domestic equid. Gilbert tried to cry out, he tried to call for help, but he was alone, alone in this forsaken house where no one would hear him, miles from anyone who could aid him - he tried to cry out but all that came forth, all the sound he make, all he could do, was the dissonant, hiccupping, ear-shattering hee-haw_of the donkey. Hearing his own voice - his new, changed voice - gave him pause, as much pause as he was allowed...he heard his lungs, stronger and larger in his barrel chest, the result of invisible changes that had progressed apace inside him, he heard them inflate, deflate, powerful, fearsome in its superiority to its human parallel. And his heart, the same - beating in his chest, sending new blood to every part of his novel form... ...he smelled the cigar, still smoldering, his donkey nose sensitive to it, every fine detail to the scent of tobacco scorched inside its roll. His ears parted, twitching, as he laid motionless, on his side, the cigar too far for him to reach with his legs - his hooves. But still...still it was too much. The smell was too much. His new _power as a beast was too much. Gilbert felt his penis, a slab of meat far larger, like the rest of him, than anything he could dream of as human - Gilbert felt his penis stiffen, stiffen hard. His body was subsumed with pleasure yet again - mere seconds passed before he felt drowned in impossible feelings of sexual contentment, intrusive thoughts in his already malforming brain of cocks like his, long and massive and flaring at the end, enormous and powerful and virile and fertile, that they could make armies of little foals... Animal instincts took over - his back hoof came to his turgid penis and stroked it, gently, meeting the hot, aroused flesh to send sparks of ecstasy at his confused brain. He blinked, inhaling deep from the nearby cigar, and with deliberate, rapid strokes kept using his back hoof to slide against the phallus, faster, faster, it felt so good, his new penis, his bigger_penis, and the thoughts of even bigger ones, owned by donkeys larger than he, letting it fall out and walk around, naked and unadorned, free, finally _free-- Gilbert thought no longer: his back hoof kicked in a frenzy, and he felt the tip of his cock flare, hard, his lips peeled back in a high-pitched whinnying bray, and in passing seconds his engorged testicles churned mightily, delivering their bounty to his shaft where, in a tremendous geyser-fountain, it poured out, spewing, a gush of thick, yellowish, gelatinous cum, again and again - there was so much of it, a disastrous blast, it was as though the orgasm would last a heavenly eternity, his flared cock the symbol of a new life of raw, jealous power, all to the shrieking tune of his hee-haw, haaaw... At last, at long last, the violent paroxysm that had rocked him subsided. His tongue protruded from his muzzle, tasting the floor, eyes open and wild. There in his afterglow, his human brain ruined into a state of near-intelligence from which he would never recover, blissful and euphoric but confused - it was shattered, and shattered immediately, with a sound above his head. His ears pivoted, a new instinct, to focus on the source of the noise: Creak, creak - wooden planks above him giving way to the weight of feet, footfalls in a pattern, one after the other after the other - creak,creak, and then a hollow footstep, another, closer, closer, until... ...there was someone coming down the steps. Gilbert found himself scrambling to get up from where he was, but he stumbled, forward, and with another braying cry, weaker this time, slipped forward to the floor - he was far, far too unused to using his new legs, all four of them, from only his previous two. He had nowhere to go - his heart raced, he shook, unable to truly fathom what was happening. But then he heard a voice: "What is all this noise? I go to take a rest and--" It was cool, clipped, the voice of a Cuban patrician, with just a hint of an educated Spaniard accent behind it - an old accent, out of place in the Twenty-First Century, and it climaxed with a boisterous laugh. "So it's you! Answered the decoy, Gilbert--" Gilbert meekly turned, he tried to answer - he could understand the man's words, the bare phonemes that comprised them, but he could not fully comprehend them, the logic necessary to do so burnt away with his transformation. There at the landing stood a tall, handsome-looking middle-aged gentlemen, with a fitted white button-down that was tucked into khakis and undone at the top to give him a relaxed, effortless demeanour - his hair was ruffled and his eyes seemed tired, as though awoken, as he had just explained, from a nap. "My, my! Already taken the bait, have we?" Gilbert tilted his head, letting out a confused snuff - the man, strangely, seemed to understand him. "And so the change is complete, also...hmm..." The man circled around to stand before him, where he folded his arms. "My name - ah, I suppose introductions are in order - my name is Ignacio de Gaspar - my ancestor was the famous pirate - you know, Gasparilla - or rather..." He smirked. "...so I am told. Perhaps you have enjoyed my family's cigars? Before now, they could be enjoyed - in private - by the rich and the wealthy." Again with the smirk, more cruel this time. "As it should be, no?" He took a step forward. "But what you smoked - was a special cigar, never for the public's enjoyment. A very special one indeed. You see my father's house here does not offer much in the way of - anything, really. But it is in the family and so it shall stay, along with his last wishes that the ancient family business of burro-breeding continue--" He stopped, his dark eyes glancing down to the gooey pile of yellowish semen on the floorboards. "I see - what a mess you've made here!" Gilbert tried to look away, swinging his tail in what he realized was shame - but the man patted his flank, chuckling, leaning down, one eye closed, as though to focus. "Most impressive yield, however - most of you boys that come out here never manage that much on your first try." He craned his neck to gander at Gilbert's still-floppy penis, hanging lewdly beneath him. "Ah - yes indeed, you will truly make a fine stud." He laughed - a cruel, sophisticated sound - and Gilbert lowered his head, feeling his body quiver in fresh fear. "Now - Gilbert, wasn't it? Let us go - just a short trip. You can meet the rest of your herd." He felt the man's hand press against his neck and he was led this way, by his oddly maneless neck that marked his origins as not having equine parentage but something else, something captured, a donkey descended from nothing because he was a human descended into a donkey - he was led by his neck, gently, firmly, out a side door and into an awaiting trailer that had been hidden behind the brick façade of the house, and then up a ramp, all while unused to his hooves and wobbly in his walk but he made it, the man saw to that. The man, Ignacio, turned and left him in the trailer, Gilbert waiting, terrified still, unsure how to act - he turned and looked at him in the eye, and there was a kindness as well as a cruelty there. "A short trip," he repeated. "You will like it there..." He squinted at him, then chuckled. "I can see you are a afraid from that look in your eyes..." He smiled, devilishly charming. "Do not be. You will enjoy it - I promise." The trailer door shut - Gilbert saw light only through the slit windows. A car engine was started, there was a hesitant pull as the antique truck lurched forward, Gilbert's trailer in tow - Gilbert clopped over to the slit-windows, straining to see where he was, his half-human mind alert but, still, barely comprehending. Ignacio was right - just a short trip, up the road, and then there was the farm he had passed - he barely remembered it now, but there it was, the farm his human self had noticed, and how odd it was that there were no people there, just donkeys...but now, the handsome svelte Cuban man was there and so was he, Gilbert, another donkey, together. The door of the trailer was opened and he widened his curious donkey eyes to the scene - the vast field, rainy, moist, the smell of the damp soil and the rank herbaceousness of manure coming to him as a clarion, an unmistakable call, joined with a final, skyrending roll of Florida thunder...this was his new home. There were the other three donkeys that he had seen as he had driven by - they would be his brothers, he knew, he somehow knew, they would be his family, and now that Gilbert was upclose to them and not driving from the road he could finally see why: they, as he, did not have manes. His simple equine heart sang at the thought. They nodded at him - he nodded back. It was so green out here, as he clopped forward, his hooves still unsteady and his gait still wobbly but his eyes drank it, in wonder - innocent wonder, the wonder of an animal that does not understand its surroundings - at the green, the green of the trees and of the grass, a radiant green, a green from the antediluvian epochs of Florida, from before Florida was Florida at all, but from origins of the Earth itself... After the Summer rains... There are many strange things that happen in Florida - in that part of Florida, especially. Ain't nuthin out there - that's what they say.