The House in the Desert

Story by wolfied91 on SoFurry

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A commission for nuwisha55 over on FurAffinity about 5 college kids who end up stuck in the Nevada desert by pure bad luck and stumble upon an abandoned house looking for help. What they find there is not what they expect and will change their lives forever.


The car had broken down on the side of the road half an hour ago and the five teens had decided unanimously to try to walk to the nearest house to find somebody who might would be able to take a look at it or at least let them borrow the phone. In all honesty, though, there had been very little luck in finding anyone, especially out in the middle of the nowhere. The five teens had barely even found themselves ahead of schedule the whole trip, but this breakdown would certainly be the last problem they could afford. They'd never make it back to the campus in time for class on Monday at this rate.

Tommy sighed and rubbed at his temples, stopping on the side of the road as he did and shaking his head somewhat. "I can't keep going like this. We've been walking for hours and we haven't seen a single house." He said with a bit of a disgruntled growl in his throat. Truthfully, he was thirsty and exhausted. The rest of the group stopped to face him as he sat down on a rock and rubbed his head again. Heat exhaustion was getting to him. They had made the bad choice to cross the rest of Nevada through the deserted highway instead of taking the hours-long detour through Las Vegas (a collective sigh of disappointment had emanated from the group when they realized they had spent all their money in San Diego on booze and food and thus had none left for gambling away) and wound up here in the middle of nowhere. Tommy sighed and looked at the others. "At least somebody try their cell phone again..."

They had been trying every half an hour to get some help with their cell phones, and nobody had found signal out in the middle of this desert. And why should there be signal out here? It was obvious that nobody used this highway anymore; everyone went through Vegas. But being rebellious teens as they were, they'd done like Frost and taken the road less travelled by, so they were now too far from Vegas to turn back.

"I don't have anything on mine." Jack replied as he held up his iPhone, which was clearly dead at this point. Apparently the heat had fried the battery out, or so Jack had kept reminding everyone for the last two hours. He shoved it back in his shorts and then wiped his forehead with his arm a bit, but both were too sweaty to do much good.

"I left mine in the car, I think." Jenny said with a bit of a shrug as she turned out all of her pockets for the third time since somebody had asked for a working phone. Jenny clung to Jack's arm, but he pushed her off gently, panting and sweating from the long hike they had been making today. Normally he wouldn't push her away, but with sweat dripping off of him in waterfalls he felt she was just another thing to make him sweat even more.

Greg shook his head when he finished hanging up his phone. "I don't have anything but a beeping noise still." He looked at the phone and realized the battery was low, so he turned it off and stuffed it back into his pocket. As soon as he had finished doing that, all eyes went to the driver of the group, Lucky Sanchez, who frowned a bit at his phone as he held it up to the sun hoping for better signal that way. Of course there was no better luck up there than down below and he angrily threw the phone off into the desert on the side of the road. In the sound of the heat rising from the pavement and the sand none of them heard it hit the ground a few feet away. Greg thought in all honesty that they were never going to find a way off this desert highway, but throwing one's phone away was just a sure sign they were all screwed. "Jesus, Lucky, do you have to be so violent?"

"Amigo, if I don't get violent with the phone I'm gonna get violent with you." Lucky grimaced and then kept pushing forward down the road. Greg and Jack started after him, with Jenny taking a look at Tommy and frowning a little before helping him off the rock then hurrying to catch up with the other guys. The collective thought was that they were lost, but each one in his or her own mind had thought that this would be the end for them. Death was probably inevitable sooner or later. They didn't have any water or food and they'd been walking through a desert for only a couple of hours, but that's all they'd need to become severely dehydrated or tired from heat exhaustion.

Truthfully, they all were suffering from some form of delusions already, the heat's trickery already manifesting itself before their very eyes over the course of the afternoon. Most of them had been small, but all of them had involved water somehow, and had been hard to shake away. Fortunately, they had been able so far to do just that, but most of them wondered for how long.

Their answer came a few minutes later with a lone house sitting in the middle of what appeared to be an oasis nearby. The house was horrendous and rundown, but the oasis in the back yard had been tapped for a well and otherwise looked lush and brightly colorful compared to the sand that had covered the majority of either side of the road for hours. The house didn't have a car parked next to it or electrical lines leading to it. It seemed too real to be a mirage, but a lone house in the middle of a desert was more than suspicious enough for the five teens to stop and look at it for a while.

"I'm going in." Jenny replied quickly before hurrying with the last of her strength towards the front steps, which felt surprisingly real under her feet. Definitely not sand. Was she losing her mind or was this really a house in the middle of nowhere? She tapped on the door but it was already ajar and just opened more with her hand against it. Jack hurried up the stairs to the dilapidated porch next to her and put his hand to her shoulder. She shrugged him off and called into the house, "Hello! Anyone there?"

After no response she went to call again for anyone in the house, but Jack stopped her, "Baby, don't yell... we need to keep moving. There's nobody here-"

"Come in, please."

Jenny and Jack looked at each other with startled confusion. There were no other words, and in fact neither could see anyone inside the house near the door. It had been as soft as the wind, but it had been clear. Jenny's lower lip quivered a bit and her face screwed up in surprised shock.

"Come in, please."

The second time was no more powerful than the first, but it was soft and inviting, just like a cool breeze would feel like on a hot day. Jenny turned to the other three guys who weren't on the porch and waved them over. They all hurried towards Jack and Jenny and as soon as all five were on the porch, the door seemed to open a bit more on its own. She pushed her way through the front door a bit and stepped into the surprisingly chilly house. There were not many windows in the house, but somehow there was still enough light to make everything dimly visible in the downstairs hall. A wooden staircase walked up the right wall to a second floor while the hall continued to the other end of the house where a back porch was visible as well beyond a broken screen door that simply lay in front of the hole where it should have been.

The house was quiet, empty, and clearly outdated. There were no light switches on the wall, nor lights in the ceiling or on the walls. No electrical plug-ins. This house was off the grid, Lucky explained, so there was no reason to believe anyone actually lived here. It could just be a way station for people whose cars broke down on this highway.

"That's bullshit, I know I heard somebody." Jenny protested. Everyone looked at her with surprise, "Jack, you heard it too, didn't you?"

All eyes ticked from Jenny to Jack, and he laughed a bit nervously before rubbing sweat away from his face again. "Uh, yeah. We both heard somebody... Or at least I thought we did."

Tommy sighed a bit and looked around. Tommy felt bad that he was the only one in the group who was overweight, which made him feel like he was the only one hungry in the group, but he tried not to let anyone know this fact. Unfortunately for him, his stomach growled angrily and he started into the formal dining room that was directly to the left of them in the hall. Nobody stopped him; in fact, everyone had started to walk into the house, either calling for the voice to come back to them or just plainly searching the place for a phone to call for help, despite the desolated state of the house. Tommy, for the most part, forgot about his friends in his growing search for food, hoping that if there was a well out back that meant there was food in a fridge somewhere.

Just as he found his way into the old fashioned open-ended kitchen with ample countertop space, his eyes found the refrigerator quite by chance. He squinted in the dim light of the room, since the windows appeared to be boarded up in here for some odd reason. Tommy felt his gut kick him with hunger and he couldn't help but walk towards it, feeling the effects of hours on that dirt road walking catching up with him, making him tired and vulnerable to the idea that food could still exist in this old, dilapidated house. With no small amount of effort he pried open the refrigerator door, and once the dusty air from it exploded in his face, he slammed it shut again, coughing and wheezing a bit in the aftermath.

Unaware, his mind hazily pushed him to open cabinet after cabinet, even checking the stove for what could've been dinner. He hadn't even realized his standards were lowered to basically garbage and dust, but sure enough he was looking, even as his hair began to grey a bit and itch, slowly pulling into his head a bit as it shortened. The fingernails on his hands began to grow more stable inside his fingers as they sank into his thickening digits, the fingernails themselves growing longer and deadly sharp. Tommy couldn't have known about the changes taking place on him because he was too busy moping through the kitchen, a little disheartened that nothing was here to eat in this house. Not that he wanted anything besides fish for some reason, but he didn't care. Nothing here to eat, nothing at all. He shivered a bit at the thought of starving to death in this house.

He'd keep looking.

Jack and Jenny had been searching upstairs in what appeared to be the master bedroom; the room was wall-papered with old, torn, fading strips of vinyl wallpaper. The bed was a thick, four-post canopy bed, sans canopy thanks to the moths that hungrily at it in a corner of the bed along with the sheets that remained. Jenny had supposed that if the voice had been an actual person they wouldn't be living like the king this bed suggested it could have once held. She was more concerned that everyone thought she was lying to herself and to them, that the voice was all inside her head and not anywhere else.

Jack, for the most part, had tried to reassure her that everything would be okay, but it wasn't quite that simple. She had begun to get on his nerves about it, but now she was silent and it gave him a gentle reprieve. He was only with her to screw her anyways. She didn't know it, but Jack was often as horny as any college pervert could be.

The thought of doing Jenny on the bed wasn't very exciting at first until he started to think about Jenny herself as she did a striptease in his head, getting him hard in his pants even despite the disgustingly dirty bedroom. He grunted a little in his throat and tried to pass it off as him trying to clear his throat. She heard him anyways, and he felt her stinging eyes looking at him.

"What?" She asked a bit harshly.

"What do you mean, 'What?' Just clearing my throat, babe." He lied a bit as he couldn't help but think about topping her again just by talking with her. He wanted to be on top of her, or even holding her from underneath. He wasn't quite aware of fact that his hard-on was growing longer slowly down his pants leg, thickening a little but not too much yet. He rubbed his head as he started to suddenly come down with a massive headache too.

"You really didn't hear that voice, did you?" She asked a little sadly as she took a step towards him, unable to say anything else for a second as she quivered her lower lip. "You think I'm making it up?"

"No, Jenny. God you're so insecure sometimes. I wish you'd grow up and just realize that not everything is your fault. If you heard something, that's all on you. I wouldn't give a shit if you heard a marching band outside-"

Jenny's face screwed up angrily in rage suddenly and she felt her body tensing, muscles thickening as she readied herself to pounce on him in a heartbeat if he continued. Jack wisely did not. Her gaze stayed sharp and almost leonine with her piercing eyes that hadn't had slits for pupils just a second ago. "You're an asshole, Jack. I know you just want me for my body, but Christ you don't have to say it like that." She sneered at him and took a step towards him.

For some reason, Jack's mind only got turned on more. A woman that took charge of sex just turned him on for some reason, and it never had been that way before today. He backed up a step and then fell onto the surprisingly sturdy bed as she kept advancing faster, his arousal becoming heavily evident, almost as evident as the hooves his hands were fusing together to form or the antlers sprouting from his forehead. In a surrealistic way, he could feel his body changing all over, but he didn't care. He was watching Jenny change too, her face pushing out into a short, thick maw as it jutted from her face, but he didn't care about that either. Right now, he was listening to her as she also became unknowingly aroused.

"And I can't believe you bet Greg and Lucky that you could sleep with me in Vegas. I'm so glad I was sick the whole time so that you had to pay them up." She continued to tear into him verbally, but while her voice was growing deeper and growling, her attitude was getting more sultry by the second, even her stalking towards him become more of a swagger to accentuate her body's changes, a tail ripping from behind and swishing behind her in flicking motions as it grew in spurts in synch with her slowing swagger. She crawled onto the bed, dropping her whole argument suddenly as she did.

With both of their weights increasing from the changes, Jack was getting taller and more muscled while she just thickened all over with newfound strength, the bed rocked and creaked a little, then collapsed to the floor as it fell out from the frame. Neither of them cared, their arousal was growing more lusty as they grew closer, static electricity and bolts of love sparking from their changing physiques. When Jenny reached in for a kiss, she pulled out a blunt, long muzzle from Jack's lips, his nose going with it and deforming into a bit of a flat top to the maw, becoming seamless to the mouth that had been below it. He let out a developing bellow of arousal as his pants were shredded by her claws, but he couldn't stop her. She was the predator, he was her prey.

And that was how he wanted it.

Greg mumbled to himself as he shook his head looking out of the living room. He had been the only one who hadn't split up to go somewhere, opting to stay in the room closest to the door if ever something happened to the rest of them. This place was like a haunted house, after all, and he wanted nothing more than to just leave and keep walking down the road, but he would at least wait for everyone else.

He lit a cigarette as he waited, dragging back on it as he relished the flavor of the menthol and then exhaling the smoke thickly into the air. Nobody lived here, that was obvious, so why not enjoy a smoke while his friends stupidly thought the opposite? He could laugh at them when they were done and came back empty-handed. He chuckled a bit to himself even as the smoke around him began to grow closer and stick to him, prickling up his hair all over his body and turning it jet black. He didn't notice; like the rest he was oblivious to the idea that he was changing. What he did notice, however, was the thumping and bumping against the ceiling above him, causing some of the ceiling's popcorn-style covering to chunk off and hit the ground in front of him. He didn't even react to it as he just kept smoking on his cigarette which started to smell a bit differently, getting a lot stronger and more rancid as he wrinkled his extending nose at it.

He pulled the cigarette from his mouth and looked at it, frowning as he tried to figure out why it had started to smell and immediately noticed it was a cigar at this point, thicker and dark in its paper wrapping. How had that happened? He suddenly went to stand, not realizing his body was thickening in its mass the whole time he'd been sitting, and found he was a bit stuck in the chair. He looked down and his eyes widened with a bit of terror as he realized he was growing fat as well, his clothes barely containing his growing form as he blinked, only able to watch the growth continue.

The black hair he'd had began to thicken as he watched it slowly becoming like a fur coat on him, short and black, but silky smooth at the same time. Greg moaned a bit in distress as he pulled himself out of the chair, and a thick, fluffy black tail grew from the motion, the tip of it stuck in the chair as he tried to tug it out. He'd never heard of something like this happening, so he thought it must be a dream, feeling his body growing fatter, lazier, and smellier at the same time, but the more that he thought it was a dream, the more he realized he wanted it to become a reality. He'd never seen a slob before, but he was quickly finding that was what he wanted to be; lazy, always smoking a cigar, and loving it. He didn't want anything else. He pulled his tail from the chair but sat back down in it and propped his feet up on the decades-old coffee table before replacing the cigar in his maw, letting the changes wash over him more, the white double-stripe of fur running down his back from tip of head to tip of tail and he couldn't help but grin.

A slob skunk, that'd be interesting to become. He shook his head, clearing the last of his human thoughts as he scratched lazily at the massive furry gut. He grinned big and then he heard a noise from somewhere that should have startled him, but he didn't even move a muscle.

"Stay, please." Had this been the voice Jenny had mentioned hearing earlier? Why did it matter? He shook the ideas from his head, letting himself become dumb to anything but his belly and his cigar.

Of course he'd stay.

All alone in the basement of the house, Lucky Sanchez looked around and found that this place was packed with wines that had to be at least a hundred years old. There were no bottles, of course, it was all in the thick wooden casks that were bigger than the car they'd showed up in San Diego with. The one that was down the dirt road at least a few miles. He sighed and muttered something to himself before he kept looking around.

"Hello?" He called out, hoping that somebody was down here. Of all the rooms in the house, the basement was the neatest and the most clearly used. It was spotless, the floor a marble or concrete, it was too shiny to be one and too evenly-toned to be the other. The casks were all well-kept, as evidenced by the locks holding them closed. The first thing Lucky had noticed entering the house was its dilapidated state, its rundown feel, but the first thing he'd noticed in the basement was how spotless it was. He started to walk around in the basement again, searching the seemingly endless rows of wine storage units as he called out repeatedly for somebody if there was somebody. Maybe it was just a stop on a smuggling ring? That would make sense since the rest of the house was abandoned and not used at all. He couldn't help but think that he was being watched as he started to look around once more.

"Is anyone here? Please, we need help." Lucky called into the cavernous basement. He took out his cell phone, hoping against hope he would have signal. No dice. He was starting to get annoyed again, his frustrations becoming a bit unbearable after a while and he shouted angrily, "Yo, anyone here!"

A heavy hand touched his shoulder suddenly and he spun around on his heels and came face to face with a massively built polar bear whose head brushed the very ceiling of the basement. Lucky yelped out in fear and fell back on his ass as he stumbled away. The thickly muscled polar bear looked radically different from anything he had even thought was realistically possible. The smile on its face was unmistakable, though.

"Hey Lucky. You have to try the food here." it growled deeply at him. Lucky's eyes were wide with fear and he realized without even knowing it that he was staring at Tommy somehow. There was no denying the grin and the voice, despite the changes, as belonging to his friend. Scrambling off the cold, slick floor proved a bit difficult but with a bit of strength he managed and he hurried out of the basement as quickly as he could, which took some work since he had to first find the exit back upstairs. Tommy growled a little less happily as he called after him, "You have to stay, Lucky! It wants you to!"

He didn't hear it. Lucky pushed his way up the stairs, bouncing up them three at a time as his feet carried him upwards. He burst into the living room where Greg the slobby skunk now sat rubbing his gut with deep affection. Lucky let out a groan of horror as he saw the thick smoke from the skunk's cigar plume into the air. He turned to Lucky and let out a menacing grin.

"Lucky, come on and sit down with me. Have a cigar, let's stay a while." He was relieved to hear that Greg's voice hadn't changed any with his change, but the rest of him sure had. Lucky thought that he'd pass on this and tried to not panic as he decided to go upstairs to find Jack and Jenny. Somebody had to have stayed unchanged.

Staying seated in his chair, Greg shrugged and lazily called after Lucky as he went up the stairs, "We have to stay, man. Calm down!"

Lucky didn't abide by that idea. He didn't want to calm down, he wanted to get the hell out of there. He bounded up the steps to the upper part of the house and as he did he considered what he'd seen, which was a massively built polar bear and a fat, smoking skunk. How the hell either were possible was beyond his realm of reality, his train of thought, and certainly not part of his agenda to join his friends. He burst upstairs as he heard angry growls and bellows from upstairs in one of the rooms off to the right of the staircase. He already knew what he would find judging from the sounds but he had to hope. There was always hope.

He dashed to the room, and he nearly screamed when he saw a rather busty lioness sitting atop a large moose as it thrust up into her hard and fast. The two of them seemed to be in the midst of rough sex but they both turned immediately to face him, the sex between them instantly over, even if the arousal wasn't.

"Hi, Lucky." came the breathy voice of the lioness, who's gaze predatorily fixated on his figure standing breathless in the doorway. "Join us, won't you?"

"Oh, hell no." Lucky spoke rapidly over and over, "Oh, fuck no. This can't be happening."

"It isn't just happening," The moose grunted a bit as he gave a single thrust up into the lioness, making her roar out in pleasure again, and they both smiled unnatural smiles at him, "If we stay we'll never have to worry about anything again. Say you'll stay, Lucky. The house takes good care of us if we stay."

"The fuck is wrong with you, amigo?" Lucky exclaimed breathlessly as he wished he hadn't even bothered now to ask, "You've changed into a monster! I'm getting out of here! Adios amigos!" Turning to run he started for the stairs again but he was shocked to see the polar bear and the skunk that had been Tommy and Greg, respectively, standing in the way, blocking him entirely from view. "Get away from me!" He shouted angrily as he started to back up a bit towards the round window at the end of the hall behind him. He'd done dangerous things before, but he wouldn't mind leaping out of a window if it meant avoiding becoming a monster-

"A monster?" The skunk snorted as he laughed, "Maybe you should look in the mirror. I think you're the monster here with your huge feet and long ears."

Lucky began to protest this but when he looked down he realized that Greg was right. Somehow in the chaos he'd begun to change as well, his feet huge and burst from his shoes. When he felt up to feel his ears he could find the longer ears ending in points towards the top of his head instead of where they should've been. He had been changing this whole time and he wasn't even aware. Part of his mind tried to ease him of the panic, to tell him that everything would be okay. But it wasn't, screamed the other part. He didn't want to become a monster like these things that had once been his friends.

"Stay and you'll be happy." They all chimed as all four of them began to approach him from all sides, coming together slowly but surely as they pressed him to the window at the wall. They knew he wouldn't jump, he wanted to stay, and he would be with them forever as their kangaroo friend.

Lucky proved them wrong. He turned suddenly and leapt from the window in a flash. As he fell he changed rapidly, the tawny brown fur growing over his whole body in an instant as he fell. The entire body structure he'd spent years working on, all the muscles, repositioned themselves in new and unnatural ways, becoming thicker and stronger, but meant for something inhuman. It was his new body, and it was done changing before he even hit the ground. When he did finally land, he landed feet-first on his new, large hind-paws that immediately bounced him forward for the street as he kept bouncing and hopping away from the house. He had to get away from that house.

"Stay with us Lucky. It isn't safe out there." The voices called from the house, and indeed he felt a want to do so, but he couldn't. He didn't want to believe it was happening. If he kept running, he'd wake up. He had to wake up from this nightmare.

He kept bounding down the road, naked and fully changed, a kangaroo in the Nevada desert. He didn't stop for a while, his stamina heavily increased for bouncing and hopping around, but as he kept going he thought to himself that he was safer with each push forward. In the near-perfect dark of the desert night, stars brilliantly showing even the Milky Way galaxy, he saw a bright light approaching from the distance up ahead in the road. He leapt in front of it at the last second as it became blindingly close. It was a car, and he was saved. He had to be saved, surely they'd stop for him!

George and Martha were on their way back from Reno visiting their good-for-nothing nephew who'd found himself in jail again for dealing drugs in town. They had been arguing on whether or not to post his bail for the majority of the day, and driving down the back roads of the Nevada desert was George's way of getting revenge on his bitch of a wife for not posting his nephew's bail. He wasn't a bad kid, just he had no smarts. There was no reason to let him rot in jail when you could just put him in rehab-

Thunk!

The tires squealed to a halt in the old '79 Plymouth in the middle of the desert. He'd been so invested in his thoughts about his nephew that he hadn't seen anything in the road until it was too late. He stopped the car, though, and told Martha with no sense of calmness to stay in the car. He jumped out of the driver's seat and ran back behind the car where a mangled beast lay dead in the road. Something this big didn't seem like it'd be a good desert animal, but maybe it was somebody's dog? He bent down and in the starry night examined the battered remains. It wasn't dead, just unconscious; he could hear it breathing still, albeit a bit raggedly.

This dog or whatever it was had to have belonged to somebody on this street because there was no town close enough for the creature to have survived the scorching desert to reach all the way out here by himself. He picked it up and tossed it into the back of the Plymouth before climbing back into the seat. He'd find the owner of the dog, or whatever it was, before he got to Las Vegas, or he'd turn it over to the pound. He drove down the road again, despite Martha's screaming and bitching to let the fucking thing just rot in the road.

After an hour or so of driving, the Plymouth saw the house in the darkness as it drew closer up ahead and George knew this house had to be the one the animal had come from. He parked the Plymouth, much to Martha's chagrin, and lugged the creature out of the backseat, dragging it up to the front door and knocking on it briskly.

"Hello? Is anyone home? I found your dog!" George barked out as he kept banging on the door. For a while, there was no answer. George knocked on the door again, but this time it opened almost immediately.

"Dog, you say?" There was a smell of cigar smoke and something far more rancid, but George couldn't see who was there, only the burning end of the cigar in the darkened night.

George nodded firmly and pointed to the massive creature beneath him on the porch. "Saw him out by the road just wandering around. Damn dog ran in front of my car and I think I hit it, but it isn't dead. Keep your pets on a leash next time." He sighed and grumbled a bit angrily as he turned to go.

"Don't worry, sir, I'll be sure to tie him down next time. Thanks for bringing him back." The voice gruffly replied, then apparently at the dog it said, "Lucky, you should've just stayed inside. It's much safer in here."

George didn't care what the damn situation was, he had to get to Vegas before midnight so he could get to the bank's ATM and get enough money for his nephew's bail. As he climbed back into his Plymouth, he turned to face Martha, "Martha, I swear. Some people just need to be more responsible with their pets."

"Well, dear, that's why you have kids instead. People don't feel remorse when a pet dies, but they get all kinds of sad when a kid is killed. They put that in the news-" She was powdering her face and making the whole situation sound like George had caused an issue.

George tightened his hands against the steering wheel, not seeing the thick black claws he had growing from them or noticing his nose turning black at the tip as it pushed out slowly with his mouth. He snarled at Martha as they drove, and it didn't take her very long to realize who the Alpha wolf was in this car. George would be damned if she ever forgot who the Alpha wolf was from now on.

The Plymouth darted down the road to Las Vegas, leaving the darkened house behind.