Null Suit Adventures: Frysco
By Musuko

The inspection hatch scraped open and two watery, feeble eyes stared into the cell. I stared back.
	“This one,” said a quavering voice. The steel door rattled as the latch was unlocked. It rolled to the side and hit the edge of the runners with a bang. For the first time in weeks I felt the full brightness of the sun, streaming in through the dirty window opposite. It seared my eyes, but I forced them to remain open, staring down the elderly wolf standing in the doorway.
	“Yes, this one will do quite nicely.” He stepped back from the doorway and waved a hand towards me. In the light I could see he wore a long white coat, very different from that of the guards.
	“Are you sure?” A guard stepped into view, holding his prod low and towards me. “This one’s a lot of trouble.”
	“Quite sure. In fact, that makes him even more perfect for my purposes. Is he violent?”
	“Extremely.”
	“Wilful too, I imagine? Yes, he’ll do very nicely indeed. Unchain him.”
	“I would advise against that, sir. It is safest if he remains in the chains at all time.”
	“Oh very well. Wheel him out then.”
	The guard snapped his fingers and three more guards joined him. They arranged themselves around me, two taking hold of my restraint trolley, with the other two standing close with their prods at the ready. I kept my eyes on the elderly wolf. He looked like a doctor, but he wasn’t the prison doctor. He was new, and I wondered if he knew what he was getting into by letting me out of my cell. I peeled my beak lips back into a grin that was just about visible at the edges of my muzzle cage.
	“Frightful looking, isn’t he?” said the elderly wolf.
	“Yes sir.”
	“Is he the only prisoner like him, or are there more?”
	“Only one we have at the moment, sir. He’s a gryphon sir. Very rare, very nasty.”
	“If you get any more like him, be sure to inform me right away.” The wolf grinned, showing a mouth full of worn and missing teeth. “My, he’s a big beast.”
	“Stand clear, sir.”
	The pushed the trolley out into the corridor and turned me to the left. This perked my attention, as they had never taken me to the left before. I counted the number of cell doors we passed and took in every detail I could see through the grimy windows. The map I held in my head of the prison grew just a little bit more. Every scrap of information was vital. It would be useful sooner or later.
	We turned a corner, coming to a stop in front of a steel door unlike the others: this one was clean and freshly-painted. A red light blinked on a small plastic box on the wall, and the elderly wolf held a card up to it. The light changed to green and the door rolled open with none of the noisy, rusty protest of the others. On the card I saw the name Cartock. Doctor Lesley Cartock. I watched where he put the card, back into a pocket on the inside of his white coat.
	They wheeled me into a large, barrel-ceilinged room that looked nothing like the rest of the prison. It didn’t even look like it belonged in this country. While everything else was cheap and dirty and old, this room was all white paint and gleaming surgical steel. I could see reflections in the tiles on the floor. I couldn’t even recognise half of the devices and machines positioned neatly on the counters, but those that I could recognise I knew to be cutting edge technology, and definitely not local. I looked back at the Doctor, my assessment changing, and I started to see him in a different light; there was a sharp hardness underneath the grey fur and the sagging skin. And though his eyes were milky and deteriorated, they were fixed with a hard stare that told me their owner was always thinking, always calculating.
	This old man, I thought, was dangerous.
	“Over here,” said Doctor Cartock, pointing to a clear space at one end of the room, between a pair of tall steel animal cages. They spun me around to face the room and rolled me back until the trolley bumped the wall. I checked for exits: apart from the steel door we had come through, there seemed to be no other way out. No doors, no windows, just a pair of vents on the wall, each far too small to squeeze myself through.
	“You four may leave now,” said the doctor. The guards glanced at each other.
	“He’s supposed to be under guard at all times when he’s out of his cell.”
	“You can wait outside the door. He won’t be of any danger, I assure you.”
	The way he looked at me when he said that brought an involuntary chill to my lower back. It had been a while since I felt that. He had a hunter’s gaze. I wondered how he had ended up as a doctor.
	“We will be outside, then,” said the guard, motioning for the rest to follow. The door rolled shut and the lock clicked and beeped. I was locked inside with the doctor. I looked at his coat and thought through the various options I could think of for getting my hands on that key card.
	The doctor pulled a pair of latex gloves from his pocket, flicking them with an unnecessary flourish. He tugged them onto his hands, flexing his fingers, his claws pressing the latex into near transparency. “I take it those are functional?” he asked, nodding towards the wings strapped tightly and securely against my back. He knew I couldn’t answer, not through the feed gag and the muzzle cage. I suppose I could have grunted, or managed a slight nod, but I wasn’t about to entertain his questions.
	“Let’s begin,” he said, flexing his fingers and smiling. I watched his every movement as he stepped over to a cabinet, sliding out a drawer and reaching inside. I tugged against my wrist shackles. The left one was loose, and had been for a few days now. Not loose enough for me to pull free. But I had been toying with the idea of pulling hard enough to break the bones in my hand and maybe, just maybe, getting it free. Then, if I had enough mobility left in my fingers, and if I hadn’t blacked out from the pain, I could...
	“First, a small amount of sedation is required,” said the doctor, holding up a syringe and a small bottle, drawing pale pink liquid from one to the other. I started to tug in earnest with my left arm. Agony shot light lightening up to my shoulder, and I bit down hard on my feed gag, waiting for the crunch of breaking bone.
	“Hold still now,” he said. I growled, but he didn’t react. The needle slid into my upper arm and he depressed the plunger.
	My left arm went limp, as did the rest of me. I felt myself slump against the frame of my restraint trolley. My breath let out with a soft groan. I couldn’t move.
	“There we go,” said the doctor. “I think these will be unnecessary now.”
	He started to unlock the chains and shackles that held me secure to the trolley. I tried to will my body to respond, to rear up and club him to death and make a run for the door and freedom beyond. But nothing responded, nothing but my eyes and my breathing and my voice. I stayed silent, not wanting to betray my alarm by making noises. Maybe the drug would wear off soon. Maybe he hadn’t got the dose right and I could surprise him.
	Trouble was coming. I could see it and I could smell it. A medicinal scent haunted the air and stung my nose. The doctor unscrewed the lid on a small metal canister, bringing it up to my beak. I tried to pull away, but my body lay limp in the frame of the trolley, unchained now but useless and trapped all the same. My breath gurgled in my throat. I couldn’t breathe. He brought the canister to my lips and tilted it. The smell became overpowering. My eyes watered. The taste hit my tongue in the next second, like the bastard child of diesel and formaldehyde. I lashed out with my eyes, wrenching them to the extremes of my sockets, searching for escape like a trapped animal. The liquid trickled down my slack throat, burning every inch of the way. I imagined it melting right through my stomach, to drip and pool on the floor below, leaving me a ruined husk. And still I couldn’t breathe. My heartbeat throbbed in my head. I closed my eyes.
	“There, now,” he said, calm and casual, as if he weren’t in the process of killing me. “We just need to give that a few seconds.”
	I had not expected to be executed. I had picked this dirty little country for exactly that reason, because whatever monstrosities occurred under this gloriously “democratic” dictatorship, capital punishment was not one of them. This doctor was acting outside of the law. He would be caught and punished, as I had been. They would lock him away in miserable squalor and leave him to die. He would suffer as I was suffering. It was small comfort, but I grasped hold of it. I opened my eyes again to glare at him, to see him in my last moments as the caustic chemical melted away my insides and drained my life away from him. I caught one glimpse of him, smiling calmly, before the blackness of my eyelids fell down across my vision and hid him for good.
	I couldn’t breathe...
	But, the pain of my aching lungs had gone.
	I felt movement, shifting sensations, things rubbing against my skin and then slipping away. I felt something cold and rigid slide right through my chest, a steel bar dissecting me. My arms and my knees hit the smooth surface of the tiles below, and then spread wider, distinctions blurring. My belly touched the floor. I felt my face slide down the shallow canyon of grouting, feeling every bump and molecule of its grain. I opened my mouth to cry out, able to move at last, but felt only the gurgle of a liquid throat.
	And then I could see, but it was not my eyes that were seeing: I saw the room above me like the grey shadows of smoke seen through frosted glass. I saw him move, leaning over me, a swimming shadow that blurred into an indistinct blob.
	“This is stage one,” he said. The voice sounded both distant and close at the same time. I felt it as a wave of tickling vibration all across my body. What felt like my stomach lurched at the distressing sensation of being spread like molten mercury into a flat pool. My mind spun with the impossibility of the feeling; my body was still registering its various limbs and organs and senses, but they were jumbled up into a confused mess.
	“And I’m saying this for your benefit, understand? You have been broken down into a liquid sludge. I know you can hear and see me. I know you can feel and smell. You are an amoeba. A protozoa. A primordial ooze of artificial stem cells, held together with a carbon lattice of nanotechnological entities. You are a null. You are nothing. A canvas to be shaped. Do you understand?”
	I could do nothing to respond. My beak felt like it was merged with my ankles and my wings and my hips. When I tried to move any part of me, I felt the whole of my body undulate in a way that made me feel sick.
	“We will move on to the next stage in a moment. For now, I would like to demonstrate to you a few of the unique properties of your present state. Please do pay attention, as it is important that you keep these things in mind. I don’t want you to forget the lessons I am about to give you. Now...”
	The shadow moved, swelling larger. Something pressed down into me, touching every part of my body, a heavy weight crushing into me. I felt ridges and hard corners. I tasted rubber and dirt, as if my tongue were pressed firmly under a sole of a boot.
	And then my mind adjusted, my body’s new layout snapping into place. I was a puddle, a pool of goo, and he had just stood his boot into me. I writhed in disgust, fighting the taste, fighting the pressure. I had no grip against the tiles beneath me, and my uncoordinated spasms fought against themselves, my memories of muscle groups improperly linking up with how they now lay.
	“You cannot be damaged, but you can be hurt, and you can be tortured. Do you understand?”
	He ground his boot harder onto me, twisting it from side to side, like he was stubbing out a cigarette. My body flattened thin under his sole and swelled up around its edges, trying to claw at him, trying to relieve the pressure. It was a crushing pain across my whole body, with parts of me flaring up in greater agony. It was a boot on my face, a boot on my throat, a boot on my cock. If I could talk, I would have begged. I could take conventional torture, but not this. This was too weird, too new. I had no defence against this.
	“You do not want to feel the effects of fire, do you understand?”
	I understood alright. I wanted to scream at him that I understood. He kept grinding his boot into me until, finally, mercifully, he lifted it away.
	“The second lesson is the opposite of the first. You are aware of the principle of carrot and stick? To properly train, you punish disobedience and improper actions with pain and discomfort, and you reward obedience with pleasure. You have already felt a taste of the stick. Now let me show you the carrot...”
	He did something, I don’t know what exactly. Two points of tingling pressure speared down into me. Simultaneously it felt like licking raw lemon, scrubbing my naked skin with the bristles of a toothbrush, inhaling menthol, and having a slickly lubed hand grip the head of my cock almost uncomfortably tightly and swirling it around in a circle. And this combined sensation felt like it was happening to every part of my body at once. I would have screamed if I could, but not in pain or distress: this would be a scream of pure, unimaginable ecstasy. It only lasted for a moment, and when it was gone I felt an ache like a ten day hunger. I needed more of that amazing feeling. I needed it badly. And if he had asked me to do something, I would have done it without hesitation, all to earn another moment of that pleasure.
	“The effects of electrical current on the null modified body is rather pleasant, wouldn’t you agree? If you behave as I wish you to behave, you will be treated to more of that. If you misbehave...” The shadow of his foot lifted above me, and I shivered, ripples moving across my surface. “You understand. Very good. Now, phase two. Please wait there a moment.”
	I felt a low hum vibrate up through the floor and into my body, like the bass beat of a distant concert, like the rumble of a truck’s engine. Tickling fingers of sensation stroked up the sides of my puddled form, squeezing inwards, like a thousand tiny hands pressing me, moulding me, compressing me up into a rounded pillar a foot and a half tall.
       “There are shapes available, more useful in their effect than in their abilities. You won’t understand this right away, but be patient.”
	It was easier for me to close my eyes than to watch the confusing distortion of the body beneath me. I had no time to wonder why my eyelids still seemed to work even while they were who knows where inside the goo ball of my body. With them closed, it was easier to visualise myself. I felt my body as it always was before, laid out in its proper pattern of limbs. But now the proportions were all askew. My arms and legs had shrunk down to nubs smaller than my little finger, and perhaps even smaller still. My body had contracted, hips bumping up against my chest, but had lengthened out too, into a long tube. But by far the strangest contortion was of my tongue, which felt like it had swelled out to nearly the length of my body, laying down my front from head to tapered tail, forming a blanket across my entire front half.
	Gravity tugged at me, suddenly lurching me sideways. I was standing up on my tail, but now the moulding fingers dissipated, and I toppled forwards, landing on my huge tongue with a wet squelch. I could feel the slime beneath it, between my tongue and the tiles, and I could taste the dirt and muck seeping in through the slime. My body shuddered. This was  just like the taste of the doctor’s boot, but concentrated now solely onto my tongue. I writhed helplessly, trying to get away from it, but that only slid me along to a fresh patch of floor. The tiles had looked so clean! But my tongue knew otherwise. I stared up at his shadow. I was a worm. I was...I was...
	“This form resembles the common or garden slug,” said the doctor. “Albeit somewhat larger. Your mass has to be preserved, of course. I can compress you or expand you to a degree, but it all has to go somewhere. So you are a four foot long, rather fat slug. The slime you feel underneath you is a water-based lubrication exuded from your tongue. It dries and evaporates away rather quickly, thankfully, so there’s little waste left on the floor. That does tend to leave you rather drained, however. You may find yourself growing hungry. But don’t worry, there’s plenty of food.”
	I saw his shadow move, opening cabinets, slamming drawers. He held something large, then tipped it on end. Dirt cascaded down. The earthy smell of it flooded my nose. I watched his shadow move around. I think he was spreading the dirt with his boot, grinding it into the tiles.
	“This is a test, just a test, nothing more,” he said. “But still, I hope you perform well. Imagine you are a prisoner...haha...and you are being punished for a minor offence. You have been altered into your present form and placed on floor cleaning duty in this room. As you can see, there is rather a lot of dirt on the floor. Those prisoners, always tracking in dirt from the yard. Not that you would know about that, of course, coming from the full isolation wing. Now, that tongue of yours and its lubrication fluid are excellent cleansing agents, soaking up any dead organic matter and a limited amount of inorganic material it comes into contact with: namely, dirt.
	“And how do we ensure that you perform your required duty? Well, that should sort itself out naturally. You are free to act as you wish, within your limitations of course. I will observe. I’m sure you will do well.”
	I heard the scrape of a chair, saw the doctor perch himself onto it. I marshalled what remained of my composure and looked up at him with what I hoped was a glare. But in my current form, I had no idea what expression I was actually pulling off, if any. My eyes seemed to have particular positions now, standing up on six inch stalks above the rounded bulk of my body. I looked down and felt a wave of queasiness. I decided not to do that again. I resolved to stay absolutely still. If he wanted me to squish about the place and clean the floor, I intended to leave him disappointed. I was not going to be a guinea pig for him!
	So I waited, sitting in a pool of my strange lubrication drool. I felt it evaporate from the edges of my tongue, always renewed by more. I kept my gaze fixed on the doctor, and he watched me in return. After a while, he turned away and occupied himself with something out of view on the worktop. I felt a small surge of hope. Was this a partial success, running down his patience with me? If I kept on stubbornly remaining motionless, perhaps I could drive him to greater frustration. He’d lash out at me with punishments, sure, but I knew I could take them, now that I had some understanding of what he’d done to me. And sooner or later he’d run out of punishments and patience altogether, and he’d change me back and they’d put me back in my cell, and this time I’d be there with an expanded knowledge of the layout of the prison. I would, in effect, come out of this in profit, figuratively speaking.
	I started to feel hungry, a pang of discomfort in the pit of my belly. I ignored it.
	In the six or so months I had been locked up so far, I had spent a lot of time thinking about the brothels and dens of iniquity that this dirty little country had in plentiful supply. There were always plenty of warm, wet holes willing to offer themselves up to someone like me. When you had money, you had sex. And when you had a body as exotic as mine, you found that sometimes you didn’t even need the money. It was to these places that my thoughts drifted to now. Those six months had been very long, and with most of it spent chained to the restraint trolley I had built up a healthy desire to be back at the brothels.
	My stomach’s discomfort worsened into aching pangs of hunger. But still I held my resolve firm. I was tough. I was strong. I had survived their solitary confinement and their heavy chains and their foul gruel. I had endured long nights of aching longing, with my naked cock hard against my stomach, dripping precum onto their cruel restraints. If I could survive that, then I could survive this.
	A spasm convulsed me. The hunger had now become a spear buried in my gut, and some cruel bastard was twisting it. I shimmied on the floor, moving a couple of inches, feeling the strange sensation of the tiles sliding over the flat of my tongue. I touched a line of grouting that my drool hadn’t reached. The taste of the tiny grains of dirt trapped in the groove reached my tongue, sending signals shooting through my psyche. It tasted as foul as ever, like licking the dirt in a gutter.
	And yet...
	My tongue drooled as if I had just tasted a steak. It twisted the blade in my gut even harder, and I knew I was beaten: I needed to eat, and this dirt was all that was available. I looked up at the doctor, seeing his back turned to me. But as I started to squelch forwards, heading towards the dirt smeared onto the floor, he turned and smiled down at me, and scribbled a note on a pad. A wave of shamed heat passed through me, a full body blush. My tongue reached the edge of the smear and the disgusting taste assaulted me. But I pushed on, sliding my slimy body over the fullness of the smear, soaking it all up into my tongue, sating the aching pain in my gut, feeding myself on filthy, disgusting dirt, like the lowest creature on earth, like a slug.
	“That was quicker than I expected,” said the doctor. “This is very promising.”
	He reached down towards me and I shied away from his hand. I felt like a pet being patronised after performing some kind of trick. I wanted to growl at him, to snap at his hand, to bite and hurt him, but all I could do was squirm in a wet slick of my own drool, a limbless, helpless rubbery slug.
	“I think that deserves a treat, don’t you?”
	I raised my eye stalks to focus more closely on him. I strained to see if I could make out electrical wires in his hand. This was followed by a sudden pang of shame. I shouldn’t be eager for reward, I knew that. But still...that sensation...
	“Here,” he said, chuckling. He upended another container, cascading dry dirt onto the floor and onto me. “Enjoy!”
	I tried to snarl. I tried to resist. I wanted to hurt him. But what I did was slime in a slow circle around his feet, eating up the new dirt, tasting all of it on my huge tongue, hating every moment of it, but craving it as the most satisfying food possible. I saw him making more notes, chuckling to himself, the sadistic bastard.
	“Alright now, you can have a real reward.”
	He tossed a nine volt battery to the floor. It bounced on the tiles and skittered to a stop in front of my face...or at least, the end of my body that was most face-like, by virtue of being where my eyes were. I stared at it for a moment, trying to make out what it was in my shadowy, dim vision. I squelched closer, tilted my eye stalks forward. And when I realised, I shivered with excitement, and I knew what to do: I slid forwards and right over the battery, embedding it in the fleshy softness of my tongue belly. My gooey drool closed a circuit with the battery’s contacts, and the tingling goodness surged into my body. I lay there, trembling in pleasure, eyes closed, forgetting where I was for long, blessed minutes, until the battery ran flat. And even then I stayed on top of it, rolling back and forth, trying to eke out the last whispers of current from it. I was an addict, and the electricity was my drug, and it had only taken two exposures to get me like this.
	Slowly, in the aftermath of the pleasure, rising like a hangover, I became aware of another ache: the dull, throbbing need of a cock that’s stayed hard for too long. I couldn’t really feel where my cock was in this new body: it felt like it was buried somewhere deep in the middle, far from any outside contact. And it ached. It ached like no lustful craving ever had. I wanted and needed to stick it in something, to rut and fuck and enjoy. But in this body there was no hope of that. I looked back up at the doctor, hopeful for something new, at least some other distraction from this discomfort, but he had turned away again, making lengthy notes on his pad.
	“I must say, I am rather surprised by how easily you succumbed. It is almost a disappointment to be too successful too early. Where is the joy in discovery if there is no room for improvement?”
	He swivelled on his stool and leaned down towards me. I could see his eyes only faintly in the shadow of his face.
	“Perhaps I need to move backwards somewhat. Ah, yes, that will be good. I have seen that this form works wonderfully, converting even the most dangerous of criminals into a harmless, helpful slug. But what do we do once the floors are cleaned and our boots spotless? You’ll be just as useless as you were sitting chained in your cells. That is no improvement at all. Safer, yes, marginally. But not more useful. Let’s try a different form, shall we?”
	I saw this time what he used to change me: a laptop sat on the counter, wired into a rounded metallic device studded with lights. He tapped in commands, and the lights grew brighter. I felt the tingling fingers again, and felt my body begin to tear apart. The room around me shrank, dropping downwards as my head rose upwards. My vision grew clearer, sharper, but stayed in washed out tones that were nearly colourless. My tongue shrank, my limbs grew, and I felt the cool, washed tiles against my hands and feet. The sickness of dysmorphia overturned my stomach again. My head felt like it was attached wrongly, at the back rather than the base. I was on all fours, with my body horizontal, but not on my knees: my legs were as short as my arms. When I looked down, I saw stubby paws instead of hands. And when I looked back up, I saw the mirror that the doctor was holding in front of me.
	I was a dog. A German Shepherd. Perfectly formed from top to toe, indistinguishable from the real thing in all ways except for the furless black gloss of my rubbery skin. The resemblance must have extended deep inside, because when I cried out in surprise, the sound that emerged from me was a short, sharp bark.
	“You would make a fine guard dog,” he said. “With the proper training, of course. Perhaps this will be a better test of this technology’s control abilities. You have the capable body of a dog. Will you also be trainable to have a capable mind?”
	He set the mirror aside and walked to a cabinet at the other side of the room. I saw my chance: while his back was turned, I reared up and placed my front paws on the edge of the counter in front of the laptop. If I could figure out how to select the right command, I could change myself back and get free of this place.
	I let out a cry of despair that became a whine: the words on the laptop’s screen were unreadable. The letters swam and blurred in confusing, unrecognisable shapes. What language was this? Did he really read like this?
	“Bad dog,” he said with amusement in his voice. He was looking at me. I dropped down from the counter. “How were you thinking to use that, hmm? You don’t have any fingers, and that form suppresses your ability to read. In fact, if I choose to, I could make you unable to understand spoken words. I could dumb down your mind until your mind even worked like a dog, incapable of forming complex thoughts. Don’t tempt me, prisoner. Not when I have a nice gift for you.”
	He held up a black fabric collar that I had seen before worn by the guard dogs patrolling the perimeter of the prison with their masters. At its centre was a black plastic box with a small winking red light on it. I knew what it was, and I knew that I should normally fear it, but in this new body I craved what it could do for me, and I walked over towards the doctor, claws clicking on the tiles.
	“Ah, you know what it is then. Very good!”
	He reached to fit the collar around my neck, and I realised I could bite his hand. I could probably tear into him with these strong, canine teeth, and kill him outright. He would scream, and the guards outside would hear and come in, but if I timed it right I could be up and running past them or at them as soon as they opened the door. How would they like their throats ripped out by a prisoner-turned-dog? I opened my mouth and lunged. But instead of my teeth making contact with his wrist, I crumpled to the ground as limp as a doll, my muzzle landing hard against the tiles.
	“Bad dog,” he said, shaking his head. “You can’t attack me, and you can’t attack the guards. I told you that this technology can alter your mind. You think that means it can’t also read your thoughts and intentions? You’re being monitored, dog. Monitored and recorded. Now lift your head.”
	I felt like I had been kicked in the chest, all the wind knocked out of me by the fall to the floor. I wheezed as I raised my head, and let him clip the collar snugly around my neck.
	“Normally, this collar would be used for punishment. But, for you, it’ll be a reward. Be obedient, and you’ll get a lovely shock. Understand?”
	I moved to nod my head, but my neck locked stiff and unresponsive. I frowned...or, at least, I tried to: my brow wouldn’t move either. I started to panic, a whimper growing in my throat. I couldn’t even make a panicked expression; my face stayed locked in a dumb, unreadable doggy stupor.
	“Now now, no need to whimper, dog. The shock is a good thing. You like it. Bark for me, dog. What’s the phrase the guards use? Speak, boy! Speak!”
	I grunted out a bark. He thumbed a small remote in his hand, and I dropped my head and shuddered, feeling the ecstasy ripple through me. It lasted only a moment, but it was a moment of bliss. Between my hind legs I felt my canine maleness sliding free from my sheath, and though I tried to will it to stop, it wasn’t in the mood to listen to me. Soon I was sporting an eager doggy hardon, and nothing I thought about was making it go away.
	“Sit, boy,” he said, his thumb over the button. I hesitated. I didn’t want him to see...
	“I said, sit.”
	I did as I was told. The shame burned behind my eyes, but my face stayed dumb. I saw him look down and smile. He pressed the button, and as I trembled in pleasure he chuckled. “It looks like you like your new collar, hmm? Well, you’ll have some time to get used to it.”
	He swivelled away from me, going back to his pad to make more notes. He kept his thumb pressed to the button, and I rode the wave of its effect for minutes. I was panting when he finally stopped; panting, and scrabbling my paws against the tiles, thinking only about finding something to hump. I barely noticed when he clipped the leash onto my collar, and I followed like a zombie as he led me from the room, out past the guards and down the corridor. I had no thoughts for the shame I should have felt with my stiff cock on show for all to see while I crawled along as a dog. All I could think about was the need, biting and clawing and gnawing at me, a need that I had no way to fulfil, pleasure becoming a torture without the chance of relief.
	The smell of unwashed canine fur dragged me back to awareness. I recoiled from it, overpowered, and received a hard tug of the leash in response.
	“Heel,” snapped the doctor.
	He led me into a long, low room with kennel cages set into the brickwork along one wall. The cages were empty, but from the smell I could tell that this is where the guard dogs ate, slept and went to the bathroom. Each cage had straw on the floor, and some of it wasn’t very clean. I started to whimper, realising the doctor’s intentions.
	“You may not be aware of the time, but I am,” said the doctor. “It’s time to me to go home to my family, to enjoy a lovely dinner of steak and stew. That means I have to find a place to put you. Seeing as you’re a dog, what better place to put you than with the other dogs? It should be a good test. The guards will look after you. I will ensure that they are fully versed in who and what you are.”
	He grinned, and I shrank back away from him. The threat implied in that...
	“In you go,” he said, yanking me in front of an open cage. The stink of canine musk inside was overpowering, and only the threat of his boot on my face edged me forwards into it. In the back corner was a small plastic dish with dry kibble in it. My food, I presumed. I shuffled around to face the front just as he closed the barred door in my face.
	“Remember, you can’t be damaged, but you can be hurt. You’ll want to keep that in mind when it comes to obeying the guards.”
	He held the collar’s remote up and, with a meaningful look towards me, set it down on a table in the corner by the door. I raised a paw and clawed at the bars, whimpering. But it didn’t do anything to stop him; a moment later he had gone, and I was stuck, locked away like the dog I evidently was.
	Still, I thought, it was better than being a slug. The smell was horrible, but the straw at least was comfortable, and this body wasn’t as weird as the other. I lay down on my side, curled up slightly, and tried not to think about the aching hardness pressed against my belly. I debated trying to hump the floor, or the bars, but didn’t much fancy the thought of scraping sharp straw against it, or trying my luck with the flaked, rusted paintwork of the bars. And besides, I wasn’t a slave to my lusts. I would be strong!
	I heard the door open and jerked my head up, hopeful that the doctor had returned. But it wasn’t the doctor: I saw two guards enter, leading a German Shepherd guard dog on a leash. The guards were talking to each other. I couldn’t make out what they were saying, and they didn’t seem to have noticed me. The dog had, though. He stared straight at me, ears up and forward, tail wagging, and barked. The guards turned to look, and I saw one smiling.
	“Well,” he said, loud enough for me to hear. “Looks like the old guy wasn’t bullshitting after all. You owe me five Drekins, Immanuel,”
	The other guard, Immanuel I assumed, grunted. “Great, now he knows my name, Benn.”
	“Like it matters. He’s not a normal prisoner. Not any more. And now he knows mine too, eh? Let’s be scared together. Come on, I want to take a look.”
	Together, they walked up to my cage, the dog straining at his leash. All three looked in at me through the bars.
	“Weird-looking, isn’t he?” said the Benn. “Looks like someone’s taken a regular dog and dipped him in black paint.”
	“Think he can hear us?”
	“Dunno. Hey, dog boy, nod if you can hear us.”
	I glared at them from the back of my cage, well aware that my face still had that blank, dumb doggy look. I didn’t even try to nod. I knew I wouldn’t be able to.
	“Guess not,” said Benn. “Just a dumb dog like the others. No offence, Max, eh?”
	The dog, Max, perked up at the sound of his name. He barked cheerfully.
	“Think they’d be friends, him and Max?” said Benn.
	“They’d fight,” said Immanuel.
	“Max would win though, wouldn’t he?”
	“Totally.”
	I saw the two guards smile at each other. I fought to suppress a whimper. Max was staring hard at me. His tail was up, but not wagging. The doctor’s comment came back to me: I couldn’t be harmed, but I could be hurt. I had never felt a dog’s bite before, and I wasn’t looking forward to feeling it now. So, to my great shame, I did what seemed to be the only thing I could do to stop them opening up the cage and setting Max on me: I lay down on the straw and rolled over onto my back.
	Benn roared with laughter, and Immanuel smirked. “What a bitch!”
	“I can’t believe this is the same fucker who kept fighting us.”
	“Hold on, what’s that? Here, hold Max for a second.”
	Benn unbolted the cage and opened it. He leaned inside, and I stared up at his exposed throat, imagining biting into it. Maybe the doctor lied about me being unable to. But with Max there, looking at me so intently, I didn’t fancy finding out.
	“Holy shit,” cried Benn. “He’s got a fucking hardon.”
	“No way.”
	“See for yourself!”
	I had forgotten about that. And now I had rolled onto my back and shown it off to them. I boiled with shame. And no wonder Max was so intent. I glanced over, not wanting to look, too scared of what I might see, and there it was: Max was sporting lipstick. These guards had themselves a gay dog, and he had eyes for me. I just had to hope...
	“Looks like we’ve got a playmate for you, Max! Wanna play, Max?”
	Max barked!
	Shit.
	In the next moment, Benn had hold of my leash and was dragging me out of the cage, forcing me to roll over and get to my feet. I tucked my tail down, in part from fear and embarrassment, and in part trying to hide my shameful erection. It wasn’t working. It was too big and obvious to hide. They let go of Max’s leash, and he circled around me to sniff at my rear. His own cock was swollen now, fully hard, the mirror image of my own, pink rather than black.
	“Hey, go fetch the others,” said Benn. “They’re gonna want to see this. Our most troublesome prisoner getting fucked by a dog!”
	I tugged back against my leash. Without the ability to attack them, it was about as far as my resistance could go. Immanuel left, and I dreaded knowing that he would return with all the guards and wardens he could find, all of them gathering to witness me being brought low. That bastard doctor knew this would happen. He set me up for this intentionally.
	“Max, sit,” said Benn. “Good boy. Now, as for you...”
	He tugged my leash and wound it around his fist until it was almost at the collar. He held my head against his thigh, tugging harder and choking me whenever I tried to wriggle free. Even though I didn’t need to breathe, it still hurt. From here I could smell his musk over the stink of the room, a canine scent that was only a little different from that of the ferals. I rolled my eyes up and saw Benn looking back down, grinning.
	“You’re a bad prisoner, but I reckon you’ll make a good dog.”
	He started to unbuckle his belt with his free hand. For a moment I feared he was taking it off to beat me with it. But then he started to unbutton his fly, and I started to whine.
	“Shush now, boy. I’ve only got a few minutes until he gets back, so shut the fuck up.”
	He fished his cock out, holding it just in front of my nose. I couldn’t escape the scent. I felt it cutting through the conscious, disgusted part of my mind, to tap directly into the animal lust throbbing beneath it: that musky scent made my cock ache harder. And the shame...oh the shame...
	“Down, boy,” he said, giving me no chance to obey: he yanked hard on the leash and dragged my muzzle to the floor. His other hand gripped the base of my tail and pulled it up. I yipped. It hurt!
	“I said shut the fuck up.”
	I closed my eyes and concentrated on my breathing. I started counting numbers, starting at a thousand, trying to distract myself. If I couldn’t avoid being fucked, at least I could try and avoid being so shamefully turned on by it. I felt him moving behind me, and I kept my muzzle to the floor and my rear in the air. The pointed tip of his cock found my hole and sunk in deep without any thought of consideration about my comfort. The pain lanced into me like a bullet, but the other more unwanted feeling was close behind: I panted out a soft, doggy moan, as he pressed against my prostate and made my cock jerk.
	“Oh fuck yeah. You’re already wet and lubed up in there. Wonder why the doctor made you like that, huh? Fucking pervert.”
	Max started to whine, pawing at the floor. His own hard cock was jutting up.
	“Shush, boy. You’ll get your turn soon!”
	I was just a dog to them. Or something less than a dog. A toy to be fucked. I lost count of my rising number, my concentration blown to bits by the thrusting of Benn’s slim, but long, canine cock. I felt his knot grinding at my pucker, and I got a mean-spirited thrill of the thought of him accidentally knotting with me and ending up stuck for all his guard colleagues to see. His fingers pressed into my flanks, claws pressing deep dimples into my rubbery skin. It hurt, but not as much as the fucking hurt my pride.
	Max rose up off his rear and padded towards us. Benn didn’t order him away. I looked over my shoulder. He was lost in bliss. I looked towards the door. Maybe, just maybe, I could wriggle myself free and make a run for it when Benn finished fucking me. Escaping with a guard’s load dripping from my rear, and with my cock hard and slapping against my tummy, wouldn’t exactly be dignified, but it would be freedom.
	But, shit, how would I get changed back to normal if I did that?
	Max sniffed at my ears, hot wet breath tickling me. I flinched my head away and he growled. It sent a shiver of instinctive fear through me. Those teeth looked very big.
	“Play nice, Max,” said Benn, and I could feel him surging close to release, breathing shallower, gripping harder, thrusting faster.
	Max barked, then stepped over the top of me. I heard him licking, but he wasn’t licking me. Benn laughed.
	“Easy, easy.”
	Max’s cock jabbed at my cheek, and I shuffled again to pull free, but Max just sidestepped to poke me again. I heard that rumbling growl again, and this time his cock pressed more assertively against my muzzle, the tapered tip prising my lips apart. I peeled them back to growl in response and he seemed to take that as an invitation. My growl died into incoherent muffled grunts as Max’s cock stuffed itself right into the back of my throat. My nose disappeared into the fur of his sheath, smothered by his potent scent.
	“Fucking hell!” It was a voice by the door, another guard. In the next moment four more appeared behind him, followed by Immanuel. Benn’s cock yanked free from me and he fell back onto his rear, fumbling to try and stuff his hard and lubed cock back into his clothes.
	“I...” he said. He sounded as shame-filled as I was. I tried to chuckle and ended up wagging my tail instead. Max clambered a bit more securely onto my back and started rocking his hips, rapidly jabbing his cock into my throat. He certainly wasn’t shy about getting caught fucking a dog. With my own cock throbbing needily, and with a much needed orgasm boiling in my balls, I started to wonder if maybe Max would let me fuck him in return...
	“No need to stop,” said Immanuel. I heard a multitude of belts being unbuckled. “Just hurry up so we can have our turn.”
	The night became a blur. I lost count of the number of guards who fucked one end or the other, sometimes one then the other, and some of them had more than one go. If there was any time to escape from the prison, now was it, while most of the guards were busy fucking me. The excruciating frustration of it was that I was the only one with absolutely no hope of taking advantage of the opportunity: I was the most guarded prisoner in the place.
	Max didn’t last long. He shot his load into my throat and threatened to knot my face. I clamped my lips tightly around his shaft and, to my shame, suckled on his cock while Benn finished up in my rear. This was the moment I learned of another unpleasant side-effect of this new body: Max’s cum, and the cum of every guard that followed him, was divinely delicious! It tasted like a mix of every food I’ve ever loved, yet somehow didn’t wind up tasting like vomit because of it. I felt like weeping when he pulled his cock free. I would have begged for more. I didn’t have to wait long before the first guard nudged the tired and happy dog away from me to stick his own cock into my face.
	I became a slut that night, a toy passed between these men, fucked by pairs while the rest watched or smoked or drank. The stink of all the loads deposited on and in me rivalled the dominance of the doggy smells from the cage. And through it all, like an ember burning in my guts, my cock and balls ached with a need that nobody was tending to, fuelling and driving my hunger for sex, turning me into the toy that these men so very much wanted.
	And, the most shameful thing of all, was that I loved it. And if some mystical force had stepped in at that moment to offer me a choice between my freedom and my own body back, and to stay in this room as a rubber dog fuck toy for as long as I desired...I probably would have picked the latter.
	Only once did I try to resist them, when a dying remnant of my dignity tried to stop me from licking clean the cum-covered cock of one of the guards. In annoyance, he scooped up the remote from the table and jammed his thumb down hard on the button. It made me obey, alright, but possibly not in the way that he intended. As the pleasure surged through me I became as docile as a kitten, and I happily latched onto his cock and suckled it clean. I did such a good job that he got hard again, and sucking became muzzle fucking. He let go of the button, and the remote soon got lost in all of the activity. I mourned its loss only briefly: there were plenty of cocks still to distract me.
	Their stamina ran down before mine did. One by one they tidied themselves up and went back out to do their jobs. Max had crawled into my open cage on his own to curl up and sleep I sat awkwardly while the last of them left, lost for guidance and wanting them to fuck me some more. In my later, more lucid moments, I realised that in this moment I had truly become like a real dog: unable to function, and deeply uncomfortable, without a guiding hand and a controlling voice.
	It was Benn who came to my rescue, walking like a sleepy zombie, his cock stuffed into his trousers leaving a wet stain soaking through the fabric. He took hold of my leash and led me over to the cages. He didn’t say a word, but he did stroke behind my ear for a moment, a surprising touch of affection that lingered with me for the rest of the night. He nudged me into the cage with Max, who stirred but didn’t wake. I didn’t think twice about curling up next to him, resting my muzzle under his. I didn’t think much of anything when Benn closed and locked the cage door and turned out the light. Only much later did I realise that in this perfect moment of potential escape, where I could have fled the room, made my way back to the doctor’s lair, and perhaps managed to fiddle the laptop into obedience with sheer trial and error, I hadn’t even managed to think about doing anything other than snuggling the other dog and drifting off into a contented sleep.
	“It smells like you had a good night.”
	I jolted awake. It was the doctor’s voice. His face was at the bars, peering in, but not looking at me: Max was awake and stood at the front of the cage, accepting petting from the doctor, wagging his tail above my head. I rolled over onto my front and stood up on unsteady legs.
	“And it looks like you had a good time too.”
	I whimpered, lowering my head and my tail. The dull ache in my crotch and the clean light of the morning sun washed away the depravity of the night before, leaving only deep, unbearable shame. Max turned back to me and began licking my face, and I let him.
	“As much as I hate to break this up, we have to go.”
	He opened the cage, tugged at my leash, and dragged me away from Max. I looked back at him at the door, but he was already curled up in the straw with his eyes closed, his new toy forgotten. The doctor was walking rather quickly.
	“There have been some developments, or so I have been told. Things are going to have to go a little differently from planned.” He looked down at me with an expression that, for a moment, could have almost been concern. I struggled to concentrate. I was thinking about Max, head full of his scent, tasting him, feeling the memory of his cock inside me, longing to feel mine inside him.
	He returned me to his room, his laboratory, but something was different about it: chairs were in disarray, the counters had been ransacked, papers were missing. My heart jumped in fear until I saw the laptop and the ball-shaped device still in place on the counter. The doctor hurried over, and I needed no encouragement to join him.
	But...then I thought about Max, and the guards. If he changed me back to normal, I would lose all of that. I would be thrown back in my cell and left to rot. And even if I did escape, I would never again feel the beautiful, frustrating ecstasy of that night.
	The doctor lifted his head, staring at the door, ears perked. I heard it too: the faint chatter of distant gunfire.
	“Sooner than they said it would be.” He tapped furiously at the keyboard, glancing back at me repeatedly. I sat by his feet with a growing feeling of dread. The sounds grew louder. I realised what was happening. The ransacked lab, the approaching gunfire: it meant the rebels were back, the government could lose, and the paper trail of atrocities was being burned. And I was one of those atrocities. I whimpered, nosing at the doctor’s leg. Was he going to kill me?
	He tapped a button and slumped onto the stool.
	“There,” he said. “It’s done.”
	He reached down and unbuckled my collar. I expected death, and tried to steel myself against it. It felt so wrong and undignified to be facing the end of everything whilst suffering an erection. I couldn’t shake it. Even now I was hoping for a fuck. I was wishing that the doctor would strip naked and throw me underneath him for a last ride before the soldiers burst in. I felt my body shift under the touch of the tickling fingers, and knew that this was it. My perception raised up away from the floor. My body spread outwards, limbs lengthening, paws rising away from the tiles and becoming hands. I felt my beak reshape and my wings emerge from my back. I stumbled unsteadily on two legs, looking down at my hands.
	“I’m...back to normal,” I gasped, my throat feeling raw. “Almost.”
	I still had the black, glossy sheen, rubber skin, rubber body. But now I was back to my full height and dexterity, with my familiar feathers and form, albeit shaped out of the black stuff. I curled my fists and peeled my lips back into a smile. I could be hurt, but I couldn’t be harmed, and though I couldn’t hurt the doctor or the guards, I could damn well hurt others. I wasted no time gloating over the doctor. I turned to get to the door.
	“Halt,” he said.
	I froze mid-stride, my body as rigid as granite. I couldn’t move.
	“Raise your hands above your head.”
	My arms rose up as if a puppeteer had attached strings to me. My body was obeying his commands without all the tedious delay of passing through my brain.
	“What are you doing?” I wheezed through lips that were frozen.
	“Tilt your body to the left. Raise your right hand higher and look at it. A little further.”
	“Please, let me go. They’ll be here soon. Just...let me go, and I’ll hide. I won’t tell anyone anything.”
	“I can’t risk this technology falling into their hands. Silence now.”
	I strained to speak, but no sound came out. He continued to pose me with short, direct commands. My wings spread wide. My feet parted. I adopted a dramatic pose, artistic even, spoiled only by my erect cock. He tapped a few commands into the laptop, moulding a flared circular base of rubber out from my feet. My mouth was forced open wide, as if by invisible hands, and I felt my throat moulding and shaping, a cavity extending down into the core of my body.
	“And now, to lock into place.”
	A wash of cold passed over me, like I had been dunked into icy water. The doctor scooped up the laptop and the device and tucked them under his arm. He walked over and stood in front of me, looking me over. “Perfect. You look just like a statue. And that is what they’ll think you are, until the rebels can be beaten back and we can recover you.”
	He looked over his shoulder. The gunfire was louder now.
	“Follow me.”
	The wide base attached to my feet started to writhe, moving across the floor with the same squelching movement that my slug form had used. I followed the doctor closely, my body moving like an automaton, taking me along for the ride. And inside, I was screaming silently, wondering where I was going to end up.

Epilogue:

I stood statue-still in the grand hall of the palace, under the blue starred banner of the rebel government, as I had stood since the day the doctor led me here. The potted ferns arranged around my base tickled at my shins whenever the breeze caught them. I stared down across the length of the hall, to the door at the far end, out to the freedom of the world beyond, a freedom I could never obtain.
	The new rulers and their guests liked me. They admired my sculpted form, and commented in lewd amusement at my erect phallus. They basked in the delightful sight of the stream of pure, clean water fountaining out from my upturned mouth to cascade down into the marble-lined pool beneath me. They mused upon the possible motivations of my sculptor, and more often than not would take turns taking photographs posed next to me.
	And none of them, not one, ever thought that there was a living being trapped inside, silently suffering the throbbing ache of an erection and arousal that would never cease, wishing for relief from the foul, sewage-like taste that constantly assaulted my tongue as the water streamed night and day through my mouth, locked inside an immobile body, never sleeping, never escaping.
	One day, I heard two of the soldiers talking. I heard the name “Cartock” and instantly they had my attention. 
	I listened as they described his capture and his execution. 
	I listened as they laughed at the destruction of his equipment, his records.
	And I listened, weeping, screaming, trapped in silence, as they described a laptop and an, rounded metal device, studded with lights, crushed under the treads of a tank and then tossed in a pyre to burn.