Brushstroke

Sure, get your face painted like a tiger at the weird renaissance fair booth. What could go wrong? Explicit.

Stepping into the face-painting tent felt like stepping into another world. Perhaps that should have been a warning sign. The tapestried walls of the tent caught the sun, which illuminated their ornate wheels and intricate knots and meanders in silhouette, and bathed the small tent in bronze light. When the tent flap closed behind me, the noise of the fair became muffled and distant.

Sitting on a stool, behind a podium with 'Face Painting' stencilled on it in blackletter, was a woman in a flowing dress, which might have been purple, but the amber light transformed it into satin black. Her braided hair rolled down her back, to the laces of her leather corset. Leaning on her podium with one elbow, she held between her fingers a small crystal ball. She seemed more interested in it than in me, and she wasn't very interested in it.

"Hi," I said, to break the quiet. "You do face painting?"

Briefly, she glanced at me, then back down. "Hold on," she said, and sat up slightly. With a wave of a finger, a gleaming light flickered into the crystal ball. "Hmm. You came to the fair alone, didn't you?"

I made a shy, shrugging laugh. "Yeah, I guess so."

The glow from her crystal ball lit her arched eyebrows. "You want a more exciting life," she said.

That was fair to say of anyone at a renaissance fair. The way she said it was uneasily accurate, though, like she'd plucked the unrealized thought right from my mind. I nodded quietly.

"And you want me to paint your face...like a fairy," she said, with a lazy wave of her hand meant to be dramatic. "Right?"

A moment's silence passed as I came back to reality. "Um, actually no. I was thinking some kind of animal?"

With a a sigh, an eye-roll, and a snap of her fingers, the crystal ball vanished. "That's a lesson for you. Never buy from fortune tellers." She shook her head, then her eyes focused on me again. She stood from the stool and leaned over the podium. "So. What manner of beast does the fair lady wish to be? I've done panthers, griffins, leucrotta..."

I said, "A tiger would be cool."

Spiked

A reality-warping collar turns an office worker into a tough hyena porn star, and changes those around him in pornographic ways. Explicit.

It starts while I'm washing my hands in the bathroom. I look down at the sink, then back up at the mirror, and instead of my tie, I'm wearing a collar.

As collars go, it's not even very work-appropriate.

The band is thick black leather, about an inch and a half tall, studded with round, half-inch steel spikes. It's big enough that I can slip my fist between the collar and my neck and still have wiggle room. There's a clasp in the back. I spin it around so it's facing front, and try to pull it open. It doesn't budge.

All right, fine, I'll just pull the collar up over my head instead. I slide the back up my neck and try to squeeze the front over my chin. Even though it's a loose fit, it's not loose enough to slide off. I keep trying for a good minute, until my neck's pink from the collar rubbing against it. My ears are hot and my face is flushed, too. I let go and it clunks down against my shoulders and collarbone.

If I can't take it off and I can't pull it off, maybe I can cut it off. I've got scissors back at my cubicle. I crack open the bathroom door and peek down the hall before I leave. I don't feel like trying to explain why I'm wearing an oversized punk collar in the middle of the office.

The coast is clear, so I slip down the hall, turn the corner, and see my boss, Tricia, coming my way. She's the sort of person who likes gray suits because 'they're neutral colors' and cares about timesheets and dress codes.

Maybe she won't notice the collar if she doesn't look too closely. I step to the side to slip by Tricia and give her a shy smile.

She smiles back, doesn't even glance at my neck, and says, "Hi, Spike."

I'm already past her, but I stop and pause. Was 'Spike' a dig at the collar? But if she saw it, she would have told me to take it off. I turn back toward her. "Um, what?"

"I was just saying hello," she says with a friendly shrug.

"Yeah, but my name's not Spike."

Tricia frowns lightly, then lifts an eyebrow. "Oh. All right, Mister Ryder," she says with more than a little sarcasm, then turns the corner and walks off toward her office.

My name's not Ryder either.

The Bureau

A fox goes to the Bureau of Orthomorphic Management for a routine appointment and runs afoul of red tape. Mature.

Robin found the yellow envelope waiting in his mailbox on Thursday. It announced, in thick letters, that it was his final notice from the Bureau of Orthomorphic Management, and that he needed to renew his license by Friday or it would be revoked. As well as the final notice, it was also the first notice, and the only notice, that Robin had gotten.

The thought of letting his license lapse as some sort of protest came to mind, but then Robin remembered what a nightmare his friend Nick had gone through when he'd gotten his license revoked. He didn't even get his old name back; he'd had to take a crummy public-access name like Reginald.

So shortly after noon and still a little sleepy, Robin tugged the garage door open, threaded himself between his apartment-mates' cars, and climbed into his own. It wasn't a long drive, but he didn't want to leave his license's fate to the whims of the local bus route.

---

The building of the Bureau of Orthomorphic Management looked like a brick of tofu. It did have windows and doors, which aren't features of tofu, but even the un-tofu parts of the Bureau building were infused with that bland simplicity. Robin imagined vandalizing its facade with spraycans of sauce and spices.

There was a short concrete walkway that led to the front door, guarded by railings made lumpy by so many re-applied coats of black paint. Beside the double doors were two plastic signs mounted to the wall. The first said, 'Bureau of Orthomorphic Management, Regional Office'. Below, next to a small intercom, was the second sign. A drawing showed a stick-figure with large tusks hunched over, trying to fit through a door too short for them. 'Persons needing assistance please press button,' it said.

Robin pulled the door open and stepped inside. The top of the doorframe cleared his ears with two feet to spare. Foxes like him weren't the tallest species, but you'd have to be a giraffe to have trouble with the front door.

Past the front doors, Robin came to the lobby. The lobby was meant to have a directory. But at some point, someone had thought to pin up a sign directing visitors to their department. Then everyone else had realized what a good idea that was, and by now, the lobby had grown into a jungle of signage. Sheets of printer paper with arrows were taped to the walls and pinned to bulletin boards and stapled on top of each other, all begging the reader to follow their directions.

If you were coming to see the Exercise and Fitness Approval Board, that was on the other end of the building. Nonstandard Locomotion Permits could be found on the sixth floor, stairwell access only. The Body Planner's Office announced that it was "on the Mezzanine", which Robin thought was likely a made-up word to trick young interns.

The Merger

A paid anthology of corporate bovine transformation. Explicit.

"TO: Erica Vale
RE: RE: Change in management
I'm having a problem right now. My hand just turned into a hoof and this is going to sevfcvb"

The Merger is an anthology of corporate bovine transformation, coming in at nearly 22,000 words of TF shenanigans. It's got cow TF, male-to-female TF, lactation, cowtaur TF, bimbo TF, bull TF, and collie TF. (And that's not even mentioning the lactation and breeding.)

Buy it now through Paypal for $5! Comes as a PDF and EPUB.

If you'd like to get a taste of just how milky it is, you can read an excerpt from the first chapter right here.

Mane: For Men

TransCo-branded shampoo turns Riley into a beastly male gnoll. Whoops. Explicit.

Riley had run out of shampoo. This wouldn't normally be a problem, but she didn't have enough time before work to go to the supermarket for her usual shampoo. The gas station on the corner only had travel-size bottles of Mane: For Men.

But even shampoo marketed to insecure teenage boys was better than nothing. Riley closed the bathroom door and kicked off her shoes. She tugged her shirt off over her head and shook out her black curls, then bent over and pushed off her pajama pants. She took a glance at the mirror; no surprises there. Fair skin, average figure, and unremarkably cute.

Riley stepped into the shower stall and swung the door shut. At first, she just let the hot water spray over her scalp. Then she rolled her head, soaking her curls and combing her fingers through them until they fell flat against her cheeks. Once she'd thoroughly rinsed, she reached for the bottle and popped the top.

The shampoo's scent ('Gnollspike', which she'd chosen over the alternative, 'Bristleboar') wasn't as bad as she'd feared. The sweet smell of soap was warmed by spices, but it wasn't overpowered and musky. ...At least, not too musky. If she rinsed it out well enough, she would be fine.

She squeezed a splurt onto her hand and slapped it onto her forehead. She spread it back along her hair, then with both hands, she scrubbed the shampoo into her scalp, working it down through her tangled curls.

The shampoo tingled into her hair follicles, like the pleasant burn of popping a cinnamon hard candy into her mouth. If she let it linger, it started to hurt, but feeling it wash across her scalp was invigorating. She leaned into the spray and closed her eyes. The water rolled down her face and hair, carrying the suds down her body. She flicked her wet hair back and squeezed another squort of shampoo into her hands. She wanted to feel that tingle again.

Go Chargers!

Billy gets stuffed into a Bully Charger mascot suit and has to find help before the suit takes over.

It was the night of the fall dance and Billy was on the floor of the supply closet with a knee in his spine.

"Quit wiggling, you dweeb," said Ryan. He grabbed Billy's left wrist and cranked it behind his back. With his free hand, Ryan shoved a long glove onto Billy's left arm. Ryan was the absolute worst. He didn't just have confidence and good hair and a great jawline. He was also the only male cheerleader on the school team.

"Let go!" Billy shouted. He ground his chest against the floor. A layer of foam and synthetic blue-and-white fur separated him from the carpet. Ryan had already managed to wrestle the mascot's padded torso onto him.

This was all about Julie. Ryan didn't even have to say her name; Billy knew it. To Billy, Julie was the prettiest girl in the school, with blonde hair kept back in a ponytail and a big, bright smile. Through some insane stroke of luck, he'd made friends with her. Julie was a cheerleader too, though. That meant that, every day, she spent time with Ryan during practice. Billy was sure Ryan wanted to date her, as sure as he was that Ryan was jealous of what he and Julie had. Or, well. What they could have. Billy hadn't asked her out yet. He was going to do it at the dance tonight, he'd told himself for weeks.