The Office Wolf

Written by Arian Mabe (Amethyst Mare)

I sighed and leaned back in my chair, the walls of the cubicle seeming to close in on me with terrifying solidity. They were the same as ever, white and imposing with the bustle of office life trickling by outside. I watched the clock, the second hand seeming to slow and slow and slow.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

Would the day never end? It was the same story every day and I was hardly high enough up the totem pole to actually do any kind of interesting work. I ran my fingers back through my hair, finding the black strands greasy from not showering the night before. I made a face, but there was no one there to see it. I really was disgusting sometimes, disgusting myself with my own lack of self-care. But there didn’t seem to be any point in it when I had no one to go home to and a dinner for one, nonetheless after a grinding day at the office doing the same thing over and over and over again, waiting for me alone.

But that day was not like any other day.

I’ll never know why the changes began, although I’ll be ever thankful that they did. The first thing I noticed was my nails getting longer before my very eyes, pressing together into what could only be claws. But my mind didn’t have time to catch up with that mind-boggling fact as dark grey hair prickled into life as if my arm hair had suddenly gone entirely out of control. I’d never been a particularly hairy person, but that was certainly about to change.

I shoved my chair back from the desk with a gasp that no one heard, wheels squeaking and my head spinning. I remember trying to catch up with myself, work out what the fuck was happening, but that wouldn’t be possible until much, much later, after the exhilaration of transformation, potent to the extreme, had finally worn off. For I may as well have been heavily intoxicated for all the giddy joy that swept through me, carrying me up and through as if on a tidal wave.

But it was good. It was positive. An insane giggle bubbled up from my lips, not sounding like it belonged to me, but it was the last sound I would ever make as a human being. My face pushed out and out and out, melding into a long snout as my nostrils tucked up into slivers in a moist, twitching nose. That spread of hair reached further and further and, if I had been nude, I would have seen that even my chest was covered, but it was hardly becoming to be shirtless in the middle of a professional office.

That option of clothing, however, was soon to be ripped from me as my body shifted. Taking on a new form would never be easy, no matter how many times it happened, and I groaned deep in the back of my throat, something raw and primal that I would never have expected to hear. Dimly, I was aware of bones cracking into a new alignment, but there was no sense of pain as this part of the transformation, my innards churning as if a sensation told rather than felt. I would forever be glad of that, as I had heard many stories of my brethren experiencing the most painful transformations imaginable.

I was one of the lucky ones. And my next form would be the most glorious one of all.

A snarl tore itself from me as I hunched forward, sliding off the chair entirely as my legs came up beneath me. It was much more comfortable to be on all fours and I heaved and shuddered as my clothes ripped, unable to contain the new shape of my forming hindquarters and stronger, more powerful chest. My neck came up, allowing me to raise my head more comfortably as muscle supported it, a thick ruff of grey fur shot through with black fluffing up around my throat.

Itching, my ears migrated to the top of my head, drawing up into alert points as the human life in my eyes gleamed in a far more intelligent amber – the amber of an animal. But it was the animal that I wanted to be, shucking the coils of human life for something altogether more glorious.

A tail. There had always been a tail and, oh, how I’d missed it! I whimpered and twisted in sheer excitement as it sprouted from the base of my spine, ready-coated with a wonderful covering of thick fur, which fluffed up all over my body, protection from the cold that I would surely need. My maleness tucked up into that fur, a neat sheath pulling it in safe and close to my body for that was one part indeed that I did want to keep safe!

There was not much left to the transformation, I could feel it, but I still hopped impatiently between my hind and fore paws even as they formed. Toes pulled closer together, pads forming on the underside of my feet as they became paws, the claws that were my fingernails now matching the ones on the toes of my hind paws. I snuffled excitedly at them, shivering as the full weight of the transformation settled over me. The new skin fit me like a glove as if it was the body that I had always been meant to have.

Growling, I shook off the shreds of my clothes from where they hung in tatters about my new form, leaping onto my desk for the simple, unadulterated thrill of what my body could now do.

My workmate gaped at me over the top of the divider as I barked happily at him, wagging my tail. He gaped at me, mouth opening and closing soundlessly until he came back to himself with a strangled shriek that was fairly comical coming from the lips of such normally simplistic gentleman. 

“Jesus Christ, it’s a fucking wolf!”

The office erupted into chaos around me, their screams music to my ears as I tipped my head back and howled.

It was good to be a wolf.