Becoming the Story by L. E. Henderson

the checkout counter. Muffins
heard water running and soon the woman returned with a damp cloth
rag. “Where did you put your perfume, honey?” Muffins pointed to
the spot above her clavicle and the woman swept the warm rag over
it again and again until the rough texture hurt. “Consider this
your baptism,” the woman said.
    The woman finally set the rag aside and
withdrew something shiny from her pocket. “Now you are ready. Hold
up your hair and bow your head.” After a moment of confused
hesitation, Muffins scooped up the locks that fell down her back,
bent her head forward, and felt something cold against the skin at
the top of her spine. After a moment the woman said, “Okay, now you
may raise your head.”
    The woman handed Muffins an oval handheld
mirror, which she had taken from one of the shelves. Muffins could
now see what the woman had done. Aside from a red patch due to all
the rubbing, a gold chain fell toward her breasts and at the end,
at the topmost point of her cleavage, hung the golden cross pendant
with the red gem set inside.
    “There,” the woman said. “That is what you
are supposed to do with a cross necklace. At last you are
pure, for you have made yourself worthy of it in the sight of
God.”
    Muffins performed an emotional
self-examination. And this time she did feel something, a
shiver from a kind of nonphysical wind. The air glittered. She felt strange . Her skin tingled. “Yes,” she said. “I do feel different.” She felt…great. She felt a sense of rightness . She felt…furrier. And hotter. The room was either
growing taller, or her eye level was sinking, but not so far down
that she could not see the look of alarm – and even horror –
evident on the pale grey eyes that stared at her.
    She was becoming too small for her clothes
and soon felt herself engulfed in a sunken tent of fabric, and
struggled to extricate herself. She no longer had hands to grip.
When she tried to use her paws, her claws became hooked into the
fabric, so she was forced to use her nose to sniff and push her way
out of the darkness.
    When she finally did, the woman could only
stare at first, her face frozen. When Muffins mewled to try to ask
what had just happened, the woman let out a piercing shriek, “Get
thee behind me Satan!”
    The way the woman had said “Satan” Muffins
had a feeling that if he was around, she had better run, and that
is what she did. She jumped down to the floor and hurtled herself
through the open door. She fled through the streets, the wind in
her face, seeing better than she had before in all the
darkness.
    She hid behind a metal garbage can in the
back parking lot of a square building and tried to catch her
breath. She clung to the cool shadows, but after a few minutes it
became clear that no one was chasing her.
    Cautiously, she emerged, a world of scent
open to her now. She smelled old meats and boiled cabbage, and
distantly smelled a trace of lilac perfume she had dropped before
finding the lamp lit street where she had begun her adventure.
    She followed the subtle scent of lilac and
got closer, until the scent gathered into a definable cloud of
density. And she followed the path of scent away from it, trotting,
until she found herself at the house where she had lived.
    At the door she trembled, remembering too
well her former treatment. She was betting she might be better
received now that she was walking on four legs again, but
emotionally she was not so sure.
    She did not think she could bear to see,
again, the alarm in the eyes of her former servant Evie. Evie might
have been a servant, but she was bigger than Muffins and could do
harm. Muffins worked up her courage and stroked the door screen
with her paw, mewling as loudly as she could.
    At first there was no response, but just as
Muffins was about to turn away, there was a rattle and the swinging
sound of a heavy door.
    At first Evie looked at her with blank
confusion, but in a moment comprehension registered and