Second Anniversary Story
By: Lance Holloway

The sun slowly peaked its way above the horizon. The sky filled
with blue. Birds awoke from their sleep and began singing. The cracks in
the mini-blinds allowed enough light to wake Jimmy up, also.

Jimmy slowly crawled out of bed. He had a long night and a short
sleep. The new computers at work needed to be reconfigured, and it took
longer than he had expected. Unfortunately, this morning he had to be at
work early.

His eyes were barely open as he trudged to the bathroom to take a
shower. He passed by the mirror and stopped. His reflection didn't look
right. He forced his blurry eyes to focus. Staring back at him was a
beaver....

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"A BEAVER!?" I said to myself. It would work in a story, but this story didn't seem to go anywhere. A beaver would be a good
transformation, but this is my anniversary story for the list. It's got
to be something... special? No, just something. There's no way I can
write something special this quick. All the other stories that I have
been working are too long and unfinished, that I couldn't use them for the
anniversary story.

I continued driving down the road thinking about what to write.
It wasn't that long of a drive, but it was boring after seeing the same
scenery hundreds of times. It was one of the better places that I can
think of plots. It was also a great way to lessen my road rage.

Another story popped into my head....

A guy could be walking down the road and sees a glint in the grass
next to the sidewalk. He bends down to see what it is. It turns out to
be a small dragon necklace. He polishes it up and out pops a dragon
genie. The dragon grants him his three wishes, but finagles the last so
that the dragon turns the man into a dragon also....

"No. That won't work either," I said, turning on my blinker to exit off of the bypass. It would be just another genie-messing-up-wishes
story. Besides, it can't be a dragon. The more I thought about the
anniversary story; the more I knew that it had to be a kangaroo
transformation. My first story was about a guy who used a computer
morphing program and morphed himself into a kangaroo. The first
anniversary story was about a dream that I had where a kangaroo spirit was
my guardian angel and turned me into a kangaroo. So, this story had to be
about a kangaroo. Why those two stories involved kangaroos was a
coincidence, but now it was almost a tradition.

I reached my apartment still pondering about the story and
immediately sat down at the computer to try to force myself to write
SOMETHING. Mostly I just sat back in my chair watching the stars fly by
my computer screen on the screensaver.

How about a story where a woman is at a petting zoo? When she enters the
kangaroo yard, a joey follows her around. She bends down to pet him, and
he jumps onto her. He rips through her shirt and crawls into her newly
formed pouch. And then she changes into a kangaroo and takes care of the
joey. The joey could also be an orphan. That would explain the fact that
he wants a mother.

Yeah, that could be a good short story. I sat up in the chair
ready to type and hit the keyboard with my large hooves. Random letters
lined up in the word processor.

"Darn it. I keep forgetting that I have to type before it gets dark," I bellowed. "Computers aren't made for moose."