Emmy Kristiansen woke up with a start. It was dark, cavernous. It smelled familiar. Suddenly, a spotlight shut on with a loud thud, casting a beam straight down at her. As her eyes adjusted to the light, her surroundings became much more clear. It was on the Eurovision main stage, the very same one where she’d rehearsed her performance for Ireland just yesterday. Except, unlike any other time she’d seen it before, the massive arena was now deserted. Every seat was empty. She seemed to be completely alone.

Or… almost alone.

As she spun around, she alighted on one other figure in the spotlight. It was Tynna, the German contestant, still wiping sleep from her eyes as she came to. Emmy helped her pull her curly brown hair away from her eyes as she woke up.

“Emmy? Wo… where are we?”

Emmy grimaced. Despite representing Ireland, she had her home country’s distinctive Norwegian accent:

“I do not know exactly. We seem to be on stage! But… I do not remember ever going here.”

Tynna rose to her feet and tried as hard as she could to recollect what happened before she went out. She looked down at herself, and then her friend. They both seemed to be dressed in the costumes from their Eurovision performances: Tynna in an all-black tunic-like skirt with leather boots, and Emmy in an opalescent silver jumpsuit that came down to her mid-thigh.

“No, no me neither. But no matter how we got here, we must find our way back to the hotel. I am getting a not-so-good sensation from this.”

Suddenly, the speaker system in the auditorium blared to life, and a voice crackled out of it.

“Very good intuition, Ms. Tynna! But of course your animal instincts have always served you well.”

Tynna and Emmy both jolted, holding each other. Their confusion was starting to melt away into abject terror.

“I suppose you’re both wondering why you’re here. Well, since there’s nothing you can do about it at this point, I might as well tell you. You two are going to become my pets.”

Emmy grit her teeth. Her worst fears had been realized

“A kidnapper?”

“Yes and no. In a few minutes, you’ll be happy to come along with me. In fact you’ll be ecstatic. Like I said, you’re about to become my pets .”

Emmy tried to take a step towards the voice, but her legs suddenly gave out, trembling with fear and excitement.

“Having a little trouble standing up, Emmy-girl? Doggies can’t stand on their hind legs too long!”

Emmy looked up at Tynna, who had her hand over her mouth in shock. Her own legs were starting to feel a little weak too…

“It was such a cute trick, though! You’re such a good girl , Emmy!”

Those words tripped a wire in poor Emmy’s brain. Her whole body shook in exhilaration: good girl! What a perfect string of words! Emmy liked the idea of being a good girl. She wanted to be a good girl.

“Oh sorry, Tynna! Are you feeling left out? You must feel so envious of little Emmy there! Well don’t worry, because I’m always going to remind you what a pretty kitty you are!”

That was just too much for Tynna. She collapsed on the ground too, shivering and shaking. With just a brief glimpse into Emmy’s eyes she understood the euphoria that she was feeling, that they were both feeling. A pretty kitty and a good girl, there was something so beautifully fitting, yet chillingly deterministic about those words. 

Emmy’s head was thrumming with questions, but the whole situation was so disorienting that it was nearly impossible for her to pick out any one thing to say. But when she tried, all she could manage was:

“Why are you a… a… a-ARF!” 

The voice seemed impressed. “Speaking like a good doggy already! What a good girl you are! Why don’t you speak for me, girl?”

Emmy simply had to oblige. There was a howl brewing inside of her, a new and very sudden instinct that her addled brain was unable to suppress:

“Aw-aw-AWOOOOOO!!!”

The catharsis of letting out her first long, loud puppy howl was enough to clear out most of the remaining human thoughts in Emmy’s brain. The former pop star was actually beginning to pant, her tongue lolling out as the intelligence and humanity dulled in her eyes. Tynna was watching the whole affair with terror, trying to return to her feet, but only succeeding in stretching herself out in various feline ways, reaching and swatting her hands around trying to regain her balance. The problem was that she felt so off-kilter like this. Walking around on all fours was normal enough, but there was just something missing, something that she needed to get the agility she needed. 

Tynna felt a tugging at her butt.

She looked around just in time to see a coffee-brown tail erupt out of her black skirt, swishing and swaying through the air like it was conducting an imaginary orchestra. Tynna knew, intellectually, that she wasn’t supposed to have a tail, that she was supposed to walk on just her back legs like a regular human, but deeper, instinctively, the tail just felt right to her. How else was she supposed to walk around without a tail to keep her balance? And the way it curled and flicked so elegantly, it was just the sort of tail that a pretty kitty would have. 

Yes, the more Tynna thought about it, the more she loved her soft, fluffy tail. She circled around on all fours, trying to get a better look at it, until she finally pounced and caught the tip of it under her hands. How cute and lovely it was! It was enough to make a soft, rolling purr swell from her throat. There was something about a purr, so gentle, so comforting, that just lulled her into a nice fuzzy state of half-awareness. Letting go of complicated, nuanced, scary human thoughts was so easy when you had a purr to focus on.

The voice was pleased. Emmy and Tynna were moving along even faster than expected! But who wouldn’t be eager to trade a stressful life as a music superstar for the simple happy life of a pet. But they still had such a ways to go… 

“Ohhh, what a cute tail you’ve got, Tynna! Emmy-girl, I bet that makes you jealous, huh?”

Emmy was indeed entranced by the back-and-forth sway of Tynna’s tail, but at this point it hardly mattered what the voice said. Her descent into puppydom was unstoppable at this point, and only accelerating. Her own tail was starting to sprout under her silvery shorts, growing in stops-and-starts. It slowly wormed its way out of a pant leg, the long, plumed tail of an Irish Setter, in a gorgeous chestnut brown to match her hair. Before it was even fully formed, it was wagging, fueled by the Emmy’s very excitement of growing a tail itself. It wagged a hole right through her jumpsuit, leaving her panties exposed as she panted and jumped around. 

“Ohhhh what a waggy tail, good girl! And don’t you just love that we’re making you Irish setter, girl? Our little Norwegian wannabe-Gaelic girl is finally getting a taste of what it’s like to be the genuine article!”

It was like talking to a brick wall. Emmy’s brain was filtering out all those silly humanspeak nonsense words, with the exception of her absolute favorite sounds on the planet: “ good girl .” Those only made her wag harder, accidentally batting Tynna in the face. Tynna’s own trickling loss of humanity was progressing just as smoothly. Whiskers pluck-pluck-pluck -ed their way out of her adorable freckled face, as her little button nose shrunk even further, pushing itself out into a small pink triangle set at the end of a short feline snout. Her face was not quite human, not quite cat, but as cute as could be. Her ears grew, shifting to the top of her head, forming into two dark velvety-furred points. She broke in her new visage with an inaugural “mewl,” revealing her newly sharpened teeth. Her eyes glistened with a beautiful cateye effect, but there was an unmistakable dimness to them, letting the whole world know that there was nothing but kitty thoughts in her head. 

The tip of Emmy’s nose was darkening into a leathery brown, pushing out of her face to turn her trademark goofy smile into a wide earnest grin stretched across a dog’s muzzle. Her ears were growing too, becoming long and floppy, while sprouting long, wavy fur which blended exquisitely into her hair. To the extent that she was still self-aware, she was pleased with how her new features matched her new puppylike self, but mostly her petbrain was occupied with playing with this pretty kitty in front of her. She grrrrowled and wrrruffed, trying to entice Tynna to chase her, but the sassy cat only responded with a swipe in her direction. Unfortunately, Emmy had already decided that it was playtime, and she tackled Tynna, licking and nipping at her. Tynna fought back, yowling and flailing. From a distance, they looked like two ordinary girls, but their movements were so adorably, undeniably dog and catlike that it would be hard to mistake them as anything other than pets.

“Look at you two! Who needs a Laika party when we can have our very own Emmy party with the puppy we’ve got right here? And sweet Tynna, our ‘ball-la-la-la-ler, I think you’ll be much happier with balls of yarn now!”

Emmy was panting, sitting upright at attention on all fours like a good dog, though her poor doggy brain was just unable to process anything the voice was saying, only its encouraging, reassuring tone. Tynna, meanwhile, simply yawned, slowly walking her arms forward into a nice deep stretch.  

“Oh, I don’t think she’s paying attention. Pspspspspsps, Tynna-girl!”

Immediately, Tynna’s pointy ears locked onto the direction of the sound, but outwardly she didn’t seem to express interest. She raised her wrist up to her face and began to lick it vigorously.

“That’s better. Now there’s just one thing left—time for your collars!”

With a brief flash of light, narrow ribbons materialized around the girls’ necks. Tynna’s was blue, Emmy’s red, but they had matching silver tags on the end, embossed with their names. But much more obviously, the rest of their clothes were dissolving. Tynna’s cute tight skirt was unravelling thread by thread, each strand evaporating into nothingness. Emmy’s jumpsuit seemed to be melting off of her, like ice thawing off a drink. They were left in their bras and panties for a few moments before those began to disappear too, leaving them completely naked. Well, “naked” wasn’t quite right… puppies and kitties didn’t need silly human clothes. Just their collars!

The voice let out a long wolf-whistle, making Tynna’s and Emmy’s ears perk up immediately. They were very well trained pets indeed. They sat down, bare bottoms on the cold stage floor, perched on all fours. They smiled idiotically like the simple pets they were.

A good girl and a pretty kitty.

Two formerly human women—respected, adored pop stars—reduced down to simple animals. Two pets who couldn’t be happier to have been robbed of human agency. Two women who had the course of their lives changed forever. The first two—but not the last.