Sahara struck the last chord of her former chart topping hit song. As always, she did so flawlessly. The notes were crisp, clear, and completely unappreciated by her audience. This was just not her crowd. She figured that out though the moment the first few people started to meander uncertainly toward the front of the stage. Aside from the one grizzled old roadie she had left, Sahara felt like she was the oldest person in the entire auditorium that night. Everyone else, including the temps she got to fill in for her long-OD’d band mates, looked barely old enough to shave. This wasn’t their type of rock show, and Sahara knew it. They were just there to wonder and marvel at the fossil of a forgotten age of music. God I miss the seventies, she thought to herself as her eyes wandered over the smatterings of a crowd giving their rather unenthusiastic applause.

With all the enthusiasm Sahara could muster, she shouted out a “Thankyouse’n g’dnight!” to the lethargic crowd, almost wondering if those were crickets she could hear in the background. As she turned toward those she played with this night, Sahara was faced with an abandoned stage. Their instruments were discarded to the floor like the aftermath of some bloody battle. She knew that they had more than likely already gone ahead to their separate tour bus in order to expedite the ritual of getting loaded, wasted, and laid all in the span of an hour.

“Good show t’night,” Bruce, her last remaining roadie, spoke from behind a large amplifier. He proceeded to grunt loudly as he hefted it onto a dolly.

“Thanks for the lie, Brucie,” she said with a smile as she slung her guitar over her shoulder.

“Eh, don’t worry yerself over it, kid…those punks out there don’t know shit from shinola when it comes to Rock. They only want t’see some pretty boy with half ‘a shirt whine about cutting himself for the entire night.”

Sahara gave a throaty laugh at this and nodded. “Yeah…I’ll catch ya later, eh Brucie?”

“Sure thing kid.”

Sahara paused at the door to her private tour bus and gave a tired sigh. Thoughts tumbled around her head as they always did after a bad show. This one though seemed to hurt more than the others. She knew why, too. She was just getting too old for this shit.

Stepping into her tour bus, her bloodshot eyes surveyed her surroundings. Memorabilia lined the walls as a testament to her former glory. From the framed gold records to the pictures of her with various other, long dead, rock legends, any music enthusiast would have been awe struck to even breathe the same air of this hall of honors. However, Sahara found that the testaments to her life’s legacy no longer filled her with pride as they once did. Instead, her eyes always seemed to find their way to the one blank spot on the wall reserved for her next gold record. That spot had been left vacant for the past fifteen years.

“It’s over,” Sahara muttered out to herself as she cracked open a bottle of Jack and took a long gulp. Her years as lead singer and guitarist had left her hands rough and calloused and her voice raspy and deep. The burning of the amber liquid helped to soothe her ravaged throat.

“No point…no point in any of it. Christ, why couldn’t I have just lived a normal life? Save me this heartbreak,” she sulked into the bottle as she sunk down into her plush leather sofa.

“After all this time, that’s the thanks we get?” came a soft voice from the front of the tour bus.

Sahara, startled, stood bolt upright. “Who’s there!?” she called out to the darkened captain’s chairs at helm of the bus. That voice…she had not heard it in over a decade.

“I think you know,” the voice answered as if hearing the thoughts bouncing around in her skull.

A light appeared and began to strengthen as a second voice joined the first. Sahara’s eyes widened as she instantly recognized this voice. It was hard to mistake its distinct quality of a soft breeze blowing through a dark forest. “Welly well…looks like she’s forgotten us, mate.”

“N…no, of course not,” Sahara stammered. “But…why now? After all this time? What, have you come to gloat at my failure?”

By this time, the light had strengthened enough for Sahara to see the two familiar forms lounging in the two front seats of the tour bus. The left one was occupied by an old man that looked as if he had just walked from an aging hippy commune. He had dusty gray hair tied back into a pony tail as well as a long beard tied in the same way. The only thing that betrayed his rather mundane nature was a deep purple glow from his eyes, as if they were filled to the brim with a dark wine. A soft clicking sound drew Sahara’s gaze to the second figure. He was tapping his cloven hooves against the floor of the bus.

“Naw, Pan, look’it her eyes. She remembers us alright. She just doesn’t want to,” he finished with a jovial laugh.

“Could at least offer us some’a that poison, Bacchus ‘ol boy,” grumbled the large Satyr rocking in his seat. His voice took on the quality of hooves stepping through the dry leaves of fall.

“Wha…? Oh! Ah…sure,” Sahara stammered once more, her heart racing as she took in the otherworldly forms once again. Slowly she approached the two. Her arm extended to offer the bottle, only to find it empty. Sahara stared at her empty hand for a long moment, eyeing the space where her bottle of Jack once occupied.

“Ahh, thankya kindly,” came the voice of Pan once more as he wrapped his goat-like muzzle around the bottle.

“Wh…why have you come then?” Sahara asked as she collapsed onto the sofa.

“Why do we always visit our favorite prodigy?” Bacchus asked as he leaned forward in his chair. The bottle of Jack appeared in his hands now, though the amber liquid had taken on the violet hue of wine. “We have heard your plea and have come bearing a gift.”

“Think all of our kind heard the complainin’ you were doing,” Pan cut in. He paused a moment to scratch behind a long, curving horn.

Sahara’s face went crimson at that remark. “I wasn’t complaining…you know that. I…I have always appreciated what you’ve done for me.”

“Sure you have, child…I’m sure you have,” replied Bacchus, the soft flow of his words calming Sahara somewhat. “But regardless, we have come bearing one last final gift.”

“Still think we should’ve given her the horns…no one plays the horns nowadays. Too bad Coltrane didn’t take us up on our offer ‘n died when he did…” Pan remarked, his long ears flicking at some invisible nuisance.

“You ‘n yer horns,” Bacchus said with another one of his jovial laughs. He shook his head slowly with a sigh. “But, no matter,” he continued, a wry smile breaking over his features, “look behind you, Sahara ‘n tell us what you think.”

Sahara paused in uncertainty, both anticipation and dread playing over her face. The fact that this was their final gift terrified her. During their first meeting, she remembered clearly that they had told her she would eventually have to pay for their generosity. Their gifts always came with a price. Slowly, she turned to see what they had brought her. Leaning against the sofa next to her was a six string guitar. It looked rather ordinary given her extraordinary benefactors. In fact, it looked rather beaten up and well used. With a trembling hand, she ran her fingers over the strings. With just the lightest of touches, the strings came alive with a beautiful chorus that seemed to massage all of her senses at once. Sahara shivered slightly and continued to run her hand over the strings. It was wonderful.

“Hey Bacchy, I think she likes it,” cooed Pan, his voice taking on the sound of the morning chorus of birds.

“That she does…” whispered Bacchus with a grin.

It was almost unbearable for Sahara to take her hand off the instrument and turn back to the two. “Thank you,” was all she could whisper out.

“Of course,” Bacchus replied, his grin growing. “Well Pan, shall we retire then? We must be well rested for the next show. Can’t wait to hear it.”

“Wait!” Sahara cried as the light illuminating the two began to dim. “What about my debt!?”

There’s always time for that later…

The sound of Pan’s voice reverberated around the tour bus like the rumble of a winter storm brewing in the distance before it finally dissipated into an eerie silence. Sahara was alone in her hall of honor.

Sahara’s band did not have another gig until the next weekend, leaving her with plenty of time to agonize over her situation. The fact that she had been contacted once more by her ‘muses’ still terrified her. She had hoped and prayed that her previous encounters with those two otherworldly beings had been the result of one of the many bad acid trips she had endured as a side effect of living the rock star’s life. Their most recent visit though had confirmed their very corporeal nature, much to Sahara’s dismay.

However, they did leave with one last gift; although the guitar had been left unplayed for the majority of the week. This, of course, was not from want of trying. Sahara just could not get the guitar to release its beautiful sound no matter how long she strummed it.

She was beginning to think it had just been one final joke at her expense by her ‘muses’ until she had an unexpected visitor the night before her next show.

Sahara had just gotten back from a PR dinner where she was promoting the last show of her tour. As she slumped onto her couch inside her tour bus, she went through her usual ritual of complaining to herself about how much she hated such ordeals. She hated the snobby people. She hated the poser wannabe rock stars that wanted her only for a photo-op. “And most of all I hate this gaddamn gittup they’re still insisting that I wear after all these gaddamn years,” she called out to that lone spot on her wall where a gold record will never hang. This of course did not make her change out of her clothes. As much as she complained about it though, her touring outfit was one of the few things that has been a comfortable constant in her life. It was a beautiful red silk dress with matching stiletto heels that she has yet to outgrow. But the feature she would never admit she loved the most about it though was the antique leather bomber’s jacket that she had picked up at a thrift store while she was still trying to make it big in the business.

The aging rock star sighed and began once more plucking away at the guitar that had been given to her. As her fingers caressed the neck of the guitar, it created an incredibly well played, but horribly mundane sound…nothing like the beautiful melody she had created the night it was given to her. During a rather routine rehearsal of one of her hit songs, a voice startled her out of her concentration.

“Well that doesn’t sound right at all,” came the creaking of a thousand crickets. Once more, Sahara almost yelped in fright as the form of Pan began to materialize on her leather chair opposite to the sofa. “Oh come, come. For sure you are used to me by now.”

“Not when you just pop out of thin air like that! Can’t you at least knock? It’s my bus!” Sahara groaned as she turned toward her ‘muse’.

With a quirk of a brow, Pan’s voice took on the tone of a hornet’s nest. “Remember well the reason you have such fancy accommodations in the first place,” he began, voicing his obvious displeasure as his eyes took on a menacing glow.

“I…I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it,” Sahara stuttered out as the blood drained from her face. Something about Pan’s sudden change in demeanor began to terrify her more than normal. Her fingers felt weak and she lost her grip on the guitar.

Just as instantly as the guitar began to tumble from her grasp did it appear in Pan’s. “Good!” he said with a broad grin, his voice taking on the jovial tone of a bubbling brook. “Now, let’s teach you how to use this instrument properly, eh?”

With weak knees, Sahara slumped into a plush chair opposite Pan. “But…where’s Bacchus?”

“Hmm? Oh, don’t worry about him…he’s helping set up for the show tonight.”

“Oh…ah…alright then,” Sahara murmured out nervously. Really, the entire situation seemed everything but alright though. Those two had never become this involved in her career before. Usually they just gave her the key ingredients to her next hit song before fading out of her life once more. Not this time though. It seemed as if they wanted to give her a firsthand lesson at putting on a concert that had undertones of anything but benevolence. Still though, there was nothing for Sahara to do at this point. It seemed all she could do was enjoy the show.

“Now, to use this instrument, you must be in the proper state of body and mind. Do you understand?” Pan asked as his nimble fingers ran over strings, sending shivers of sound down Sahara’s spine.

“Mmmhh….yes. I understand,” Sahara said as her eyes drooped slightly and she relaxed in her plush sofa. With a lazy hand, she reached up and pulled the scrunchie out her hair, allowing it to cascade down her shoulders and back like a raven black waterfall.

“To use this instrument, you must be in the proper state of mind and body. Do you accept?” Pan asked as he unfurled a new electrifying string of notes.

To Sahara, it was the same question. To Pan, she could not have been more wrong. “Yes…” she whispered out, her eyes drooping further.

“Good,” Pan finalized with a grin. As he began a new riff on the guitar, he continued to speak. “You see, this guitar will not unlock its sound for just anyone. No, in order to unleash this guitar’s true potential, you must face your demons. Every…last…one.”

As Sahara opened her eyes slightly at this hint of menace, she was faced with Pan’s grin once more. It had always been unsettling, given that it was coming from a goat-man; however this time there was an added flavor of dementia flowering at the corners of the grin. Something of pure and utter chaos that made Sahara want to run screaming from the tour bus.

“Wh…what do you mean?” she asked hesitantly as she diverted her eyes from that manic grin.

“Exactly what I said, my dear Sahara,” Pan replied like a gust of wind, “You are far from the purest of hearts. So in order to play this guitar, we must materialize your demons and cast them out of your soul.”

“What? But…wh…” Sahara stammered, at a complete loss of words. This conversation was quickly spiraling out of her control…as well as many of the natural laws of the universe’s. The only thing she could think to ask was one of the most basic questions one would ask of the unknown. “Will it hurt?”

“Oh my dear…of course it will,” Pan chittered out as he struck a chord that resounded around the entire tour bus, causing Sahara’s head to reel. “Your first demon is one of vanity. For too long have you taken your beauty for granted…like a festering cavity…the seeds of fame you planted. For too long have you used your face to get what you want, the record deals, like a recorded taunt. See now your true face, only then shall we increase the pace.”

As Pan rattled off this odd rhyme, Sahara’s expression grew from one of concerned confusion to outright fear. It was almost as if she could see the notes Pan was playing wafting toward her. Striking out at the oncoming energies with a useless wave of her hand, she shouted out, “No! Please!”

“Ah my dear, I’m afraid it’s too late to back out. You have already agreed,” he cooed toward the fidgeting beauty.

Sahara began rubbing at her cheeks and nose as the energies began settling over her features, causing her flesh to tingle. She was about to ask the one fated question anyone in her situation would have asked, “What’s happening to me?” when suddenly her entire jaw seized up in a grimace.

“AH!” she groaned out through clenched teeth as the tingling in her facial features began to burn. Vigorously she began rubbing at her flesh, only to halt almost immediately as a thoroughly unfamiliar sensation washed over her face. ‘It can’t be,’ she thought to herself as her eyes went wide in fright. The tips of her fingers lingered on the minute protrusions of growing fur for only a moment before it became too much and she just held her hands out in front of her. As if this horror was not enough, the tensed muscles in her jaw began to convulse, causing her to snap at the air as a loud crack signaled the extension of the bones in her face. Looking cross eyed, Sahara watched as the soft part of her nose began to visibly deform and stretch away from her face.

“NNNghhh,” were the only sounds she was able to get out as the entire muscle structure of her face bulged out a mere inch. Sahara was lucky though that she could no longer control her jaw, or she may have horribly mangled her tongue on her teeth that were lengthening and sharpening considerably.

As she writhed there, afraid to clutch at her swelling and deforming face, Pan just sat there with his cloven hooves crossed, plucking out an increasingly fast-paced melody. As his current song increased in speed, the energies swarming her distorted face began to concentrate on the tip of her nose before slowly petering out. Sahara let out a soft gasp of breath as she could feel the pores in the tip of her nose widen and begin to moisten as the pigment turned a deep black.

Finally, Pan finished his song and Sahara was left gasping for breath as her jaw slowly came back under her control. She tried to work her mouth a few times. She was rewarded with only a few pops of protest as her muscles and bones set into their final structure of a small carnivore’s muzzle. With a shaking hand, she reached up slowly to touch the now extended bridge of her nose. As she did so, he tongue involuntarily lapped out and licked at her wet, black nose.

Sahara snapped her jaw closed as she covered her muzzle with her hands and stifled what could have been an ear piercing scream. “What did you do to me!” she screamed out to the serene Pan.

“I think it’s rather obvious by this point,” he snickered out, “I’ve just shown you your first demon.”

“You turned me into a freak!” She cried as she ran her hands along her short muzzle.

“You agreed to be in the proper state of mind and body in order to use this gift…now hush, there’s plenty more to do.”

“More?” Sahara asked, her voice faint and her eyes darting to a possible mode of escape from this insane being.

“Now, now,” Pan began as he lifted a finger toward the door of the tour bus. It promptly vanished, along with the windows. “Get any of those cra-aaazy thoughts out of your head, kid. You really don’t want to renege on your deal and fail to impress us with your show. And the only way to do that is to use our gift.”

Sahara’s pulse raced as the implications of Pan’s implied threat raced through her mind. She wanted to yell at him, scream at him, take the guitar and bash him over the head with it; but all she could do was whimper and curl up into a ball, rocking back and forth slowly as Pan began to play his next song.

“Stubborn you were, like the unbreakable stern, of an ice-breaking ship in the northlands,” Pan began to sing as his fingers ran over the guitar’s neck. Quicker than before, Sahara could feel the energies of the notes building and swarming her way. “No one knew what they were in for, too, when Sahara and her dealings began.” She could feel the weight of the notes begin to break over her hips and thighs as the familiar tingling sensation returned to her. “Her other band mates could never get their way, when Sahara strode onto the deck.”

Although petrified by the increasingly painful tingling sensation washing over her hips and thighs, the words of her ‘muse’ cut through her stupor like the unsuspecting point of a blade in a mugging. She never wanted to admit it, but what he was saying was true. When they had finally made it big in the world of music, Sahara had almost never allowed any of her band mates to give any creative input in the workings of their songs. She liked to justify it to herself by thinking they would never have made it big if they hadn’t listened to her in the first place, but Pan’s nagging song was slowly breaking down these barriers.

However, all of this was cut short as Pan struck a definitive chord in his song which seemed to break the dam that was holding back the rest of the notes from affecting Sahara. She let out a groan of discomfort as once more the tingling became a burning sensation and all of the muscles in her legs began to lock up. “Ah…GAhhd….” She muttered out, her tongue once more escaping her mouth to lick at her nose.

With a trembling hand, she forced herself to pull back the hem of her short dress to see what was happening to her hips and legs. The first thing she noticed, as before, was a soft sheen of fur rapidly spreading along her legs. It began in her crotch, pushing its way from underneath her panties like miners digging their way to freedom, as a dark brown color and spread like a shaggy wildfire up and down her legs. However, this didn’t concern her as much as the increasing pressure building up in her stiletto high heels. The feeling reminded her of the time when she was a child and a horse stepped on her foot. The injury resulting from it caused her entire foot to swell considerably until it barely looked human. The thing that broke out of the weak seams of her shoes looked damn close to that.

Sahara was dumbfounded as she saw the veins in her feet throb and pulse as the flesh around her toes grew heavy and thick. Grabbing a nearby pillow and biting down on it was the only thing keeping Sahara from yelping out in pain as the bones in two of her middle toes bulged out. She could feel the skin stretching, doing its best to make way for her toes that continued to crack and stretch. It wasn’t until she saw the cuticles of her toenails begin to stretch and distort though that she realized just what was happening to her feet. “Oh…oh God no,” she whispered out, barely hearing herself over the din of Pan’s song.

Her cuticle began to wrap itself around her entire foot; encompassing all of her other toes that looked dwarfed next to the ones that were continuing to stretch beneath her skin. It wasn’t long after this though that her nails literally began to pour out of the cuticles, covering the entire bottom of her deformed foot and forming in the end two neat and albeit over-sized cloven hooves.

“No…no…noo,” she continued to moan as her feet continued to crack and stretch. Her Achilles tendon pulled up sharply on her calf, leading Sahara to realize that she’ll never be able to walk on the bottoms of her feet again.

Sahara held back a sob as she waited for the energies to subside once more. However, as she looked into Pan’s maniacal grin, she knew it was not yet over.

The tingling began to travel from her hooves, to her feet, up through her calves, warming her crotch, and settled on an area just above it. The focus of the tingling split into two small areas just above her pelvic bone. “You must learn to give, my dear Sahara,” Pan began in his sing-song voice, “allow others to take from you from time to time.”

“No! What now?” she cried out as she scrabbled at the hem of her dress to find what new thing was beginning to move around down there. She did her best to spread apart and move around the shaggy fur above her crotch to find where the energies had moved to. As Sahara saw what had begun growing down there though, she flung the hem of her skirt over it as if it were red hot. With a shuddering breath, she clamped her hands over the two small fleshy growths that had begun to grow in. She could feel the flesh around the area begin to swell as the energies increased in intensity. A random memory from childhood almost made her break down and start laughing hysterically as she remembered the feel of the balloons she used to fill up with water in the bathroom sink. She remembered how the rubber felt as it squished between her fingers as she tried to hold it up under its increasing weight. And just like that time when she was a child, she saw the red fabric of her dress press and squish through the spaces between her fingers as the two mounds continued to bulge and expand. The mass growing just above her panties almost stretched them to their breaking point, however for the time being they remained intact.

All she could do was whimper between clenched fangs as she instinctively tried to push the growing mounds back into her flesh. It was, of course, to no avail though as before too long she had to spread her thighs apart ever so slightly in order to keep her new goat’s teats from squishing painfully between her legs.

No longer did she want to curse Pan out, nor bolt for the door. All she wanted now was to just curl up into a ball and try her best to block out the feelings of all of the completely alien part of her body that were rubbing against each other.

“Only one more demon, my dear Sahara,” Pan cooed out once more from behind the guitar.

Sahara let out a soft sob, cradling her head in her hands.

“You say you want to lead a normal life,” Pan began to sing once more, “Mundane and boring and full of strife. Yet you bitch and moan as your glory fades, for it is humanity itself that is your bane. Let everyone see your deepest desires, to be known and recognized through your trial by fire.”

At this point though, Sahara didn’t want to hear any more. She clutched her hands over her ears, only to fling them away and cry out in frustration when she discovered that they had not been spared by the horrors of Pan’s song. Having been ruffled by her hands, her now furry and distinctly animalistic ears flicked in agitation before instinctively turning toward the direction of Pan’s playing.

“Please…” She murmured out as she reached a trembling hand toward Pan. “No more…God, no more.”

The only response she received from her ‘muse’ turned tormentor was a renewed vigor in his playing which hit Sahara like a shock wave, throwing her back onto the sofa and knocking the wind out of her. As she coughed and panted, trying to get the air back into her lungs, the energies she had now grown to know and hate so well began to focus inside her mouth.

As much as Sahara wanted to cry out yet another form of protest, she found it to be a lesson in futility as both her panting and her current predicament with her tongue made it impossible. With every gasp and with every pant, she saw with horror as her once rather small and human looking tongue began to creak and stretch out of her mouth. The constant gyration of her jaw caused her flattening muscle to wave about, casting drool to and fro all along her nice leather couch. Pan moved inched his hooves away from her in order to miss getting hit by a rather large droplet.

It took Sahara a good couple of minutes until she was finally able to get her breath back, but once she did, she couldn’t help but to have her jaw drop in amazement at how long her tongue had stretched. Flourishing through the motions of her head, her tongue lazed about at the length of her breasts, creating a long streak of drool across them. It took this display to snap Sahara back to her senses and quickly slurp her tongue back up before clapping her hands over her muzzle while her eyes showed wide with horror.

She began to tremble as Pan once more picked up the tempo of his song, signaling that she was far from finished with this demon.

This time, the force from the song split and traveled up and down her body, sending a shiver of magical energies through her spine. Stopping at her forehead and the base of her tailbone, Sahara cried out as she felt as if her entire body was beginning to stretch out like taffy. It wasn’t her entire body however, but her tailbone itself that began to stretch out along with two small lumps on her forehead. As her coccyx unfused itself with the sound of carbonation escaping a can, the two small lumps on her forehead began to dribble out small beads of blood as the hard protrusions soon pierced through her skin and began to curve out from her skull.

Her growing tailbone announced itself to Sahara, not through the pain of breaking the skin, but by causing her to yelp out in surprise as it pulled against her panties. At first the swelling extension of her spine caused the fabric to be drawn through the sensitive flesh of her vagina before the panties could no longer take it anymore and snapped fully against the sheer force of the growing mass. The torn panties hung along the base of her tail like laundry out in the wind as it continued to lengthen.

Try as she might though, Sahara could not get a good look at her tail. Although she knew whatever it was that made her yelp like that would in no part be good in any sense of the word, a morbid curiosity forced her to at least try and see it. Her legs trembled as she slowly eased them to the floor of her tour bus. They were shaking so much in fright that her oversized cloven hooves clacked against each other softly before she steadied them by putting her weight on the hooves. Slowly, she began to stand on them, all the while trying to force her now naturally bent knees from shaking. As she stood on her new footwear, she could feel the unnatural scratching sensation her new horns were making along the ceiling of her tour bus. With one hand she began to investigate the two new protrusions along the top of her skull, still slick with blood from erupting from her temple, and with the other hand she did her best to steady herself as she craned her neck around to look at her backside. While she had been going through the arduous process of trying to stand, her tail seemed to have reached its final length of well over as long as she was tall. However, the very tip of it was currently swelling and stretching into an odd shape. A small spike appeared at the tip of her tail, as well as on either side. The two spikes on the side of the tip began to pull the flesh along with it as it continued to warp into something Sahara instantly recognized: the large spade at the end of a demon’s tail.

Sahara wasn’t sure whether it was the shock of seeing this rather demonic addition to her body, whether it was the fact that the blood flow to her new legs were still sorting itself out and making her woozy, or whether all of the energies of Pan’s current song swarmed into her back that made her lose her balance, but she was sure as hell not expecting to fall face down onto the couch with a loud ‘whump!’ As she shook her head to clear the dancing lights that clouded her vision after her fall, she began to realize that her leather jacket was no longer fitting properly. Craning her neck over her shoulder, Sahara saw that her jacket was being tented up along her back by two growing lumps. The blood draining from her furry face showed that Sahara could guess by her previous changes that she knew what was coming. An odd muscle reflex in her shoulders that triggered some newly formed nerve in these lumps only confirmed her suspicions as two bat-like wings exploded from under the hem of her leather jacket, causing it to flip up and over her head and dangle from her horns.

With an hysterical motion of her arms, Sahara reached up and yanked the jacket from its grapple with her curved ram’s horns and then proceeded to use it to cry into as she flopped back down, face first, onto her sofa. Her legs lifted up and crisscrossed themselves as she continued to sob. The clinking sound her hooves made against each other only exacerbated her hysteria.

“Tsk tsk…is that any way to show your appreciation for a wondrous gift?” Pan asked in a patronizing tone of voice, highlighted by the chirping of crickets.

“I’m a monster!” was all she could muffle out from under her jacket.

“Well of course you are, my dear. You did have many demons, you know. And after all…we don’t hire humans. But don’t feel so bad. I have done this before, and you came out rather stunning compared to some of the others I’ve dealt with! Just ask the Gorgon sisters if you don’t believe me.”

“Stunning!?” she cried out as she fidgeted to find a comfortable position to lie on her stomach without having the large teats hanging from between her legs getting squished. “I…I don’t even know what I am anymore! Other than a freak!”

“All sentient beings are freaks, my dear. You humans just hide it better than we monsters. What I did tonight was just…ah…how to put this…unveiled your true self. Yes, that’s it! I took down the wall you humans have built up throughout the centuries and showed yourself the real you.”

“God…just…just go away…” she sobbed out, flipping a hand in a shooing gesture toward Pan, the spotted fur on her elbows waving about slightly.

“Aww, I am deeply hurt that you don’t appreciate what I have done for you,” Pan began, his voice taking on the tone of a bubbling creak once more, “…well then…I suppose I shouldn’t tell you how to build your wall back up then…shan’t I?”

At this, Sahara’s head popped up, her horns taking her jacket along with her. With a distracted wave of her hand, she pushed the jacket out of her face. It swung around and came to rest along the top of her wings where they twitched in agitation from being so ignored. “What did you say?” she asked hesitantly.

“Hmm? Oh…nothing. It’s just that after you complete the deal we made so long ago, we’d be forced by the ancient laws to turn you back…that’s all. But no matter! You want me to leave, correct?” he asked with a smirk as he stood up, taking the guitar with him.

“NO! Please! Don’t go! I’ll do whatever you want!” she pleaded as she clumsily swung her hooves off the couch and tried to stand up too fast. What she succeeded in, however, was falling painfully to her knees. Sahara didn’t let this stop her though as she crawled toward Pan, her tail waving about in excitement. “Please, Pan…tell me how I can turn back…please,” she finished while trying to mask a grimace when her tail caught the corner of the leather chair, making a loud cracking sound.

“Hmm…well…if you’re sure. Remember how you tried to back out of learning how to use the guitar, hmm?” he taunted Sahara.

“Yes! I’m sure! Anything.”

A grin lit Pan’s goat-like face, and, like before, it made all the hairs on the back of Sahara’s neck stand on end. This time though, the grin succeeded in making Sahara bristle out like a scared cat. “Well then…if you are truly sure that this is what you want… You will use the guitar to break down the walls of every single human being at your concert tomorrow night. Only then, shall you regain your humanity,” he hissed out like a snake.