In Need of an Explanation

When Mike opened the door to the room her shared with his fiance he was amused to see it was apparently empty. That meant Melanie must be hiding under the bed, which he found to be a particularly cute reaction to her unusual predicament. He knew he had to act like he had no prior knowledge of what had happened, and suddenly found a knack for acting and improvisation he never knew he possessed.

"Shit has Mel left already?" Melanie heard her husband wonder out loud from up above, as she peered out of the crack under the bed at his shoes, hoping they would move back towards the door "Wait, this room smells like a stinky mutt slept in it. Riley, are you in here?"

Melanie cursed silently to herself at this unwelcome development. It was about to get even worse. As Mike called out for Riley there was a patter of paws quickly approaching from the distance and, not long after, loud barking in the room. It had slipped Melanie's mind until now that there was an actual dog living in the house and, worse still, a male one. She was starting to seriously regret standing her ground on not having him neutered when Mike had wanted to.

It didn't take long for Riley to start sniffing the other canine out, and Melanie had **** but to dart out from under the bed before he came after her. Predictably, her pet started barking excitedly at her while trying to sniff her transformed owners' butt, but luckily Mike managed to get him under control.

"Woah, looks like we got ourselves a stray" Mike got down on one knee and ruffled Melanie's fur "I guess I should probably call the pound"

"No don't!"

As her partner had reached for his phone, Melanie decided it was time to come clean. The thought of being in a pound as a dog was bad enough. Turning back to human there might actually be worse.

"What?!" Mike play acted "Who said that?"

"Down here! It's me Mike, it's Mel! I don't know how the fuck this happened but it's me. I just woke up like this. You need to keep Riley the fuck away from me until this gets fixed"

Mike looked around the room again.

"Is this a hidden camera show or something? How are you making this look so realistic?"

"Because it's real. Fuck it Mike, just listen to me, this is your fiance okay? I need your help so you are just going to have to believe the evidence in front of your fucking eyes and do something!"

"Do what? People don't just turn into dogs!"

"CLEARLY THEY DO!"

"Okay, calm down Mel, I believe it's you, okay. What should I do, just tell me. Call a doctor? Or a vet?"

"This isn't funny Mike!"

"I never said it was!"

"Okay, let's think this though.." Mel huffed, annoyed that even as a dog she had to take charge "First we should call my work, obviously I can't go in today"

"Right, sure, good idea!"

There was an awkward pause before Melanie snapped again.

"You're going to have to operate the phone!"

"Oh yes, of course"

Mike unlocked Melanie's phone, dialled up her workplace and put the phone to the dog's mouth.

"Um, oh hey Claire this is Mel, I woke up this morning feeling a little...not quite myself"

"Melanie? is that you? Can you speak up? All I can hear is your dog barking" Claire answered with irritation.

"What? Riley is in the other room! I was just saying that.."

"I'm just getting dog noises.."

Mike raised the phone to answer himself.

"Look, I'm really sorry Claire, the dog is playing up and Mel has some kind of throat infection and seems to have lost her voice. She should hopefully be back with you soon"

Mike couldn't help but feel a little bad at all this fun he was having at his partners expense, but he also knew he could use commands to fix all of this, and then some, further down the line. Though that wasn't much consolation to Melanie right now.

"Your work said for you to take as long as you need"

"Who knows how long that will even be?" Melanie sighed "We need to find out what this is. Try Googling 'people turning into dogs in their sleep', as crazy as that sounds, and see if anything comes up"

Mike knew he would have to find an explanation for this surreal situation to give to Melanie, and it certainly couldn't be the truth. But, since she currently couldn't operate a phone, laptop or communicate with anyone but him, what that explanation would be was very much down to his own discretion.