The Donkiote.

When Bryce first saw Lindos he fell in love. He loved the long white rooftops and the relaxed way in which the locals went about their lives in placid enjoyment of the simple act of being alive. He and his particular friend Wendall Froome had decided to holiday in Rhodes because Bryce had seen adverts for the locale and it featured shots of scantily clad and willing local girls. It seemed odd to Wendall as one of the biggest myths about holiday romances was A. That they happened to men and B. That there were any young girls in Rhodes at all. Wendall spent three weeks trying to convince his friend that Lindos village in Rhodes nothing but ahaven for the retired elderly of Greece and a large smattering of souveneir sellers who would try bartering greasily with all and sundry. For some reason Bryce didn’t mind this but to Wendall it ruined the picturesque nature of the spot.

For the benefit of those who have never been there, Lindos is an ancient town, although it verges on the small side. The streets are so small that cars cannot get down into the town centre and as a result in the early twenty-first century quad bikes are employed or the more commonly used and traditional donkeys. It was the donkeys that annoyed Bryce. He couldn’t stand the creatures. ‘Smelly and stupid,’ was his comment as they passed an elderly brown creature on the way into town. Looking out of it’s large old watery eyes at Bryce the donkey regarded him with neither like nor dislike but a faint curiosity at the brightness of his red T-shirt.

In their rented rooms Wendall pointed out that since entering town they had not seen one of those local babes from the advert. ‘And you won’t see any either,’ he went on to say, ‘I’ve been here before. There’s nothing but old ladies with humps and no teeth.’ Wendall’s favourite past time was moaning but Bryce was accustomed to this and took it in good part.

‘I only need one girl,’ said Bryce.

‘There’s not going to be any! Don’t you get it! There is nothing here, not unless you want a cheap glass chess set or Greek lace that was made in England.’

Bryce would not listen. He chivvied his friend out of the door, he would have spent all day in the room sulking otherwise and forced him down to the beach. Once down on the sands of the beach even Wendall had to grudgingly admit that the scenery was beautiful, with water so clean that one could see the fish swim about their feet. Over to the right at the rear of the sand was a small café that served drinks directly at small tables or brought them directly to the reclining sun seekers on the sand. Then above them to their right, way at the top of a hill, in fact crowning the summit, was the Acropolis of Lindos. Built by the Knights of St. John over six hundred years ago and built on the site of an even more ancient fortress the Acropolis brought in tourists to see it’s magnificence from far and wide.

While Bryce and Wendall lazed on the beach or tossed a frisbee to each other in their more active moments, up in the village the donkeys stood by their mangers and munched. In the main they were fed upon hay and this kept them fit for their arduous work but unfortunately it passed through their systems very quickly. There were many piles of donkey dun around the donkey-post and that combined with the scent of the donkeys gave off a very pungent aroma. No-one but a sad few knew what the donkeys thought of it all. Every so often a two or three donkeys would be tethered together in a line and led up to the Acropolis with a fat tourist who couldn’t be bothered to walk up the steep hill under their own power.

Meanwhile Bryce wondered where to eat. He was getting peckish and the choice of restaurants was bewildering. He asked the café manager who shrugged his shoulders in a peculiarly gallic manner and said, ‘The best place I know to eat is Cesar’s.’

‘Cesar’s?’ asked Wendall.

‘Yes,’ said the manager, slicking back his hair. ‘My wife works there, makes some wonderful food.’

So that evening they ate at Cesar’s.

They found they didn’t have to eat inside. Cesar, their host was a fat greek that reminded Bryce and Wendall of Jabba the Hutt. But he did have the virtue of providing some gorgeous meals and the restaurant had a flat terrace that customers could sit at when they wanted to take advantage of the views of the lamps and lanterns that lit up all over the hillside, they looked like fairy-lights. Then through the piece of the night air a donkey brayed. Bryce sighed, the place was beautiful he felt he could stay forever but the asinine brays that punctuated every moment here were driving him insane.

‘One day,’ he said and all I can think of is donkeys braying. It echoes throughout my skull!’

‘I thought you loved it here.’

‘I do but someone ought to shut them up… oh my.’ This change in his subject happened as he chanced to see a figure walking through the nigh below them. She had appeared beneath a Grecian arch was clad in a long willowy dress made of a light muslin material. It looked moset but cool. Most surprisingly she was young and beautiful but her face was filled with ineffable sadness. She led the troupe of donkeys by means of a dyed red rope that looped in a line down from the first donkey to the last. But the rope was slack in her hand, it was clear that the donkey’s knew exactly where they were being taken.

‘Hi!’ yelled Bryce before he could stop himself. She looked up at the terrace, her expression barely changing. Bryce found it hard to breathe, her face was so lovely. It was as if it had been crafted by romance. Dark, dark black hair fell down her back in a long plait and her hair shone in the reflected light of the lamps. Her eyes were blue, electric in their gaze but the gaze was fleeting. Bryce got to to his feet to run downstairs to her but Wendall grabbed at his arm and tugged him back into his seat.

‘Don’t,’ said Wendall quietly. It was then they both realised that they were being watched. Cesar was stood watching them, his dark eyes seemed to betray a little anger but his voice was warm.

‘I see you admiring my daughter Ioanna?’

‘Your daughter?’ asked Bryce. ‘You must be very proud.’ Then he winced as Wendall kicked him under the table.

Cesar pulled a face. ‘A woman of many talents but sadly wasted.’

‘Oh?’ said Wendall.

‘Well she has some very special skills but she doesn’t want to excel at anything in this world. All she does is tend to our donkeys.’

‘She wants that?’ asked Bryce, aghast. He couldn’t imagine anyone ever wanting to spend time with donkeys.

Cesar appeared to think deeply and then he said, ‘She likes grooming them and taking them out to graze. Even more than spending time with her family. During the summer I ask her to lead the donkeys to the Acropolis, otherwise I have to hire another to do this. But she won’t do it, she says she hates company.’ He shook his head in exasperation. ‘I wish someone could get through to her.’ Then he turned to deal with some other customers at the far side of the restaurant.

‘Do you hear that?’ said Bryce. ‘He’d positively welcome me trying to win her.’

‘I don’t know,’ said Wendall. ‘She doesn’t look friendly.’ But his warning was unheeded, Bryce spent the rest of the evening talknig about how he would speak to her tomorrow.

That night in their tiny room the men couldn’t sleep. The noise outside was unending. First there was the sound of the locals yelling to each other in the dark. ‘How are you?’

‘I don’t know… how are you?’

‘Ha ha ha ha!’

‘Ha ha ha ha!’

‘Stop cackling,’ said Bryce through clenched teeth. ‘I’m trying to sleep.’

‘You keep waking me with your moaning,’ said Wendall sitting up in his bed. ‘Just go to fucking sleep.’

Suitably chastised, Bryce pulled the sheets over his head and tried to if not be asleep, to pretend to be asleep. Then there came the sound he hated most, like a rusty garden gate. ‘Haw hee haw hee haw hee haw!’ The cry up on the hillside could be heard throughout the town and Bryce cursed the animals. Then he could another bray but annoyingly it was only the incomplete creaking of the ‘Hee!’ He kept waiting for a haw but those were rare compared to horrid screeching noises that kept him awake for most of the night.

The next day Bryce looked for Ioanna but didn’t see her. He and Wendall spent the day reading on the beach. Bryce was careful not to tell Wendall of his plans for that evening. Instead when darkness came he sneaked out of the room alone. He went and waited by that arch that he had seen Ioanna pass through the night before. Bryce tried to time it right so it could look like he had accidentally bumped into her, but as it turned out, she was late.

Bryce was ready to give up and return to his room when he heard footsteps in the dark. He looked into the murk and he heard crying. Strange, he thought. ‘Is something wrong?’ he asked the darkness. There was silence in reply. He walked into the archway and strained his eyes into the dark. There was no-one about. He was about to turn to go but again he thought he heard crying. Then he saw a couple of wooden doors ajar, they led into a courtyard. There he saw Ioanna lit by lamplight, standing at a donkey post, she was weeping heavily.

‘Ioanna?’ he asked timidly. ‘Are you alright?’

‘It’s not me…’ she said. ‘It’s Donald.’

‘Is Donald your boyfriend?’

‘No, no!’ she cried. ‘He’s my childhood pet and he’s, he’s dying.’

In amongst all the donkeys stood around the courtyard Bryce saw one lying on the floor breathing shallowly. He recognised it as the donkey he first saw when he arrived in Lindos. Bryce felt a little compassion rise in him, the poor creature was obviously breathing his last but on the other hand he could still smell the stench of donkeys and dung and he watched disgusted as one of the female donkeys let fly with stream of steaming urine.

Despite being genuinely sorry for her, he knew this was a chance to enter her good graces and he said words that he would ever regret. ‘Is there anything I can do to help him?’

Ioanna’s blue eyes were red rimmed, ‘You could help me put him to rest.’

‘You mean put him down?’

Her busom heaved and he imagined nestling his face between those ripe orbs. ‘Yes, I have a knife.’ She held out an ornate dagger, with a carving of a donkeys head etched into the bone handle. ‘I cannot do it though.’

Bryce took the knife and feeling its weight in his hand he placed his other hand on the dying donkey’s head. He plucked up his courage and plunged it deep in to the donkey’s throat and pulled it through the main artery. Blood spurted upward and caught Bryce on the face and he grunted in shock.

‘There,’ said Ioanna her tears fast fading, ‘you saved him.’

‘He’s in no more pain,’ said Bryce. ‘I’m very sorry.’ He was still gripping the knife, there was a trange stiffeness in his hand and he found it hard to let it go. Finally he prised his fingers apart but it was very hard to drop the knife. It seemed like the animal’s blood was sticking to his hand and he threw the knife to the floor. The bloody goop wouldn’t come off his hand, it webbed and slickly linked him to the corpse.

‘You like Lindos?’ asked Ioanna.

‘I do,’ he said futiley trying to rub the slick off of his hand. It was horrid, he couldn’t get it off.

‘Enough to spend a lifetime I hope,’ said Ioanna and he looked at her confused. ‘Look,’ she said, gesturing to the donkeys corpse. He looked down and couldn’t believe it. The hairs were falling and shedding from the body. The donkeys fur coar was falling in clumps to the tiled floor and underneath…

‘What is this?!!’ demanded Bryce, because the donkeys body was contracting inward and becoming smooth of hair and yet wrinkled. Then he saw… it was an old old man. A dead, bald, old man.

‘Donald will live on in you,’ said Ioanna and then she kissed the confused Bryce on the nose. He could feel the heat of her breath and he coughed suddenly, something seemed stuck in his throat. The bloody slick on his hand seemed to grow over his arm like and obscene black oil and then it writhed like it was alive and he felt a terrible pain as it burned into his skin, leaving his arm stinging. Ioanna pulled at the neckline of her dress, exposing her blue veined heavy breasts. The brown nipples loomed large against her olive flesh. ‘I am sorry that you will never again know the kiss of a woman’s flesh. But I will always stay with you.’

‘Whaaort?’ asked Bryce. He felt giddy. His hands bunched and he looked down in fear. ‘Whaort is hooaw?’ he could not get his throat to utter his phrases. The giddiness continued. His ribs began to hurt and he pressed his hands to his side, noticing as he did so that his fingers were aching terribly. Ioanna backed away.

Bryce screamed as the pain in his ribs grew to a tormenting height. There was a splintering sound and they pressed outward, barrelling out his chest. ‘Oof,’ he breathed. He was finding it hard to stand, the pain in his torso spread to his back which cracked and began to elongate. ‘Whooaaaaaah!’ he screamed in confusion. ‘Whoooaaaaaaaaaaw!!!!!!’ he stopped in fright. He knew that hated noise… it was the sound of the donkey!

He tried to pull at his t-shirt, it was too tight against his skin. Skin that was now boiling hot and itching uncontrollably. He tried to make his way to the exit but as he did so he felt a tingling feeling come over his legs. He tried to move them but they did not seem to want to move.

There was a tingling feeling now, deep in his shorts. He could feel a rhythmic pulse gathering pace. In and out, in and out. Bryce tried to fight it but it only fed the passion in is loins as his dick grew outward, straining at his shorts, straining, straining… FREE! To his horror he saw the dark bulge emerge and knew it not as his. It was a large leathern mis-shapen hose. He felt heaviness beneath his balls swelling in strobing pains that mingled into orgasm,

‘We’ll find you a use for that…. Your wife will like it,’ said Ioanna gesturing to a grey female in the corner.

No, thought Bryce. I must be back in my room, being tormented by the sounds of the donkeys braying, this can’t be… There was a tearing at his spines root and a horrid tickling sensation as a fleshy rope beat around inside his short, it rubbed slickly against the back of his leg… this can’t be real! Then he fell.

Bryce was only halfway to his banishment. He felt his hands beginning to rupture painfully. His fingers dropping away to leave one single digit that hardened and grew to bony extrusion. My hands! He thought, My beautiful hands! Feeling his hands/hooves pressing against the floor he felt the way they were cushioned within and scared himself when he found himself stamping them in pleasure. No that was not him, he hated this! His face, his nose. It grew outward and he grunted, trying to orate. ‘Haaaaww, heee haaaw heee haaaaaw!’ The smell was horrid. It had been strong enough in the courtyard before but now he could smell the donkey sweat upon his flesh.

Bunches of hair blossomed out of his skin and he rolled his eyes frantically in terror. His ears felt like they being pulled off of his head as brown thick hairs forced their way noisily from them. They were moving now as his body gyrated, moving back and forth on his head, pointed symbols of his shame.

What was most horrid was that he could feel his mouth moving outward from him. His nose pushed out and flared, it felt like it was going to burst as his nostils grew wide over a stretching snout. His tongue tingled and it felt too large for his mouth but as he pressed it forward he felt stony slabs greet it. Flat, square. yellowing that lined up in his mouth. He could not see it but beneath his chin he felt sore as muzzle hairs burst free.

Now Bryce was barely human. He felt his skeleton constrict around him and felt his thighs draw up beneath his belly, his knees crunching and creaking in protest. His mind was in terror. His remaining clothing fell alongside his burst open shoes, rags now.

Trying to look at Ioanna he found that he could not focus beyond a fixed distance. Inside he pleaded to wake up… but was unanswered. His hips cracked and groaned. His humanity was reluctant to be evicted and it was as if it knew it was being banishewd from paradise. The straining and groaning in his bones made Bryce scream but to the world at large the only sound that was heard was Donald’s bray of pain as he was born again.

Wildly looking around, Donald no no his name was Bryce but who? His name was Donald. He could remember faces from his past but they were beginning to fade into a silty murk in his mind. He could remember his mother, her tasty udder and shiny coat, but surely? He remembered being saddled that first time… The faces from his human past were clouded and demanded recognition but he realised to his terror that he did not know any names and then there were no words.

With a terrible finality he felt the stinging pain of thousands of black hairs forcing their way up along his spine and neck, his mane… No he thought, then he thought of food… food. He saw that pink thing over there. He did not have a name for her but he could smell it was female. Ioanna walked over to him and gave him an orange thing to chew on. Humans would have known it was a carrot but Donald only knew that it felt good.

But as he stood later on the hillside Donald (or was it Bryce?) Felt a terrible longing for something he did not know. He brayed into the darkness, ‘Eeeeeeeeeeeergh.’ There was no answer and he brayed again repeatedly all night long, as he would do forever… seeking some reason for where and what he was.

Deep uner his bedsheets Wendall, worried about where his friend had gone and already finding it hard to sleep cursed repeatedly at the donkeys noisiness this night. ‘Shut the FUCK UP!’ he yelled. Bryce had been right about the donkeys, wretched creatures. Would they never shut up?

‘Haaaaaaw! Heeeeeee-Haaaaaaaaaaaw!’

(Donkiote – Like a symbiote but a donkey… bizarre no?)