Jethro sighed and got ready to leave work. His blue work shirt was stained with little bits of all the dust and stains he'd spent the day cleaning. Setting aside his mop and pail for an empty lunch box and bible gave him a certain comfort, let him know the day was through.
But it wasn't, really.
He walked out the front door of the clinic. He saw the protestors lined up, chanting and berating it's clients, regardless of who they were. He knew it was the young girls that they especially targeted, the "sinners." He saw a few faces from the church he had once attended, until the other members of the congregation realized where he was working and quietly asked him to leave.
As he passed through the line of chanting people, one of them grabbed his shoulder. As he turned, he recognized the man's face. It was Fred Harris, who had sat three pews up from him every Sunday until recently.
"Jethro!" Fred shouted. "The Lord sees what you're doing. Repent! We don't want to see you cast from his sight!"
"Folks need someone to keep things clean."
"You can find another job, Jethro. It'll be hard times, but your wife can take it. It will be better than doing the work of Satan."
And then, everything went horribly wrong.
Fred slumped and made a noise as if he'd been hit in the guts, and fell over into the grass in front of the clinic.
"Ah... my feet... gotta get my shoes off..." he said, clutching at his shiny leather shoes and prying them off. Under the sock, the flesh rippled, became more bulky. His pants were rippling in ways that suggested that the legs underneath were becoming something different and entirely inhuman. His powder-blue suit pants split open and he kicked them off, showing the crowd circling him the coarse hair that was growing on his legs. His knees had reversed, and a pair of black hooves completed the goatish look.
Horns grew from his forehead and a barbed tail from his rear to the soundtrack of his groans. Finally, his genitals inflated, completing the transformation.
He looked down at himself. He had become something profane, obscene. In agony, he looked skyward, searching for a meaning that would not come.
