After an absolutely interminable interval, the football team captains-in reality probably just steroid-gobbling beef-brained jock wanna-bes, or so Brendan kept telling himself-abandoned their protracted arm-punching back-slapping tail-grabbing head-locking no-hugging-we're-not-fags-or-nuthin' ritual and headed into the surf, boards held over their heads like trophies. Now the girls, who had been huddled together in giggly admiration of their boyfriends or testosterone patch test subjects or whatever they were, spread out their towels and commenced soaking up the sunshine. Brendan tried as casually as possible to find a pose that would allow him to stare at them without looking like he was staring at them while at the same time minimizing his modest belly, which he could suddenly feel pushing out over his shorts like he'd swallowed a beach ball. Unable to find a satisfactory arrangement, he settled for the pretense of watching the seagulls flying overhead, especially those whose flying took them in the vicinity of the furry femme flesh arranged in a tidy row nearby.

He'd spent far too long staring at his favorite, a lovely lass and fellow raccoon, her long black hair tied back in a ponytail, when he suddenly realized the closest girl, a vixen with fierce green eyes, was staring intently back at him. Embarrassed, he quickly averted his gaze and tried to show as much interest in the nearby gulls as he could without actually jumping up and chasing them. He could hear their giggles to his left, and he wished he could just melt away into the sand. In fact, he had finally resigned himself to going home to brood in quiet solitude when a shadow fell over him, and he looked up to see the vixen standing over him. "Well, hello there," she said, grinning.

"I wasn't star... um, hello there. Uh, nice day, eh?" If only he'd been a little more decisive, he could be halfway to the parking lot now, he thought glumly.

"It certainly is. I was wondering if you could give us girls a hand with something?"

This had to be a trick. His brain raced through all possible scenarios, recalling every dirty trick ever pulled on him and his few friends, searching for a pattern that fit. "Um, yeah, I guess so. What with?" He resolved to swallow his pride and bolt at a moment's notice if anything seemed fishy.

"Well, our boyfriends are all out there surfing," she began, gesturing to the ocean in case he thought they might be surfing through the parking lot. "And we wanted to go for a float in the lagoon." Another helpful gesture singled out the lagoon among all the surrounding non-lagoon terrain. "But there's a big mean hole in our poor raft and we need some help to fix it."

This seemed harmless enough, he supposed, especially if she was as dumb as she sounded. "Um, all right, I guess so. What can I do?"

"Well, first you need to come over here with us," she replied, still grinning the grin that was starting to make him distinctly uncomfortable. He harbored no illusions that his lifetime of bad luck was suddenly going to turn around so completely that the girls would all fall upon him for an afternoon of passionate sex, but he thought he might at least get to spend a little time checking out the babes up close, so he agreed. Standing up carefully, doing his best to keep his stomach sucked in as far as his internal organs would allow, he followed the girl over to their little beach roost.

"Ladies, this is..." She looked at him expectantly.

Oh, right. That was his cue. "Brendan," he offered, holding out a paw for a shake and hastily withdrawing it after a moment as the girls all stared at it as if waiting for it to do a trick.

"This is Brendan," she continued. "And this is Linda, Beverly, Muffy, and I'm Sandra." She pointed in turn to the raccoon who had caught his eye, and two beige rabbits who appeared to be sisters, or maybe they were just generic. "And this," she added, pointing down to a limp bundle of blue vinyl with yellow spots, "is our late, lamented raft. Which is where you come in." The raft, more of a pool toy than a real boat of any kind, was topped by a deflated head that looked rather sad, despite its huge goofy grin.

He looked at each of them in turn, desperately wondering what he was supposed to say at this point, completely forgetting that he was supposed to be remaining aloof and cool. "So, ah, what do you need me to do?" he timidly asked.

"Oh, that's easy," Sandra offered. "We just need something to patch the hole. Now, if you could just stand right there for a moment, and look up directly overhead... that's it. OK, and now we just make like so!"

On "so," Sandra reared back and stomped squarely on his left foot. "eeeeYOW!" screeched Brendan, stumbling backwards. But before he could draw a breath to protest, Beverly and Muffy, or maybe Muffy and Beverly, each grabbed an arm, and Linda, who had apparently picked up the deflated raft while he wasn't looking, shoved it directly into his wide-open mouth.

His eyes bulged as the bundle filled his mouth. He couldn't understand-how the hell could it completely fill his mouth like that? But that thought was overwhelmed almost immediately by a larger concern as he felt the whole bundle sliding down his throat. In seconds, it landed in his belly with a thump. He swayed back and forth, staring down at his bulging belly in stunned silence. He'd worried about looking fat before... this was ridiculous.

He finally gathered the presence of mind to look up and ask what the hell was going on. As he did, Sandra yelled "Dibs!" a second ahead of the other girls, and grabbed the only part of the raft he hadn't swallowed, a length of string dangling from his muzzle, a red plastic handle at the end. With a giggle and a solid yank, she pulled it completely out of his mouth, and his ears filled with a deafening hiss. His stomach suddenly blew up far more than he would have imagined possible, and then kept going. He swelled up and swelled up, his arms and legs disappearing as he expanded. He tipped over and fell to the sand with a gentle thud as he continued to inflate, and he realized he was more or less flat, and was only really expanding in two dimensions.

He had just grasped what was going on when he felt a tremendous pressure in his neck. It felt for a moment like his head was going to fly off. He prayed it would take out one of the surfers when it landed. Suddenly his head shot up several feet into the air, feeling like it was exploding, as his neck suddenly ballooned outward and lengthened. The beach danced before his eyes as his head swayed back and forth on his new long neck, finally settling down. He realized that the hissing had stopped at last, and then he found that he couldn't move a muscle. Blinking was about the extent of his motor skills at the moment.

He was doing quite a bit of blinking, staring at the huge round muzzle now projecting from his face, and was trying to start thinking but couldn't quite handle it at the moment. Sandra leaned over in front of him and tickled him under his chin, with another of those giggles he was really starting to hate. "See, we forgot to bring a patch kit, so we decided to just cover the entire raft with a new skin to patch over the hole. Thanks! You're such a good sport! And your big ol' giraffe head is so cute!"

Brendan had managed to collect his thoughts to the point where he could say to himself, "I'm a frickin' RAFT?" when the girls each grabbed a corner and hoisted him over their heads. His next thought was, "I have corners?" But as they jogged over toward the lagoon, he discovered that his stretched-out skin seemed to be extra-sensitive, and their hands on his body felt rather good. Very good, in fact. So good that he very much hoped his dick was stretched out as flat as his arms and legs and wouldn't be making an untimely appearance as the world's kinkiest keel. He didn't even mind that he couldn't see what must be a truly awe-inspiring display of bouncing bosoms as the girls jiggled their way across the sand.

When they tossed him into the lagoon and all jumped in him, he realized that they were going to spend the next few hours rubbing all over him as they played and swam. Suddenly his predicament didn't seem quite so bad. He just prayed that when they deflated the raft he wouldn't deflate right along with it and end up wadded into a ball and stuffed into their trunk. Then again, as long as they went to the beach regularly, it might be bearable for a summer, as long as they eventually released him.

As the hours passed, Brendan was so caught up in enjoying himself that he didn't notice as his fur gradually smoothed out and became fur-patterned vinyl. He didn't notice that he eventually stopped blinking completely, gazing at the frolicking all about with wide-open eyes that had become larger and more cartoony in appearance. What finally caught his attention was that he suddenly found he couldn't direct his gaze any more, and was only able to stare straight ahead. It took him a while to notice, because his field of vision had somehow increased, as had the size of the area he could focus on clearly, so he really didn't need to look around. In any case, he immediately forgot about it when Muffy and Beverly, or maybe Beverly and Muffy, took off their bikini tops and lay face-down on him, their breasts rubbing against his back as they shifted position. The huge goofy grin that he'd been wearing since they first threw him into the water grew even bigger, and gradually changed into the simple painted-on grin of a pool toy. The fur pattern on his vinyl skin also gradually shifted, simplifying into broad patches of uniform colors.

He didn't start to worry until Linda and Sandra were out of his field of view, and the bunnies had apparently fallen asleep on him, no longer shifting around. Bored, he started paying attention to other things, and suddenly realized that the fur of his muzzle was gone, and he could see only a smooth expanse of grey vinyl, topped by a shiny black nose. Once he started noticing things, he also realized that his neck had shrunk until his head was only a few inches from the raft that was his body. And, come to think of it, the huge round muzzle he'd had at the beginning had also shrunk down to the point where it almost resembled his own again.

Panicking, he realized that maybe the girls weren't just going to deflate the raft and yank it out of him again. His eyes widened in fear and his grin changed into a worried frown. At least, that's what he tried to do. He found that he couldn't move his features at all. He continued to stare at the world with happy eyes and a great big smile, and found he couldn't help but feel as happy as he looked. As Linda and Sandra swam back into view, and his bunny passengers woke up and lazily stretched, he lost his train of thought. He tried to remember what he'd been so worried about a moment ago. Something about having changed, but he felt perfectly normal. He decided he'd think about it later.

After a long afternoon of wet fun, the girls heard the calls of their surfer boyfriends, ready to head home for the day. With delighted squeals, they splashed their way out of the lagoon and ran across the sand, jiggling all the way, Linda dragging the raft behind her by the big inflated tail that stuck straight up from its rear. She paused as she passed a large family of chipmunks, two adults staring glumly at a crumpled pile of vinyl at their feet, and five kids running in hyperactive little circles when they weren't busy whining that they wanted their raft.

Linda dragged the raccoon raft over toward them and asked if she could help. The father looked at her miserably, the terror of an afternoon at the beach with nothing to keep the kids busy written all over his face. "Our fu-- darned raft has a leak, and the kids don't have any other toys. We figured it would be enough to keep them busy."

"Aw, that's terrible," said Linda. "Tell you what. We're headed home, and we really don't get to the beach too often. Our raft is big enough for a bunch of kids, so I'll sell it to you for, say, $15."

The parents sighed in relief together. "That would be wonderful," the beleaguered mother said. The father hurried over to their minivan and returned with a wad of bills, grinning like a man who had just watched his firing squad have a collective heart attack. Linda took the handful and made it disappear somewhere in her bikini top. Turning back to the raft, she kissed the tip of its nose and whispered, "Sorry, sport, it was fun, but at least you'll have a good home." She started to hurry off, but then turned around again and asked, "Say, can I take your old raft? I'm sure we can fix it up."

"Oh, sure, no problem," said the mother. "Help yourself. This new one looks like it'll last for years."

"Oh, it will. We-- uh, they make 'em to last. Enjoy!" Brendan happily watched her hurry away. The girls had been nice, but children would have a lot more fun with a toy like him than a bunch of college kids would. He was really looking forward to the summer ahead.