This was written for a person named Eric Schnieder. This was a bit difficult for me to write since the original request basically involved punishing the character for no real reason, and I tried to compensate by making him as unpleasant as possible, which made me feel really uncomfortable while I was writing. The exact specifications were as follows (title was his idea too):

"The main character's a trainer at a travelling circus who's been chasing after one of the young female acrobats. Her father (I'm thinking it's a family of acrobats :) finds out and has a gypsy woman lay a curse on him. The trainer wakes up the next day, not in his bunk, but naked and in one of the stalls at the sideshow. Now he's on all fours with the fore- and hindlegs (and probably the undercarriage :) of a white Lippizaner, but is otherwise fairly human. Even more strangely, everyone seems to think that it's normal and he's always been like that (except the Gypsy woman and maybe the father and daughter.) Folks start out treating him like he's a 'person', though one of the sideshow inhabitants. As the days go by, he'll get bigger and more horselike and folks will treat him more and more like a 'horse' until finally he's in the barn with the rest of the circus animals and performing in the ring for the new trainer who seems to have always been the trainer. :) In this one, I'm hoping to see a gradual transformation of the fellow from man to horse. I imagine that he'll be mentally unchanged through the process and I'd love to see how he interacts with the other folks at the circus, especially as they start to think of him more and more as a 'horse'."