The actress parked her car in front of the house.
It was an ordinary house. Two stories with a large privacy fence running from the sides, to what she thought was the back yard. It sat alone on the lot, no neighbors for miles around. She thought it was rather odd, not being used to seeing something this mundane. The actress was used to large mansions with pools and fountains. "This is so.....plain." she thought to herself.
Walking up to the large brown door, the actress tried to look in the windows, but saw dark curtains covering them on the inside. She shrugged her shoulders and then tossed her head, so her reddish blond hair fell onto her back. When she pushed the doorbell, the actress did not hear a sound. However, in a short time the door opened to show her a rather gaunt looking man in his 60s or so.
What really caught the actress' attention was the man's eyes. They were large, black and unblinking. The bored into her like black suns from a scifi movie she was in awhile back.
To break the contact with those eye, the actress looked down at her outreached hand and "Hi! I'm...."
The man interrupted her with "I know who you are. Benjamin told me you were wanting to be here. Come."
He turned his back on the actress and strode further into the house. The actress blinked at his retreat and stepped across the threshold and turned to close the door behind her. After it was shut, she looked around the room to speak with him again but he was nowhere to be seen.
Instead, the actress was confronted with a living room dedicated to dogs.
Pictures on wall showed canines of all breeds, some standing, some sitting on grass. Others still showed dogs in pairs, posed like family photos. Other frames on the wall were dedicated to medals and cards saying what dog placed in various dog shows, the actress guessed.
Looking around, she saw a showcase holding a number of trophies. Some large some small. Mixed in with the awards were jars. Some looking like dogs themselves, others like small wooden boxes. All of them bore a name and a set of dates.
Somewhat taken back, the actress looked around again, trying to find the man when his voice barked "Come!" from a doorway at the back of the room. She followed the sound into another room, this one a bit more friendly. Finding the man sitting in a leather recliner, stuffing tobacco into a pipe, the actress walked up to hold out her hand again and tried to introduce herself again. "Ben said you were..."
Pointing at the couch with his pipe, the man simply said "Sit."
She blinked her eyes at the man again and did as he requested. The couch was leather, matching his chair in color. Crossing her legs, she watched the man finish filling his pipe and getting it lit. A cloud of grey smoke separated the two of them. "But," she thought to herself, "at least it blocks those eyes."
Casting out another cloud of smoke from his nostrils, the man said to the actress "I know why you are here. Benjamin sent me the script yesterday when he told you were come coming over. An interesting concept: A woman believing she is becoming a dog."
The actress beamed! This was going to work out great! "Yes! I fell in love with the script when my agent gave it to me! A stay at home mom who is so driven by her child and husband, she begins to lose her grip on reality and thinks she is turning into an animal!"
"I want to get into this woman's head! I want to feel what she is feeling! I want to be where she is!" The actress continued. "But I know very little about dogs. I need someone to help me connect to a dog spirit, if you will. Ben says you know all about dogs. That you have trained dogs most of your life. If you can show me how you do that, I would so, so grateful!"
The man simply said "No."
Taken aback, the actress sunk deeper into the couch. "But....why not" she stammered back to him.
He leaned forward in the recliner and waved away a fresh puff of smoke. "Because," he told her frankly, "you are not here to learn how dogs are trained. You are here to be trained as a dog."