Judoo's Captions

surprise update: 3 new captions

2010-12-24T12:20:00.000-08:00

For those celebrating it, Merry Christmas! Here is a surprise upload of 3 new (well, they did come from tf-media.net first) captions. I did it mostly for organizational purposes, but the fact it's a day of giving tomorrow helps.

I also want you to know that I have the stories written out for more captions, so I won't run out and should be able to post a few every month (or whenever the update comes.)

See you next year!

Xmas Eve update: 3 new captions

2010-12-24T12:17:00.000-08:00

update: 12 new captions

2010-12-12T17:19:00.000-08:00

12 new captions in the post below this one. I haven't been posting as many or as frequently, and my stock is down to 2 captions. Hopefully I'll get to make more over the holidays.

On a side note, these past few months I've been putting in a lot more of my creativity into the "Choose Your Own Transformation" storylines than for captions or stories. Because CYOT is collaborative in nature, I can't really post any of that stuff up here without it making any sense. If you enjoy the stories I've posted on here in the past and want more material like that, you may want to register at tf-media.net and search for the CYOT sections under the name "Judoo."

Since I won't be posting again until next year, have a merry Christmas and a happy new year!

mass update: 12 new captions

2010-12-12T17:15:00.000-08:00

update: many new captions

2010-11-06T23:36:00.000-07:00

Sorry for not having posted sooner. Life is busy and I don't get many chances to post anything up, even over at tf-media.net where I tend to upload 2-3 pieces once a week. I would post each caption individually, but it just takes up a lot of time and is a bit annoying when there are so many in a single update.

The number of captions I have in stock is getting pretty low and I'm not sure if I will be making any (or hardly any) new ones for the upcoming year. I have over 400 captions posted up, which I think is a pretty good run over the course of a year and a half. Thank you very much to everyone who has followed me since I began this blog about eleven months ago, but from here on out I doubt I can provide the quality or volume of captions that I did over the spring and summer. But don't worry; I'm not going away entirely. I plan to make and release at least one caption a week at tf-media.net, and will probably post the four or five captions here at the end or beginning of each month.

mass update

2010-11-06T23:30:00.000-07:00

Update--17 new captions, possible blog updates

2010-10-02T13:19:00.000-07:00

Sorry it took so long to get an update up. Here are all the captions, all seventeen of them, that I missed posting her over the past few weeks.

Blogger seems to have a new mass image upload feature that is quite nice for someone like me who has a lot of images to post in a short time. Unfortunately, it also means that there are seventeen pictures in a single blog post, so each image does not have its own unique title or tags. (If you do want to know what each caption is called, hover your cursor over the image and you should see its title down where your browser's progress bar is.)

I'm not sure how I'm going to update the blog in the future. Chances are I'll go back to the old one-picture-per-post format, and sometime in the future I may go back and bring up this week's update back into the old format. Leave a comment if you have a preference!

Update: 17 new captions

2010-10-02T13:12:00.000-07:00

no update

2010-09-22T10:55:00.001-07:00

I moved into a new apartment and have very poor internet connection, so I don't think I'll be able to update this blog until our connection is upgraded, which should be in a few days. Supposedly.

Sorry for the wait. Just rest assured knowing the update will contain more material than usual :P

Update: 9 new captions

2010-09-13T19:34:00.001-07:00

Okay, so it's not 11 new captions, but it's close enough :P

Nine new captions this week.

Six Months Later

2010-09-13T19:33:00.000-07:00

Just a Good Old Fashioned Blowjob

2010-09-13T19:32:00.000-07:00

Nikky's Latest Favor

2010-09-13T19:27:00.000-07:00

Unsettled

2010-09-13T19:26:00.000-07:00

A Behind the Scenes Guy

2010-09-13T19:25:00.000-07:00

And to Sweeten the Deal

2010-09-13T19:24:00.000-07:00

She Can't Get Mad, Can She?

2010-09-13T19:23:00.000-07:00

Caught Up in it All

2010-09-13T19:21:00.000-07:00

Temporary Gender Reassignment

2010-09-13T19:20:00.000-07:00

Going Through the Motions

2010-09-06T20:16:00.001-07:00

Who is Whose Slave?

2010-09-06T20:15:00.002-07:00

What Would You Have Me Do?

2010-09-06T20:15:00.000-07:00

It's Only Been Five Hours...

2010-08-30T17:58:00.000-07:00

There's an Art to TG

2010-08-30T17:57:00.000-07:00

Merely Preventative Measures

2010-08-30T17:56:00.000-07:00

Delaying the Demolition

2010-08-30T17:55:00.000-07:00

A Better Friend thanThat

2010-08-30T17:53:00.001-07:00

While I'm Still Young

2010-08-30T17:52:00.002-07:00

Trial Failed. Resetting in Three... Two... One...

2010-08-30T17:52:00.000-07:00

Campground Catastrophe

2010-08-23T21:29:00.000-07:00

Everything Takes Practice

2010-08-23T21:28:00.000-07:00

Witches Come in Threes

2010-08-23T21:27:00.000-07:00

The community over at tf-media seemed to like this one a bit. My... third anime cap, I believe. Someone pointed out that the girls are actually from Final Fantasy. This is actually the second time I've used them in a cap... not on purpose though.

Forget About Filling In

2010-08-23T21:25:00.000-07:00

Bound to the Dwelling they Built

2010-08-23T21:23:00.001-07:00

The Cost of Closeness

2010-08-23T21:22:00.002-07:00

The Sultan's "Performers"

2010-08-23T21:22:00.000-07:00

Baby I Apologize

2010-08-16T20:43:00.000-07:00

This was the winning caption in the Summer 2010 caption contest over at tf-media.net . It won %55 of the votes with 157 votes. But there were only four entries this time around, possibly because there was only two weeks to make the captions.

Three Days Home Away

2010-08-16T20:41:00.000-07:00

Restoring the Human Element

2010-08-16T20:40:00.002-07:00

Racing Uphill

2010-08-16T20:40:00.000-07:00

Bringing his Characters to Life

2010-08-16T20:39:00.000-07:00

For All the World to See

2010-08-16T20:37:00.002-07:00

What's Your Story?

2010-08-16T20:37:00.000-07:00

Story: The Fifth Roommate: Chpt. 8: Kitty Girl

2010-07-24T15:20:00.000-07:00

Almost a month after I finished Chapter 7 (has it really been that long? Wow!) I have now finished the eight installment of the Fifth Roommates series. In this chapter Amy and Anna get into a fight and begin to cast magic on each other, but when Eric tries to stop it he himself is accidentally transformed first into a catgirl and then later into an actual cat. Eric and Karen also have some problems with their relationship.

It's going to be a while before I write chapter nine. I'm going off on vacation for three weeks and will then need to actually start writing it, which might take several weeks by itself.

Please rate and comment!

--------

I would have thought that I’d have dreams about Gore. Nightmares. But I didn’t. I didn’t dream at all, or at least I didn’t remember what I had. Even when I woke up, I emerged from my slumber in a sort of numb, amnesiac trance. There was something I was supposed to be upset about, but I couldn’t quite place what or why. But Karen—she was next to me, right? I could have sworn that I’d heard her light breathing, felt her soft kicking against my legs during the night. But no. As my memories returned, I looked about and saw the blankets empty beside me. The warmth against my body was just a false impression.

I heard a knocking at my door. Karen? I rushed to my feet hopefully, shaking off the awake-all-night dizziness, and opened the door. It was Anna.

“Wakey wakey,” she giggled. “Come to breakfast. Melissa’s making pancakes.”

I yawned. “What time is it?”

“Eleven. We all sort of slept in after what happened last night.” Anna’s cheerful smile vanished. “Are you okay? I was so worried…”

“I’m fine,” I said stoically, trying to keep Anna from detecting my loneliness. “Everything worked out in the end.”

“Okay,” Anna said, smiling again, evidently satisfied at my brief answer. “Let’s go wake up Karen.”

I followed Anna outside and over to Karen’s door. Anna knocked at it lightly, but hearing no response she knocked again a bit louder. Still nothing.

“She’s awake,” Anna told me before I could say that we should leave Karen alone. “She’s just ignoring me.”

“I’m not ignoring you!” Karen groaned from behind the door. “Eat without me. Just save me some for later.”

“Come on, Karen,” Anna pleaded. “We’re eating as a family. With Eric. Amy says it’ll cheer you up.”

“Cheer me up?” Karen’s muffled voice didn’t sound very happy. “Eating won’t make me feel better. Please just go away.”

Amy had been watching us from over in the kitchen. She joined Anna and I and began to pound at it forcefully with her fist. “Get up, Karen. Don’t make me turn Eric into a coathanger and pick your lock.”

I backed away, hoping Amy wasn’t serious. Amy grinned at me, seeing my discomfort. “Or maybe I could make him some panties and slide him under the door,” she yelled, facing me.

I chuckled nervously, half expecting to feel my body start to tingle as Amy began working her magic on me. I felt the sensation start to form on my skin, but I wasn’t sure if I was just imagining it or not. Amy wouldn’t actually transform me at a time like this, would she? After what happened last night? But then again, if she did turn me into something small and force me under the door, Karen would have no choice but to respond, and then I’d get my chance to talk to her and try to work out something out.

“Don’t you dare, Amy! Fine, I’ll come out. But let me take a shower before we eat.” Karen unlocked her door but didn’t open it.

“You don’t need a shower,” Amy yelled through the door. “Eric hasn’t taken one either so you two can be stinky together.”

Was I stinky? I sniffed, backing away from the twins. Anna saw me and laughed.

Karen sighed. A moment later she opened the door and saw the three of us standing outside, her own little welcoming party. She looked at Amy, over to Anna, and only for the slightest moment at me before she turned away again. She wore her wrinkled blue nightgown and a pair of fuzzy slippers. Her hair was a mess, oily and tangled. But worst, I saw the drying crust of tears on her cheeks. Karen seemed to notice that I saw them and rubbed at her cheeks with her arms, sniffing softly and breathing in long, controlled breaths.

Amy grabbed Karen and pulled her toward the large table in the kitchen. Melissa stood at the counters where she cooked fragrant blueberry pancakes. She wore a white and blue checkered apron that reminded me of something from the Wizard of Oz. Out of the five of us, only Melissa looked fully awake and prepared for the day.

Karen slumped into a chair at the far end of the table. I seated myself across from her. She still wouldn’t even look in my direction, either focusing silently on Melissa or resting her forehead on the tablecloth as if still half asleep. I watched her, hoping she’d meet my gaze and say something to me, but whenever Karen happened to glance in my direction she shifted her attention away equally as fast when she saw that I was paying attention. My chest throbbed with an agonizing emptiness. The girl I loved wouldn’t even acknowledge my existence and I had no idea why.

I couldn’t take it anymore. I offered to help set the table, but Melissa insisted that she could handle it. Amy and Anna helped out a little at first but took seats next to me when the task was finished.

“Remember the last time we ate together like this?” Amy squinted at me. “You had a little something on your chest, didn’t you?”

I didn’t answer her.

“Your life would be boring without me. Admit it,” Amy teased. “You like the things we do to you here. And there are still so many things left to try…”

I saw Karen flinch. Amy jabbed her with her elbow.

“Karen loves me. She just won’t admit it,” Amy continued when Karen didn’t lift her head. She wrapped an arm around Karen and pulled her sister close, dragging the chairs across the vinyl floor in the process. “There’s a fun Karen deep down in there. A Karen that wants to be just like me.”

Amy’s taunting worked in provoking her younger sister. Karen sat up and glared at Amy ferociously. But Amy, ever the brave one, ignored her sister’s wrath and surprised everyone at the table by landing a kiss on Karen’s cheek. “Smile and be happy, baby sister.”

Karen pushed herself away and stood up, striding angrily back to her bedroom.

“Karen…” Melissa called out, sighing. But Karen didn’t turn back. “Go get her,” she ordered Amy sternly.

“I think Eric should. He should get to know all about Problem Girl,” Amy defied.

Ten hours ago Amy had saved Karen and I from Gore. I didn’t understand how she could be so callous now. “I’ll try to talk to her,” I volunteered.

“No. Sit down.” Melissa slid the last four pancakes onto a plate, sat it down on the center of the table, and went to Karen’s door.

None of us spoke as Melissa tried to coax Karen to join us again. I couldn’t hear what she said, but whatever she told Karen worked. Within a couple minutes Karen joined us again. She had changed out of her nightgown and into long blue jeans and a wrinkled black t-shirt, her hair halfway combed. But one thing hadn’t changed. She still wouldn’t look at me, and just like before, it killed me to be kept so distant from someone I invested so much of my heart in.

The five of us ate. The pancakes were delicious. Melissa was a great cook—I hadn’t had such a great breakfast outside a restaurant since before I left for college as an undergraduate freshman. But even the tastiest food in the world would have felt like sand in my mouth; my mood and aching heart ruined the pleasures of my senses. Melissa, Amy, and Anna made light conversation. I joined in at times, trying to forget about the boulder of depression crushing me down. Karen flinched when I spoke as if I were shouting in her ear.

As soon as Karen finished eating the two pancakes Melissa gave her, she disappeared back into her room as the rest of the family enjoyed a third and fourth. I felt Melissa gazing at me through the last portion of the meal as if I could explain Karen’s aloofness, or worse, as if I were the one causing it. Maybe I was. I didn’t know and Karen wouldn’t say.

“So what are you doing today, Eric?” Anna asked, but before I had a chance to reply she continued. “I’m going out with Robin. We’ve been talking for like the past week. He’s so awesome. So sweet…” Anna sighed theatrically.

“You’re not going out until I meet him first,” Amy challenged.

“Amy, Robin is Eric’s best friend. I trust him. He’s a good guy.” Anna turned to Melissa as if hoping for support. “I’m not some high school girl, you know. I’m an adult.”

“Have you forgotten what happened last night already?” Amy challenged.

“No. What did happen last night?” Melissa folded her arms and faced the three of us with a stern expression. “I want to know the truth.”

“We told you already. Eric and Karen got a little drunk so Anna and I picked them up. That’s it. Nothing more to it.” Amy folded her own arms, mimicking Melissa rebelliously.

I felt sorry for Melissa. She worked so hard to support her three seemingly jobless younger sisters and was cut out of the loop in return. I felt as though I should have told Melissa all about what happened privately, but I also feared what her response would be. She couldn’t exactly ground any of us. Certainly not me, anyway. But being out of favor with the oldest, most practiced witch of the family could probably yield punishments I hadn’t even knew existed.

“I’m going to go talk to Karen,” I excused myself.

Amy chuckled grimly. “Good luck with that brat.”

I took a deep breath and knocked at Karen’s door, my heart throbbing. Karen didn’t answer. I tried again.

“Who is it? What do you want?” Karen asked in a tone that suggested visitors were very unwelcome.

“It’s me… can I come in?” I asked quietly, leaning against the door. I heard footsteps behind me.

“Let Eric in before you own a new pair of underwear. Hm. Dark red. Frilly. Naughty.” Amy, who had crept up behind me, placed her hand on my back and began to press me against the wood. “Or maybe I’ll keep him for myself today. And I remember what he did to me last time… He just loved playing with my tits. He’ll be that much better when his face is in my pussy.”

I cringed, terrified and aroused at the same time. Amy’s hand seemed to grow warmer, that tingling sensation start to spread up and down my spine… Karen swung the door open. As soon as I’d stumbled inside, Karen slammed it closed back in Amy’s face. She didn’t help me up. Instead she sat down on the corner of the bed and buried her face in her hands. I sat down beside her, afraid to touch her with something as simple as a warm hug.

“Thanks,” I said after a minute of silence. “I hate frills.”

Karen sighed.

“What’s up?” I asked lightly. “How are you feeling?”

Karen sighed again, but this time she sat up, staring at the wall. “I don’t think this is a good idea,” she exhaled slowly. I felt as though I were having a heart attack as my mind tried to sort through what she meant.

“What is?” I squeaked, my voice cracking. A lump stuck in my throat.

Karen was quiet. “Us,” she said. “Together.”

It took all my strength not to cry as the worst-case scenario I could imagine was quickly coming to life.

“Why do you say that?” I croaked, my words spaced awkwardly in my trembling voice. “It’s only been a couple weeks…”

Karen stared straight ahead at the wall emotionlessly. “Because I make you be somebody you aren’t when we’re together.” I waited for her to explain. “Erica doesn’t exist. She never should have. You never should have been put in any danger last night. But you were. Erica was.”

I fought to find words to reply with. I couldn’t. Instead I wrapped my arms around Karen’s stiff body, burying my head against the side of her neck. Karen ignored the gesture at first but after a few seconds she hugged me back, sniffling. I felt her tears drop on my shoulder and felt her body shake in my arms. Her skin pulsed with the blood streaming through her veins.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” she cried between sobs. “What’s wrong with you? Did you think I wouldn’t care that she was trying to fuck you that whole night?” Her grip around me tightened, crushing me until she had exerted all her strength and collapsed into my lap. “It’s my fault… I never should have made you come…” Karen said something else but I couldn’t make it out through her crying. I let her weep in my lap for a while until it subsided. I admit that I cried too, maybe just as a reaction to her. Or more honestly because I dreaded what her final verdict on our relationship would be. She was in my arms now, but that could change so quickly…

“I’m sorry, Eric. It’s just not a good idea,” Karen murmured when her tears were exhausted.

“Are you sure about this?” I asked, feeling tears and sweat gather in my eyes and on my body. “Absolutely sure?”

“I’m sorry, Eric.” Karen wriggled out of my embrace. “I really do love you. You have no idea how much this hurts…”

I was pretty sure I did. “I should go,” I said. It was over. Truly over.

Karen didn’t say anything. She watched me silently as I slipped outside and hurried to my room. I had hoped she’d call me back, come running up to me to tell me she changed her mind, or at least give me one final kiss goodbye, but no. I went to my room, shut the door, and lay down on my mattress, muffling my tears in my pillow.

I heard the door open after a while. I didn’t look up, not even when I heard footsteps approaching me and someone sitting down next to me on the mattress, rubbing my back gently. Karen? I took a quick peek to the side. One tiny look at a pink shirt with an exposed bellybutton told me it wasn’t Karen but Amy. Amy? Why her?

“So you two broke up, huh?” Amy said calmly. “You won’t think so now, but this is for the best. Good to pull out before you get too involved. Now that you’ve had a little taste of Karen.” Amy grinned. “You got a lot further with her than I expected. You took her virginity. I thought she’d never lose it. You can be proud about that.”

I tried to calm myself best I could, wiping the tears off of my face before Amy could get a full look at my miserable state. But somehow I didn’t think I was fooling anybody.

“Poor Eric,” Amy wooed, massaging my back with both of her hands. She was skilled at it. I felt my muscles relaxing. “You’re single again, you know. That has its benefits…” I felt Amy begin to pull up at my shirt slowly, sliding it up off of me inch by inch until it was wadded up in her hands. I didn’t resist. I didn’t know why. I was not all that happy at Amy after all she’d done to me and Karen, but I couldn’t deny that right now her warm, sensual hands numbed my pain.

“I can make you happy, if you want.” Amy rolled me over. I looked up at her, at her long blonde hair and tight pink shirt, her round, pleasant breasts and plump lips… she was very beautiful, as much as I hated to admit it. I moaned softly as she massaged my chest. I felt my nipples begin to tingle and grow, my skin swelling out into now-familiar feminine breasts. At first I thought she was turning me into Erica, but the extent of the transformation was limited to my breasts, turning them from flat male ones to small but sensitive female A-cups. She tickled my nipples in her fingers, grinning. “Do you feel better?”

I squirmed as my nipples and manhood grew erect. Amy massaged lower and lower until she was sliding one hand down into my athletic shorts, past my pubic hair and starting to tug at my cock. So erotic… so tempting…

“I don’t think this is a good thing right now,” I forced myself to say. As if on command, my breasts and nipples shrunk back down to my normal male size, losing the sensitivity that had made me so horny. Amy pulled her hand out of my shorts, leaving my cock throbbing for attention. I imagined her warm mouth sucking at the tip of my dick… Amy had been with a number of guys… I could only imagine the type of skills she had acquired in the bedroom, skills that could fill me with a level of arousal I thought impossible. But no. Ten minutes ago I broke up with Karen. Having sex with her sister was probably close to one of the worst things I could do if I ever wanted to mend my relationship with her. Hell, I still had to live with her for the next eleven months.

“Your loss. But let me know if you change your mind. You’re too good to suffer at the hands of my bitch sister.” Amy grinned at me. “Not many girls will say no to you once I spread a rumor that you have a ten-inch dick. The rumor won’t be true, of course. I’ll make you at least eleven inches.”

I chuckled, simultaneously tempted and revolted at the offer. Amy left me in peace, shutting the door behind her. I lay back down and rested, trying to push my short but excruciatingly painful conversation with Karen out of my mind in vain. Where had I gone wrong? I didn’t complain to Karen about Gore because I didn’t want to ruin the sleepover for her, but clearly that wasn’t how Karen interpreted it. Was it something else I said? Something I didn’t say? Was Karen hoping that I’d come back to her door and beg for forgiveness? Or would that only infuriate her? Maybe Amy was right. Our breakup was inevitable. Karen just wasn’t the dateable type. Or maybe I wasn’t the dateable type. But what would someone else have done in my place? Too many questions, too many “what if”s. I crushed the side of my head against my arms, clenching my teeth, trying to drown the questions out with a more manageable type of pain.

I needed to talk to Karen again. After a shower. I grabbed some clothes and made my way to the bathroom. I let the water run icy cold on my body, trying to forget the memory of Karen’s warm body against mine when we had showered together merely days ago. I quickly dressed, tossed my dirty clothes in my room, and knocked at Karen’s door. No answer.

“Karen left,” Anna said, peering at me from her door. She must have showered before me because she was wearing much nicer, flirtier clothes than at breakfast. Anna her lower lip and looked like she might herself begin crying. “What did she say to you? She wouldn’t talk to me before she left…”

“Don’t worry about it,” I replied flatly. “Have a good time with Robin tonight.” I hadn’t tried to sound bitter with that last sentence, but I feared Anna thought I was intentionally being malicious.

“No, I can call it off… he’s heading over in an hour. We can hang out some other time. I want to make sure you’re okay, Eric.”

I laughed. “Amy already tried to ‘make me feel better.’ I think I’ll be all right. Don’t worry.”

Anna returned to her room. I didn’t know what to do, so I flopped down on the couch in the living room and turned on the television, hoping to fill my mind with something other than Karen. I watched some kids’ cartoons for about fifteen minutes before giving up and turning the television back off.

I heard Amy shuffle and knock at Anna’s door. She looked at me and grinned. When Anna opened her door, Amy grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her outside.

“We have to talk about Robin.” Amy gently pushed Anna by the shoulders until she sat down on the couch next to me. “You know what I expect you to do.”

“I’m not taking you along with me!” Anna protested. “Robin’s taking me out tonight, not you.”

“But I don’t know anything about this Robin. Can I trust him? You don’t always fall for the best guys, Anna.”

“I already told you, Robin is Eric’s best friend! If Eric trusts Robin, I trust Robin. You can’t do this to me anymore, Amy!” Anna shrieked. She tried to stand up but Amy pushed her back down on the couch, scowling.

I felt obligated to intervene. “Robin’s okay. I can vouch for him,” I interrupted. “Don’t worry.”

“That’s not the point. Anna and I made an agreement and now she’s breaking it.” Amy put her hands on her hips and began shaking her head.

“That was seven years ago! It wasn’t a life contract. You have boyfriends of your own. I can have mine too!” Anna leaped over the side of the couch and stood up to challenge her twin sister.

“I don’t have boyfriends, I only have dates. And our agreement lasts until I say it’s over. You can’t back out of it now, Anna. You know the consequences if you try.” Amy stretched her hand out, her palm facing toward Anna. At first I thought she was taking up a karate pose or something, but I began to notice a faint blue glow around Amy’s hand. Something bad was about to happen.

“Don’t you dare! I’ll call Melissa!” Anna assumed the same warrior-like stance, a similar blue aurora forming around her open hand. The two girls stood about five feet apart. I noticed a thin blue band of suspended light stretching between them and heard the air begin to crackle. “No Kitty Girl!”

“Yes Kitty Girl.” Amy took a step forward. Anna stumbled back as if an invisible hand were pushing her back.

“Hey! I don’t think this is a good idea!” I protested, standing up.

“Oh, don’t worry. We’ve done this before,” Amy laughed, turning to face me nonchalantly as her sister struggled to stay on her feet, sweating off some of her mascara and makeup. “This has nothing to do with you, Eric. It’ll all be over soon, once Anna admits she can’t resist forever.”

“Fuck you!” Anna groaned with all her strength and pushed forward, causing Amy to lose her footing and land on her back. I watched, heart pounding, as Amy began to grow hair on her arms--thin, silky white strands that covered every inch of her skin. Her ears began to shift, becoming more triangular and pointed, slowly bending further to the side. Just like the rest of her skin, the outside of her ears was covered with the thin white hair. It took me a moment to realize that her ears looked like an animal’s. A cat’s, to be exact.

“Anna!” Amy cried in disbelief. “How dare you?” Her voice sounded distorted, her ‘r’s thicker and more drawn out. “You asked for this!” Amy pushed herself back up to her feet, resuming the spellcasting stance.

This time Anna couldn’t keep her sister’s magic back and slid backwards on the carpet until she was pinned against the wall, her arm trembling in exhaustion. She let out a long yelp as her body began to morph in the same way as her sisters. Four of her teeth grew out into long, sharp fangs as the neat, smooth, white rows reshaped themselves into a series of smaller, jagged triangles. Her tongue grew longer but thinner, rougher and sandpapery.

I couldn’t stand back and just watch. Anna offered to be there for me through my hard times with Karen. How could I claim neutrality and abandon her now? I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and jumped directly into the hissing beam shooting from Amy’s hand into Anna’s chest. Amy would have to stop now.

I was completely unprepared for my idiotic action’s consequences. Amy yelped and drew her hand back, but it was too late. The last few milliseconds of the blue beam shot inside my body like a thousand microscopic bullets. My body immediately began to itch and burn fiercely, not a pleasant tingling like I was used to but a kind of pins and needles that made me wince in discomfort. The beam of energy quite literally knocked me off my feet as if I’d been struck by a solid metal beam, though the impact wasn’t all at once but accumulated gradually. Otherwise it probably would have shattered my ribcage and killed me.

I landed on Anna who was slumped against the wall. She gasped, my heavy body knocking the wind out of her lungs. Rasping for breath, she tried to lift me off of her but was too exhausted from her struggle with Amy to do it, and I was too stunned to do it myself.

“Eric! What the fuck!” Amy wheezed. “Are you fucking retarded?”

I couldn’t answer. The prickling began to spread across my body from my chest to my scalp and down to my toes. I squirmed, feeling like a million wasps were stinging me all across my body. I felt my body begin to snap and crack, sharp pains shooting through my arms, torso, legs, neck, and even in my skull. In particular I felt a searing jab at the base of my spine.

Anna finally managed to roll me off of her. I curled up into a ball, trying to withstand the pain. I had been clutching my eyes shut at first, but as the gray blurriness in my vision faded I opened my eyes a crack to see that the number of hairs on my arm had tripled, forming a dark brown cover against my otherwise light skin. More hairs continued to pop up at random, continually increasing the thickness of my hair until I could barely see any flesh underneath it. As the hairs grew dense I noticed that they were taking on an orange tint.

My fingers began to ache. Several seconds later each of my joints began to pop, not just once but several times each. My thumb retracted until my body until it was little more that a stump sticking out on the side. My other fingers shrunk back to a lesser degree, the entire shape of my hand becoming more circular. My fingernails began to grow thick and long until they were like a series of small, translucent ivory knives. I rotated my hand to see my palm, discovering dark black pads growing at the base of each finger.

“Oh my god… look what you did!” Anna gasped, crawling toward me and trying to coax me out of the fetal position. Somehow or other the feline features Amy had caused her to grow had already vanished.

“It’s not my fault!” Amy sounded panicked. “You started this!”

“What? No, I did not!”

I was too distracted to pay much attention to the sisters as they tried to refute their part in my transformation. My ears began to itch intolerably. I tried to scratch them with what remained of my human hands, but I was completely unfamiliar with its shape and could really only rub it with the pads on my palms. My ears felt softer and thinner, covered by the same hair coating my arms and legs. Everything began to sound louder, every slight vibration from the girls’ voice making my ears ring. Not only their voices, but the sound of humming from the air conditioner, the rushing of water in pipes behind the walls, the distant sound of traffic three floors down… my large, cupped ears picked up an astonishing number of noises I had never even heard or paid attention to before.

The itching moved to my face. My eyes went dim and blurry, but it felt like I was staring directly into the sun. I squinted and blinked, the light around me suddenly blinding me until my pupils readjusted to its intensity. My nose began to flatten on my face into a sturdy diamond shape, my nostrils shrinking down to two small slits. I was glad I couldn’t see the changes as they occurred, but I sensed a damp feeling on my nose that scared me just as much anyway. I did see several blurry lines begin to grow out from my cheeks just to the sides of my nose. I focused on them with my eyes, seeing that they were whiskers. They were sensitive to the currents in the air and even to the vibrations closing in from all around me. I clutched at them with my hands that were more like paws but could do nothing more than stroke them.

My teeth popped and I felt them shift around in my gums. I felt four sharp jabs against my lips that began to fade as the very structure of my jaw lengthened into a shallow snout.

I was so focused on the changes happened to my face that I didn’t even realize that my entire body was shrinking except for two swelling, itchy breasts. I fumbled out of my shirt, my claws getting tangled up in the fabric. Useless. I began to bite at the fabric, trying to tear it off of me. I felt something press against my waist and lurched violently, startled. I saw Anna helping me take off my shirt and forced my body to relax until it was gone.

My entire chest was covered in a thin, orange coat of hair. Most of my breasts were covered except for my nipples, which remained for the most part completely human. And completely feminine. My breasts continued to inflate. It was hard to estimate how large they were; my body itself was no more than four and a half feet tall and disproportionately busty for a human female. But my breasts were at least as large as Amy’s, even at my diminished size. I rolled on my back, feeling my breasts sink to the side under their heavy weight.

My waist narrowed, my hips remaining about the same width but still giving me an hourglass form. A furry hourglass. I kicked my way out of my shorts and underwear. My fur covered up most of my nakedness. Just when I thought the transformation was over, the jabbing at the base of my spine returned and I rolled on my chest to relieve the pressure. Then one of the strangest parts of the transformation occurred—I felt an entire new set of bones, muscles, and skin jump to life right above my ass, twitched left, right, up, down, and every direction in-between. I couldn’t see what was going on, but I reached back and felt an extrusion from my body. It was my tail. A cat tail. With some practice I realized I could control its twitching, swinging it around in circles above me or whapping it on the ground. It was kind of like my whiskers in the way it was an entirely new sensory input, a new way for me to observe my surroundings by the sense of touch.

“Eric? Are you okay?” Anna rolled me on my side, peering down with wide eyes.

“Mnnnngggrrr…” I tried to speak, but that was the best I could pull off. My thin tongue couldn’t form the same sounds and I had trouble adjusting the pitch of my voice. My mewling.

Amy joined her sister with a similar look on her face. But unlike her sister, she slowly broke into an enormous grin. “Kitty Girl!” she laughed, reaching down to stroke my fur-covered waist.

I hissed. I had tried to meow sharply, but my instincts overpowered my intentional action. Amy shot her hand away in surprise, backing away.

“Eric? It’s me, Anna. You know who I am, right?” Anna slowly reached down and patted my shoulder gently. I didn’t stop her. In contrast, I felt a clicking, rumbling sound coming from deep in my throat and my tail began to swish excitedly. I was purring! I liked Anna. Anna was good. Anna was nice. I liked it when Anna touched me.

“Can you stand up?” Anna asked. “Eric?”

It’s difficult describing how I understood Anna. I knew what she was saying and somewhere in the back of my mind it registered. But I had to fight to pay attention to the words themselves. My body paid more attention to other things like the tone of her voice, whether it was a soft, coaxing pitch or a louder, sharper, harsher one.

I carefully steadied myself and tried to pull myself to my feet. My body didn’t want to. It didn’t see a need. But I managed to stand upright anyway and looked down at my half human, half feline body. I was Kitty Girl. A catgirl, though much more catlike than in the few Japanese mangas I’d glanced over. My breasts were huge! I tried to steady them in my paws, but with limited ability to bend my fingers it was no easy task.

“We should change him back,” Anna said quietly.

“Not yet,” Amy grinned. “I’ll be right back.”

“Amy! Robin’s going to be here any minute now! We have to!” Anna called out, but her sister was already gone. “Amy!” She chased after her sister, leaving me by myself.

I lay back down. My fur felt dirty. I lifted my forearm and began to stroke it with my tongue, swallowing quite a few strands of hair. My paw itched. I bit at it gently.

I felt the two girls thundering back into the living room, the vibrations of their feet tingling the pads on my feet. Panicking, I looked around for something to hide under and tried to dash underneath the television stand, but with my awkwardly proportioned body I only succeeded in slamming my forehead into a wooden leg. I hear Amy laugh. I tried to scratch my way underneath the television in vain. My mind expected my body to be small and nimble, completely feline instead of my catlike features on a short but busty female frame. Somebody clutched my tail. No matter how much I tried squirming it out of my captor’s grip, I remained her prisoner.

“That’s terrible! You’re not going to put those on Eric!” Anna shouted.

“Oh, come on. He’ll be so adorable!” Amy dragged me by my tail away from the television. I embedded my claws in the carpet, tolerating the tugging against my twitching tail. But without releasing my tail, Amy swooped an arm down underneath my waist and lifted me up off the ground. My senses screamed as I lost contact with the solid floor and I struggled in her arms.

“You’re hurting him! Stop it!”

“He’s just being a baby. Here. Hold his wrists, will you?”

“Robin is coming! We have to change Eric back right now! I mean it! Karen’s going to be mad as hell if she sees Eric like this!”

“Karen’s always mad as hell. What difference does it make?”

“Well… what about Melissa?”

“She’s not coming home until late tonight. We have plenty of time to have a little fun with cute little Eric.”

Amy wrapped a giant black bra around my breasts, pinching the fur on my back as she tightened it around me. I detested the feeling of the cloth binding my body. I stretched my neck as far as I could and began to bite at it, rotating my shoulders to try to methodically wriggle it off of me. Amy hissed at me sharply. “Bad kitty! Don’t put teeth marks in my Halloween costumes!”

“Amy! You can’t…” Anna tried to stifle a giggle as she watched me struggle.

Amy wasn’t finished dressing me. She grabbed my legs and forced a tight black skirt up them. At first it bent my tail down against the tight fabric, but Amy threaded my tail through a small hole in the back. I growled and lay as still as possible, curling up into a ball. Amy finished off my costume by wrapping a lacy collar and little pink ribbon around my neck.

“Look how cute he is!” Amy laughed, nudging me in the ass with her foot for me to uncurl. A bright flash blinded me the moment I turned to face her. A camera.

“Mrrrw!” I cried, trying to hide underneath the television again. I hear more clicks and saw more bright flashes as I tried to crawl underneath the stand. Both girls were laughing hysterically.

“Okay, you have your pictures.” Anna gasped for breath, clutching her sides. I smelled perspiration off of both sisters. “Now we really, really need to stop this and turn him back. I mean it.”

“When did you become so boring?” Amy asked. “But fine. Not a word about this to Karen or Melissa, understand?”

“What if Eric tells? Is he going to remember this? Does he even have any idea what we’re saying right now?”

“Dunno. Doesn’t matter, he won’t tell if I ask him not to. Not unless he wants to be my new vibrator for a while. You hear that Eric?” I flinched as Amy ran a hand from my forehead down to waist. “You’ll know a lot more about pussies from that close.”

“Amy…”

“Oh, come on. He’s through with Karen. And he loves this transformation stuff. He’s a kinky little Kitty Girl. Aren’t you, Eric?”

Amy took a long look at me cowering next to the television before closing her eyes. My body began to itch as all the hairs on my body began to stand up. It felt as though I had fleas biting me all over my body. I didn’t like that feeling. It wasn’t a good feeling. Amy wasn’t a good person. Mustering all my strength into my hind legs, I launched my body forward, stumbling on my paws, elbows, and knees for refuge in the kitchen. I hated this body. It wasn’t right. I was so limited by the remnants of my humanity, my dangling oversized breasts and bipedal form…

“Get back here, you naughty cat!” Amy chased me to the kitchen, sliding on the linoleum flooring as I dived underneath the table, smashing aside chairs with my unwanted human size and clumsiness. She cornered me between the fridge and the cabinets. I had to fight the urge to sniff out the thousands of distinct, unknown scents lingering in the kitchen. The wafting scent of syrup and sweet batter. Burnt, dry bread crumbs. Metallic copper wires. A putrid molding grape rolled underneath the fridge. Plastic. Paper. Mouse droppings. But no time for that now. I squirmed as far back against the wall as I could, unsettling dust that had not been disturbed for at least a decade.

“No running this time, okay? Deal?” Amy shut her eyes.

The prickling feeling resumed all over my body. This time, without an easy route of escape, I had no choice but to fight Amy in a different way. I focused my mind, fighting back against the itching as Amy’s magic tried to reshape my body. It was a mentally exhausting process, sort of like a complex game of memory, trying to match up each prickling sensation on my body with an equal and opposite force as quickly as Amy bombarded me with them. After half a minute, Amy exhaled sharply and opened her eyes, backing away from me.

“What’s wrong?” I heard Anna ask.

“He’s fighting me!” Amy swung open the fridge door and grabbed a soda. I heard a hiss, smelling a cherry-like scent infiltrate the air.

“How? Eric doesn’t know magic! You’re shitting me.”

“You want to try? Be my guest!” Amy collapsed into a kitchen chair. She looked exhausted. She smelled it too.

Anna kneeled down in front of me, reaching out a hand cautiously. Seeing that Amy was out of range, I cautiously crawled forward and sniffed it.

“Eric? Can you understand me?” Anna asked, petting me gently. “What are you doing? I’m going to try and return you to Erica and then back to normal. Okay? Is that okay with you?”

“Yeah, good luck,” Amy scoffed.

Anna shut her eyes and the tingling once again returned. I broke her concentration in only a handful of seconds. Anna looked up in surprise.

“I’m trying to help you, Eric. You’re a good kitty. Good kitty. Just relax. Don’t fight us.”

I liked being a good kitty. I liked Anna. I rubbed my nose and cheek against her hand, hoping she’d return the motion with a long stroke down my back. I threw off Anna’s second attempt at probing my body with her magic almost effortlessly. I knew she wasn’t being mean. I liked Anna. I crawled forward and rubbed the entire length of my body against hers, wrapping my tail around her behind me.

Anna backed away and sat down cross-legged on the ground, sighing as she glanced at a clock on the wall. I wanted her to pet me. I climbed onto her lap, trying to curl up to warm as much of my body against hers as possible. But again my awkward body could not fulfill what my mind envisioned. I had enough of that. I knew how I wanted to be. I concentrated on a small, nimble, fully feline body and felt myself begin to itch. I didn’t like the feeling but knew it had to be done.

“He’s changing again!” Anna cried. “Look!”

Amy’s maid outfit grew loose on my body as my body contracted, my long humanlike arms and legs growing shorter and thinner for a true quadruped. My annoying breasts shrank, the bouncing mass underneath my fur retracting into my body leaving behind only a small set of nipples. But two other pairs of nipples began forming further down my chest, smaller but equally sensitive. Before long I finally had the body I desired, that of a true cat, an orange-furred tabby. Purring, I curled my body up to form a round, comfortable dislike shape with the very end of my tail tickling the tip of my nose.

“Wow… I can’t believe he did that by himself!” Anna stroked my soft fur. I liked Anna. Anna liked me. Anna was good to me.

Amy took several more pictures and slouched back down at the table. “So… now what?”

I felt something buzz in Anna’s pocket. Jolted to attention, I leaped off of her and began to probe at the mysterious living thing in her pants. I didn’t smell flesh or blood. But it was moving. What was it? Anna giggled and dug the thing out of her pocket, flipping it open and looking at the glowing screen. Her cell phone, I vaguely recollected.

“Robin’s outside. I’m leaving now. Take care of Eric.” Anna stood up.

“You’re not dumping him on me!” Amy protested. “This is your fault too! I’m not going to be stuck here babysitting this bitch!”

“That bitch is Eric! You started this with your Kitty Girl crap. I’m leaving. I’ve been looking forward to this for a week now. You can go out whenever you want. Just do this!” Anna grabbed her purse and darted to the door before Amy could respond.

I heard Anna talking to a guy over by the front door. Robin. That was his name, Robin. Robin was my friend. I liked Robin. Did Robin like me?

“We’re leaving now! Bye!” Anna called out.

Amy sighed as the front door slammed shut. She stared at me. I stared at her, ready to dart away and hide at any moment. “I don’t believe this,” Amy groaned. “You’re a bad cat. You hear me? A bad cat!”

I didn’t like being a bad cat. I didn’t like Amy. Amy wasn’t good to me. I wanted Anna back. I slid in the narrow gap between the stove and the counters, a tight fit but nothing my new agile body couldn’t handle. I watched Amy from my hiding spot, waiting for her to make a move.

“Fine. You’re a good kitty. I can’t believe I’m doing this.” Amy pulled herself to her feet and sat down on the linoleum closer to me, holding out a hand the way Anna had earlier. “Here, kitty kitty. C’mere, Eric. Good boy. Good girl. Whatever you are.”

I didn’t trust Amy. I stayed just out of her reach. Amy groaned again.

“Okay, let’s try this a different way. You like tuna? Cats love tuna.” Amy backed away and began fishing around in the cupboard, pulling out a small tin can. A moment later my sense of smell was overwhelmed by juicy, salty meat. My mouth watered and I grew restless. “Here, kitty kitty. Tuna. You want Tuna? Come and get it!”

Amy set the open tin in front of her. I was deeply tempted, but my instinct warned me to remain cautious. Amy saw my reluctance and backed away from the can. Confident that I had enough time to return to my hiding place if threatened, I inched forward to the source of the delicious smell until I was standing right in front of the can. Keeping an eye on Amy, I dabbed my tongue on the meat. Heaven! I pushed the meat around in my tongue, trying to free small chunks that I could fit in my mouth.

Enjoying Amy’s peace offering, I let her creep forward back into the danger zone. I even let her start petting me. Maybe Amy did like me. I wanted to like Amy. Amy stroked my back and tail gently as I lapped up the last remaining juices from the can. I liked Amy! I began to purr.

“Does kitty want some milk?” Amy brought out a carton and poured some white liquid into the empty can in front of me. I tasted it cautiously. It was good! Cold, but good. Forming a small bowl shape with my nimble tongue, I lapped the milk up, spilling small droplets on the linoleum floor. I liked Amy.

“Wanna play?” Amy asked. “I’ll be right back. Don’t go anywhere.” She darted away to her room. I explored the kitchen, trying to sort out the million scents.

There were a lot of strange ones coming from on top of the counter, but I couldn’t see. I peered up, trying to calculate how much power I needed to make the leap up. Could I make it? Maybe. I tensed my muscles and leaped with my powerful hind legs, but I came up short. My claws couldn’t find any surfaces to grip on, so my entire body slid back down three feet. I twisted in the air, trying to land on my paws. I failed, landing softly on my side, but within a split second back on my feet for a second attempt. The second try worked and now I had an all new vantage point from up on top of the counter, the lofty kitchen not quite so intimidating now that was mastering my way around it. Unfortunately, Amy returned just then with a bent coat hanger with a string attached to the end. She had tied a small red ribbon to the end of the string. She shook it around, the ribbon whistling through the air and rustling against the floor. Its erratic motions captivated me. I sneaked as close as possible, crouching low to stay out of sight of my simulated prey. I waited until it was nearly underneath me before pouncing down on it from the counter, clutching at it between my claws while I reared my teeth to deliver a fatal bite to the lifeless plastic.

“Awww! You’re so adorable!” Amy laughed, tugging the ribbon back out of my paws. I dashed after it, sliding on the linoleum, unable to change direction as quickly as my target. I scrambled in circles trying to catch it, but all that did was wear me out. I broke the pattern and retreated behind the counter, eyeing the toy from behind the corner, waiting for the opportune moment to strike.

Amy played this game with me for a while until I was exhausted and my stomach upset. I found a corner of the kitchen and began heaving, trying to clear my aching stomach. I coughed and hacked, arching my back until I finally emptied part of the contents of my stomach on the ground.

“Gross! Oh, I am not cleaning that up! Bad cat!” Amy shrieked. “Damn you, Anna.” Despite her earlier statement, Amy pulled a huge bundle of paper towels off of the role and mopped up after me. I felt guilty. I didn’t want to be a bad cat. I meowed apologetically, wanting to know that Amy still liked me. I liked Amy.

Once the mess was gone, Amy picked me up, holding me upright just underneath what would have been my armpits. I didn’t like being held like this, my paws dangling in the air. Amy brought me to Karen’s door and pushed me inside, closing the door behind her.

“I’m done. Karen can deal with you when she gets home.” I saw Amy’s feet move away from my limited vantage point underneath the door crack. I heard shuffling from outside. The front door swung open. Car keys jingled. The front door shut. Then there was silence.

I meowed. I was alone. I didn’t want to be alone. I scratched at the door, raising a storm of mewling. Nobody came. Nobody was home. I could hear distant talking from the neighbors above and below our apartment, the humming air conditioner, someone playing hiphop in their car loudly as they drove past. But nothing from the apartment.

I entertained myself by exploring Karen’s room, sniffing her bed, her dirty clothes in a laundry hamper, a discolored spot on the carpet where she must have spilled perfume some months ago. Her backpack that sat next to her desk had an entire plethora of indistinct smells to it. Many different people had touched it, or at least been near it. It had traveled quite a distance, although I couldn’t detect any strong scents. It must not have been used for a little while. I pawed my way inside the back, peering down into the dark interior, searching for something to amuse me.

I leaped up on Karen’s desk and sniffed her laptop. My hind leg stepped on something and I heard a wooden thumping as a pencil rolled across the surface. I twisted around and pounced, batting at the pencil, causing it to fly off the desk. I leaped after it, kicking some of Karen’s papers off the desk by accident. I pounced on the pencil and circled it on the carpet, waiting for it to try and dart away. It didn’t. I knew it wouldn’t, but I was bored.

Curious, I knocked over Karen’s wastebasket. Papers, plastic wrapping, a withered dead plant, an apple core, and other such rubbish spilled out. Nothing entertaining. I gave up on trying to amuse myself and jumped up on Karen’s bed, snuggling in amongst the ruffled sheets and curling up into a warm ball. I shut my eyes and dozed into a light sleep.

Sometime later in the late afternoon I heard the front door open. I perked my ears, swiveling them in the direction of the sound. I listened and felt the vibrations as someone shut the door, threw something in the kitchen, and walked in my direction. Not completely in my direction but off to the right. I shut my eyes again, trying to return to my nap.

“Eric? Can I talk to you?” It was a new voice. I recognized that voice. I remembered that the others called her Karen. I didn’t like Karen. I wanted to like Karen, but only if she liked me. Karen was good to me but I had to be cautious. “Eric? Are you in there?” Karen knocked lightly at the door to my bedroom. “Eric, please, I want to talk… Eric?”

The footsteps vanished inside my old bedroom for a minute. I heard Karen sigh and shut the door. Her footsteps grew louder as she came to her door, the door to the room I was in. This was my chance at freedom, but at the moment I wanted to sleep more. Light poured into the room as the door swung open. I felt air brush past my whiskers and fur.

“Who was in my room? My trash can… damn it, Amy. What did you do this time?” I watched silently as Karen picked up the papers from off of the floor and set her trash bin upright. She didn’t see me, not even when she backed over to the bed and began to lower herself down. Her shadow spilled over me. I looked up in alarm as her ass grew larger in my vision, ready to sit down right on top of my cozy but hidden position.

“Mrrwr!” I screeched, darting away to avoid being crushed.

Karen screamed sharply and spun around, her eyes wide and a grimace on her face. “What the hell?”

I ran behind Karen’s desk, watching her cautiously. I knew she hadn’t intended to sit on me, but I didn’t trust her just yet. Karen crawled on her hands and knees, peering at me.

“What are you doing in my room?” she asked. “We’re not allowed to have pets in this building. You can’t be in here! Who are you? Did Anna pick you up off the street? Come here… I’m not going to hurt you.”

I didn’t budge. Karen sighed and pulled out her cell phone, dialing some number or other. “Come on, Amy. Don’t be a bitch. Pick up.” I heard ringing but nobody answered on the other end. “All right, let’s try Anna…” Same process, identical results. “Damn it,” Karen swore.

She slipped out of the room, closing the door behind her. I heard her rummaging around in my bedroom for a few minutes. She returned carrying my cell phone, gazing at me quizzically. “Do you know what’s going on, pussy? Eric always takes his cell phone when he leaves.” All of a sudden her face lit up in realization. “Oh my god… you’re not Eric, are you? Eric?”

Eric. That was me. I meowed, slowly creeping forward.

“Did Amy do this to you? God, I’m going to fucking kill her!” Karen shouted, her face turning crimson. She startled me. I retreated back to my hiding spot. “I’m sorry, Eric… I didn’t mean to scare you. Nice kitty. Did Amy and Anna both abandon you? I can’t believe this… How could they do this to you and just dump you in my room?” Karen sighed and collapsed on her bed, lying down on her side. “Eric…” she moaned.

Karen began to sniffle. I smelled salty tears waft from her direction. She buried her head in some blankets to muffle the sound of her whimpering. I didn’t want Karen to be sad. It made me sad. I wanted Karen to be happy. Without a second thought I slipped out from underneath her desk, meowing. Karen didn’t look up. I pounced on the mattress beside her and began to walk along the length of her legs and waist, steadying my balance on her trembling body. Karen still didn’t look up so I began to lick her, running my sandpapery tongue against the back of her neck, tasting her salty flesh.

Karen rolled on her back. I jumped on her damp t-shirt and leaned down, sniffing her nose. Karen looked up at me with watery eyes. “Eric…” she murmured. “I’m sorry I left Amy to do this to you. I’m so sorry… it’s my fault…”

I didn’t understand what Karen was saying, but her tears and her trembling voice conveyed all it needed to. I cried out a long, sympathetic wail. Karen flashed the faint trace of a smile and began to pet me. I purred.

“I do love you, Eric. Do you know what I’m saying?”

I liked Karen. Karen liked me. Karen was good to me.

“Meow twice if you understand me,” Karen ordered. I sat down on Karen’s chest, my front paws between her breasts. I began kneading my claws gently, trying my best to keep from scratching her through her t-shirt. I didn’t want to hurt Karen. “Meow twice for me, Eric,” Karen tried again. “I want to talk to you… how much of you is in there?”

I rested my chin against my paws. Karen sighed. “I made a mistake this morning. I’m sorry, Eric. I hope you don’t hate me.” She sighed again, shutting her eyes. “I hope you haven’t given up on me. You probably should, but I don’t want you to. You make me feel better about myself, Eric. You make me feel safer when you’re around. But you have no idea what I’m saying, do you?”

Karen’s soft words soothed me. I let my muscles relax, feeling Karen’s heart beat underneath me. I felt Karen relax as well, her gentle petting slowly down until her hand slipped off of my back entirely. I rose and fell as Karen took long, deep, relaxed breaths. Together we dozed off for a few hours.

I didn’t know what time it was. The light behind her window blinds was dark purple, so it must have been around sunset. Karen woke me up by rolling over on her side. I tumbled off of her, rolling back on my feet as fast as I could. Karen jolted, startled. “I’m going to try to change you back, okay, Eric? I really need to talk to you and know that you understand me.” Without sitting up, Karen closed her eyes. Once more the uncomfortable pricking of magic stung my body all over. I meowed sharply. Karen opened her eyes. “You do want me to be human again, don’t you? Do you even remember who you are?”

I jumped off the bed and began scratching at Karen’s door. I was done napping. I wanted to go exploring. Karen slid to her feet, pulling half of the blankets off of the bed with her. She opened her door a sliver and I darted out, taking a few steps out into the living room before stopping in the middle of the floor and looking at my other options. I trotted over to the bathroom and began sniffing at the multitude of fragrant soaps and odorous cleaning chemicals. Karen watched me from the door as I leaped inside the bathtub.

“What’s this like for you?” I turned around and looked at Karen. I couldn’t read the expression of her voice, so I turned back to my investigation. “Well, I’m sorry, kitty, but I want my boyfriend back. At least… maybe my boyfriend. I don’t know anymore.” Karen closed the bathroom behind her and pulled the shower curtain back. There was nowhere for me to run or hide. Karen took a deep breath and assumed a meditative stance.

It was harder repulsing her magic this time. Karen was devoted to winning, but I didn’t want my bulky, awkward humanoid form back now or ever. I was fast and nimble the way I was now. Kitty Girl felt like a fish out of water. After a twenty-second struggle, Karen gave up, clutching her forehead. “Dammit, Eric… Why are you doing this? Are you upset at me? Are you doing this on purpose? I don’t know. Please… give me a sign or something. Eric. You’re a twenty-three-year-old male graduate student. Let him speak to me, kitty.”

Karen was upset. I didn’t want her to be upset. I meowed questioningly.

“Are you hungry?” Karen opened the bathroom door. I hesitated, cautious about approaching her, but when I saw that she was about to close the door I sprinted out as quickly as I could. The bathroom was cold. It made my paws uncomfortable—I much preferred the fuzzy texture of the carpet where my claws were useful. “Let’s see what we have in here for you…” Karen dug through the fridge and pulled out several plastic bags with leftovers in them. She tossed a few chunks of sausage on the floor in front of me. I sniffed them. They smelled good. Not as good as tuna, but good. I tore off a chunk and chewed it, eating most of the oils and fats but leaving behind some of the tasteless skin.

Karen smiled and dipped her finger in a tub of margarine. I pranced over to her and began licking it off. When it was all gone I peered up at Karen and meowed for more, swishing my tail eagerly.

“If you weren’t Eric I wouldn’t be spoiling you like this,” Karen scolded. “Um… do you want some vegetables?” She set a few carrots in front of me. They smelled strange. I took a small nibble but decided I didn’t like it, returning my gaze back up at Karen. I meowed and pranced over to the cupboard. I wanted tuna. This was where tuna came from.

“What? What’s in there?” Karen asked, following me. “Canned tomatoes, pickles, soup, ravioli… canned chicken. You want chicken?” She peeled back the lid from a tin and set it down in front of me. I took a sniff but didn’t eat anything. I meowed again. I wanted tuna.

“So you’re a picky eater now, are you? Fine. That’s my dinner then.” Karen grabbed the can of chicken away from me and reached inside, pulling out a chunk with her fingers. “Yum. Tasty chicken.”

I meowed angrily. Karen dropped a chunk of chicken down on the floor. I gobbled it up without complaint this time, sniffing the linoleum for any traces of more. There were none. I looked back up at Karen and meowed, rubbing my body against her leg and purring. I wanted Karen to like me. Karen was good to me.

Karen laughed and plopped down several more chunks on the ground, petting me as I finished up my gift. When I looked back up at her, I saw her eating the last bits of chicken herself. That was okay. Karen was good to me. I liked Karen. Karen tossed the empty can in a trash bin and bent down, picking me up and holding my curled up in her arms. She kissed my forehead and carried me back to her room. Sighing, Karen set me down on the bed and kneeled on the floor in front of me.

“Be a good kitty and let Eric back out soon, okay?” Karen spoke softly. She smiled and tickled my whiskers before sitting down in the chair facing her desk. She turned on the desk light and began shuffling through her backpack and the papers stacked on her desk. I watched for a few minutes. She wasn’t paying me any attention. I meowed and jumped down, purring against her legs. She pet me with one hand but otherwise ignored me.

Karen was paying attention to the desk. Maybe if I were on the desk she’d pay attention to me too. I circled the chair several times, searching for the best spot to jump up. I found a spot relatively free of papers and with one swift motion launched my body into the air. Perfect landing.

“Eric!” Karen laughed after jolting in surprise. “I have to do some homework or I’m going to fail this class. Again. Please… I’m close enough to academic probation already.” She lifted me off the desk and turned back to her work.

Disappointed, I explored the perimeter of her room a second time. I caught Karen watching me several times. She turned away when I looked at her. I meowed, trying to attract her attention, but she ignored me. I gave up and found a warm spot on her bed, lying down with one eye open and fixed on Karen in case she was going to do something interesting.

I flinched some time later when I heard Karen throw her pencil against the desk, sighing and burying her face in her hands. Karen was unhappy. I wanted Karen to be happy. I jumped down and began to rub my nose against her bare legs, trying to cheer her up. Karen picked me up and set me down on her lap, stroking my back with long, kind pets. She smiled sadly. I smelled tears.

“Mrrrrrwwww…” I wailed.

Karen chuckled. “You’re right, Eric. I can’t get any work done tonight. Come on, let’s go watch tv.”

She set me down and walked slowly out of her room. I trailed behind as close to her ankles as possible without her kicking me. Karen slumped down on the couch in the living room and turned on the television. I gazed at the flickering image. I saw people but I couldn’t smell them, so they must not have been people at all. I climbed up the couch and lay on Karen’s warm chest, ignoring the strange sounds coming from the flickering images. I rested.

A while later I heard footsteps outside the front door. I perked up my ears, listening to a couple muffled voices. Anna and Robin. Seeing my interest, Karen turned off the television and sat up as Anna slipped inside the apartment with a wide, dreamy grin that vanished the moment she looked in our direction.

“Hey,” Anna murmured quietly. I smelled drying sweat on her. Drying sweat and something else. Robin’s scent was mixed with hers, on her skin, clothes, and bodily liquids.

“I hope you had a great time tonight.” Karen glared at her sister. I didn’t like the harsh tone of her voice. She was unhappy. She was angry. I hoped she wasn’t angry at me. I liked Karen. I wanted Karen to like me. I wanted Karen to be good to me.

Anna bit her lip, watching me. “I’m so sorry. Amy didn’t want me to go out with Robin and she threatened to make me Kitty Girl and we began fighting and Eric got in the way and Amy hit him full blast and Eric was Kitty Girl for a while but then he went full cat and he fought us and wouldn’t let us change him back. And Robin was coming over and I really, really wanted to see him, and…”

“So you threw Eric in my room and left? You did this to him and then you went out and had a great time?” Karen clenched one of the pillows from the couch in her hand tightly, her skin turning red with the pressure.

“No, I left Eric with Amy…”

“You left Amy to look after Eric? What the fuck were you thinking? Since when has Amy been a responsible person?” Karen flung the pillow at her sister. Anna yelped and jumped out of its path. I didn’t like big flying objects. I crept underneath the couch to where it was safe. Cramped, but safe.

“I’m sorry. That wasn’t smart of me,” Anna apologized.

“Not smart? How stupid are you? Where is Amy now? She ran off, didn’t she?”

“I… she’s not here? Then… yeah… I guess so. Please, Karen. You know I don’t get to hang out with my boyfriend very often, and when I do, Amy…”

“Well, maybe you should grow a spine and not let her treat you like her little lap dog!”

Silence. I heard Anna shuffle to her bedroom and close the door quietly.

“Come on out, Eric. I’m sorry about that,” Karen sighed, lifting up a flap of cloth and letting my little dark corner flood with light. I didn’t budge. She reached as far as she could and pet me gently on my head. I let her. “We’ll get this sorted out when Melissa gets home.”

Karen coaxed me out. Just as she was starting to carry me back to her room, the front door opened. This time Amy stood there, pulling off her light jacket nonchalantly and ignoring Karen’s glaring.

“You look cheerful today,” Amy commented as she warmed something up in the microwave. “Something happen?”

“I found a cat in my room this afternoon and Eric was nowhere in sight. Gee, I wonder what could have happened.” I could feel Karen’s body trembling with restrained rage.

“You tell me, Sherlock.” Amy sat down at the kitchen table and grabbed a magazine. Karen’s trembling grew worse and she set me down. I darted back underneath the couch as Karen began to shout, Amy replying innocently and calmly each time, which only served to make Karen scream louder. I flinched at every cruel vibration streaking through the air, thundering against my sensitive eardrums.

“When are you ever going to grow up and stop doing this stupid shit all the time?” Karen screamed, pounding her fist on the kitchen table.

“You know,” Amy replied slowly, “I seem to recall pulling you out of Gore’s apartment last night after you and Eric were tricked into thinking you were Gore’s sex slaves. Don’t I get any thanks for that? Of course not. I didn’t know what I was doing. I’m not grown up enough.”

Karen faltered. “You’re changing the subject. Why is it that when you do stupid shit it’s okay, but if anyone else tries it they’re a terrible person? Eric is stuck! He was work tomorrow! What if we can’t make him human again by then? He could get fired! You’d have gotten him sacked! Do you honestly think your magic never hurts anybody?”

I heard papers flutter as Amy shoved the magazine off the table, her voice elevated for the first time. “Look, I didn’t try to, okay? Eric jumped between us when we were fighting! How was I supposed to know he’d do that? Maybe if he weren’t moping about his crazy ex-girlfriend he’d be out having fun with you right now.”

“Don’t try and say this isn’t your fault! When Melissa gets home—”

“When Melissa comes home we’ll see if she can change Eric back. Okay? This is my fault. There, are you happy now?” Amy pushed her chair away and swaggered to her room, slamming the door behind her. She sounded… worried, almost. Amy was never worried.

Karen tried to coax me out from under the couch. I was more cautious, afraid more harsh words would begin flying again, but after five minutes of relative calmness I decided it was safe enough. I didn’t let Karen touch me, though. Karen’s voice was the loudest and angriest. I felt guilty. I was a good cat, wasn’t I? I was good to Karen, wasn’t I?

“Come on, we’ll figure things out when Melissa gets back.” Karen brought me back to her room and lay down on the bed, petting me with a distracted, mechanical motion as she stared off into the air. Karen was uneasy. I couldn’t feel comfortable either until Karen was happy. I didn’t purr.

Not a trace of natural sunlight pierced through Karen’s blinds by the time Melissa came back. Karen picked me up and brought me out into the living room. I sniffed Melissa’s scent as best I could from Karen’s arms. She also smelled like many different people and many different places. I couldn’t identify any of them.

“Why do you have a cat, Karen?” Melissa asked, frowning. “You know pets are not allowed in here.”

“This is Eric,” Karen answered bluntly.

“Well, change him back. If the landlord comes by—”

“None of us can. Eric’s resisting it somehow.”

Melissa sat two grocery bags down on the kitchen table and walked up to me. She rested the palm of her right hand on my head lightly and assumed a rigid stance, taking a deep breath. I felt her prickly magic try to infiltrate my body. Still remembering my hideous experiences as Kitty Girl, I struggled in Karen’s arms in vain. As my body began to swell, my bones cracking, I focused my mind on countering her.

The oldest sister gave me the toughest time yet. It was my will against hers. One of us would lose concentration first. As our struggle passed from the first minute into the second, my body felt exhausted as if I’d been chasing down prey all day. I fought the urge to fall asleep right there in Karen’s arms. Just when I was about ready to give up, I felt the pressure on my body revoke. The slight changes Melissa had managed to force out of me similarly retracted. I had won. No Kitty Girl. I was happy. Exhausted, but happy.

“Eric’s using his residue against us. Who transformed him? Amy? She poured an insane amount of energy into him! It’ll take hours for enough of it to dissipate before I can fight against him. All night, probably. And then he’ll still probably have enough residue to linger on for weeks afterward.” Melissa sighed. “Go get your sisters. We’re going to have a long talk.”

Karen dropped me off in her room. I heard her knocking at her sisters’ doors. There was some shouting, some scolding, some apologizing… I didn’t pay much attention. I was too tired to listen, so I jumped up on Karen’s bed and fell asleep on her pillow.

It was some time later in the night when I heard a door slam. I perked up my ears but didn’t bother opening my eyes until the door to the room swung open. It was Karen, carrying a brown paper bag.

“Hey,” Karen whispered. She locked her door but hesitated for a minute. I watched uneasily as she grabbed her dresser and began to drag it in front of the door, preventing anyone from getting inside even if they managed to pick the lock.

She sat down cross-legged on the bed in front of me. She dug through the paper sack and pulled out a pink plastic bag, a cloth toy that resembled a mouse, and a brush. I wasn’t amused. I was tired. I lay still as she began to run the brush through my fur, pulling off loose hairs with each stroke. I liked the sensation of the brush’s hairs sifting through my fur, cleaning me. I stretched out, letting Karen brush my ticklish chest. Purrs rumbled from my throat as I began to twitch excitedly.

“You like that? Wait until you see what else I bought…” Karen stopped brushing me, to my disappointment. She began tearing at the plastic bag, peeling off a strip at the top. It only took a moment for an overwhelming scent to flood the air. It was a sweet herblike smell that tickled my throat. I rolled on my feet and thrust my nose inside the bag, drowning in its seductive, intoxicating power. I sneezed, causing a tiny storm of dried leaves to fly out and sprinkle out on Karen’s bed.

“Hey, calm down.” Karen cupped her hand around my face and pushed me back. I tried to dart around her and get back at the source of my pleasure, but Karen kept me at bay until the bag was zipped back up. She sprinkled a pinch of the herb inside the mouse toy and tossed it in my direction. Although the scent was weaker, I sniffed the toy, trying to find my way to the herbs inside it. I bit it, trying to tear a hole in the fabric. Karen laughed and pet me.

I didn’t take much notice as Karen stripped naked, piling her clothes neatly in the corner of the room. She turned off the main lamp that illuminated her room but kept her closet light on, casting shadows across the walls and floors. I gave up trying to destroy the mouse toy and pranced up to Karen, meowing. She had more of the herb. She was teasing me. I wanted more.

“You’ll get more catnip soon,” a naked Karen spoke to me. I watched eagerly as she picked up the bag of catnip, but instead of opening it she wrapped a string around it and set it on the top of her dresser, letting the string dangle down to the carpet. I meowed at her. What was she doing?

Karen picked me up, holding me in her arms as she assumed a meditative stance in the center of her room. She watched me for a couple minutes, poking her fingers inside my mouth and rubbing my body. Then she set me down and shut her eyes. I felt the prickling of magic against my skin, but this time it was very faint. It wasn’t me that was changing this time, but Karen!

I backed away as Karen began to shrink, a dark brown fur growing on her skin. Her ears flattened into simpler triangular shapes, shifting higher up on her head. The hair on her scalp shrunk up as the fur began to cover the rest of her body.

I wasn’t as fascinated by watching Karen’s shifting body as smelling her shifting scent. Her familiar scent, the fragrance of her shampoo, the biting bitterness of the soap on her body, and the saltiness of her sweaty skin began to vanish, replaced by something much more familiar to me. I smelled kin. The scent of a cat. I began to circle around Karen, ready to bolt at any second. But as her body shrunk down to a size a little smaller than mine, I relaxed a bit and inched closer.

Karen sat on her haunches, her body motionless except for light breathing and a tiny thumping motion at the tip of her tail. Her eyes were still shut, and if she acknowledged my presence, she didn’t show it. I stood in front of her, bringing my nose within a centimeter of hers. Karen suddenly opened her eyes, her diamond-shaped irises looking back at me. I didn’t know what to make of her. Did Karen like me? Would Karen still be good to me? Would she compete with me for territory? Would I need to worry about her stealing mates from me?

“Mew,” Karen whimpered. She meowed several more times, each meow growing in strength and confidence. I backed away but kept my attention fixed on her as she began to twist her neck around, observing her new feline body.

I knew from the smell that Karen was a female cat, just like me. But the scent was off. Fabricated, almost… it was something I knew no natural cat would release. And her body was slightly off proportion, her legs too short, her tail too long, her irises still too circular. But what betrayed her most was simply her behavior. She moved jerkily and stiffly, not sleekly and gracefully like a natural predator should. In a way she was like a kitten just learning to walk, unaware of her true abilities that an older, more mature cat should.

Karen meowed, trotting over to me. I still wasn’t sure if she presented a threat to me yet, but I didn’t want to give her the wrong idea if I were to run off. I held my ground as Karen sniffed me and gazed into my eyes. My claws extended, I was ready to strike her with a paw if she hissed at me. But she didn’t. Instead, she began to purr and rubbed her whiskers against mine. I relaxed. So Karen liked me. But did I like her? I did not return my companion’s affection, even when Karen began meowing at me unhappily.

Giving up, Karen spun around and grabbed the dangling string with her teeth. With the thread in her mouth, she backed away until the catnip tumbled down from off the top of the dresser, spilling out all over the carpet. I didn’t care about what Karen thought of me anymore. I dashed over and began clawing at the dried leaves next to Karen, my hair standing up as the scent overwhelmed my senses.

Karen and I rolled around in the catnip and bit at the carpet, trying to eat the herb. It was too difficult to actually get in our mouths, though, so we enjoyed it the best we could in a frenzy of meowing and purring. I liked Karen.

When the catnip’s potency fading away quickly, I jumped up on the bed and curled up in a ball. Karen tried leaping up beside me but failed the first few times, getting one of her claws stuck in the fabric and dangling by one paw. She meowed and struggled, but there was nothing I could do to help. In time she freed herself and took a more cautious approach to jumping up next to me.

Karen meowed. She was energetic. I was exhausted. I shut my eyes and ignored Karen as she tried to nudge me awake to play. I opened my eyes when I felt Karen jump back off the bed. She clattered about on her desk, grabbed something in her teeth, and returned back to me. When she dropped the item next to me, part of me recognized it as my cell phone. Karen meowed and stared at me as if she’d just brought me a hard-earned gift. I sniffed at the plastic, unimpressed.

Time and time again Karen kept bringing items from off her desk, dropping them around me. She spat out a pencil, the panties she’d been wearing not that long ago as a human, a sock, and even a small digital camera. What was she doing? Why did she think I cared about these items? When I refused to show interest in her strange collection after it had grown to about a dozen items, Karen lay down beside me, resting her head between my paws and looking up at me. Her fur was a bit messed up, I noticed. My motherly instincts kicking in, I began to groom her cheeks with my tongue. I cleaned her ears and the back of her neck, all the places that are impossible for one to reach on their own. When I was finished Karen reciprocated, but she did a terrible job so that I was almost in worse shape than before she started.

Karen wedged herself in the blankets next to me, her warm body against mine. I was more than happy to share the warmth between us. Every time I opened my eyes, I saw Karen watching me. Sometimes she would meow quietly when she saw that my eyes were open. But after a while I drifted off into a deep sleep that lasted all throughout the night.

I woke up to hear light knocking outside Karen’s door. It was morning, based by the warm sunbeams that slipped through the blinds and warmed patches of my orange fur.

“Karen? Are you awake yet?” came Melissa’s voice. “Eric has work in an hour. We need to try to change him back now. Karen? Karen, can you hear me?”

Karen slept soundly through the noise. Feeling rested enough, I stood up and stretched my body, arching my back to relieve the pressure from my spine being curled up for so many hours. Still Karen napped on. I jumped down and trotted over to where the door should have been, except that the dresser still blocked access in or out of the room. I meowed, trying to catch Melissa’s attention.

The pounding grew louder. I turned around and saw Karen jolt awake. She clumsily pushed herself to her feet and tumbled off the side of the bed, rolling to the center of the room. I watched as she closed her eyes, her body growing, her feline scent once again replaced by her human one. Within a minute she was fully human again, a naked girl with a thin band of sweat all over her body.

“Murst a mirrnute!” Karen cried out, her words distorted. She frantically dug through her closet and pulled out some clean clothes, fumbling to slide them on as her sister pounded loudly outside. “Just a minute!”

“What are you doing in there?” Melissa called out. “Why is your door locked?”

“Just a minute!” Karen repeated, dragging the dresser back to its original position. I watched all this from underneath the desk, away from the heavy moving items. “Okay, come on in.”

Karen unlocked the door and swung it open hurriedly. Melissa scanned the room, locating me from my hiding spot. She also saw the pile of catnip scattered about on the carpet and the various cat toys laying about from the previous night. She gave Karen a look but didn’t ask any questions.

“Come on out, Eric,” Karen urged, patting the carpet in front of me. Now that the furniture was still, I crept out and purred against Karen’s leg. I liked Karen. Karen was good to me. But then she picked me up and set me down in her lap, holding me tightly. “Please don’t try and fight us again, okay, Eric?” she pleaded.

Melissa stood in front of me and took a deep breath. Yet again I felt the effects of her magic on my body, but unlike the previous evening, I didn’t have the concentration or willpower to resist for very long. I wasn’t even sure why I was resisting in the first place. Something to do with Kitty Girl. Kitty Girl wasn’t good to me. But what was Kitty Girl? I didn’t remember.

“Come on, Eric… we need you back now,” Karen murmured, stroking my back.

I could do little as my body began to shift, my front legs growing longer and thicker, my orange fur retracting back into my skin. My torso grew thicker and longer, my bones cracking as I went from being a quadruped back to a biped. Long brown hair began spilling out of my scalp, dropping down to shoulders. One by one the digits on my paws grew longer and narrower, their dexterity improving greatly. The same happened with my rear legs.

I wasn’t back to my regular self, though. As the transformation continued, I realized that my hips were still too wide, and while the four lower nipples on my body blended away into my skin, the upper two grew wider and perkier, supported by swelling breasts. As the last traces of my tail and feline features vanished, I was once again fully human, but also fully feminine.

And I was naked. It didn’t bother me at first—after all, I’d spent over a dozen hours with no clothes on at all. But as my transformation neared its finish, my human mind, just as with my human body, slowly reemerged in my consciousness. Without necessarily thinking why, I covered my breasts and scrunched up to hide my genitals from Melissa. I still sat on Karen’s lap and was surprised to feel her hug me from behind.

Thoughts flooded back into my mind. I remembered everything from my experience as both Kitty Girl and a true cat. I could remember the conversations I’d overheard, able for the first time to make sense of what were previously nonsensical syllables and consonants. I remembered devouring tuna from the can. I remembered coughing up on the kitchen floor. I remembered Amy entertaining me with her makeshift toy. I remembered Karen asking me over and over if I could understand her, that she needed to speak with me, that she still loved me. I remembered Karen screaming at her sisters in anger when she first found out what they had done to me. All the memories dashed through my skull like a hurricane. I struggled just to figure out what to try and make sense out of with my human mind first.

“Eric?” Karen gasped. “Eric, you’re getting kind of heavy…”

I tried to ease myself off of her, but my mind still wasn’t fully reconciled with my human form. I expected an entire different set of movements and balances, so as soon as I tried to put any pressure on my arms I tumbled down and rolled off on the floor.

Melissa swiped a light blanket from off of Karen’s bed and tossed it down at me. I covered up my body, though I was pretty sure Melissa had seen pretty much everything already.

“Let’s get this finished,” Melissa said. She didn’t need to shut her eyes in concentration. I felt my body begin to shift again, rapidly converting from Erica back to my normal male body.

“Eric?” Karen asked softly, her eyes starting to water up.

“Yeah… it’s me,” I replied, my baritone voice resounding in my head as I thought of all the meowing and purring I’d done as a cat.

Karen crawled over and hugged me tightly, resting her head on my chest. I hesitantly returned the embrace. I also remembered that Karen had broken up with me just twenty four hours ago… I knew that she wanted to talk to me, but not what about.

“Oh, Eric…” Karen sighed. I rocked her in my arms, feeling a tear drop onto my chest. “I’m so sorry about all this… please forgive me… I never should have left you alone for the twins to torment you…”

“Shhh,” I whispered. “It’s okay. I’m fine.”

“That’s good, because you still have work in half an hour. Better hurry up or you’ll be late,” Melissa spoke callously. Maybe not callously, but in a way that downplayed all that had happened since I got caught up in Amy and Anna’s fight and suffered from Amy’s surge. But Melissa did shut the door softly behind her, leaving Karen and I in peace.

I didn’t know what to say to Karen as she lay in my arms. Her eyes were shut, her breathing light. I wouldn’t have thought that she was even awake except for her iron grip leaving red marks on my skin. My heart still melted feeling her body against mine. And yet something deep inside of me burned with resentment, screaming at me to quell all lingering thoughts of love before she could hurt me again.

“I should let you go to work now,” Karen sighed, sitting up. She looked at me with sad, tired eyes. She lingered next to me as if ready to lean in for a kiss any moment, but that kiss never came. “I do need to talk to you… please come home quickly, okay?”

“Yeah,” I replied. “Sure.”

Before I could let myself get lost in thought, I pushed myself to my feet and returned to my room, Karen’s blanket still wrapped about me. I took a quick shower and hurried out the door a few minutes past the time I should have started my shift. I couldn’t focus on anything, not with all my memories of my feline body coursing through my mind.

I zoned out a lot at work. My manager yelled at me, but it was hard to muster the excitement to care. Finally eight hours had gone past, but I didn’t return to the apartment right away. I bought some groceries and took a walk in a small park, anything to delay me from arriving back at the apartment. It wasn’t until I received a text message from Karen asking where I was that I sighed and drove home to face the future Karen and I had for each other—or the lack of one.

After All these Months

2010-07-19T13:12:00.000-07:00

Casting Just About Anybody

2010-07-19T13:11:00.000-07:00

All We Gotta Do

2010-07-19T13:09:00.000-07:00

The Dreaming Room

2010-07-19T13:04:00.002-07:00

Creating a Reason to be Desired

2010-07-19T13:04:00.000-07:00

Not Really Camping

2010-07-19T13:02:00.001-07:00

You Can Do More than Stare

2010-07-19T13:01:00.000-07:00

The Leaves, the Stars

2010-07-12T16:30:00.000-07:00

Distributing the Feminity Curse

2010-07-12T16:28:00.001-07:00

Femininity. Femnity. Feminity. That's a fun word to try and write out when you have clumsy fingers like me!

"Highly Addictive with Hormonal Extremities"

2010-07-12T16:27:00.000-07:00

Time to Pay Back the Favor

2010-07-12T16:26:00.000-07:00

My second (non-duel) anime cap.

Overnight in the Canopy Bed

2010-07-12T16:25:00.000-07:00

This Is Not Lucky

2010-07-12T16:24:00.000-07:00

Too Great a Temptation

2010-07-06T07:26:00.001-07:00

Photomanip: Little Fishy

2010-07-06T07:25:00.002-07:00

This is a little photomanipulation I attempted, a woman transforming into some kind of fish or aquatic creature. I like some elements of how it turned out, but other elements like those fins, not nearly as much.

Seven Hour Exhibition

2010-07-06T07:25:00.000-07:00

Not Running a Charity

2010-07-06T07:24:00.000-07:00

Forgotten Party Doings

2010-07-06T07:23:00.001-07:00

To Help Him Relax

2010-07-06T07:22:00.002-07:00

Shapeshifter Experiment

2010-07-06T07:22:00.000-07:00

Anything But That!

2010-07-06T07:21:00.000-07:00

Story: The Fifth Roommate: Chpt 7: The Sleepover

2010-06-28T16:01:00.000-07:00

Chapter 7 is finally finished. 15.5k words and 42 pages in Word, it is the longest chapter yet. It's also a bit darker, but for once we get to see part of Amy's good side.

In this chapter, Eric and Karen go on their sleepover with Karen's lesbian friend Gore, but as the night goes on, Gore continuously attempts to seduce Eric with the assistance of less-than-honorable magic.

So here it is. Enjoy. Please point out any spelling/grammar mistakes.

~~~~~~

I sledged my way through Monday morning classes and work in the evening. I couldn’t focus on the lecture or properly placing the books back on the shelves at work. It was a combination of exhaustion and thoughts that kept streaming through my head, particularly about Josh. It was difficult now, back in my normal male body, to recall how strongly attracted I’d felt toward him. My mind could retain the mixture of emotions and confusion from the previous night, but my body—an equally fundamental component, I was beginning to understand—had no way to truly emulate the physical aspect of it all. There was something dissociative about it all, like I might as well have just been watching a movie about a girl named Erica with the camera pointed exactly where she was looking. But it didn’t quite truly feel like me. Or maybe as if there were a second me that existed only when the normal me ceased to, and that somehow we swapped memories between the two forms.

But that’s not to say I didn’t like Erica. Myself as a woman, I mean. She was a gift to me, a chance to understand life from a different perspective. When I was young and played my old Nintendo console I used to rush home after school and lose myself in that little fictional world of mine until it seemed a living, breathing thing about me. Being Erica was kind of like that—but real! Not just looking at a screen, but observing—and enjoying—every touch, scent, sound, emotion… Maybe I’d eventually grow tired of it all until Erica was nothing special anymore, when everything had been said and done. After all, in time all my old games lost their charm and I locked them away for years. But I certainly didn’t feel that way toward Erica yet.

But at any rate, when I returned home late on Monday night, there wasn’t any time for practice. Anna was watching television in her pajamas, holding her cell phone in her hands and texting someone every fifteen seconds or so. She was smiling to herself, taking little notice of me or her surroundings. Someone was in the shower. Karen, probably. Exhausted and needing to catch up on sleep, I went straight to bed and fell asleep within minutes.

At some time during the night I heard someone slip inside quietly, but I didn’t have the energy to look up. I heard someone walk up to the mattress, but when the noise ceased entirely for near half a minute I felt compelled to look up and see who it was that stood next to me, watching me silently. I feared it was Amy, but I made out Karen’s frame instead.

“Sorry… did I wake you up?” Karen whispered.

I groaned. “Long day,” I mumbled back, resting my head back down on the pillow and shutting my eyes. Karen sat down on the floor next to me and began to rub my shoulder gently, running her hand up and down my sid. Her touch soothed me and I began to nod off again when I felt her slide into bed next to me, wrapping one arm underneath me and the other around my shoulder in a gentle cuddle. I lay still, too tired to respond to her gestures. Even when I felt her begin to kiss the back of my neck, I lay silent and motionless, hoping to dissuade her.

“Eric?” she whispered.

As much as I enjoyed her company, I also needed rest. I didn’t reply. But Karen persisted, massaging my chest and teasing my flat, male nipples underneath my shirt. It didn’t accomplish much. After several minutes of this massaging, she slowly worked her way down my body until she was fondling my manhood through my gym shorts. Exhausted, I tried to fight an erection, but her perseverance won the day. My cock rock-hard, there was now no denying that I was awake. I rolled over to see Karen grinning in bed, her face mere inches from mine. “Why are you always so horny?” she whispered with a slight giggle. Sure. Like it was my fault this time.

There wasn’t any turning back at this point, though. I crept my fingers in Karen’s pussy and dabbed inside. Warm and wet. No surprise there. Using her own fluids to moisten my fingers, I began massaging her labia and clitoris. She moaned softly, tugging at my cock in short, gentle pulses and pulling my shorts and boxers down several inches for easier access. After a while she licked her fingers and used her saliva to help them slide up and down my stiff shaft. We pleasured each other for a while, kissing gently all the while. Eventually she brought me to the brink of orgasm and I cummed, launching my semen against her crotch. She jerked back in surprise when the first ejaculation hit but smiled and lay still for the following final waves. Luckily she was still wearing her panties, though I wasn’t at the right angle for any of my semen to possibly enter her anyway.

At first I lay back, my exhaustion returning all at once. But I remembered how long it took us to finally climax in the shower together; just because my body was finished didn’t mean hers was. I resumed rubbing her best I could, hearing her moan quietly in pleasure. She shut her eyes and I would have thought she’d fallen asleep herself if it weren’t for the occasional sigh of content. Eventually she pushed my hand aside and took over the process herself. I contributed the best I could by gently massaging her breasts and kissing her neck, but it still took a while for her to reach that final intense gasp that indicated orgasm. I could feel her heart throbbing underneath my fingers.

We lay in silence for a while. Just as I was starting to drift off back to sleep, she whispered “I really appreciate what you’re doing for the sleepover.” That was all. I fell asleep beside her.

Tuesday went much the same. Work in the morning, homework in the evening. Karen—with little to do herself, evidently—offered to help, but she’d never seen the kind of math and calculations my graduate classes required. She surfed the internet on my laptop as I worked on my homework, waiting for me to finish. She brought me coffee and a few warm cookies from the deli. She rubbed my shoulders as I worked. Despite her kindness, her presence distracted me and it took until three in the morning to finally finish all my homework. No feminine practice that night either. Amy and her guy friend had spent some time together in the apartment for a while, but she had her own things to do and left me alone.

But on Wednesday after class, Anna made me call Josh to reschedule the lunch date. I’d nearly forgotten about it. She cast her spell on me and I quickly morphed into Erica. The transformation was becoming faster and the tingling sensation that tore through my body was only a fraction as strong as before. Urged on by Anna, I dialed Josh’s number, my heart pounding and my palms cold and clammy. While I may have been able to forget about Josh easily enough as a guy, everything came rushing back once my feminine mind and hormones took over.

“Hey… Josh?” I stammered. “It’s me, Erica.” Anna stood next to me close enough to hear both ends of the conversation, holding her breath so she didn’t accidentally contribute with awkward breathing.

“Oh, hey, what’s up?” came Josh’s distorted voice. “I was just thinking about you.”

I took a deep breath, calming myself. “Um… want to grab dinner or something?” I managed to spit out.

“Yeah, sure, sounds great! Where can I meet ‘ya?”

I turned to Anna. I didn’t know much about the local restaurants, but she didn’t offer any help. “Would the deli be okay?” I asked. “I know you work there and all, but…”

“There’s a coffee house across the road. How about that? I’d rather not have my manager ask me to take up a shift tonight, and if he sees me eating there, well—”

“No that’s fine,” I interrupted. “Is eight okay?”

“Sure. See ya there?”

“Yeah.”

“Alright. Can’t wait.”

“Same,” I replied and quickly hung up. The date was on and only an hour and a half away.

I took a deep breath, trying to ignore my clenching stomach. I’d have preferred if the date was scheduled to start immediately. Why didn’t I ask for seven?

“Now we get to make you look pretty!” Anna giggled. She pushed me to the bathroom and ran back with an old lunch box with a pink cartoon unicorn on the cover. When she opened it and began shuffling through its contents, I saw that it was presently her makeup kit filled to the brim with half-used, empty, and unopened bottles of perfume, lipstick, mascara, blush, nail paints, clippers, nail files… “Sit down,” she told me, motioning me to take a seat on the bathtub rim. She began humming and glanced between my face and a palette of makeup.

“This is just a casual chat,” I told Anna as she brought something that looked like scissors close to my face. Instinctively I pulled back, but Anna just giggled.

“You big sissy,” Anna teased, showing me that what I assumed to be scissors were eyelash curlers. “Hold still and keep your eyes open.”

I fought the urge to clamp my eyes shut as she brought the curlers to my eyes. She carefully clamped them over my eyelashes and pressed tightly, repeating the process several times before moving to the other eye. She gave me a hand mirror. I peered back, not noticing a difference at first until I realized how the curlers gave a cute upward bend to my eyelashes.

“Now close your eyes,” Anna urged, digging through the lunchbox. I did so reluctantly. In a few moments I felt something cold and hard pressing against my eyelids, and in another moment of panic I jerked back. “Eric! Stop that!” Anna inched close to me, bracing the back of my head with one of her hands. “Close your eyes and don’t open them. And relax. I’m not going to hurt you!”

I sighed and tried again. Anna ran some kind of firm brush or pencil around my eyelids, making distinct lines around the edges and blurring them together with a softer brush, repeating the process several times sometimes rather vigorously. She paused, switching eyeliner pencils several times, humming all the while. “I’ve always wanted to try the smoky look,” she told me, “but it doesn’t match my hair and Karen won’t let me put makeup on her. Ever. You have the perfect skin tone for this, you know. I think it looks good on you. Maybe a little darker… should I go with the black mascara or just the dark brown one? Hm… Okay, open your eyes. Keep them open. Not that wide. Relax a little. Here we go… swish, swish, swish… close your eyes… okay, open them again. Aaaand… finished!”

I dared to look at the mirror again. I almost didn’t recognize my reflection at first… I was wearing eyeliner, not just a solid shade but a mixture of several similar ones, blended together neatly, accompanied by thick, dark, lush eyebrows still drying with mascara. I blinked several times, staring back at my gorgeous eyes in disbelief. Anna giggled. “Don’t you dare rub them or you might mess them all up.”

“Got it,” I said, trying to stand up.

“Where are you going?” Anna asked, pushing me back down against the rim. My ass was starting to hurt from the awkward seat. “We still have to do blush and lipstick and your nails and your toes and your hair.”

I chuckled. “I think I’m good, thanks. I don’t think Karen will be happy if you do much more.”

Anna pursed her lips and stared at me pleadingly with her soft, blue eyes, clasping her hands together. I sighed. “Fine.”

Over the course of the next forty-five minutes, Anna worked her makeup magic on me, dabbing my cheeks with powder, covering up tiny blemishes on my skin with a paste almost identical to the tone of my flesh. She gently coated my lips with a luscious, dark red cream that tasted bitter and smeared easily. She combed and fluffed my hair in all directions before brushing it back to normal, telling me it gave my hair extra volume and made it look thicker. Finally, she arrived at my fingernails and gasped.

“What?” I asked.

“You have ridges!” Anna exclaimed. “You didn’t know?”

“I’ve always had them,” I protested. “What’s wrong?”

“It means your skin’s damaged. Here. I’ll take care of it.” Anna grabbed a nail file and began to rub down furiously across my fingernails. I tried to tolerate it, but the friction from the motion made my skin burn when the heat permeated below my nails. “Sorry,” Anna apologized. She was starting to sweat from the activity. “You have such guy nails. Karen should have warned you.”

A small collection of white dust had collected on Anna’s jeans, tiny pieces of the ridges Anna had essentially grinded away. When it was over and my nails were washed off, I was astonished at how smooth and round they looked. They even caught the light a little bit. But Anna didn’t stop there. She found a small bottle of nail polish and painted each of my digits with an artist’s care and precision. Finally, Anna had me stand up and looked over my body.

“Did you shave?” she asked. “Hold up your arms.” She felt my armpits and seemed satisfied. “Um… do you have any hair… down there? Just curious.”

“No,” I replied truthfully. “How does this magic stuff work, anyway? Shouldn’t you decide whether or not I have pubic hair when you do the spell?”

“Sometimes,” Anna began. “You don’t have to know all the details though. It’s complicated. When’s your date again?”

“Eight,” I replied. “Why? What time is it?”

“Shit!” Anna grabbed me by the wrist and pushed me to the apartment door, tossing me a jacket hanging up in the closet. It was one of Amy’s… I didn’t exactly feel comfortable borrowing anything of hers after the bra incident. “You have three minutes! Run!”

I stumbled outside, jogging down the stairs. I was wearing one of Anna’s pink, lacy bras and a tight tank top and noticed how my heavy footfalls made my breasts bounce more than normal. Luckily, she permitted me to wear a pair of her jeans and normal tennis shoes, no high heels or skirts to worry about.

I ran into Karen in the parking lot. “Eric?” she asked, doubling around to face me. “Are you wearing makeup? Oh my god… where are you going?”

“For Josh… I’m late,” I replied frantically. “Anna insisted on it.”

“Eric…” Karen drew herself close to me, examining Anna’s work. “It’s just a friendly chat, not a… a…” She exhaled sharply, eying my bra. She looked back up at me and kissed me lightly on the lips. “Good luck,” she said.

I darted to the café across the road and looked around the tables. My hair was a bit of a mess from a light drizzle and I feared that Karen had smudged my lipstick. I didn’t know. I carried one of Anna’s purses with me. Supposedly there was a mirror inside somewhere, but it was messy and I didn’t have time to dig around. Josh waved to me from a high table by the windows. Shit! The café was right across the street from the apartment… had he seen Karen and I kiss? I took a deep breath and made my way to him, trying to sway my hips a little the way Anna had demonstrated for me earlier.

Josh smiled as I sat down. “Hey there, Erica,” he said. My heart fluttered. Damn he was cute. His deli uniform made him a little sexier though, in my opinion.

“Hey,” I replied, scrambling my head for something, anything, to carry on a half decent conversation. “Sorry I’m late.”

“You look great,” Josh complimented. My cheeks grew hot and itched. “Just saying, you know?”

“I… thanks,” I stammered. I caught Josh’s eyes flicker down to my chest for only the briefest of moments. I looked down myself in response. Was my bra crooked? Maybe a little bit. Would it be bad if I adjusted it in public?

“So… where are you from?” Josh asked with his ever-present smile. It was hard to look away from that it. “I see you stayed overnight with Karen and Anna again. Sure you don’t live there?” he joked.

I chucked nervously, turning away to hide my burning face. My scalp itched furiously. I bit my finger nervously. Why hadn’t I prepared something to tell Josh? I should have created an identity for myself… a family, a high school, fake friends… I was going to have to improvise. But what if I contradicted myself? No… That was it! I was going to steal one of my old friends’ backgrounds. That way I wouldn’t get details mixed up.

“Am I making you nervous?” Josh asked with a frown.

“No, no, no… no…” I stammered. Idiot. Idiot. Why couldn’t I keep my head on straight? “It’s just… well… I’m kind of new here, and… I’m not used to this kind of stuff,” I rambled.

Josh nodded he leaned in close and spoke quietly. “You and Karen…”

So he’d seen. I sighed. I felt relieved. I nodded.

“I understand. Don’t worry; I can keep my mouth shut.” Josh smiled again. “Can I still buy you a coffee, though?”

Our “date” went fairly smoothly after that. I didn’t talk much, feeding him enough of my friend’s background to satisfy his questions. We spoke for maybe half an hour before Josh said he had to go. I’m not sure why. He seemed a bit disappointed. I supposed my quiet nature probably gave him an impression of disinterest. I felt guilty. He was a great guy. Definitely very cute. I’d have loved to hold hands with him and walk through the streets. Maybe if the situation had been different. Different… different as if I’d been born a girl? Different as if I weren’t already dating Karen? But if I weren’t dating Karen, I wouldn’t be a girl.

Karen was waiting for me back in the apartment. “How’d it go?” she asked with dishonest nonchalance. I wasn’t sure whether or not she’d be happy that the date was basically a bust.

“We didn’t really strike it off,” I answered, collapsing on the sofa with a sigh.

“You just needed the experience, that’s all,” Karen said sweetly, sliding on the couch next to me. There wasn’t quite enough room for her and she began to slide off until I grabbed her and lifted her up on top of me. Anna burst into the room at that inopportune moment and giggled.

Thursday, work and classes. Karen and Anna made me try on nearly half of Anna’s wardrobe and forced me to learn how to clasp my own bra. They didn’t provide much modesty; I simply turned to face the wall to hide my breasts from Anna the best I could. I also had to learn how to walk in high heels, which resulted in a number of bruises. I suddenly didn’t feel quite so graceful in my feminine body anymore.

Friday, classes. I came back before lunch. Today was the big day, the day of the sleepover with Gore and two other girls from Karen’s high school. Anna transformed me into Erica and let Karen and I pick out my wardrobe. Anna pushed me to wear some of her more revealing, sexier outfits while Karen insisted I dress more conservatively and casually. I compromised by bringing regular jeans—well, some of them had frills and sewn-in images of flowers—and a few of Anna’s more attractive shirts. Right now I wore a pair of tight jeans and a pink button-up shirt with the top few buttons undone, showing off a bit of my bra. Anna also insisted on giving me makeup and for another half hour I let her paint my face however she wished. Karen refused her sister’s offer, but she did dab on some light makeup herself.

“So, who exactly are you having the sleepover with?” Anna asked as Karen and I finished filling a duffle bag with a couple fresh pairs of clothes apiece.

“Nobody,” Karen replied.

“Oh, come on. I get to be bored and lonely all weekend and you get to go to a party. At least tell me who you’re visiting,” Anna pled.

Karen sighed. “Gore. Don’t you dare tell Amy.”

Anna’s eyes shot open. “Gore, the lesbian from high school? The one Mom said she had a bad feeling about? Karen… are you sure about this?”

Karen viciously glared at Anna. I hadn’t seen such a threatening expression since Amy walked in on us having sex. “Don’t tell Amy. Or Melissa.”

“But… but…” Anna stammered. “I thought you weren’t friends anymore.”

“We just lost contact, that’s all. Look, she’s kind of strange but not a bad person. And I’m bringing Eric with me just in case. It’s going to be fine, Anna. We’ll be back Sunday afternoon.”

Anna glanced nervously between the two of us, biting her lower lip. “When are you leaving?”

“Half an hour. It’s going to be okay. Don’t worry, I can take care of myself,” Karen reassured.

Anna silently disappeared into her room. We didn’t hear from her until we were just about to leave when she suddenly burst outside carrying a lacy, crimson bra. “Take this with you,” she said.

“Where did you get that from? I’ve never seen it before,” Karen protested. “And it’s not going to fit either of us anyway.”

“It’ll fit Eric.” Anna threw the bra in my hands. “Just take it. Please. It’ll make you look sexy.”

Karen eyed her sister suspiciously. I didn’t feel like watching the two get into an argument so I gently grabbed her arm and pulled her out the front door with me. “Having a spare can’t hurt,” I said, throwing it in the duffle bag. “Thanks, Anna.”

“Have fun…” Anna stood at the door and watched as Karen and I made our way down to Karen’s car. She didn’t return inside until Karen drove us out of the parking lot, heading further downtown.

“You look pretty,” I told Karen.

Karen smiled. “Remember that we’re not girlfriends when Gore is here.”

“What, don’t girls comment on each others’ looks?” I asked, looking at my makeup in the side mirror. Anna had done a great job.

“Yeah, but… You know what I mean. No holding hands, no hugging, definitely no kissing…” Karen eyed my crotch. “No letting your hormones go crazy either. Try not to stare at anyone’s boobs. You’re supposed to be straight.”

“I know, I know,” I sighed. “We don’t want to give Gore any notions. I understand.”

“Spending a few nights as a chick hardly lets you understand what I mean. It’s not going to be easy passing off as a normal girl after just a few nights of practice,” Karen lectured.

I didn’t reply for a few seconds. I didn’t want to argue with her. “Can’t you just use magic to make me act more girly or something? Plant some false memories or something, I don’t know.”

Karen slowed to a stop rather violently as we approached a red light. She glared at me. “We don’t do that kind of stuff. It’s irresponsible and immoral. We don’t mess with people’s minds.”

“It’s not like you wouldn’t have my permission or anything,” I answered, confused and a bit irritated at her sudden anger. “What’s the harm in it?”

Karen sighed sharply. “There have been several times in history when witches and warlocks used their power to alter people’s minds. They’ve started wars that killed a lot of people, and then there come witch hunts that kills far more innocent victims than actual witches. Okay, so there hasn’t actually been a witch hunt for centuries, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t people watching us to make sure we don’t abuse our powers. And it’s just wrong to begin with. So no and that’s final.”

I remembered my thirst for Amy’s sweaty breasts when she transformed me into a bra and wore me. And she’d given me breasts for an evening and turned me into a girl that first time entirely without my consent. How were those not abuses? How could simply giving my mind a few more feminine instincts be any worse than the spells cast on me already? But I didn’t press the matter any further and sat silently as Karen drove deeper into the city.

“I’m sorry,” Karen apologized after three minutes of silence. “I admit I’m a bit uptight right now. We’re almost there.”

Our destination ended at a parking garage. Karen paid for two-day parking at the ticket kiosk and together we walked down to the bus stop. The streets bustled with pedestrians, men in suits rushing home for a relaxing weekend, musicians playing on street corners, a man in a ridiculous costume handing out fliers for a local business, couples walking hand in hand… Several times I lost sight of Karen in the shifting crowd and had to run to catch up. So many people kept looking at me, not only at my face but at my breasts and ass under my tight jeans… It had taken me a while to feel comfortable walking around in public as a girl with just a few people around. Here in the bustling city I felt like shrinking up into a tiny ball all over again.

We rode a bus a few blocks. Karen and I sat next to each other but not quite close enough. A teenage guy—a kind of cute one—wedged himself between the two of us and kept bumping against me during the ride. I wasn’t sure if he was doing it on purpose or if it was just the bus jerking him about involuntarily, but feeling his hip and shoulders against mine and smelling his deodorant made me both aroused and repulsed at the same time. I clung to our duffle bag tightly, holding it like a shield during the crowded transit. Several other passengers gave me an amused smile watching me, some poor, nervous girl.

Finally we arrived outside a tall, forty-floor apartment building. Karen checked an address she had written down inside her purse. “This is it,” she said. “Gore’s place is up on the thirty-seventh floor.”

An armed guard sat in the lobby, positioned as if reading a newspaper but instead eyeing me discreetly. Karen and I walked up to the receptionist who buzzed us through to the elevators. We slipped into the elevator silently and started the long ride up. Karen ran her eyes over my body as if making one final check. She looked so pretty...

“One last kiss for good luck?” I asked.

Karen rolled her eyes but couldn’t keep from smiling. “All right,” she gave in, turning to embrace me. We held each other, lips pressed lightly against each other, up the final floors of the ride. “Good luck.”

We passed through the twisting hallways until we arrived at room 3761. It looked like any other door in the building. Karen knocked lightly and stood back. I listened as someone shuffled to the door and flung it open.

“Karen! You’re here! How the fuck have you been?” exclaimed a tall redhead girl just inside the apartment. “You must be Erica,” she said, turning to face me. “I’m Gore, G-Girl, Succs, whatever you want to call me. Come on inside!”

I was astonished. Karen never really gave me any good description of Gore other than that she was an “aggressive lesbian.” In my mind I’d envisioned her as sort of butch with a deep voice, manly haircut, and a myriad of punkish piercings. But she was nothing of the sort. At six feet tall, she towered over me by several inches. Her beautiful, wild red hair cascaded down past her shoulders in fierce curls. She was sturdy in build with defined muscles lining her still-feminine arms, her hips and waist forming a beautiful hourglass form. Her voluminous breasts sat just a few inches below my eyes, filling out her bra very neatly. It would be hard to not notice them, even for a straight girl. Everything about Gore seemed to draw attention to her chest, from her undersized orange jacket to the way several strands of hair fell down atop her breasts and between her cleavage.

I followed Karen inside, examining Gore’s living room. It seemed fairly ordinary. Two sleeping bags sat rolled up in a corner against the wall, various articles of clothing—bras and panties included—scattered about.

“Hey! Company’s here! Make yourselves presentable!” Gore shouted. She turned to Karen and I and smiled warmly. “Sorry for the mess. Sometimes my company finds it hard to keep their clothes on in here. So make yourselves comfortable!”

I quietly sat down on a couch as Gore gave Karen a tight hug. I noticed the difference in size between the two, Karen the petite, gentle brunette against Gore the towering redhead. “I missed ya’ so much, Karen. It’s so good to see you again! You were always my voice of reason. I owe you for that big time.” I saw Karen try to nudge her way out of Gore’s iron grip. Seeing the two embrace made a tiny stab of jealousy pierce through me.

When Gore finally released Karen, she turned to me and offered a hand. I stood up, expecting a quick, friendly handshake, but instead she wrapped her arms behind me and pulled me in a tight hug, almost burying me between her two breasts. I almost felt suffocated in her overly affectionate squeeze, feeling the strength of her deceivingly strong arms. I didn’t entirely dislike that feeling. “Mm, you smell nice,” she said, though I felt more of the vibrations coming from her throat than hearing the sound from my ears. “I have a good feeling about you.”

Once I was free, the three of us sat down on the couch, Gore snuggling in the middle between Karen and I and wrapping her arm behind our backs. “Beebee and Deedee should be out any second now. I can’t keep those girls off of each other… but it’s even harder to tear them off of me once the three of us get going. Hm?”

I had no idea what Gore was talking about until two girls emerged from a room I assumed to be Gore’s bedroom. One girl had long, straight black hair with an Asian look to her—Korean, to be precise. The other girl had her hair dyed dark blue with strands of green and purple mixed in. But it wasn’t their hair I noticed first—it was that both girls wore only undergarments. The Korean girl didn’t even have her bra latched but simply held it against her chest. I tried my best not to stare at the two beautiful half-naked girls. Instead, I tried to watch with disinterest. Would turning away look too suspicious? What was Karen doing? I looked over at her but only found her focusing her attention back at me.

“Naughty girls,” Gore laughed as her friends picked up the clothes lying next to the sleeping bags and put them on. “That’s Beedee,” she said, pointing at the Korean girl. “Byung-Soon, if you want to use her full name. And the other girl is Diane, but I call her Deebee because she makes such a cute couple with Beedee.”

Beedee and Deebee murmured hellos and shook our hands. Beedee stared at my breasts, making not even the slightest effort to pretend not to. “You’re pretty hot,” she said to me, her voice emotionless as if she were saying any old fact of life.

“Uh… thanks,” I stammered, fighting a desire to button up the rest of my shirt. “You look great too.”

“We can always look better! Let me help you and Karen unpack.” Gore stood up and grabbed the duffle bag Karen and I brought. She unzipped it and began rummaging through it, pulling out the crimson bra. “Oh, that’s so pretty! You have to let me see how it looks on you, Erica.”

I chuckled, not sure if Gore was serious or not. Gore lay out our clothes neatly on a table next to the sleeping bags, examining our panties with a particular interest. She held up a pair of my panties and held it out toward my hips as if trying to imagine how I’d look wearing it. All right… Gore was a bit creepy after all, but I didn’t understand why Anna was so nervous about this sleepover.

“Well, now that we’re all here, let’s go downstairs. Big sale over at Macy’s today that I know Beedee and Deedee have their hearts set on. And I might buy a sexy little thing or two for myself while we’re there. And something for Karen too. You can’t wear t-shirts all the time, hon.”

“You don’t have to buy me anything,” Karen insisted. “You couldn’t get me to dress up all pretty in high school, what makes you think I’ll dress up now?”

“But I want to buy something for you! As a reunion gift! Just wear it tonight for us and keep it in your closet. Someday you’ll want to wear it again to impress that special guy… or girl.” Gore laughed as the five of us trailed outside. She locked her door and together we made our way to the elevator, the five of us crammed inside. Halfway down she grabbed a small silver flask from her purse and took a small swig. What was it, whiskey? I didn’t ask.

Downstairs on the street, the five of us piled onto a crowded city bus. There wasn’t anywhere for us to sit down this time, so we held on to the bars and straps dangling from the ceiling. The lurching bus caused me to lose my balance more than once and I stumbled against Gore. She quickly caught me in her free arm and held on to me, her hand wrapped around my waist and inching slowly lower. She grinned at me. “You’re not a city girl, are you?”

“No,” I admitted.

I grabbed onto a strap and steadied myself, but Gore didn’t release me as if I might collapse again without her assistance. I noticed several passengers staring at us. Gore almost had her hand buried in my back pocket at this point. I squirmed, trying to hint that I was uncomfortable with what she was doing. Gore laughed and eased her hold on me, but still not letting go entirely.

“So tell me how you met Karen,” Gore whispered to me, gesturing at Karen. “I mean for real.”

“We shared some classes a couple years ago,” I lied. I could smell Gore’s breath. The scent was strange… although it smelled minty from toothpaste or mouthwash, I detected something else… something that almost smelled like vinegary horseradish. I wouldn’t say that the scent repulsed me. Not entirely. There was just something strange about it… something that made my nose tingle and a bitter taste creep in my mouth. I wanted to back away, and yet… I also wanted to get closer.

“Which ones? Did you share chemistry?”

“Yeah. A lab anyway,” I replied, taking a shot in the dark. Truth be told, I didn’t really know much about Karen and her college life. She rarely talked about it.

“So you share chemistry.” Gore grinned. “Did you use a lot of latex together?”

“What? Yeah, um, there were latex gloves,” I told her. It only dawned on me a moment later what Gore really meant. I turned to look out of the window, hoping Gore didn’t see me blushing. But with our faces ten inches away, she couldn’t have missed a thing.

“You know, Karen was one of the first girls I tried to date back when I was coming out,” Gore spoke casually. I felt her stroking my waist with the arm wrapped around me, small discreet motions meant only for me to notice. I felt my muscles begin to clamp up with the ticklish—and somewhat sensual—stroking. “I’m glad she turned me down, though. I’m proud of her for it. She set a challenge for me… and I’m doing great at it now.”

I smiled shyly. “That’s good.” I wanted this bus ride to end or Karen to find an excuse to disrupt our conversation. I glanced at her, but she had her forehead pressed to the window, gazing out at the sunset flickering between skyscrapers.

“I can see why you like her. She’s so innocent… so sweet… so cautious… You just have to be someone deeply special to her, don’t you? To make her happy?” I felt Gore’s eyes bearing down at me. Her stroking grew stronger, her grip around me tighter.

“No… We’re not dating…” I stammered, squirming nervously. My heart began to race.

“Who said anything about you dating her?” Gore leaned down and pressed her forehead against mine, her breath overpowering my senses. “But you are, aren’t you? I see the way you look at each other. You don’t have to feel guilty about it. Some girls just embrace the fact that they’re gay later than others do.”

“I’m not gay!” I protested. “I’m straight. I only like guys. Dicks turn me on, not vaginas. Look, I really don’t want to talk about it. Please.” I squirmed out of Gore’s grip, squeezing past several strangers to stand closer to Karen.

Karen, seeing my reflection in the window, looked back at me. She frowned. “Eric—Erica, what’s wrong?” She looked at where Gore was standing, but her old high school friend looked obliviously out the window as if our conversation had never happened.

“Nothing, just… I just need some air.”

“Erica… here, take my seat.” Karen stood up. “You aren’t fine.”

“No, you don’t need to…” But Karen’s quiet, patient glare made me accept her spot without further protest. I was glad to sit down, to try and shake Gore’s words out of my mind. Gore had seen right through my pretenses of being straight. How should I have acted when she indicated that I was a lesbian? Maybe it was better that the truth was out and she knew Karen and I were together. Maybe then she wouldn’t touch me so much…

After another few minutes we got off the bus and made our way to a tall building housing several large businesses. Beedee and Deedee—I hated using such silly-sounding nicknames, but the two girls evidently didn’t mind it—didn’t really talk much. They held hands and walked quietly as we rode up escalators into the clothing store, vanishing somewhere between the endless racks and shelves of clothing lining the walls and floors.

“Where are we going?” I asked as Gore led Karen and I to the intimates sections, rows and rows of bras filling the shelves. Sports bras, lacy bras, silk bras, small bras, enormous bras, solid bras, fibrous bras… Gore dived in among them, shuffling through them and picking out the occasional bra that caught her eye. Soon she carried an armful of them.

Karen grabbed my arm and gently tugged me away. “We should find you some sandals.” She walked hurriedly, glancing back to make sure I was following closely behind. When we were about halfway across the store, she sat down on a bench in the shoes department and motioned for me to join her. “How’re you doing, Eric?” she asked softly.

“I’m fine. Gore’s… an interesting person.”

“What was she talking to you about on the bus?” Karen’s eyes seemed to probe me for answers.

“Nothing, really. Just about how you two were friends in high school.” This was more or less true… I didn’t want to worry Karen with the uncomfortable details of the conversation. I wanted to hug Karen, to smell her hair and feel her warm body in my arms. But I didn’t, of course.

Karen didn’t look convinced. She stared at me. When I didn’t say anything else, she sighed and looked away.

“There you are!” came Gore’s voice from directly behind us. Both Karen and I lurched in surprise, cold adrenaline slowly draining from my veins. Gore kneeled down behind us and wrapped her arms around our shoulders, jutting her head between us and looking at our reflection in a mirror. “Come on, I want your opinions on these.” She dumped several bras in our arms, a mixture of smaller bras for Karen and larger ones for me.

“I have to use the bathroom,” Karen said. “Sorry.” She stood up and handed me her portion of the bras before striding away.

Gore chuckled. “She did this back in high school too. But it doesn’t matter.” To my astonishment, Gore leaped over the bench and sat by my side. She cupped my right breast in her hand and lifted it up, bouncing it in my bra for a couple seconds, feeling its weight and size. Just like on the bus, my instinct was to tense up half my body, ready to dart away at any second. Gore laughed. “Just checking,” she said with a grin. She grabbed my arm and almost dragged me to the nearest dressing rooms. “Oh, have some fun, will you?”

Was this normal behavior for Gore? Was she… was she trying to flirt with me? Stroking my waist on the bus… cupping my breasts… asking me to watch her try on lingerie…

“I think I have to use the bathroom too,” I lied.

“This’ll only take five minutes,” Gore reassured me, pulling me inside a dressing booth. As soon as the door was shut she seized her shirt at the waist and in one motion pulled it off her body. I saw her freckled skin and ample breasts resting in her tan bra. Immediately I tried to look away, not just out of modesty but because of a growing dampness between my legs. Shit. Gore was making me horny. My nipples… what would she say if she saw my nipples erect?

I stared at the pile of bras, trying not to think about Gore’s body when she tossed her tan bra into my hands. It was still warm… Gore unscrewed her silver flask and took another small sip.

“What are you waiting for? I got a bunch of bras just for you,” Gore spoke. “The sooner we try them on the sooner you can use the bathroom.”

I hesitated. “I’m broke,” I lied.

“You can still try them on. I’ll buy a couple for you. You’re Karen’s friend, so that makes you my friend too,” Gore argued. She spun me around to face her, gripping my shoulders with one hand as she unclasped her bra. I tried to ignore her naked breasts, but… well… I couldn’t help but sneak a peek at the two freckled orbs topped by her perky, red nipples. “Do these look all right to you? I think the right one’s a little bit bigger than the left. It bugs the hell out of me. What do you think?”

“I… They look fine to me,” I stammered.

“Are you sure? They don’t feel the same size.” Gore rocked up and down on her toes, her breasts bouncing with the motion. “You think I should see a doctor?”

I had to turn away, feeling my arousal building. “I’m not really comfortable doing this,” I admitted openly. I handed her back the tan bra and prepared to slip back outside the stall.

“Erica… I’m sorry. Sometimes I need a good smack on the ass to get me to behave,” Gore laughed. “Please don’t go. I seriously want your opinion. No offense, but Karen doesn’t know a thing about fashion, and Beedee and Deedee will just lie to me to get in my panties. Please? I’ll buy you some underwear to match your new bras.”

I sighed sharply. Gore, still topless, wrapped her arms around my back and pulled me close. I felt the weight of her breasts on top of mine and smelled that same tantalizing scent on her breath. I wanted to push my way out of her grip or to strike her, but… my body suddenly felt limp in her arms. My legs seemed as jello. I could stand upright but do little more. I leaned against Gore’s tall, strong body, pressing my cheek against her bosom. Her breath…

“Now don’t be shy,” Gore said as she began unbuttoning my shirt from the bottom up. Very slowly, very deliberately, very sensually… as the final button came undone, she gently pulled my shirt away, leaving me in just my bra and jeans. I found myself reaching to unclasp my bra almost involuntarily. It just seemed like the most natural thing to do in the world, to let Gore gaze upon my breasts just as she let me gaze upon hers, to revel in her naked beauty…

There suddenly came a light knocking at our stall door. Jolted awake, I pushed Gore out of my grip and threw one of the bras against her chest. What the hell was I doing? I grabbed my shirt and slid into it, buttoning every third button so that I was at least somewhat decent.

“Erica?” came Karen’s voice. Thank god…

“In here,” I squeaked. “Want to come in?”

“No, it’s fine. Just checking.” I saw Karen’s shoes underneath the door as she started to walk away.

“I need your help!” I exclaimed. I didn’t want to be stuck alone in there with Gore any longer. “I want you to see if this looks good on me. I want to know if you think Josh will like it.” I hoped Karen was smart enough to play along.

A moment later Karen popped inside. The small dressing room was terribly crowded with all three of us inside, but it was an inconvenience I was willing to endure. Karen looked at Gore who still held her tan bra against her body.

“What do you want me to look at?” Karen asked, looking at me with an “is-everything-okay?” type of look.

Gore handed me one of the bras from the pile. “Twenty bucks says Josh won’t be able to keep his hands off of this one,” she teased, giving me a “I-know-what-you’re-doing” look of her own. “Try it on.”

I hesitated a moment but began to unbutton my shirt again. When it came time to take off my bra, I faced the wall so neither Karen nor Gore were able to see my breasts from the front. Shit. My sensitive nipples stood erect, waiting for attention. I quickly slipped the new bra over my chest, fumbling at the clasp until Karen took over for me. Shit… I was getting good at that earlier, why my sudden lapse now?

Over the course of half an hour, the three of us went through the entire pile of bras, sorting out the good from the bad and the best from the good. Karen even went through the bras Gore picked out for her in specific, mimicking my modest by turning to the wall as she went topless. Even Gore adopted the habit, despite the fact that just a few minutes ago she had been all too willing for me to see her bare breasts. As Gore tried on her final bra, I jumped as someone grabbed my hand. It was Karen, of course, but I wasn’t expecting her to violate her no-intimacy policy now of all times. She smiled at me reassuringly.

When we finished with the bras, I was expecting for Gore to buy the ones we picked out and leave the store. But no. After the bras, Gore collected a couple dozen dresses and made Karen and I try them on. Karen didn’t fit in many of hers, but somehow all of mine were perfectly proportioned to my feminine body. I tried on a white dress that barely came down past my thighs, a green dinner dress that showed off half of my breasts, a sexy tight black one, a long red one, a ruffled purple one that cost nearly a thousand dollars. Over time I began to notice that Karen seemed to be eyeing me, glancing at my chest and ass, subtly betraying her lie of being straight.

“Oh! Bikinis! They should be really cheap this time of year!” Gore clapped. “I’ll be right back!”

Karen rolled her eyes once Gore was gone. She took my hand and we sat down on the bench. My legs ached and my skin itched from all the fabric that had scraped against it. I leaned against Karen, resting my head on her shoulder.

“Isn’t this great?” Karen asked sarcastically, gently stroking my arm. “Clothes, clothes, shopping, clothes, bras, swimsuits, clothes…”

I groaned. “I’m glad you’re not like this. You’re pretty without all this junk.”

“Shhh…” But despite her shushing, I felt her embrace tighten and she kissed me on my forehead.

We snapped back into a totally non-intimate stance when we heard Gore’s footsteps shuffle to the stall. She didn’t knock when she came inside. “This are all they have left,” she said, handing me a couple pieces of red fabric. I held them up. They looked so tiny... they could never fit on me. Could they?

“Eric’s not feeling to well,” Karen interrupted.

“Eric?” Gore grinned. “That’s a cute nickname.”

“Erica. You know what I meant. Maybe we can come back tomorrow. It’s almost ten. I think the store’s going to close any minute now.” Karen took the bikini out of my hands and began to pick up some of the mound of tags and hangers littering the stall.

“Let’s get trapped in. Then we can try on clothes all night!” Gore laughed. “But fine. Let’s go get dinner. I promised to buy one for Eric.”

“Erica,” Karen corrected.

“Erica,” Gore agreed. “But Eric’s a cute name. Kind of manly sounding.”

Gore couldn’t possibly know my secret, could she? Okay, so it was easy enough for her to tell I wasn’t being honest about being straight, and maybe she didn’t believe the thing about Josh either. But she couldn’t possibly know that I wasn’t really a girl at all, could she? No. Impossible. Right? Just because I was awkward about topics like bras and dresses, she couldn’t derive my true gender or anything, could she?

We had to call up Deedee and Beebee to find them. The two girls had gone on to explore other stores. When we met up, they each carried a small handbag labeled “The Garden.”

“What did you get?” I asked, trying to be friendly.

Deedee grinned and pulled out a bottle of lube and a dildo. Right then… so the two had gone to a sex store. Thank god Gore hadn’t insisted that we go shopping there or I might be walking home with a leather corset and whip or something kinky like that. The night wasn’t all bad, I supposed. Gore had bought me a couple pairs of bras as she had promised earlier and Karen came back with a few free additions to her wardrobe herself.

The night guards and janitors were eager to shoo us out of the building. We emerged into the bright lights of the nighttime city with all the crazy drunken traffic of a Friday night. We chose a small, quiet pizzeria for dinner and ate. Karen and Gore talked about old memories from high school. My several attempts to make conversation with Deedee and Beedee ended awkwardly. All I managed to learn was that Deedee also went to Karen’s high school but had only become friends with Gore recently.

After we ate we stopped by a DVD rental store and checked out several movies. Karen disappeared into the bathroom to clean off a tomato sauce stain from her shirt, leaving me alone with Gore again. Together we slowly paced from one side of the store to the other, browsing all the new releases.

“She’s hot,” Gore commented, pointing to a DVD with a woman in a bikini on the cover. “I’d totally screw her.”

I had no idea what to say. “Yeah,” I agreed. “She’s pretty, I guess.”

Gore took another swig from her flask. By now it was obvious that the vinegary horseradish scent was coming from whatever mixture she kept drinking from, but what the hell was it? Certainly not whiskey… What kind of alcohol smelled like horseradish? Was it even alcohol at all?

“How about her?” Gore asked, pointing at a woman on a different DVD.

“What about her?” I asked, confused.

“Let’s say her car broke down in front of her apartment and she didn’t have the money to stay at a hotel. Would you let her stay with you for the night?”

“Sure, I guess.” I replied.

“And then say you noticed she kept eyeing you and you know she’s totally into you. Would you strip for her?”

This again… “No,” I answered.

“What if she begged you?”

“Still no. Look—”

Gore put her hands on my arms and spun me to face her. “It happens to me all the time.”

“What happens?”

“Chicks see me in the supermarket and ask for my number. They go crazy for me. I get a lot of pussy. A lot.” Gore’s breath reeked of her mysterious scent as she spoke. As repulsive as I found the scent, images of Gore naked in her apartment flooded my mind. I thought of her rosy breasts… her long, red hair… tumbling down on the body of another woman… on top of me…

“Ninety-two. That’s how many girls I’ve had sex with. Fifty seven lesbians. Twenty three bisexuals. And twelve supposedly straight girls. That’s a lot of orgasms. Hundreds.” Gore dropped a DVD case into my hands. It bounced out as my body stood numbly. I thought of Gore burying her head between some woman’s legs, licking at her clit… my clit… My heart beat faster, my legs quivering. I stumbled forward into Gore’s ready arms… smelling her breath… her alluring breath…

“When we get back let me show you the Wall. Now come on. Back to your feet, girl,” Gore finished, backing away. My skin tingled with a sudden chill in the absence of her warm embrace. I wanted her to hold me, to carry me… I took a few steps toward her, trying to satisfy my aching desire for her sweet breath, but Gore held me at a distance. “Not now, girl. Not now.”

What the hell was I doing? I longed for Gore… I craved her, her body, her skin… I needed to smell her breath, feel it against my lips… But I didn’t like her! She creeped me out and bombarded me with awkward conversation. And I already loved Karen, something far more meaningful than this irrational, sudden lust for Gore. Guilt infiltrated my body and mind. This wasn’t fair. This wasn’t right. I wasn’t so shallow of a person to suddenly forget about my loyalty to Karen for some pesky stranger… was I?

Gore grinned at me before strutting away, leaving me numb and speechless. I stared at her hourglass form as she vanished between two shelves of videos. The way she swished her hips… her fiery red hair…

“Eric?” I jumped as Karen rested her hand on my shoulder from behind me. “Jeez, Eric, it’s just me. Eric… what’s wrong?”

It took me several seconds to regain control of my body. I still itched for Gore, but Karen provided some degree of relief. I turned around, staring at Karen’s cute face, at her modest breasts and hips. I wanted to touch her… to slide my fingers under her shirt and around her waist, feeling the smooth contours of her back underneath my fingertips, to squeeze her tight against me… Something… anything to relieve the tension Gore left me. Being unable to touch Karen was sheer torture. So what if I did hug her? Gore already knew neither of us were straight. I didn’t think Beedee or Deedee would care. And what was the probability that one of Karen’s classmates or peers would happen to see us?

“Eric… don’t hold out on me,” Karen urged. “Is it Gore? Did she say something awkward to you? She has a bad habit of doing that… just try to ignore it. Eric?”

How could I explain to Karen my body-consuming attraction toward her old high school friend? I loved Karen. She was beautiful. But she would never understand if I tried to explain how I felt. I’d hurt her too badly if she found out how strongly I lusted for Gore. She was so delicate… so restrained… so emotionally fragile, and it tore at my heart. But Gore… strong, independent, Gore… Gore who could understand me… protect me… satisfy me…

“I just have an upset stomach,” I lied, pushing past Karen to the bathroom. When I popped inside and saw a man in front of a urinal, I realized my stupid mistake and tried to dart back out. But I collided into a guy who wasn’t expected me to push my way out so quickly. I quickly apologized, running into the women’s room, feeling the man’s eyes bearing down on me. My heart pounded, my palms cold and my skin damp with sweat.

I washed my face, scrubbing off all the makeup Anna had so carefully given me. I felt calmer seeing my true face—Erica’s true face, anyway, not my male one. After a couple more minutes, I managed to purge the last thoughts of Gore out of my mind. I took a deep breath, smiled at the mirror, and returned to our group at the checkout line. Karen eyed me, but with Gore still in earshot, she said nothing to indicate her concern.

I felt considerably better on the bus ride back to Gore’s apartment. The bus wasn’t half as crowded now so all five of us were able to find our own seats. I made sure to stick as close to Karen as possible. Too close, perhaps. She nudged me away several times when I drew too close to her personal space, too close for mere friends.

Finally, close to midnight, we returned to the apartment building. Gore unlocked the door to her apartment but stood at the doorway for several seconds before entering.

“We didn’t leave the lights on,” she pointed out. “Christina? Sarah? Alissa? Candy? Megan? Emma? Anyone in there?” There was no response. Gore turned around and smiled at Karen and me. “I’ve handed out a few house keys over the past couple years… sometimes I never know who pops in.”

Gore swept all the rooms, singing out various girls’ names seductively. There was nobody inside, not a single indication that someone had been through the apartment. Gore’s flat screen television still rested nailed to the wall, so if someone had broken in, they hadn’t stolen the obvious.

“Huh. Maybe we did leave the lights on. Oh well. Sooo… Karen, you going to try on that nightgown I bought for you? It’s so adorable…”

Karen reluctantly dug through her shopping bag and pulled out a pink dress, or a nightgown to be more specific. She changed in the bathroom and came back out wearing it, but she still wore her bra and panties underneath, something I felt pretty sure the nightgown was meant to be used without.

“Adorable!” Gore laughed. “Erica, I have something to show you. Follow me.”

I unenthusiastically followed Gore to her bedroom. Karen, perhaps sensing my reluctance, followed us. When Gore saw that Karen was with us, she frowned only for the briefest of moments before masking it in a charming grin. “Karen, can you go grab some beers from the fridge?”

Karen seemed to know that she was being shooed away. She slowly retreated back outside. Gore shut the door behind her and drew open a curtain that I had assumed went to a window, but instead it masked a giant pushpin board dotted with photographs of various girls, some of them labeled neatly with a name and a short straight line, a wavy line, or a circle.

“This is the Wall,” Gore giggled. She handed me a photo from off the board. It was Deedee. Her name was accompanied by a straight line.

I looked back at the board in closer detail. There were hundreds of photographs. I began to see a trend between them. Each cluster of photos pictured one particular girl in various parts of Gore’s apartment. Some girls only had one photo in their collections while one had several dozen. But what caught my eye was that many of the girls were posed half dressed or completely naked, smiling lustily at the camera. I recognized several of the girls from my undergraduate classes! But Gore didn’t leave me much longer to examine her collection. She slid the curtains shut again, hiding the board from unwanted eyes. Karen’s eyes.

“A lot… of orgasms.” Gore took another drink from her flask. The seductive odor coming from her breath immediately sent a surge of arousal through my body.

Before my body seized up in lust, I pushed past Gore back to the living room. Karen, Deedee, and Beedee sat on the couch sipping beers. Karen looked worried when she saw me, but still she said nothing in front of company.

“Make yourselves comfortable, everyone. Erica… did you bring anything to sleep in?” Gore asked.

I pulled out some pajamas from the duffle bag. They were fuzzy and decorated with pink hearts, another set I’d borrowed from Anna. But they were warm and coved my body, not leaving my half naked like something Gore probably would have wanted to see me in.

“Hm,” Gore grunted in disappointed approval.

I turned for the bathroom but stopped when I saw that Beedee and Deedee’s idea of “comfortable” was to strip completely naked and wrap blankets around themselves. I tried my best not to stare at all that luscious skin…

Gore’s bathroom instantly became an awkward place once I paid attention to the details. It was easy enough to change out of my jeans and shirt, but as I changed I realized that there were more bottles of lube lining the shower than shampoo. I took a peek in the medicine cabinet and found several vibrators and dildos inside. I shut the cabinet as silently as possible and left before I discovered something else I didn’t want to know about.

We watched a movie on Gore’s television in the living room for the next couple hours. Gore, Karen, and I sat on the sofa, but I made sure Karen acted as a buffer between Gore and I. Beedee and Deedee, still naked except for a blanket they shared together, watched from the carpet in front of us. The blanket draped over the countours of their bodies. They shifted positions several times during the movie, tugging at the blanket and exposing the other’s nakedness for several seconds. Gore just eyed them and laughed, and near the end of the movie she snatched the blanket away completely.

“Naughty, naughty,” Deedee repeated, standing up seemingly oblivious to her nakedness. I averted my attention away as I heard Deedee and Gore fighting for the blanket, accompanied by giggles, shrieks of laughter and pleasure, and kissing.

How could Karen have ever befriended someone like Gore? Gore was everything Karen was not—open, blunt, bold, and publicly sexual. She seemed more like someone Karen would sooner detest than befriend. I heard Karen sigh softly next to me; evidently she was as bothered by the display of affection as me.

At some point or other Deedee won the blanket back and Beedee found a different one to wrap around her body. It seemed safe enough to look at something other than the wall.

“I don’t know about you girls but I think it’s time to get some rest. Who wants to shower first?” Gore asked, straightening her ruffled clothes.

“I’ll go,” I volunteered. I grabbed the toiletries Karen and I brought… somehow the thought of using Gore’s soap made me feel… dirty. Not fully in a bad way, as much as I hated to admit it. I took the better part of half an hour to clean myself. Most of the time I stood still, letting the water run down the female body I was becoming so accustomed to. In a way I almost found it hard to believe that somewhere beneath my breasts was my true male identity. Oh, if only I could have it back… no need to live in fear of Gore’s seductive habits… no need to live a false life… How much easier it would have been to just stride up to Gore with my male body and tell her to fuck off and leave me alone. But no. I was doing this for Karen. These breasts of mine, these all-consuming urges as Gore laid on the charm… it was for Karen. I wasn’t going to let her down, to ruin this reunion with an old friend.

When I shut off the water, dressed back in Anna’s pajamas, and returned to the living room, I saw that Beedee and Deedee were snuggled together in a single sleeping bag. Karen also lay on top of hers, her eyes shut. She wasn’t asleep though. When she saw me, she groggily sat up and took the vacant shower for herself.

If Beedee and Deedee could fall asleep, so could I. Gore was in her bedroom somewhere. Good, I didn’t have to talk to her. I shut my eyes, trying to let sleep relieve me as quickly as possible. I listened to the shower turn on and as either Beedee or Deedee began to snore lightly from across the room. The sounds combined to lull me to tranquility.

But this tranquility didn’t last long. I felt footsteps as Gore approached me. I pretended to be asleep, but when I felt Gore come down to her knees my curiosity forced me to look up at her.

“Erica…” Gore whispered, her horseradishy breath wafting down, igniting my body with a whirlwind of agitated pins and needles. “Such a pretty name… Erica…” I felt her lean down until she was whispering directly into my ear. My body tensed up. Suddenly it felt as though the temperature in the apartment was climbing a degree every second.

“Such a pretty little thing,” Gore sighed. I felt her begin to stroke my arm, working her hand over to hips, up my waist, down my back, and then gently down my buttocks. Her touch cooled my burning skin. My mind screamed no! Don’t let her do this! But my body wanted to cuddle up in her grip, to make contact with as much as her bare skin as possible. Torn between these two contrasting desires, my body simply clamped up, completely immobile.

“Karen won’t let you be herself,” Gore sang. “But I know you better. We have a connection, you and me…” Gore’s hand began sliding toward my crotch until she was rubbing my nub through my pajamas. I moaned involuntarily, my legs parting and back arching by instinct. “You want me. You’ve been holding back for so many years, haven’t you? Just relax… breathe and lie still…” Gore’s stroking grew faster and harder, my crotch starting to drip with anticipation. I wanted to feel her fingers circle my clit… I needed to feel it… But no! I shouldn’t… I couldn’t… For Karen… But neither could I let this overwhelming tsunami of pleasure slip away…

“No… no… no…” I whimpered, my tongue as useless as a wet rag.

“Shhh… relax…” Gore ceased her rubbing and began to slide my pajama bottoms down, ever so slowly, ever so sensually, revealing more and more of my hips and thighs…

I’m not entirely sure what happened next. A thousand images of Karen shot into my mind. An image of her masturbating me that night on our first date… an image of her crying in my arms… an image of her moaning as my dildo-cock jammed inside her silicon pussy… an image of her eating with Anna and I at the corner deli… an image of her revealing herself to me with our innocent love… an image of her the first time I met her when she helped me carry boxes up to my room… My body suddenly sprang back to life and with an adrenaline-fueled surge of energy, my stressed legs shot up and kicked Gore off of me. I immediately slid my pajama bottom back up and fumbled backward, crawling toward the bathroom door.

“You’re a tough one,” Gore gasped, clutching her ribs. She grinned darkly and with a single swift motion tore off both her shirt and bra, letting her jiggling breasts dangle as she crawled on all fours toward me. “But you’ll change your mind about me…” She grabbed one of my ankles and pulled me back. Like a wrestler, she swung her legs over me and sat on my sternum, pinning me to the ground with the full weight of her muscular, six foot body. I struggled, but there was nothing I could do. “Beedee, Deedee, lend me a hand, will you?”

Within a few seconds the two naked girls grabbed hold of one of my arms apiece and held them to the ground. With my entire body now pinned, Gore leaned down, bringing her face to within half of inch of mine. Her breath… that overwhelming vinegary scent… She blow air into my face, into my mouth and nostrils until I was completely consumed by the alluring fragrance. My struggling grew weaker as arousal pulsed through me. Gore licked one of her fingers and ran it tenderly around my lips. I couldn’t help it anymore. I leaned up and kissed her, tasting whatever it is that scented her breath. I ran my tongue over her lips, gently at first, but then deeper… trying to get to the source of that taste…

Gore backed away and stood up. I couldn’t even move my head to watch her; all I could do was look up at the two naked girls restraining my passive arms. When Gore returned, she resumed rubbing me through my pajamas. I gasped… the pleasure… I didn’t protest as she pulled my pajama bottoms off completely. I heard a buzzing sound and felt something cold and metallic against my clit. Shit! All the pleasure, all the anticipation Gore built up for me… nothing could match this new feeling of vibrations coursing through my crotch, stimulating every nerve of my soaking pussy. My hips began to gyrate, unable to resist the erotic bliss dominating my entire existence. My body trembled as I felt the pleasure grow… stronger and stronger… I couldn’t hold back much longer, I was going to orgasm any second…

But just at the brink of climax, Gore stopped.

“No, don’t…” I begged. “I need you…”

“Oh, don’t worry… we’re still just starting.” As if on cue, Beedee and Deedee leaned over me and began to tenderly suck on my nipples. I moaned, rolling my head from side to side. At first I didn’t notice the object sliding up into my vagina. But when I felt my labia begin to part, forced aside by a warm, vibrating cylindrical item, I knew what Gore was doing.

“You’re so tight… You’re an enigma, Erica. I never took you to be a virgin.” Gore smiled as she began to slowly pulse the dildo in and out of me, forcing the cock-shaped object a tiny bit deeper each thrust. Pain shot through me, but at the same time it was a minor inconvenience to the flurry of overwhelming pleasure.

A long cry escaped my lips. Gore had to muffle me with her hand, but she was too late. I screamed as the orgasm finally hit, the strongest orgasm of my life that left my entire body thumping uncontrollably. Gore’s dildo still half stuck inside me, I broke free from Beedee and Deedee’s grip and wrapped my arms and leg around Gore, clamping on to her as smaller orgasms continued to surge through me. The delight… I needed Gore. I NEEDED her. Gore, Gore, Gore, Gore… with a swing of my body, I floored her and seized her thighs. I tore off her remaining clothes and saw the luscious, silky folds of that irresistible pussy. Without concern to anything else in the world, I began lapping at it, tasting her salty cum.

“Now that’s a good girl…” Gore squealed.

I surged my tongue against her crotch, nibbling at her clit when my tongue was too tired to keep pace. I saw a shadow in front of me in my peripheral vision and paused long enough to glance up.

It was Karen. She stood with a towel wrapped around her dripping body, a mixture of shock and horror glued to her face. Her mouth hung open and I saw a tear roll down her cheek. But her eyes… her eyes roared with fury and flitted back and forth as if the sight of me seared them. Her body trembled violently until I thought for sure she was having a seizure. But… I couldn’t stop licking off Gore. Guilt stabbed through me, drowning me in agonizing regret and depression. But my lust continued to command my body, and no matter the pain I caused to Karen and myself, Gore had to be pleased at all costs.

“Eric…” Karen cried, choking on tears. “Oh my god… Eric…”

Gore shoved me away, the violent motion causing me to tumble on the carpet until I thumped against the wall. “Karen,” she simply stated. “Join the party.”

“You…” Karen grabbed a lamp and held it by the light bulb, reading to swing it like a club. She slowly inched forward, her palms turning scarlet as she clutched her weapon tightly.

Meanwhile I scrambled back to Gore, wrapping my arms around her legs. I needed to continue the pleasure… I had to satisfy her completely. I just had to. I needed to. If I didn’t, I felt as though my body would shatter into a million pieces, battered eternally with lacerating agony.

“It’s been too long, hasn’t it?” Gore laughed. “You inspired me, Karen. You’re my muse. But I could never have you… anyone else I wanted, but not you… Why, Karen?”

“What are you talking about?” Karen gasped. “What the hell have I done?”

“Why Erica? Why her?” Gore snarled. “I know you love her. Why did you hold out on me? Why do you keep on lying? Can’t you just tell me the goddamn truth?”

Karen shrunk back. “Eric, let’s get the hell out of here.”

“Go make love to your girlfriend,” Gore commanded me. “I want to see what it is that makes you so fucking special.”

I stumbled to my feet and cautiously advanced toward Karen, fearful that she might strike me. But Karen dropped the lamp and backed up until there was nowhere for her to go. I gazed into the fear in her eyes, the searing anguish caused by my betrayal. But I couldn’t help it. This was what Gore wanted. I wrapped one arm around Karen’s limp body and began fondling her breasts through the nightgown with the other.

“Eric… Don’t do this…” Karen begged. “You don’t have to do this. You—”

I silenced her with a kiss and moved from groping her breasts to massaging her crotch, forcing my fingers past her panties and sliding them up Karen’s dry pussy. It only took a few moments for it to flush with warm cum to ease my finger’s invasion. One by one Karen’s muscles relaxed and she slid down to the ground, letting me pleasure her freely.

“Eric… Eric…” she gasped, her words slurring indistinctly together, replaced by gentle moaning. She shut her eyelids halfway, rolling her eyes back into her head.

“Bravo, bravo.” Gore pushed me aside again and dragged Karen to the center of the room by her arms. I stood and watched as she breathed into Karen’s mouth. Slowly, reluctantly, Karen lifted up an arm, hesitated a moment, and wrapped it around Gore’s back. “You go play with Beedee and Deedee,” Gore instructed me. “Tonight I’m taking Karen with me in private. Isn’t that right, love?”

I heard Karen giggle before leaning up and kissing Gore on the lips. I felt warm arms embrace me from behind. Deedee and Beedee. I thought nothing more of Karen as I turned to face my two new lovers… But before I could do anything, a blinding flash of light knocked me to the ground. I heard five thuds as we all collapsed, disoriented. My ears rang and all I could see was a blinding white light. As I slowly began to make out dim shapes around me, I felt something new. A new presence. Someone was in here with us.

I squinted. There was a shape growing near the duffle bag, growing taller and wider into a humanoid form. Not only humanoid, but the shape of a woman. A girl. And as I began to make sense of color again, I saw that she was blonde with a fading crimson tint to her skin. My heart raced. I backed away.

“Hello?” I asked. “Who is that?”

“You know me.” It was Amy. How the hell…? “Get up.”

“What the fuck?” I heard Gore swear. She was still recovering from the flash, holding her hand over her eyes, shielding herself from a nonexistent blaze.

“What the fuck indeed.” Amy took my arm and helped me to my feet. She was naked herself at first, but several rings of light made a modest light, translucent dress fabricate around her from thin air. “Do you know what the fuck you’ve been doing?”

“Karen, Erica, get this bitch out of here!” Gore cried. I detected something new in her voice… a quiver of fear. I needed to please her… didn’t I? I turned to challenge Amy but was met with a sharp slap that made my cheek sting. No. I didn’t need to please Gore. In fact, I rather felt like pummeling her with my fists.

“Shut up. The sooner you can’t speak, the better.” Amy bent down and helped her sister up. Once Karen was in her arms, she faced Gore and muttered a few words.

“This is breaking and entering! I’m calling the cops on you! You’re going… guh… guh…” Gore clutched at her throat, eyes wide.

“I think you might get a kick out of this,” Amy laughed. “I’ve wanted to try this one for a while.”

At first I didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary, other than the fact Gore couldn’t breathe. But then I watched as her breasts became rounder like balloons and began to take on a plastic-like gleam. Gore clutched at them, but something stopped her from moving arms the full range. They looked increasingly bloated and baggy, taking on the appearance that they were filled with air than flesh and bone. Gore’s expression froze, her eyes wide and her mouth gaping open forming a tight “o”. Her makeup seemed to absorb into the skin like paint, and her long, red hair began to clump together in strands of considerable greater width like some kind of wig. She wriggled, but her body assumed a static pose of her lying flat on her back, arms and legs spread out. Before long she appeared completely inanimate.

I took a few cautious steps closer. Gore’s eyes followed me, but otherwise her body sat completely motionless. I bent down and ran my finger against her skin. Latex. Gore was no longer a warm, breathing human but a stationary, cold mannequin… a sex doll.

“Seems fitting, doesn’t it?” Amy turned to face Beedee and Deedee. The two girls held onto each other, trying to shrink into the wall. “I haven’t forgotten about you two.”

Both girls began to shrink, their arms and legs retracting inside their bodies and their hourglass forms compacting into a more cylindrical shape. Deedee’s skin began to take on a red shade, Beedee’s a purple one. Four feet… three feet… The remaining stubs of their arms merged into their sides, their thickening legs absorbing together into a single column of translucent plastic. Two feet… one foot… Soon nothing remained of the two accomplices other than two dildos resting idly on the ground. Amy walked over and picked them up. She handed the red one—Deedee—to me. It was still warm and despite looking like a completely ordinary dildo, it still felt like a living, breathing organism in my hands. If I concentrated, I could even feel it move just the tiniest fraction of an inch.

Amy took the dildo back and stood over Gore the sex doll. “Open wide!” She jammed Deedee inside Gore’s open mouth. “And this is home for you,” she said, pulling down Gore’s skirt and stuffing the second dildo into the doll’s vagina. “Enjoy.”

Her deed finished, Amy turned to Karen and I. “As much as I like seeing you naked, Eric, now’s not a good time. Pack up. We’re getting out of here.”

I slipped into the set of clothes I’d been saving for Saturday, careful to step around Gore. Her eyes were the only human aspect about her, and seeing her watch me freaked me out as I wondered what thoughts were running through her mind. Fear? Anger? Sorrow? Despair? Whatever she felt, her emotions were locked away inside her. I ended up tossing a blanket over her head.

I lurched as Karen silently clasped her hand in mine. I was still jumpy. Together we stared at the carnage of the night’s happening. Clothes littered the floor. The lamp Karen grabbed earlier sat shattered against the wall. Sweat and vaginal juices dotted the carpet. I wanted to get out of there. Badly.

“Come in here,” came Amy’s voice. Karen and I entered the kitchen, still holding hands and leaning against each other for support.

Amy picked up a clay jar and smashed it against the tile floor. A flare of white powder drifted up. She continued to sift through Gore’s pots, jars, and eating utensils, smashing certain containers after examining each one individually. She kicked the pile of clay shards, powder, and herbs that was forming on the floor into a homogenous mess.

“What are you doing?” Karen asked quietly.

“Don’t you know what Gore has been doing?” Amy questioned, her tone serious. “This are all potion herbs. Has she made you drink anything or been carrying around a suspicious bottle?”

“The flask…” I murmured. I darted back to the living room and found it lying on the floor. I handed it to Amy.

Amy unscrewed the lid and took a cautious sniff. She wrinkled her nose. “Blech. Talentless hack. But she got the recipe right, I have to give her that…” She drained the remaining liquid on the kitchen table and threw some napkins down to soak it up. “Karen, mom warned you about this exact situation. That’s why we all tried to keep you away from Gore. We told you not to trust her. You knew she was experimenting with potions in high school!”

“What was that stuff?” I asked, motioning toward the liquid dripping down onto the floor.

“She probably thought it was a love potion,” Amy explained. “But that’s just a side effect. The potion’s real power is the force of submission. She just didn’t think to use it any other way. Thank god.”

Once Amy was finished ransacking the kitchen and was satisfied with the destruction of Gore’s kitchenware and herb stockpiles, she dug through the bathroom and then moved on to the bedroom. When she pulled the curtains open and saw the pinboard, she began tearing down the photos in a violent frenzy.

“All those girls…” Karen murmured.

“Victims,” Amy stated simply. “You two were about to be next.”

Karen and I hugged each other as we watched Amy yank out drawers and throw all of Gore’s clothes into disarray. When she came to the bookshelf, she flipped through several titles. “Magicks and Potions for the Teenage Witch. Forgotten Herbal Remedies and Potions. Releasing the Inner Magic,” she read off. “This is mostly just bullshit.” But at the end of the row she came upon a small, leather-bound book that fit in the palm of her hand. I saw a round yellow sticker on it indicating it cost fifty cents at some garage sale or other. Amy flipped through it and stuck it in her pocket; there must have been something of merit to that particular book.

There wasn’t much left to check except Gore’s desk. A computer sat on top. Amy lifted a hand up and a moment later sparks began to fly from the black casing. I cringed, thinking of how much monetary damage we were causing. But remembering what Gore had done to us…

“Let’s go home,” Amy said. “Grab your stuff.”

We walked past Gore and her two dildo companions one last time. Amy whisked off the cloth over Gore’s face and leaned down, glaring at the doll. “Don’t ever… ever! let me catch you doing this ever again.” She spat on Gore’s plastic breasts and stood up, herding Karen and I out the door. We left the apartment for the last time and rode down the elevator in silence.

Anna sat waiting in the parking lot in the car she and Amy shared. She bit her lip. “Is everything all right now?” she asked when we were all in the car.

“Yes.” I never heard Amy speak so directly e before.

Anna drove us to the parking garage where Karen’s car was parked. Amy, Karen, and I moved into the other car. Amy drove the three of us with Anna following behind. It was close to four in the morning so the streets were quiet. Karen slumped against me in the back seat. I hugged her tightly, feeling the car lull me to sleep.

“This was stupid of you, Karen,” Amy scolded, breaking the long silence and jolting me back to my senses. “It’s a damn good thing Anna can’t keep her mouth shut.” She waited a few seconds, then said in a more joking tone that I recognized, “And it’s a damn good thing Eric liked me as that crimson bra to grab me before you two left.”

“So… the whole time…” Karen whispered.

“Karen, you’re my younger sister. You’re family. I’m going to look after you no matter what. Especially after tonight.” Amy turned the radio on, but it was too quiet to make out any voices or songs. “Did Gore ever talk about her obsession with magic before?”

“I always thought she was joking,” Karen murmured sleepily. “I had no idea…”

“There were thousands of dollars of ingredients in that apartment. I didn’t even recognize half of them,” Amy admitted. “It was a wonder she didn’t poison herself. Gore must have been lucky to mix something that actually worked out of all that crap in her room. But she mixed it anyway, and look at what happened. Magic isn’t all fun of games, Eric. And you too, Karen. Mom told you to stay away from Gore for a reason. And you didn’t listen.”

None of us spoke the rest of the ride home. I nodded off against Karen’s shoulder as she slept with her head in my lap. My body tingled and ached at every joint. Now that the adrenaline was clearing from my body, I felt truly exhausted, unable to keep even my thoughts straight. I just kept envisioning Gore seducing me, tearing away my resistance step by step… I felt that only Karen’s warm body in my arms was keeping me sane. What if Amy hadn’t been spying on us, ready to rescue us from Gore and her stranglehold? We could have spent all weekend under her spell. Days. Weeks. As long as Gore kept us around… and then what? Would I live life with my lust for her constantly flooding my mind, my body aching with withdrawal when she moved on to seduce someone new?

At long last I felt the car stop. I didn’t want to get up… I would have preferred to stay with Karen in the car all night long. But Amy pushed me awake. Karen, feeling my body move, suddenly snapped awake and almost crushed my nose with the top of her head as she jerked to attention.

“We’re home,” I whispered to her. Karen groggily sat up and shuffled out the door.

Anna pulled in the parking lot a minute later. As soon as she had parked the car and turned off the engine, she ran up to Karen and hugged her. Glancing in my direction, she let go and wrapped me in an embrace much the same way. “I’m glad you’re okay,” she commented sincerely.

“You can’t keep a secret,” Karen replied unsympathetically.

“I know, I’m sorry, but Gore… Well, I didn’t want to tell at first but then Amy came home and she looked at me and she asked where you and Eric were going and I tried to ignore her but she got suspicious and...”

“I don’t care,” Karen sighed. “You were right.”

“No, I was right,” Amy interrupted. “And don’t forget that.”

“What’s going to happen to Gore?” Karen asked.

Amy laughed. “She has about a week to think about what she’s done before the spell wears off. Her two slut friends will be themselves against in a day. Don’t worry. They deserve a hell of a lot worse, but I don’t want the Center to show up at our door.”

We went inside where Melissa sat awake at the kitchen table with her laptop, just like the night when Anna drove Robin and I home after cleaning the old house. Amy told her that Karen and I had got drunk and just needed a ride home. I don’t think Melissa bought it, but I didn’t stick around long enough to see her reaction. I collapsed on my mattress and almost fell asleep.

“Don’t you want your guy body back?” came Karen’s voice. I hadn’t realized she followed me inside my room.

I grunted in reply. “Yeah, sure.”

“Take your clothes off first, then.”

Summoning the last ounces of strength from my body, I pulled off my clothes and tossed them on the ground. I lay still on the mattress as I felt my body morph. My breasts flattened back into my chest as my hips and waist returned to a sturdy male frame. My long hair withdrew into my scalp, leaving my head suddenly cooler against the chilly air. This body… my normal body… Maybe I could have physically beat off Gore with these muscles. Maybe. But even though my enlarged muscles and extra weight should have made me feel safer, I couldn’t shake the feeling of helplessness as Beedee and Deedee pinned my wrists to the ground so Gore could have her way with me.

I was expecting Karen to lie down beside me and sleep in my arms as she had done almost every night since my training began. But all I heard was the gentle hum of the air conditioner. I looked up and realized she was gone again. I missed her… I wanted to feel her body warming mine, to wrap my arms around her and help her feel safe in my strengthened embrace. My loneliness tormented me until I forced myself up and tried the handle of Karen’s door. It was locked. I knocked lightly, unsure if Karen was awake to hear it. Just as I was about to give up and turn away, I heard footsteps. Karen opened the door just a crack.

“Can I come in?” I asked.

“No. I’m sorry,” Karen sighed sadly.

“Why?”

Karen looked away. “I want to be alone tonight.”

I didn’t. I dreaded solitude; Gore seemed to lurk in the shadows, ready to prey on me during Karen’s absence. Nothing could have calmed me down more than Karen’s mere company. “Please?” I begged.

“No. Goodnight, Eric.” Karen shut the door.

I returned to my room and fell asleep alone, broken.

Encounter at the Beach

2010-06-28T15:59:00.000-07:00

Going the Emotional Route

2010-06-28T15:58:00.000-07:00

Time for Some Truths

2010-06-28T15:56:00.000-07:00

Photomanip: Back to the Elements

2010-06-28T15:55:00.000-07:00

This is just a small experiment I did in GIMP for practice. The transformation is two women into a fire demon and ice demon.

Calling Him Out

2010-06-28T15:54:00.000-07:00

She'll Never Know

2010-06-28T15:52:00.000-07:00

Pussgal Panthers Guest Artist Raffle

2010-06-28T15:51:00.000-07:00

Seeing It Through Together

2010-06-28T15:50:00.000-07:00

Bimbocalypse 7

2010-06-21T10:18:00.000-07:00

How the Story Goes

2010-06-21T10:17:00.000-07:00

Anime captions are something new to me. Some people prefer them strongly to regular photographs. I'm not entirely sure how the style of art really effects the caption's story, but I notice that many captioners permit their stories to go in slightly more surreal directions. Perhaps it's because an image born completely out of one's imagination lends itself to more imaginative stories, whereas a photograph is pretty much the capturing of life here in the normal world. That's not to say photographs can't be artistic, of course, but it's still not the same.

You can probably look forward to occasional anime caps here in the future.

Babes and Glory 4

2010-06-21T10:12:00.000-07:00

Anyone remember this old series?

Unwanted Immunities

2010-06-21T10:10:00.001-07:00

Venus Tree

2010-06-21T10:09:00.002-07:00

Trapped in his Own 'Verse

2010-06-21T10:09:00.000-07:00

I imagine people will be very confused about this caption. Well, a while back a member over at tf-media.net by the name of one-eyed-pirate started up something called "cap duels" where two or more captioners use each other in humiliating captions. This was my response to his caption.

That Totally Makese Sense, Right?

2010-06-21T10:06:00.001-07:00

Story: The Fifth Roomate: Chpt. 6: Practice and Imperfection

2010-06-14T20:53:00.000-07:00

Chapter 6 is finally finished. It's the longest section so far. The primary theme of this is Eric into a girl in preparation of a sleepover with some of Karen's old friends, so Eric is supposed to learn how to act like a stereotypical, straight woman. Next chapter (whenever I manage to write it) will include the sleepover and the series will turn a little bit darker. Oooh. Suspense.

Anyway, here's chapter 6. Please comment, rate, and tell me if I make any stupid errors like swap Karen or Anna's name (or use Amy instead of Anna, something I did several times by accident before proofreading.)

~~~~~~

I endured strange dreams that Saturday night and late Sunday morning. Dreams about Robin, Anna, and I working at the old family house. I dreamed that it was I who Anna transformed into a centaur, but as I was running in my equine body I found myself lost in an endless forest in near pitch darkness. Somehow or other I found Karen wandering in the forest, alone, but when I tried to talk to her she screamed and tried to run away from me. I chased after her, but my legs turned to rubber and I collapsed, completely paralyzed on top of a heap of browning autumn leaves. Then I was somehow lying face up in a human body. From out of nowhere, I saw Amy standing over me and moving her mouth but no words came out.

I always had my strangest dreams after exhausting days, and between spending so many hours driving, cleaning, riding Anna, and having sex with Karen, my mind was dancing with whatever fantasies that could be dragged up from my subconscious feelings.

When I finally woke up, still not sure if I was awake or just thinking I was awake in a dream, I felt for Karen’s soft, warm body beside me. I wondered if the entire night with Karen had itself been a dream. But no, I felt crusty patches of fabric that still smelled vaguely of cherry, and I saw Karen’s nightshirt sitting in a heap on the floor. I heard my laptop humming… I hadn’t left it on, had I? No, I was sure I hadn’t. I sat up, rubbing my eyes, hearing my mouse click and keys rattling on the computer. When my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I saw Karen sitting at my desk, her body illuminated a dull blue glow. She was naked except for a thin bedsheet spread on her lap. I admired her humble beauty and felt like watching her silently forever, her graceful arms, slender shoulders, perky, firm breasts and gorgeous, should-length brown hair…

“Mmh,” I moaned. Karen’s body twitched; evidently I had startled her.

“You’re finally awake?” Karen asked, wheeling the chair away from the desk. “I was going to bring you breakfast, but every time you said something back to me you rolled over and fell asleep again.”

I saw a couple coffee mugs on my desk, accompanied by a paper towel with small smears of cream cheese and dotted by sesame seeds. I didn’t remember her trying to wake me up.

“What time is it?” I groaned. Without any windows, it was impossible to tell the time of day in my room. I peered beside me where my alarm clock sat on the ground. Four fifteen. In the afternoon. “How long you have up?”

“Three hours,” she told me. “You were kind of breathing hard for a while and started kicking me.” Karen wrapped the blanket around her body and knelt down in front of me. She held up my cell phone and as the screen flickered to life, I saw the photo of Anna, Robin, and that we’d shot before we left the family house. She watched me silently as I took the phone and examined the picture. It was from a text message; Anna must have sent it when I was asleep.

“Did Anna do this to you and Robin without asking? That is Robin, isn’t it?” she asked soberly, meeting my eyes as if tempting me to look away and betray some form of dishonesty.

“Yeah, and no,” I responded truthfully. “No, Anna didn’t do anything to us we didn’t want. Robin’s probably asked her out by now. They were… flirting a lot yesterday.”

Karen exhaled sharply without breaking her gaze. “So how did you end up as girls, then?”

I hesitated. What was Karen prompting me to confess? Her look turned darker. “Well, at first Robin didn’t believe the stuff about Anna being a witch, so I had Anna give a little demonstration. Robin asked if Anna could change him too, and then… well, we all just pretty much stayed that way until the drive back.”

I hoped the truth would satisfy her, but the inquisition wasn’t over just yet. Karen sighed, breaking her gaze. “So you just like being a girl, then? It’s as simple as that? You like having big tits and a tight little pussy and…”

I tried to hug Karen to ease the tension, but she backed away. Not this again… “Does it bother you?” I asked quietly. “Are you disturbed I find being a girl so enjoyable? I mean, I wouldn’t ask you to change me when we were together if you don’t like it.”

“No, Eric…” Karen coughed, trying to hide a sudden change in her voice. “I’m fine with the fact you like it. It must be… fun.”

I had no idea how to respond. Fun? Well, yes and no… What would she do if I explained the details? That I felt so much lighter and energetic in my female form? That looking down and seeing breasts under my shirt excited me? That the handful of orgasms I’d had seemed so much more satisfying and ready to keep going time and time again?

“Would you like it if I turned you into a chick right now?” Karen said after calming herself with a deep breath.

“I… well, no,” I stammered, but in my mind I was already imaging the feeling as my skin morphed into beautiful feminine curves.

“Why? Do you just like being a girl when I’m not around?” questioned the one I loved. “I’m just… I’m just trying to understand you, is all.”

Bonding with someone wasn’t supposed to feel like an interrogation. “Is that why you’ve been looking through my computer for three hours?”

Karen’s breathing started to quicken and she stared off into nothing. I couldn’t tell if she was furious or about to start crying, but clearly she was distressed. “Sorry,” I commented. “I didn’t mean to be rude.”

Karen didn’t respond. In half a minute she was breathing steadily again, her stoic composure revived. “Last night…” she said slowly, her sentence trailing off. I feared what she was going to say next. That what we’d done was a mistake? I waited for her to continue, but to my surprise she sighed and leaned against me, running her fingers down my torso, massaging my chest hairs with her fingers.

“I just want to get a picture of who you really are,” she said uncertainly. “Who you are inside. What you really think about me.” So it was back to the communication thing again?

But she didn’t dig deeper into that thought. Rather, she entered a completely new one. “Ever since our date… well… I’ve been thinking about something. I have some old friends from high school that keep asking me to hang out with them.”

“Okay,” I said. “That sounds good.”

“Eric…” Karen gave me her look. “I haven’t explained everything. These friends of mine, we’ve drifted apart over the past few years. I’m worried about meeting them alone; they aren’t really the kind of people I hang around with anymore, and mom always told me to be careful when I did. I don’t know how I ever got to know them in the first place. So I want you to come with me. I’d feel better if you were there too in case anything happens.”

“Well, I’m not really that much of a tough guy,” I replied, “but I’ll do the best I can. They are your friends, right? You do trust them, I hope.”

“Of course. Mostly. But Eric… it’s a sleepover.”

“Okay… I guess that means I’ll be sleeping on the couch,” I said.

“No… Eric, guys don’t do sleepover with girls. You’re going to be a girl too.” Karen backed up and looked me in the eye. “Are you okay with that?”

Every time I thought I understood Karen, she revealed something that astonished me all over again. Three minutes ago It sounded like she didn’t like the fact I enjoyed my female transformation, and yet here she was asking me to become one… for a slumber party! “Yeah, I’m cool with that,” I answered.

Karen gazed at me silently. Was she hoping I’d say no or something? And if so, was it because she wanted me to act more manly, or was she looking for an excuse to turn her old friends down? “Normally my friends do this once a month on a Friday and don’t leave until Sunday. Gore lives a couple hours away so it’s kind of a weekend trip,” she spoke at last.

“Gore?” I asked, thinking of a politician.

“Her name’s Elizabeth but she goes by her nickname, Gore,” Karen explained. “She’s… well, she’s a pretty obvious lesbian. Kind of aggressive. She kept trying to ask me out senior year. She insisted that I was gay or at least bisexual but too scared to publicly come out like her.” Karen sighed, staring into space as old memories surfaced. “For a while she even made me wonder myself, at least until prom.”

Prom… I remembered the photo of her and a guy at a prom on top of her own desk.

“I started seeing a guy,” Karen continued, though I could already guess how the story went. “Gore gave up hitting on me, but we were still friends over the summer until she moved out.”

“You’re afraid she might start hitting on you again?” I asked, hoping my question wouldn’t offend her. It didn’t.

“Yeah. And at the sleepover we can’t let anyone know we’re dating. Can you keep your hormones under control, Eric? Gore is… perceptive. She’s really good at picking up who’s straight and who isn’t, and she’s not afraid to ask you to your face if you want to make out in public.”

“I’ll be careful,” I promised. “But what if she hits on me?”

“Eric…” It was clear Karen had no desire to discuss that possibility. “The sleepover won’t be until Friday. But before then I want to practice with you.”

“Practice what?” I inquired.

“Being a girl,” Karen sighed. “You can’t act like a guy.”

“Well, how is a girl supposed to act?” I questioned.

Karen sighed louder. “Makeup. Seventeen Magazine. Hot actors. Clothing. Periods. Dating. Gossip. Chick flicks. Purses. Birthday parties. Sex stories. Things girls talk about.”

I chucked, but Karen replied with a cold, serious stare. “You’re kidding, right? That’s such a terrible stereotype,” I explained meekly. “I’m positive girls don’t just talk about makeup and sex all day. That’s like Hollywood or something.”

Karen rolled her eyes. “Eric, of course girls talk about a lot more than just that. But you couldn’t possibly understand the pressure a lot of women put on you to act feminine. But that’s not really the big deal. Gore will try to get you to admit you might not be too girly, then she’ll suggest that maybe you like chicks and don’t realize it yet, and before you know it she’ll be pulling you into a sex store to buy a double-sided dildo.” Before I could comment, she answered the question forming in my mind. “Yes. Personal experience. Not just me; I’ve seen her do that routine to several girls. She knows what she’s doing.”

“All right,” I agreed. “So what is practice? Are you going to quiz me and make me pretend or something?”

Karen smiled and began to fondle my manhood. I didn’t think I could get erect so early in the morning. I was wrong.

“Real practice.” Karen began caressing the back of my neck and shut her eyes, sitting motionless. She remained this way for about twenty seconds before opening her eyes and glancing back up at me, looking down at me as if there were an insect crawling on me or something.

“Something wrong?” I asked. I didn’t know what she was trying to do. Cast a spell of some sort, but clearly it wasn’t working. Or if so, I hadn’t noticed any changes yet.

Without saying a word, Karen stood, grabbed a textbook from my desk, and wedged it under the door. After she’d done this, she dimmed my lights and let the blanket wrapped around her slide to the ground, revealing her naked body. I felt myself growing harder and fought the urge to begin pleasuring myself.

“This might work better,” Karen said, explaining nothing. She climbed on top of me, sitting atop my legs, and began rubbing her breasts. I couldn’t help but stare in excitement. She began to rub against my cock between her thighs. I let off a soft grunt of pleasure. Without slowing her rhythm, Karen closed her eyes again, returning to her meditative state.

I didn’t notice at first as my body began to tingle. My mind was focused on Karen, watching her breasts bounce, feeling her sweaty skin glide against mine. I didn’t realize that my lengthening hair was beginning to gather in tumbles on my mattress, or that my nipples began to ache for Karen’s soft fingers and warm tongue with a desire and sensitivity men don’t possess as greatly. But I did notice what was happening to me when Karen’s hand felt enormous in my shrinking cock, that the shaft had withdrawn far enough inside my body that she could only rub it between her thumb and index finger in short, gentle tugs.

“Karen?” I asked. My voice cracked in its transition between octaves.

She opened her eyes and looked down at me. The tingling feeling faded away, but my transformation was anything but complete. My hair had grown down past my shoulders and my breasts were slightly swollen. I didn’t have a penis or scrotum, but my vagina was merely a few wrinkles in an otherwise entirely smooth crotch broken only by a tiny vertical slit. I was neither male nor female, something between the two.

“Huh.” Karen explored my ill-formed crotch with her fingers. I didn’t have much sensation down there one way or another. “Let me try this again…”

“You don’t really know how to do this, do you?” I asked her.

Karen rolled her eyes. “Of course I do, because I turn guys into chicks all the time like my sisters.” Her sarcasm bit.. “Just… I need you to think about Erica. Concentrate on her.”

“Aren’t you the one doing the spell?” I asked. “Does it really make a difference what I’m thinking about?”

“I’m…” Karen hesitated. “I think it might. There’s something about you…   We noticed it from the day you moved it.”

“We? Huh” I tried sitting up, but Karen pressed me back down against the mattress. “What are you talking about?”

“Just do what I asked,” Karen replied. “I’ll explain later. Think about Erica. Remember what it was like being her.”

Although a bit disturbed that Karen spoke of my female body like a separate person, I did as she asked and began thinking about posing in the mirror from the clothes store on our date. I envisioned seeing my curvaceous body reflected back at my disbelieving eyes, feeling the weight of my breasts on my chest and the cold air caressing my hard nipples. The tingling sensation returned slowly. Without opening my eyes, I began to feel my body resume its transformation as my breasts grew fuller and more defined, as my spine arched away from the mattress with the way my fleshy ass bulged out in a feminine hump. I focused on the pattern of my breathing as it grew lighter and the way each breath made my breasts shift up and down. I felt the narrow slit of my pseudo-vagina grow wider and deeper, rearranging my organs.

I wasn’t sure how far through the transformation I had progressed, not without my sight. But the tingling pulsing in waves through my body felt amazing. It was a sensation of both deep relaxation and arousal. I felt submerged in a gentle heat that stripping away every minor ache and pain and replacing them with massaging streams of pleasures. I lost my sense of awareness; I could no longer feel the mattress below me or the air above me, not Karen’s touch against my body or even the reverberations of sound on my eardrums. Everywhere on my skin felt stimulated equally like I were suspended in warm water.

“Eric!” I slowly began to feel tremors run through my shoulders. As my concentration broke, I suddenly realized that Karen was shaking me. “Hey! Snap out of it!”

“Is it over?” I asked, my voice now fully feminine. I opened my eyes. My vision swam at first, but as my senses continued to return I was able to focus on Karen’s face above me.

“Eric… What did you do?” Karen demanded. “I told you the spell was done two minutes ago but you kept ignoring me!”

I peered down my body and was met by a surprise. I wasn’t Erica as I remembered her. My breasts were enormous! I pushed them together in my hands, feeling my new skin reshape against my fingers. Each breast was about the size of a melon, my nipples about an inch and a half in diameter and standing erect by nearly a third of an inch. Further down, my hips were far wider than before. Firm, wide, soft, milky skin… a perfectly shaven, smooth crotch, not a blemish or freckle anywhere to be seen. I tasted something fruity on my lips and saw that my eyebrows were long, thick, and dark.

“Wow…” I murmured, massaging my sensitive nipples. “Um, I assume this was an accident?”

“I told you to focus on Erica, not… not… some kind of slut!” Karen exclaimed. “Are you supposed to be your own wet fantasy or something? God, Eric! I can’t believe this!”

“What did I even do?” I remarked, growing irritated at Karen’s accusations. “Weren’t you the one doing the spell? How is this my fault?”

“I just got you started. You did the rest yourself, Eric. I even told you to stop but you ignored me. My god… you look like a total whore. Jeez… can’t you even stop fingering yourself while I’m talking to you?”

I pulled my fingers away from my crotch. That was odd… I didn’t even remember starting to pleasure myself. The moment I pulled away, my body began to ache for stimulation. My pussy craved attention; it itched and burnt until I caved in and massaging it again.

“Look, that’s enough,” Karen said, grabbing my wrist. She sat on top of my hips to keep me from touching my genitalia, but feeling her warm ass against my skin only made a new wave of sensation ripple across my body. I began moaning softly. “Focus on Erica.” Karen shut her eyes and steadied her breathing. I bucked my hips, trying to push her off so I could satisfy my sexual hunger. I wasn’t able to pull her off of me, but the impact of her thighs against my crotch satisfied my desire momentarily. I began to rub my nipples with my fingers simultaneously, my heart pounding as I felt an orgasm begin to grow.

But before I was able to climax, Karen’s magic took effect on my body and my breasts began to deflate. Small marks and freckles began to dot my body, nothing that detracted from my overall beauty but made me normal and less… well, like a slut, as Karen had put it. My hormones slowly subsided, the hurricane of arousal and small stream of fluids trickling down between my legs easing away, releasing me from my tormenting cravings. At first I tried to fight the changes and several times I managed to reverse Karen’s influence, enticing my breasts to swell larger again to the bastion of womanhood, but my lust-invaded mind released its grip on me when it saw Karen was winning the battle. At last I was back to my familiar form—my brunette female form, at any rate, the one that Karen had named Erica.

Karen opened her eyes and sighed. “Are you always so damn horny? That was a lot harder than it needed to be.”

“Sorry,” I apologized sheepishly in my new voice. I searched for words to better explain myself, but I couldn’t. I had no excuse; my lust simply overwhelmed me. It was actually kind of scary, now that I had the ability to rationalize about it.

Karen sighed again but dropped the issue. My stomach gurgled quietly, breaking the silence. Karen rubbed my belly, triggering another soft rumbling. “Do you want to get something to eat?” she asked me.

“I’m okay for now,” I lied.

Karen gave me a look. “There’s a little deli outside,” she said. “Let’s take a shower and go eat.”

“Sure,” I agreed. I found my athletic shorts and t-shirt that had been thrown aside the night before and slipped them on, feeling the elastic band tight against my widened hips and the t-shirt tickle my exposed nipples. I grabbed some jeans, socks, boxers, and a t-shirt from my closet and began to make my way to the door, but Karen stood in front of me, blocking me from leaving.

“What?” I asked, confused.

Karen snatched the clothes out of my arms and held them up. Right. Those were men’s clothes… I went back to the closet and dug out my only real pair of women’s clothing, the tacky zebra-striped summer top, bra, a pair of black panties, and the pleated jeans skirt. I had forgotten to fold them or even wash them, so the top was hopelessly wrinkled. I remembered what Anna had said about it being out of style, but I didn’t have much alternative.

Karen approved of my selection and let me pass. I made my way to the bathroom, hoping Amy wouldn’t suddenly emerge from her room or the kitchen and see me. I couldn’t hear any other signs of life in the apartment other than some typing in Anna’s room. I slipped inside the bathroom and locked the door, hanging up my clothes on the door when I heard knocking. “Eric, let me in,” came Karen’s muffled voice from behind the wooden door.

I unlocked the door and held it open a few inches, waiting for Karen to say something. But instead of speaking, she pushed her way inside, carrying her own fresh set of clothes in her arms, a simple pair of jeans and black t-shirt.

“Uh…” I began. “You want to go first?”

Karen rolled her eyes. “Eric, sometimes… Look, remember that I’m supposed to teach you how to act like a real girl? You’re going to need a lot of help. What shampoo were you going to use?”

I thought for a moment. “Not Head and Shoulders?”

“Good job.” Karen slid the shower curtains open and began shuffling through some of the dozen shampoo and conditioner bottles lining the rim of the bathtub. She handed me a pink bottle that smelled like pomegranate. “This one exfoliates your skin.” She handed me a green bottle that was nearly empty. “Here’s the shampoo.” Now she tossed over a short, purple one. “Conditioner.” She looked at the combination of bottles in my hand, thought for a moment, and replaced the conditioner with a different variety. Finally, she wedged a small red bottle between my compressed breasts and grinned. “Your rack is god for something after all.”

“Seriously?” I asked.

“Seriously.” Karen pulled off her t-shirt, something she’d borrowed from my room. I watched her undress, my body growing steamy between my legs as I watched more and more of her naked skin emerge. Karen took the four bottles out of my arms again and set them in the shower. I only stood still, adoring Karen’s naked back and ass as she bent down. For the first time, I caught sight of her vagina completely in the bathroom’s warm light, astonished how close it was to her anus.

“Well?” Karen asked, turning to face me. “You’re not going to take a shower in your pajamas, are you?” She pulled my shirt off over my head, but still I stood as if paralyzed. My heart beat quickly, my naked body so close to her bare flesh, her smooth, narrow waist… Karen tore my gym shorts down and I stepped out of them, fully naked.

“Don’t tell me straight girls normally take showers together,” I finally commented, trying to divert my lustful gaze as I ran my fingers over every curve on Karen’s body in my mind.

“Of course not. But the sleepover with Gore will be overnight, so I’ll have to show you how to shower properly. Now get inside the shower.” Karen pulled me inside the bathtub and pulled the curtains shut. She reached for the hot and cold water knobs, ducked, and pulled up the rod that made the shower head spring to life. Immediately I was blasted by several seconds of cold water, feeling the spray impact against me in a way I never would have imagined. The water tickled my soft skin, in particular my soft breasts, running in wriggling streams past my erect nipples. A second after the water first hit me, I felt a stream flush over my clit and labia, the cold water making me clench up to protect my sensitive genitalia. I gasped, clutching at my crotch with one hand and covering my nipples with the other. Goosebumps dotted my skin.

Karen laughed and let some warm water enter the stream. “There. Does that take care of some of those hormone problems of yours?”

I smiled and wrapped my body around Karen’s in a tight embrace. Now it was Karen’s turn to quiver as my cold skin pressed firmly against hers, stealing the warmth from her body. I didn’t let go after my body had warmed up, though. Water began to collect between our breasts—mostly between mine since Karen’s were too small to form pool.

“Eric…” Karen tried to protest, but her uneven breathing told me she enjoyed this as much as I did. I ran my hands slowly down Karen’s spine, gliding frictionless with the shower’s continuous flow of water, until I held her ass in my hands. I squeezed gently, pulling her body in closer to mine. I felt Karen’s heart beating against my breast.

“You’re never going to learn how to act straight this way,” Karen complained softly, but she only tightened her own grip around my waist, whimpering almost inaudibly over the splattering water. She smiled and began rubbing my thigh, moving around my hips until her fingers were nearly to my labia. She teased me by lingering there for a few seconds before suddenly thrusting her fingers in the shallowest folds of my pussy.

My legs quivered with the sudden sensation and I almost slipped. I began to mirror Karen’s action. Soon we both stood, breast to breast, our hands dancing about one another’s privates, competing for room to pleasure the other harder, faster, and deeper. Our breathing grew faster and heavier and I felt Karen’s heart throbbing against me. Soon we sang in a chorus of short moans and whimpers, my voice indistinguishable from hers as we worked our way into a natural rhythm.

I don’t know how long we were like this. At one point I almost slipped again, so Karen gently lay me down on the plastic mat and mounted me, small rivers of water clinging to her skin until droplets gathered and fell from her nipples. We pleasured one another for some other length of time until the warm water gradually chilled back into a cold jet that felt like ice on my naked skin. I never did manage to reach orgasm; it was too cramped in the tub for a full range of motion. But I’d been damn close. Only the freezing water convinced my body to desist its pursuit of climax.

Karen shut off the water. We stood up and held on to each other until our bodies had warmed up again. At last Karen spoke. “Now look what you made us do… an hour in the shower and we’re still not even clean.”

“We should have some warm water again in about twenty minutes,” I replied, still trying to catch my breath. My breasts heaved up and down. “We could start soaping up now.”

Karen gazed at me silently, her face tired. She slowly inserted a finger back into my warm vagina, pulling it back out and looking at the glistening cum coating it. She looked back at me and suddenly seized the back of my neck, pulling me down to her height for a firm kiss. All at once I felt her heart began to race again. “Oh Eric…”

We tumbled back to the ground, lying on a large, fuzzy blue rug. Frantically, like a vicious caged animal, Karen began rubbing me with an overpowering vigor. I let out a long girly shriek, consumed by pleasure. I struggled to match Karen’s limitless energy, focusing on the sensation coursing through my body so my tired fingers could continue my gift back. Finally, we climaxed almost simultaneously, our contracting thighs nearly crushing each others’ fingers. Karen rolled off of me so we both lay on our backs, staring at the large round light on the ceiling, struggling to catch our breaths in the humid air. Several small orgasms continued to pulse through my body a full minute after we broke contact. When they finally subsided, I felt as though I could fall back into a deep sleep, despite the fact I’d been awake just a couple hours.

We lay silently for a while, holding hands. Karen sat up and ran her eyes up and down my naked curves. She sighed. “I’m starting to wonder if I’ll be able to pass off as straight myself,” she murmured quietly as if talking to herself. “Come on. Shower time. For real.”

The water was only lukewarm with the heat dissipating quickly. Karen handed me the shampoo, lotion, conditioner, and whatever other hygiene products she thought I needed. My long hair made this process much more difficult than I was used to; every time I thought I was finished, Karen sighed and began to caress my hair in her own hands until she was satisfied I was clean enough. Then came the exfoliating, a body wash solution mixed with tough, sharp grains of sand or something that made my skin feel itchy, but Karen gave me a lecture on how it peeled away dead skin cells and made my skin look healthier and something or other.

Showering itself made me all the more aware of my female body, of all its curves and features, the tiny blonde hairs on my arms, the bumps of my vertebra against my back, the contour of my waist and thin, sensitive skin stretched tightly against my expanded hips, the cushioning, firm flesh that formed my luscious ass…. But my body wasn’t entirely the way I envisioned it before, now that there was need for my fingers to explore every square inch of it. My breasts suddenly didn’t feel as firm or shapely; rather I began to understand them more as what they were, simply mammary glands surrounded with regular fat. I saw how my veins ran through them, one certain vein particularly thick that branched out around my nipples and gave the cells there its sensitivity. Up close, the organs didn’t seem quite so magnificent, not the beautiful sensual attractions that my male mind (and bisexual female one, too) thought of them.

And then the vagina… Karen lifted one leg high up and set it against the rim of the shower, soaping her fingers up before fingering herself. At first I assumed she was starting to masturbate and watched her, but Karen noticed my gaze and grabbed my right leg, lifting it up next to hers and handing me the soap.

“Uh…” I murmured dumbly.

“Wash up,” Karen instructed, rubbing her fingers in and out of her with quick circular motions. I mimicked her. At first I was afraid I’d only get myself horny, but I tried focusing more on the hygienic side to what I was doing rather than the pleasurable aspect. When Karen finished, she slipped her index finger inside of me, inspecting my work. She handed me the soap with a smug grin.

By the time we were washing the last bits of chemicals out of our hair, the water was freezing cold again and it took all my will to keep from leaping out. Finally, we were clean. We huddled together to warm up yet again, but my frozen body was more concerned with regaining its core temperature than with sex. Karen wrapped a couple towels around us and picked up a hair dryer, turned it on full heat, and began to blast warm air between our breasts. My skin greeted the warmth with joy and before long I actually began to see a thin coat of sweat forming in the pores of my skin.

Karen broke away from my embrace and pushed me to face the mirror. As I stood watching my reflection in the glass, Karen hummed softly, drying my hair alternating between brushing the clumpy brown strands. I shut my eyes gently, enjoying Karen’s fingers against my hair and the warm breathe of the hair dryer. I envisioned lying on a soft bed, Karen massaging the back of my neck with lotion, pressing her lips against my neck and ear and whispering softly… I moaned quietly, something I was sure only I could hear, but Karen suddenly groped at my stimulated pussy, swishing her finger around in my fluids.

“God, you’re the horniest girl I’ve ever met,” she sighed. She handed me the hair dryer and brush and posed in front of the mirror, backing up against my body. “Your turn.”

Clumsily, I ran the brush through Karen’s dark hair. Several times I met a tangle but didn’t stop in time, jerking Karen’s neck back by accident. I was astonished at how much hair came off and wound itself through the brush’s pins until I realized how much of that hair was actually my own. Karen wasn’t satisfied until I was able to run my fingers through her hair effortlessly and it sat plump and thick atop her scalp.

My stomach gurgled. I’d forgotten about my hunger during the shower, but it was all coming back to me now. Karen must have felt the rumbling as her back was still pressed to my belly. She turned off the hair dryer and turned to inspect me, running her fingers up my body from my thighs to my shoulders. She spun me around in a slow circle, observing my skin from every angle.

“Not bad I guess,” she told me.

“It’s just a shower!” I replied. “And it took, what, an hour and a half?”

“Well, whose fault was that?” Karen rested her hands on her hips scoldingly. “You’re acting like your period’s about to start in a few days.” She saw my blank expression and sighed. “Female hormones come in cycles. The horniness gets really bad right before the period starts.”

“Kind of like it’s screaming that it’s your last chance for babies for the next five days?” I joked.

Karen attempted to stifle a laugh. “This is all just fun and games to you, isn’t it? What would you do if you had to actually live this way and worry about getting pregnant?”

I didn’t reply. My stomach gurgled again, interrupting the awkward silence.

“Come on, let’s just get dressed and eat,” Karen said, tossing me my clothes. I slid into my panties, but trying to put on my bra was a little more difficult as I fumbled with the clasps. Karen eventually pushed my fingers away and sealed the clasp for me. “You know, you’re going to have to learn how to put that on yourself.”

My stomach rumbled yet again before I had the chance to reply. I wished the thing would be quiet. Somehow I’d thought that being a girl would make me a little more graceful, but my angry, empty stomach didn’t seem to give a damn what gender I was. It was roaring for food all the same.

We finished dressing and tidied up the bathroom. Karen slowly swung the door open, looking to see if anyone was in the living room. Amy would have something to say about us emerging from the bathroom together, no doubt about that. But luckily she was nowhere in sight, even though I heard the television and someone was sitting on the sofa. Karen tried to lead me silently back to her room without attracting any attention, but no luck.

Anna suddenly stood up and spun around to face us. She opened her mouth but said nothing, shifting her weight nervously. Karen pulled me by the wrist to her bedroom where she grabbed her purse and slid some sandals underneath her bare feet. She began to dig around in her closet among a dozen other pairs of shoes—dress shoes, high heels, sneakers, sandals, and boots.

“I do have my own shoes,” I interrupted as Karen pulled out some scarlet shoes with inch-tall heels. Karen gave me a look and thrust them into my hands. I sat down on her bed and tried to slide my feet in, but to my relief they didn’t fit. High heels? For a casual dinner at a deli? I was okay with wearing a bra and panties—they were necessary, after all, but high heels?

Suddenly a light knocking sounded at our door. Karen whispered at me to ignore it.

“Karen? Can I talk to Eric for a minute?” Anna spoke quietly, her voice muffled behind the wood.

I stood up ready to open the door, but Karen grabbed my wrist and pulled me back toward the bed. I lost my balance and fell backward, springing against the bed with a series of metallic squeaks.

“Please?” Anna pled. “Just for a second.”

Karen rolled her eyes at me and opened the bedroom door, standing in the doorframe to block Anna’s view inside. I saw Anna simply peek over her sister’s shoulder, straight at me.

“Can I come in?” Anna looked worried, her posture slumped and demeanor jittery, the way she’d been when she first asked me to help her clean the old farmhouse.

Karen sighed and cleared the way for Anna to enter. She closed and locked the door behind her. I knew Karen wasn’t extremely fond of Amy, but I hadn’t actually seen much of her relationship with Anna. There was one immediate hint: Karen seemed annoyed at her sister’s intrusion.

Anna sat down at the foot of the bed and nervously spun a ring around her middle finger. Finally, she took a deep breath and peered up at me. “Ihaven’theardfromRobinyet,” she mumbled. She breathed again and repeated “I haven’t heard from Robin tonight. I thought he would text or call me by now but I haven’t heard from him at all and I’m starting to worry he might not be into me after all. Has he spoken to you? Do you think maybe he wants me to call him? Or would that make him think I’m too clingy?”

Karen burst out laughing. With a new energy, the energy of bitter satisfaction, Karen jumped on the bed next to me and leaned back into my arms. Anna watched, biting her upper lip. This was Karen’s way of getting back at Anna, it seemed. She was… showing me off as her boyfriend--well, at the moment girlfriend—just to make Anna jealous. Normally I would have liked nothing more than to feel Karen in my embrace, but this was different. Karen was using me for her own revenge, and that wasn’t something I was going to play along with. Instead, I squirmed out from underneath Karen and sat closer to Anna, whose soft blue eyes made my heart tremor in sympathy.

“Don’t worry,” I reassured Anna over Karen’s fading chortles. “He’ll probably call you tomorrow. He told me once that he never calls too soon after his first date. Something his brother told him, I guess.”

Anna’s eyes lit up. “First date?” she gasped, her pout morphing into an ecstatic grin. Spontaneously, she leaned forward and gave me a quick, tight squeeze. But as quickly as she had given me the friendly embrace, she pulled back, her eyes wide. “Oh, um…” She glanced at Karen. “I’m not interrupting anything important, am I? ‘Cause I heard the shower running for a long time and I didn’t hear either of you and… and… um… How come Eric’s a chick? Did Amy do something? I’m so sorry if she did, I didn’t know anything about it this time, I swear!”

Neither Karen or I spoke at first. I waited for her to explain. Evidently she wanted me to do the same.

“So it wasn’t Amy?” Anna smiled. “I think Eric’s really hot this way too.”

“It’s not like that! I—” Karen protested.

“Karen… I’m your sister.” Anna acted hurt. After a moment I realized she wasn’t just acting. “It’s okay that Eric turns you on even when he’s a chick. He turns me on.” Silence followed. Anna began to blush. “I mean, well, not that I would… would… just saying… a little bit of makeup and Eric could do some photo shoots at the mall for money if he wanted.”

Now I began to blush as I imagined myself strutting down a catwalk in a tight dress, swaying my hips, blinded by flashing cameras and drowned in cheering and catcalls… I shook the image out of my head.

“Should I go?” Anna asked quietly. “I should go. Karen? Sorry about last night. None of those pictures Amy took turned out any good because it was too dark.” Biting her lower lip, Anna waited for either of us to speak. When we didn’t, she began to rush out the door. I hated watching her like this… it made me feel terribly guilty to exclude her when she was just trying to be friendly.

“Hey!” Karen stopped Anna just before she vanished outside. I watched Karen as she seemed to debate something in her mind. Anna stood still, but when Karen remained silent she darted away, closing the door softly behind her.

Karen sighed. She stood up and tugged at my wrist, urging me to follow her. I stumbled forward, stepping on Karen’s high heel shoes still lying by my feet and losing my balance. Karen tried catch me, but I only ended up knocking her down on her back. Somehow or other I ended up on top of her.

“You horny bastard,” Karen laughed, teasing me by running a hand up my skirt and rubbing me through my panties. “You did that on purpose.” She seemed in unusually high spirits. She kept on pleasuring me through the thin fabric until I began to moan softly, my body all too eager for another go. But my stomach betrayed me by rumbling.

“I keep starving you, don’t I?” Karen stopped massaging my pussy and slid out from underneath me, leaving me aroused and unsatisfied. Damn it. “Let’s go eat.”

I grabbed my wallet from my room, but realizing I had no pockets to carry it in, Karen laughed and put it in her purse for me. “Let’s go find you some shoes.” To my surprise, she led me to Anna’s door and knocked at it loudly.

Anna emerged a moment later. I saw that her mascara was blurred slightly. Had she been crying? I felt terrible.

“Eric needs to borrow some shoes,” Karen said. “I think he’s more your size.”

Anna breathed in quick, panicked breathes. “Okay. Um. I have an idea.” She darted to her closet and slid the doors open, revealing a collection of shoes that dwarfed Karen’s. She brought out a shiny, black, pointed-toe pair and lifted my left foot into the matching shoe. It fit a little loosely but well enough to walk around in. “Is that okay? It kind of matches the shirt.”

“Looks fine,” Karen agreed. “Have you eaten dinner yet?”

“No… why?” Anna looked at me as if I might have an answer.

“We’re going to the deli… come with us.” Any hint of revenge or annoyance had vanished from Karen’s mood.

“Sure. But um… Eric is still…”

Karen brought her hands down firmly on Anna’s shoulders and looked her sister sternly in the eye. “Promise not to tell Amy?”

“Yeah, yeah.” Anna looked at, confused. “I promise.”

“I’m teaching Eric how to be a girl.”

Anna giggled. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner? I can help with that. I hope Eric isn’t listening too closely to you.”

“What are you talking about?” Karen frowned. “Oh, don’t you dare start up with that—”

“—Karen looks like a tomboy thing?” Anna finished. “Well it’s true. Remember what you almost wore to prom? Aren’t you glad you asked me before you bought that ugly green thing?”

“You say it’s ugly but you’ve never tell me why!” Karen protested.

I watched, amused at the sisters’ friendly bickering.

“And that’s why Eric needs my help. Eric, take that shirt off. I’m going to find something better for you. Eric and I look about the same size, don’t we, Karen?”

Both sisters turned their attention toward me. Anna suddenly approached me and tugged my shirt off, positioning her breasts merely half an inch away from mine. They were nice breasts… I tried not to stare. Indeed, we were almost the same shape in many different aspects—bust, hips, and height. Remembering Anna’s awkward statement about how I “turned her on,” I couldn’t help but feel as though Anna’s eyes were feasting on my exposed skin. Luckily I still had my bra on, but somehow it felt like she could see right through it.

Karen pulled Anna way, her expression slightly annoyed. She stood between us, protecting me from Anna’s interested gaze. “Well if you don’t like that shirt, go find something better already.”

Anna dug through her closet and gave me a pink tank top with spaghetti straps. “I think this one goes well.”

Karen sighed. “Of course you would; that’s the one you used to show off your boobs in twice a week when I was a sophomore.” But despite this, she didn’t object when I tried it on. It was a tight fit—something intentional, I was sure. And it did highlight my bust quite a bit. I liked it. The only problem was that it was too short by several inches, revealing a wide band of skin just above my skirt that exposed my bellybutton and the lower half of my waist. I tried tugging the fabric down, though the elastic material merely sprung back up and I was afraid I’d tear it if I persisted.

Thinking it was too small, I gently began to pull it back off. The tight fabric made my breasts lift up, almost tearing off my bra in the process. The latch came undone and despite the fact it wouldn’t have fallen off me, I panicked and clutched it tightly against my chest, flattening my breasts underneath my arms.

Both sisters laughed at my embarrassment. “He has a lot of work ahead of him,” Anna giggled. “Eric, you do know that shirt is actually supposed to be that small on you, right? You’re supposed to show off your bellybutton. And you should let your skirt a little lower too… you want to show just enough to get guys’ imaginations to start going crazy.”

I was beginning to feel as though I’d signed up for much more than I bargained for. Being a girl was one thing. Wearing a bra was another. But dressing with the sole intention of attracting lustful glances… that was too much too soon. What if a guy tried to ask me out? I began to imagine meeting a handsome guy on the sidewalk, exchanging a few words before handing out telephone numbers… walking hand in hand with him back to his apartment… lying on the bed as he slowly slid his hands up my shirt… Shit, not this all over again.

But I couldn’t force the idea out of my head. I’d had sex as a guy, and Karen and I had fooled around when we were both girls. But if I were to have sex as a girl, with a guy… Rationally, I knew I shouldn’t have any problem with it. But I’d feel uneasy nonetheless. I was a guy. Perhaps not at the moment, but for the most part, yes. But then what if Karen liked keeping me around as a girl better and I started to spend as much time in a female body as my male one?   Or more? What would I be then, not just physically at the moment but how I thought of myself in my mind? Would I start to consider myself as a woman? I’d heard stories of people who learned a new language and forgot the old one—was it possible the same concept could happen to me? Too much to think about.

“Here, let me help you,” Anna said, tugging the tight shirt off over my head gently while I still clutched the bra tightly against my breasts. After a little struggle, I was shirtless once again, still afraid to let me breasts be exposed even for a moment. “Eric, you’re going to have to let go… trust me,” Anna said from behind me, tugging at my dangling bra straps. I eased my grip a little, providing her enough slack to reconnect the buckle around my back. Finally, it was strapped firmly against me again and I dared to let go.

“Why don’t we go with something a little less slutty?” Karen suggested, folding her arms. “Remember all those detentions the principal gave you when you kept wearing that to school?”

Anna giggled. “Half the time I did that on purpose, you know.”

“Yeah, so you could meet all those tough guys,” Karen retorted.

“Can I just have a shirt?” I interrupted. I didn’t mind Karen seeing me in nothing but my bra. After, she’d seen a hell of a lot more already. But now that Anna was here with us, it was no longer a private situation. Just because I wasn’t my regular gender didn’t give me an excuse to prance about naked for everyone to see. Not to mention I was still half afraid Amy would walk in any second and decide to join the fun…

Anna found a larger black shirt. It fit much more comfortably—much more modestly as well, except for an long v-shaped cut that ran from my shoulders down halfway my bust. I peered down at the dark shadow between my breasts, amazed at how much cleavage the shirt still exposed. And it still didn’t quite reach down all the way to my skirt, leaving my thighbones and bellybutton visible.

“Better,” I said. “Can’t I just wear one of my t-shirts though?”

“That’s not going to give you any practice acting like a girl,” Karen protested.

“Why can’t I wear something like what you have on?” I asked, pointed to Karen’s solid, modest t-shirt with a faded band emblem on the front. “I know your stuff won’t fit, but can’t you just magic to make it change size or something? Amy turned me into a bra. I’m sure you can make the fabric stretch out a bit for a few hours without ruining anything.”

Karen sighed. “I won’t make you do anything you don’t want to,” she told me quietly. “Do you want me to tell Gore I can’t come?”

“No…” I looked into Karen’s eyes, trying to catch some hint of emotion, but her expression remained absolutely stoic. “I’ll do it. I’ll wear this shirt. I’ll practice the best I can.”

“Are you sure?” Karen inquired sternly. “If you’re too uncomfortable…”

I straightened my shirt out, adjusted my bra, and shifted my hips into the most seductive stance I could think of at a moment’s notice. I licked my lips and flicked my hair back, letting it fall back down wildly. I rested my hands on my hips and shifted them like some kind of dancer. “I’m good if you are. Who wants to party?”

Anna burst out laughing, clutching her sides and collapsing to the carpet. “Oh my god,” she gasped before returning to series of giggles. “What’s that supposed to be? You’re hilarious!”

My face burning, I sat down on Anna’s bed. I had been trying to imitate some kind of rich high school girl or something, something pretty stupid for me to try in the first place.   So much for my acting skills. Even Karen had difficulty suppressing her own giggles until she eventually joined her sister roaring laughter. I was afraid we’d piss off the entire apartment complex.

“That was sooo corny,” Anna chuckled when she regained her composure. When she saw that I was significantly less amused at my catastrophic failure, she grinned mischievously. “Just act normally.”

“Normally means I’m a guy and don’t have these tits stuck on me!” I complained, cupping my breasts. I saw Karen frown. Before she could suggest we abandon the whole sleepover idea, I continued “It’s not that I don’t like being this way. I do. It’s… well, it’s a pain in the ass, but it has its upsides.”

Anna giggled. “You like the sex, don’t you?”

Neither Karen or I spoke. Anna apologized softly and for several moments the three of us waited in silence. Once again, my annoying stomach rumbled, quickly causing the conversation to shift.

“We’re going to starve Eric to death if we keep delaying dinner,” Karen spoke.

“Poor Eric,” Anna chimed. “Come on. Let’s go eat.”

“I’m not really that hungry,” I remarked mid-gurgle.

“Eric…” Karen gave me another one of her infamous looks. “You haven’t eaten in almost a day. You don’t have anything to prove.”

“Girls are ‘supposed’ to be thin,” I countered. “Worrying about diets all the time and how to fit in a bikini and obsessing over their looks.” I was being childish and I knew it. But Karen was starting to drive me crazy. I couldn’t be myself, and yet I couldn’t satisfy her by pretending to be someone else.

Karen glared at me, but Anna’s reaction was considerably different. “You’re acting like a spoiled brat,” she told me with a giggle. “Do you know what mom did when we were being brats?” She strode forward with a wide grin on her face. “She tickled us.”

When I realized her intentions, I tried to shrink up into a ball, folding my arms tightly together so she couldn’t get at my ticklish armpits. At least I assumed they were ticklish; they were when I was a guy, and with this sensitive body…

“You have to put up at least a little fight,” Anna teased playfully as she grabbed my ankles and pulled. I slid forward, clutching to the blankets on her bed, but that succeeded in nothing more than pulling them along with me. I thrashed my legs about but her grip was firm. Even struggling with all my strength, my efforts were in vain. I wasn’t used to this lighter, weaker body—no matter how much I strained to free myself from Anna’s grip, my muscles just didn’t have the same capabilities. It wasn’t that I was weak—I just didn’t have the advantage of my bulkier male body and the slight muscles I’d developed over a few months of sporadic lifting. But, to be perfectly honest, I don’t think I realized at first that I wasn’t struggling with the intent to actually break free.

“Karen… grab his arms!” Anna encouraged her younger sister. “He’s your boyfriend. I think you should be the one to teach him about mom’s tactics.”

Karen sighed, her anger at my thoughtless remark slowly flushing from her crimson face. She watched me blankly for a few seconds as I lay on my back, my legs held captive by Anna’s surprisingly strong arms. But eventually she released a timid smile, her eyes twinkling with what I took to be growing thoughts of payback. Slowly—deliberately slowly—she climbed up on the foot of the bed and crawled toward my unprotected side. I felt the mattress sink under her knees as she came to within inches of my body, leaning over me, letting me squirm in anticipation.

I loved that feeling, seeing Karen watch over me. I wanted to feel her magical fingertips against my skin, squirming against me, restraining me as she did whatever she pleased… Anna was right. I’d put up a little fight, but not enough that I could possibly win… Suddenly, Karen broke her tranquil stance and lurched at my waist, moving her fingertips over the thinnest segments of my shirt. My muscles contracted and I squealed in a voice that, despite having days to familiarize myself with feminine vocal chords, still astonished me that such a sound could come from my own throat.

I clamped my arms around Karen’s, trapping them against my side and limiting her ability to move her fingers. “What now?” I gloated as Karen struggled to break free of my grip. While Anna was my equal in strength, Karen’s slender arms still couldn’t compete with my own strength. But my gloating didn’t last long; Anna suddenly joined the action by tickling my legs behind my knees. Shrieking, I forgot about Karen and let her break free. Immediately, she shot straight at my exposed armpits and began tickling my furiously there, easily the most ticklish part of my body.

“So you still a spoiled brat?” Anna teased, her tickling relentless. I couldn’t answer for the lack of breathe. It took half of my concentration to remember to breathe and not feel completely overwhelmed in this ticklish, sensitive body. I began sweating profusely, and I took a moment of freedom from the two sisters’ grips to seize a blanket and wrap it around me as a protective shield. Anna’s formerly pristine bed was in complete disarray.

Anna, looking almost as tired as me, took a step back. But Karen didn’t give up just yet. I held the blankets clenched underneath my armpits and around my waist, expecting her to assault me from the same place as before. But Karen smiled and dove underneath the portion draped over my legs instead, disappearing into the tent formed by the draping fabric.

“Karen?” I gasped. Anna looked confused at first, withdrawn from the action. But I didn’t have long before Karen continued her torture, seizing my thighbones and pressing tightly against the pressure points along them. Her fingers pulsed up in down in firm, determined strokes, inching down slowly, down my panties, closer and closer to my pussy… My laughter turned into a series of gasps and I collapsed against the wall, absolutely overwhelmed by the pleasure. Involuntarily, my thighs suddenly sealed against Karen’s head, dragging her face down to within inches of my crotch. I took a final glance at a disturbed-looking Anna before a wave of pleasure caused me to clamp my eyes shut and throw my head back.

My arousal was overwhelming. The tickling… evidently it had made me a hell of a lot hornier than I realized. My god… It dawned on me exactly how much I enjoyed being submissive, to feel my body pressed against two beautiful girls, being restrained and tortured with tickling… Had I always been like this, or was it a side effect of this foreign body? But it was difficult to reason when my body craved satisfaction so deeply… It took all my willpower to keep from rubbing my clit or massaging my breasts to encourage orgasm. Anna was still here in the room, watching. Did Karen really think that she’d be able to mask what she was doing by hiding her torso and my legs underneath a blanket?

“I should… um…” Anna stammered, inching her way toward the door. But this was her room; Karen and I were the visitors, not her. And the look on her face… I knew she was thinking of Robin. I understood how she felt, how watching Karen and I must have made her ache for someone of her own. It was, after all, the same feeling I found myself compelled to escape from a mere thirty hours ago when she and Robin were growing intimate. With my hormone-crazed mind screaming at me in anger, I pushed Karen away and slid my skirt and panties to where they’d been before Karen dislodged them.

Karen emerged from under the blanket a moment later, her hair tangled and sweaty. She gaped at me, a shocked look tugging at her face. She took several deep breaths, straightened her t-shirt, and murmured “Now look what you’ve done… Oh my god…”

Anna grabbed a brush from off of her dresser and straightened her hair. When she was finished, she began the same process on mine, holding me gently on the shoulder with her free hand. None of us spoke. Karen stared at me and at the ground. She turned away to try and hide that she was blushing.

“Let’s eat,” I said, breaking the silence. “Please. I’m not going to lie; I think I’m going to pass out if I don’t put something in my stomach real soon.” No lies, no pretense, no childish actions. I was damn hungry and at this point I didn’t really give a shit what Karen or Anna or anyone else thought.

And finally—finally!—the three of us locked the apartment behind us and walking the short distance to a small deli on the corner of the block. It was eight fifty-seven and the sign on the door informed us it closed at nine. Through the front window I could see that half of the lights behind the counter were shut off for the night, and the building seemed entirely vacant except a single young guy sweeping underneath the tables.

“Nooooo…” Amy leaned against the window, peering inside with her chest, hands, and nose pressed against the glass.

“McDonalds?” I suggested.

But Anna refused to give up yet. She tapped on the glass softly until the lone employee looked up and saw the three of us right outside. He was cute, a little bit scruffy with bleached blonde hair, tall and handsome, an adorable little strut as he worked in rhythm to music from an ear bud… Shit, I was still too damn horny. Once I was in the mood, there was little to break me from the cycle save orgasm itself, and even then that didn’t always do the trick. This couldn’t possibly be normal for a girl, could it?

The employee smiled and jogged to the door. “You’re just in time,” he said.

“You look closed,” Karen sighed. “We don’t want to bother you.”

“Oh no, it’s perfectly alright!” he offered warmly. His name was Josh, according to his nametag that looked like it had been through the wash by accident more than once. He glanced at all three of us, but his attention lingered on me the longest. “I know you two,” he said, gesturing toward Anna and Karen, “but I don’t believe I’ve met your friend before. My name’s Josh.”

Josh extended his hand out to me. I stood dumbly for a second before reaching up and shaking it. His handshake was firm and friendly, his eyes never breaking contact with mine… My heart began to pound in excitement and nervousness.

“So do you have a name?” Josh asked warmly.

“Oh, um. Eric. Ah. Erica,” I stammered. I felt like such a blundering idiot. But hey, I had a excuse, didn’t? How was I supposed to know how to talk to my guys? For all but a recent portion of my life, I was one myself.

“So you live next door too?” Josh grabbed his broom and resumed his sweeping, but he still turned to face me as he worked.

“Yeah,” I answered, spitting out an answer before I really thought about it.

“No, she doesn’t,” Karen interrupted. “She’s just spending the night with us.” She gave me a look, a stop-saying-stupid-stuff expression.

“Shame,” Josh commented. “Let me know when you’re ready to order.”

We three girls paced up to the counter. I scanned through the menu of cold subs. Instinctively, I looked for the longest, thickest sandwich available. I debated whether or not it would be “out of character” for me, but in the end my rumbling stomach won priority.

“Josh totally likes you,” Anna whispered you into my ear.

Great. Someone had a crush on my already. He was cute though. But I was seeing Karen. Still, I couldn’t help but steal an occasional glance, much to Karen’s quiet disapproval.

“I think he’s going to ask you out.” Anna spoke a little too loud for my comfort. I looked at Josh. He seemed absorbed in his work. Too absorbed. He was listening to us.

“Don’t be silly,” Karen whispered back to her sister.

“I’m serious!” This time Anna spoke quietly. “I bet you ten bucks he’ll do it before the end of the night.”

Karen rolled her eyes. “Whatever.”

“You girls know what you want?” Josh called out as he swept the last pile of dirt and crumbs into a dustpan. He had a nice tight ass. Damn my hormones…

We each ordered and sat down at the last table without its stools sitting upside down on top, a cozy little spot by the window where I could see the sunset against the skyscrapers deeper downtown. Gazing out the window helped me take my mind off of the current situation. Within a few minutes Josh gave us our subs and vanished into the kitchen, leaving the three of us to eat.

“Eric’s not even wearing makeup,” Anna pointed out seemingly randomly. “Josh must really have the hots for him.”

“Her,” Karen corrected softly. “And I still have no clue why you think he likes Erica.”

“Oh come on, you saw the way he was looking at her.” Anna took a large bite out of her sandwich; suddenly I didn’t feel quite so gluttonous with my own graceless mouthfuls. “You have to pay attention to the little stuff. Shaking hands and everything. That was flirting.”

“What do you know about flirting?” Karen challenged. “How many boyfriends have you actually had?”

“Well, I know more about flirting than you do. How many guys have you hooked up with? Two.”

My attention perked. I assumed I was Karen’s second boyfriend. Which left someone before me… the guy from the prom photo, perhaps? Whatever happened to him? But the conversation didn’t head down that path, to my disappointment.

“We should totally hook Eric up on a lunch date,” Anna continued.

“Excuse me?”

“A lunch date. Not a real one. You know, so Eric gets some practice flirting.” Anna slurped her drink, causing Josh to emerge from behind the counter for a moment and give us a smile. “It’d be great practice. That’s what you’re after, right? Practice?”

Karen looked at me for several long seconds. “Fine. Just so long as he knows it’s just a friend thing.”

“Don’t want Eric going around breaking any poor guys’ hearts?” Anna giggled.

Karen rolled her eyes. She brushed some crumbs off of her jeans and stood up. “I have to go use the bathroom,” she said loudly, but she didn’t start walking toward the restroom immediately. She gently grabbed my elbow and tore me away from the last remnants of my sandwich, urging me to come with her.

I followed Karen to the bathrooms and pushed the door open, but for some reason Karen didn’t follow me.

“Eric!” she hissed. I took a few steps back and looked at the door. Oops. I’d just walked inside the men’s room. Karen pulled me into the bathroom and looked at herself in the mirror, sighing quietly.

“So…” I said. “What’s all this about?”

“If Anna’s right, Josh will come up and ask if you’re single,” Karen explained. “If she’s right.” She sighed again. “Do you like Josh?”

“Of course not!” I laughed nervously, but Karen must have seen through my lie. Well, I didn’t like him. I thought he was cute, but I didn’t like him. Or was that kind of the same thing? I began to look forward to my old, uncomplicated male life again. My practice was in many regards starting to turn into a week of hell, and it has just barely begun.

We waited another few minutes before returning to our table. Anna sat beaming at us. “Wednesday at noon.”

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“That’s when your lunch date is.”

“I have class then!” I protested, inwardly relieved at an excuse to miss it.

But Anna handed me a small piece of paper with ten digits scrawled on it. “You’ll have to call and reschedule yourself then.”

I groaned and looked at Karen, hoping she’d have some excuse for breaking the date. But she only smiled at me innocently.

Karen brushed off our table with a napkin, gathering the crumbs in her hand and tossing them out, leaving only a minimal mess behind. I found my wallet in Karen’s purse and walked up to the counter in the meantime, nervous about what I’d say to Josh. Hell, I was just paying for some subs and coke, what was there to be nervous about? But my stomach twisted in knots anyway.

At first Josh didn’t realize I was at the counter. I looked for a bell to ring or something. I tried knocking lightly but he must not have heard. Finally, I managed to squeak “Hello?” and again a second time in a more confident voice. At last Josh emerged and saw me with my wallet.

“Oh, dinner’s on me,” he said with a smile. “Well, technically not, but I’d have thrown out all the old stuff anyway so it doesn’t matter. I mean, you want today’s bread? It’s not warm, but I’d rather give it to you than the dumpster.”

“Uh…” I stammered, my heart racing. “Sure.”

Josh vanished, returning with a basket of baguettes and other assorted breads. He handed it over to me, smiling and gazing into my eyes all the while. I felt… flustered, for lack of a better word. “Thanks,” I squeaked and darted away.

Anna held back and flashed Josh a few more smiles before the three of us returned to the apartment, setting my easily-earned basket of breads on the kitchen table. Free dinner and a huge basket of breads…   He really did like me, didn’t he? I doubted he would have let a few meals slip by free for anyone who walked in late and made him stay fifteen minutes extra at his shift. I just used him. Well, not intentionally. He did it by his own free will. I hadn’t flashed him for it or anything. And I wasn’t flirting with him… was I? Was I blushing when we was talking to me and I couldn’t find the words right away to answer him? Too many questions… too many mixed emotions… too many hormones…

When we returned to the apartment, I quickly changed out of Anna’s black shirt and found a nice loose, baggy t-shirt of my own and changed into my nighttime gym pants. Something—anything—to help me feel like a guy again. Even though my hips, ass, and breasts were still as noticeable as ever, filling out the gym shorts with my curves and seeing two big mounds underneath the shirt.

“You’re really quiet,” Karen said as I changed in my room. Anna had gone off to her own, leaving us in private for a few minutes. “Are you still thinking about Josh?”

“A little bit,” I lied. I was hardly thinking about anything else.

“If you don’t want to do this…” Karen wrapped her arms around me in a compassionate embrace. We kissed tenderly.

“It’s fine. I just… need to get used to all of this.” My bra felt uncomfortable. I took it off, letting my breasts hang freely and my nipples poke through the fabric. A question suddenly popped in my mind, but I hesitated to ask it. Finally I summoned the courage. “Have you… have any of you ever turned a girl into a guy before?”

Karen looked surprised. “It’s possible, I suppose. But why?”

“How do you think you’d like it?” I asked. “Can’t be that bad.”

Karen sighed. “You want me to turn myself into a guy like Josh?”

“No!” I protested. “Well, I mean… never mind. Forget it.” I knew she wouldn’t, of course.

We sat in silence for a while. I looked at my alarm clock; it was nearly midnight. Melissa was home. Amy wasn’t, not that I was aware of. I had class in the morning at nine thirty. I knew I should have gone to bed then, but I didn’t feel the least bit tired after my late, long nap. Without talking, Karen and I fondled each other for a while, cuddling against each others’ warmth. I felt comfortable with her. With Karen it didn’t matter what I was wearing, whether I was decent or not, whether I could talk with hot guys and act socially acceptable. I savored these moments, my soft body against hers, my breasts flattened and warm against her chest, squeezing her ass and drowning in her beautiful flowing hair.

When we were both ready to admit we weren’t going to get any sleep, we borrowed some DVDs from Anna. Chick flicks, mostly, movies I’d heard of in theatres but had no desire to see. I didn’t like the first one. Neither did Karen; only Anna seemed to enjoy it, but she went to bed after the first movie leaving Karen and I to leave the films running on my laptop without really paying it any attention. When the movies were over, we tried napping, failed to do so, looked up some music videos, failed another attempt to fall asleep, and ended up amusing each other with silly little drawings on the back of my scratch paper half filled with calculations.

I only managed to sleep the last hour before I had to wake up and go to class, and when I did, I felt exhausted. I would have let Karen sleep in peace except that I needed my male body back to go to class. The conversion back to my normal form was painless compared to Karen’s first attempts at turning me into Erica—something to do with “magic memory,” as she tried to explain it, that the longer someone spent in a certain form, the easier it was to return to it. In a matter of seconds I once again inhabited my old male self. My old, clunky, heavy, clumsy, graceless self. I felt like I was dragging around a suit of armor. My arms and legs seemed like solid iron blocks. I was half tempted to ask Karen to transform me back into a woman again and just show up to class that way! But I’d had more than enough of an awkward social encounter with a single cute guy… I could only imagine with dread how much worse the scenario would be if I were a mysterious girl who showed up out of nowhere in a male-dominated classroom.

After a couple hot mugs of coffee and a cold shower, I forced my mind to acknowledge my new—old, technically—male body and endure the exhaustion. I kissed my sleeping Karen goodbye and made my way to a normal day at the university, knowing that as soon as I came home my “practice” would resume.