I could see that Julie was getting bored of the situation. She kept looking at her watch and rubbed her middle ring finger and her thumb together. When our gaze met, she coughed. 

I wrinkled my nose and tried to rub it against my shoulder before asking Vicky for help. She extended a hand and delicately rubbed my nose before securing a lock of hair behind my ear. The touch of her hand against my skin warmed my soul. When she retracted her hand, she accidentally knocked down her glass

Bingo.

"Oh my god I'm sorry!", I said in a unconvincing voice, "How stupid of me!"

She gasped and jerked back, but the alcohol flowing in her bloodstream softened her response : "That's no problem really, my shirt is still dry! Most of it stayed on the table. Plus, I'm can't really get mad at a cripple right?" She squinted her eyes at me and I felt myself blushing. Seeing the liquid nearing my phone, I bent forward and pushed it away using my chin. "Let me just grab a..."

"I'll get it."

Julie sprang up and got to the kitchen. Carefully, she grabbed a towel, holding only a single corner, and gave it to Vicky. She quickly dried both of her arms as well as the table and emitted a clicking sound with her tongue to match her final scrubbing motion. After rolling the towel back in a ball, she threw it back to Julie who couldn't help but gasp as she instinctively caught it. After putting it in the sink, she sat back down and looked at me in faked desperation. I stuck my tongue out at her and giggled. I took another sip. Julie two.

As Vicky drowned that incident in even more beer, the potion we had soaked in the cloth began its work on her upper extremities. As she drank, I watched how she naturally (yet unconsciously) handled the changes in her own anatomy. I had been conscious of the process so I actively needed to adjust depending on my actions. She, on the other hand, was completely clueless. If it was first secured by a complete hand, her glass soon threatened to free itself as her fingers shortened and couldn't hold it quite as firmly in place. She had to bring up her other hand up to compensate for the lost of her phalanges and soon enough, only short finger stubs were left on her hands. Fingerless palms finally put her glass down again and she gave her shirt a final brush to make sure there wasn't any beer drops left on the fabric. 

"Your turn to speak up, now", said Julie to our guest. "How's the Law Faculty?"

"Way different than Science, obviously." She wiped something off her face. "A lot more competitive, also. People study hard to score on the exams and hope to get recruited by one of the prestigious firms. I'm still trying to fit in, you know......"

She kept talking as if nothing was happening since, for her, every single moment of her transformation was how she had always been. She ran her palms through her hair, a lame attempt at taming a wild haircut she wouldn't be able to fix later on, and crossed her arms for a second. Distractly, she put her hands together and flexed her wrists one last time as she was looking for words, then waved around her arms as they slowly kept on retracting inside of her. Hands and wrists were now completely gone. Her biceps also seemingly lost some muscle and the tip of her arms got narrower. Using her shrinking stumps, she drew shapes on the table to try and explain something, using them just like she would've used her fingers only moments earlier. 

"Which is weird since students usually have a common....."

She briefly looked me in the eye and went back to her drawing, tapped it a few times insistently, then joined her arms together on the table, skillfully grabbing the cork from Julie's bottle in the process. She lifted them up "high" into the air and rotated them outwards to illustrate what I guess was the pinnacle of her story. The cork fell and rolled out of reach on the floor as her arms reached their final length. She didn't notice a single thing, from the vanishing flesh to her complete lack of digits, or even the fact that she had lost about 12 inches of reach on each on her own fucking arms. Gosh and I thought I was doing a good job at managing a single leg. She said something funny that I can't really recall and gently hit the table with her elbows. Then, as precise and in control as a girl who lived her whole life without fingernails can be, she grabbed her glass between her short forearms and drank again.

"Are you that drunk already Nicole?!" Said Vicky in a high pitched voice. "Come back to us, gurl!"

I snapped back into reality and blinked several times. I shrugged and twisted to rub my eyes on my shirt: "Oh my god I dozed off hard, sorry about that."

"Yeah well next time, try not to stare at my boobs while you're away! They're sensitive, you know!" She comically covered them and made a pouty face. 

I skipped a heartbeat. "Oh yeah, your tits are... Amazing! I was totally fantasizing about them"

She looked down and pressed her breasts together using her elbow pits. She then shrugged to lift them up and slowly let them back down as the fabric of her shirt slipped against her skin. Feeling my mind drifting away once more, Victoria suddenly remembered she had brought food.

"Here, help me!" 

Losing several articulations cost her several things, length, precision, and dexterity being the obvious ones, to which she had to compensate by moving her upper body a lot more than before. As she extended her arms, she leant forward to reach the bag of chips and swung it towards Julie. Without any hands or fingers, most of her movements were now driven by her abs. Even with her arms beneath the table, her lack of hands was obvious. It took me a few minutes to realize exactly why, but then it hit me. 

On a complete human body, precise gestures are usually channeled through the wrists to reach the fingers, but Vicky's body scheme had been shifted backwards!     Her shoulders were restless, moving up and down to adjust the height of her limbs or moderate subtler motions that the biceps couldn't quite manage on their own. The cutest thing was when she rested her arms alongside her torso in-between conversations, her stumps pointed upwards like soldiers to attention. I drifted off again, mesmerized by her every gestures and seduced by the roundness of her limbs. After spilling a few potato chips on the table, she grabbed them between her arms and lifted them up before extending her neck to reach her food. 

My flatmate kept talking about school and boys, but my head was spinning fast. My mind was blurred by alcohol and Victoria's new body sent tingles all over mine. I could feel the heat rising beneath my skin. I lifted my stump to let some fresh air cool down my thigh and rolled my shoulders backwards, hoping to create a breeze inside my shirt. My sleeves only flapped uselessly. I brought my foot up on the chair and tried to pull on the jeans against my stump to pull my pants down but they were too tight, of course. I couldn't get a good grip on them. But I wouldn't be able to hold on for much longer. My breath quickened and the sight of my own moving breasts turned my nipples hard. Was this Julie's work again? Did she have a goddamn spell for everything? I didn't care. I just really needed to satisfy that urge. 

"Julie?" I pleaded. "I'm gonna eat my own tongue if I can't touch myself in the next five minutes." I kept rubbing my stump against my leg, hoping to slow down the flow of envy that was filling my entire body. My shoulders rolled back, as if I was looking to free myself from invisible bonds.

"No need for that" She said softly. Her own right hand had been reduced to a single thumb, directly attached to her wrist. She reached out for me with it and gave my side a gentle rub. "I think she's cooked just right, too."

Vicky was now staring at me, her desire almost visible to the naked eye. Arms alongside her body, she read me like an open book and we got up in sync. I sat on the table and laid my stump on it. Waiting for her to come to me felt like an eternity. She pushed my chair aside and gently felt my face with her stumps before crashing on my lips. We kissed, dove, swam, and drowned in each others' mouth, mixing saliva, tongues twisting around in a heated battle. Her arms messed up my hair then pulled me towards her, weakly grabbed my waist and touched my flaming breasts. I wanted to reach for her back, squeeze her butt cheeks, grab her shirt, but I couldn't do any of this. My stupid shoulders only moved back and forth in a stupid state of helplessness. I moved back an inch and gritted my teeth in frustration. FUCK FUCK FUCK PLEASE, PLEASE LET ME! Give me a hand or even a single finger, ANYTHING! I'm gonna die if I can't grab onto something!! I need to hold on to this world or I'm going to drift away in this prison that is my body. I moaned in desperation as she kissed my neck. I shrugged so hard my back was about to snap, but she silenced me with another kiss. She embraced me harder and I instinctively put my leg around her waist. She lifted me up and walked us to my room, her brief arms barely able to support my weight.

Lying on the bed, I pushed myself up on the pillows and stared down at my pants. Shutting the door behind her, she crawled on the sheets and undoed them using her mouth. A combination of rubbing, pulling, pressing, and swearing finally took my pants off. I managed to take my shirt off by pulling my body downwards using my foot and pushed it aside with my head. Victoria expertly used her arms to undress herself and scattered her clothes accross the room. I was already panting and covered with sweat when she bent near my genitals and bit my panties off. I arched my back and repressed another moan when she came back for my bra. While she stared at my naked body, so did I. My shoulders ended prematurely, halfway between their usual position and my neck, narrowing my torso at the top. My right leg was about a quarter of the length of my thigh, but was still firm enough to bolster me up as I reached for Vicky with my only fully formed limb. 

I pressed her against me, our crotch now in full contact, their heat about to ignite the entire universe. 

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The next morning, I stayed in bed for hours. Rolling around, being actually confortable lying on my sides without arms or hands awkwardly angled between the sheets. Feeling the sun in my face, I rolled up in foetal position and brought my knee to my face to hide from the evil sunlight. I stayed like this for another few minutes before finally getting up. 

Sitting in my bed, I quickly spotted and reached for a ridiculously oversized t-shirt lying on the floor. Grabbing it between my toes, I laid it on the bed. I poked my head in it and managed to prop it on my shoulders. When I stood, it dropped below my knee, which was perfect. Another look around the room confirmed what I had feared : "my" wheelchair was nowhere in sight (so was my piano when I think about it...). I hopped to the door and pulled it open using my chin, then continued down the corridor. A note was pinned on the kitchen wall.

"Gone for the day, back at 6. Enjoy!"

I sighed.