“Okay, let’s go over it one last time.” Siobhan said, lifting her spellbook to her face.

“Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” Catarina stood in front of her, looking around the room nervously, chills running up her spine.

“Who’s a top student at the Academy? You or me?!” Siobhan answered, stomping her foot. Catarina’s gaze lowered to the floor, silent. “Candles?”

“Five, all lit, at the star’s points inside the pentacle.” She muttered.

“Incense?”

She sniffed loudly. “Still burning.” Grey wisps floated up to the ceiling and pooled up around the support beams, draping the room in a thick and pungent smell. “Still smelling awful.”

“Offerings?”

In the middle of the pentacle, two bowls had been set down, each one containing a strand of hair from a different person. One from Tiffany, and one from Catarina. They sat on a thin obsidian tablet that glimmered in the low candlelight. “All good.”

Siobhan lifted her nose out of her grimoire. “Is the pentacle still intact?” She walked around to inspect it and nodded silently. Then, she put her hand on Catarina’s back and pressured her forward gently. “Now, go stand in the circle. Anywhere but in the middle. And don’t smudge any lines.”

“I’m not a kid, you know?”

Catarina took a deep breath and put up her hair in a tight ponytail before carefully stepping over the chalk lines Siobhan had meticulously traced on the hardwood floors, placing each foot in a different branch of the pentacle star. It was a tight fit, but nothing she couldn’t manage. She scrunched her toes nervously, a bit cold, waiting, as Siobhan revised her spell for the thousandth time. She joined her hands and clicked her nails, toyed at the short sleeves of her blouse, crossed her arms behind her back. Squatting, she pulled her leggings back up, and finally spoke to her friend, still jittering.

“You better start before I change my mind..”

Siobhan shushed her and, after taking an exaggeratedly big breath, started reading. The spell was written entirely in Latin, as all spells were, so Catarina didn’t understand a word of what her friend was saying. But the more she spoke, the more things started happening around her. The air seemed to shimmer and vibrate almost. Her hair stood on ends, she heard dry, muffled snaps, as if whips were being cracked in the next room. As Siobhan spoke the spell’s final word, it bounced through the air like a rubber ball, lingering, echoing. Then, everything went silent for a moment.

From underneath her feet slowly came a sound. If barely audible at first, it grew louder and louder until it resembled the sizzling of meat on a grill and the chalk lines of the pentacle took on a bright red color. Light soon shone from it like the elements of an industrial oven and Catarina broke into a sweat almost instantaneously. She felt awful, like she was about to throw up, and brought her hand to her forehead. It was cold to the touch. Her head began to spin just as the locks of hair inside the bowls burst into flames, adding another shade of red to her vision.

She heard her own voice distorted, like coming out of somewhere else other than her mouth. “Siobhan, I… Is this normal? I feel like I’m gonna…”

And she passed out.

—

Catarina woke up with an earth shattering headache. Even before she opened her eyes, the pain seared through her head like a hole had been bored through her skull and had been filled with hot coals. When she tried to open her eyes, the daylight assaulted her and forced them shut again, only accepting to stay open after long minutes of acclimation. 

She looked around and figured she had been carried to Siobhan’s room, although she had no memories of the trip. Her blouse and leggings had been removed and she laid in clean, fresh sheets wearing nothing but her underwear. The last thing she remembered was standing in the pentacle, and… and… She sighed and brought her hand to her forehead, mimicking the last thing she had done before losing consciousness.

Nothing happened. She had felt her right arm move, but it felt sluggish, as if she had slept on it wrong and it had gone numb. She shrugged it off and tried with the left without much success, either. She turned towards it and her eyes opened wide.

Her left arm was gone. Erased, deleted, missing, like someone had cut it off from her body cleanly at the shoulder. Instead of sticking out of her articulation and resting at her side beside her chest, it simply didn’t anymore. She could see the bedsheets through where it was supposed to be, leaving this side completely limbless. She reached over with her right arm, trying once more to get control over it, and shrieked as she looked over to the other side. Panic took control of her body and she threw her legs off the bed, walking up to the standing mirror at the foot of the bed. She gasped and shuddered.

Her right arm was now nothing more than a stump. It stuck out of her shoulder for about 3 inches before tapering abruptly into a round nub, without any elbow or wrist of any sort. Her breathing quickened and sweat gathered on the back of her neck as she wagged it around, trying to get a purchase on her surroundings, but it was of little use. It flapped at her side like the fin of a fish, her range of motion ridiculously limited. Tears formed at the corner of her eyes as she stepped closer to her reflection to inspect it and noticed that two pointer fingers still protruded from it. She bent them awkwardly and winced, as if in actual pain, when her brain understood that the movement of such atrocities was indeed commanded by herself. She stretched the arm towards her chest but it didn’t reach far, only managing to clumsily swipe at her ribs and towards the side of her breast. 

She turned the other way and immediately felt lightheaded again. Her left shoulder was as she had seen in bed, completely armless. Her shoulder still extended to the side, wide and strong, although more bony than she remembered it, but failed to show her arm. The strap of her bra held on by good faith near the ridge of her shoulder, menacing to fall at any moment. She shrugged it up and forward, brows furrowed, breathing loud and hard, and stared at the skin that covered where her arm should’ve been.

This is a dream, a fever dream, caused by the spell, and I’m going to wake up any moment now. She told herself in a low voice, closing her eyes with force. She clenched her fists mentally but only the two fingers to her right followed her command, brushing against her ribs again, like a reminder that she was wrong. Terribly wrong. She shook her head and tried again, refusing to accept the truth, biting her lip to wake herself up, taking deeper and deeper breaths until she couldn’t take it anymore.


“SIOBHAN!!!!”

She tried to scream but no sound came out of her mouth. She was in full panic mode, now. She stomped around the room and kicked at the door with force before rushing back to the mirror. There, at the base of her neck, was a hole. A fucking hole. It tensed and relaxed along with her breathing like the blowhole of a whale and she now realized why she couldn’t make a sound. And yet, she screamed again.

—

Her face buried in her hands, Siobhan was sobbing quietly. She had inverted Catarina’s and Tiffany’s names during the casting of the spell and, due to the syntax error that it had caused when reciting the words, it had gone haywire and fizzled out uncontrollably, randomly changing the outcome.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…”

Catarina stood in front of the mirror again, her eyes still red but no longer crying. They had gone dry and her cheeks were crusty with dried tears, which she couldn’t even wipe herself. She wasn’t angry at her friend. Why would she? They had both agreed to do this together, and they both knew that magic could be unpredictable. If anger had to be directed at someone, it was at herself. Because she was the one who asked Siobhan about the spell. But she didn’t feel angry. She felt empty.

Stop it, Siobhan, I’m not mad at you, she tried to say, but talking was no use, either. She lifted her head to stare down her tracheostomy hole once more, and noticed a thin slightly discolored scar that ran cleanly across her neck. If her arms looked like she had been born this way, this scar told another story altogether. 

Catarina tapped her friend’s knee using the toes of her right foot to catch her attention. Siobhan’s puffy eyes looked back at Catarina and she threw herself at her, pressing her friend’s armless figure against her chest. After a minute or two of tragic embrace, she backed away and sniffled loudly.

“I don’t understand. It was a simple spell.. It was supposed to drain Tiffany’s breasts and transfer some of it to you, not.. not do… this…” 

Catarina mouthed back at her. It’s okay…She shrugged her shoulders, the left one rolling in its socket, still delusionally looking for a limb. It’s okay. We’ll figure something out.

The last part was lost in translation as Siobhan’s hand shifted to Catarina’s armless side. Its flesh was soft and supple, as if her body had turned part of her arm into some sort of padding in replacement of her missing bones. The band of her bra was tight around her chest and the flesh sagged slightly over it, like a thigh overflowing from a pair of knee high socks.

Catarina detached herself softly from her friend’s grasp and turned around, fitting her fingers into Siobhan’s hand. Come, she mouthed. I need your help, now. She tried to grunt but her intent turned into a forced sighed instead, the air gushing out of the base of her neck. She was going to need a better system than that. Frowning, she walked towards Siobhan’s desk where books, ink bottles, and papers lay scattered in a stunning mess. She reached out for a torn page with her remaining arm, somehow forgetting that she had lost almost all of it. It wriggled under her efforts and as the muscles inside her stump pulled at the loose flesh and the atrophied bone, it compressed and shortened even more. She released the tension and it sagged again.

She tapped her side with it and leaned forward, almost in a 90 degree angle, to reach the page she had been aiming for, so close to it that she could’ve used her mouth to catch it instead. She pulled it towards her, using the entirety of her range of motion to do so, and scoffed at what little effect it had on it. She had to repeat her movement four additional times to get it close enough to the edge of the table that she could hope to write something on it.

She squatted even lower and curled her fingers around a pen with an inefficient yet calculated clumsiness. Then, engaging the muscle group of her entire shoulder to manipulate the pen, she shimmied her torso back and forth to scribble a simple message to Siobhan. While shaky, her writing was surprisingly legible.

Fresh air.

She pinched the sheet of paper between her two fingers and showed it to Siobhan. The latter’s face softened and she reached for Catarina’s empty shoulder, gently putting her hand where her arm used to be a few hours ago. The way her brain compiled the sensations on this new part of her anatomy were hard to describe. One one hand, she remembered living her whole life with two arms. Grabbing, pulling, flexing her muscles when needed. But right now, as she shrugged her shoulder looking for a limb to move, the idea of having a left arm seemed illogical somehow. The skin where Siobhan had rested her hand was real and tangible, which her arm wasn’t anymore.

After helping her into a pair of pajama pants, Siobhan slipped a simple T-shirt over Catarina's head. Without arms, it had been a trivial endeavor, and Catarina managed to fit her remaining stump inside the short sleeve to her right. Catarina led the way out of the room, slightly off balance, her empty left sleeve dangling back and forth along with her steps. The lack of counterbalance caused by her lack of arms threw her off and even gave her an uneven gait. Her little arm still swayed along with her opposite leg, of course, but it was far from being as effective. She felt her abdominal muscles more tense, her back straighter, but less stable as a whole.

As they stepped outside, the warm summer wind carried in notes of lilac and incoming rain, and Catarina looked around from their vantage point on the balcony. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. She had been dragged through Hell and back, but the world kept on turning without issue, without even a glimpse of remorse towards her. She curled her toes against the concrete floor and turned to her friend.

I’m hungry.

—

The last few days had been particularly rough for both girls.

Apart from a few minor details, Catarina had managed to get dressed by herself this morning. It had been a personal challenge of hers from the get go. Surely I’m capable, she thought, since in this new reality, she had been born like this. This was reinforced by the fact that around her room and their apartment, new adaptive elements had appeared after the miscast of the spell. The fridge and microwave doors had been changed, so were doorknobs, to allow her to use her feet in place of her missing arms and hands. Dressing up was still a big endeavor, but a quick research on YouTube gave her reference videos of other girls overcoming the same disabilities. She had asked Siobhan to wrap a piece of cloth around a plastic hanger, turning it and the hook at its end into a makeshift arm and hand.

Pants, for example, were still particularly tricky. At first, she had to bundle them on the floor and wiggle her feet and ankles in the pant leg, before shimmying and twisting her legs like a 1960s dancer until they were up to her knees. Then, she laid on her bed and shimmied again, bringing them further up her thighs and standing again, legs spread wide to keep them in place. Finally, she needed to hook the elastic waistband of her leggings with the hanger, using only her mouth and the muscles in her neck to tug them up. It was a grueling process, for which her stumpy arm and grubby fingers were of absolutely no use. But if she was to live in this body for a while, she had to adapt.

As for her bra, she was not ready to deal with it by herself. Since her breasts had grown in size quite a lot, they were harder to manage than before, especially compared to her initial bonnet size before her transformation. Siobhan helped her in and out of them, for now.

Shirts were easier, in some ways, as fitting her head through the collar was really the only difficult part. She had a hook affixed to the wall for that. Although sometimes, when the fabric wouldn't slide down around her like she wanted, she needed to use her arm, again in a very limited way, to pinch and pull the fabric over and over again, inch by inch, using the entirety of her range of motion to accomplish very little movement. When she did, the muscles in her shoulder burned under the absurdity of her efforts. They went through so little everyday work that the simplest of tasks seemed like the end of the world for them. After fitting her arm through the sleeve, often still too short to stick out of it, she rocked her empty shoulder back and forth and after a few seconds of effort, it usually settled down properly, and so did the rest of the shirt. If not, she had learned to use her feet, propping one leg on the other's knee to reach the hem of her shirt with her toes and pull it down.

Then, the girls did some digging. They had learned that apart from them, no one knew about Catarina's sudden transformation. They had looked everywhere : old pictures, yearbook group shots, and had even called her mom but the results were all the same. Somehow, it was as if she had been born this way. Congenital amputations they called it. Yes, her arms were missing, but they had never been cut off, per say. Instead, they hadn't developed at all. A genetic anomaly, according to her medical records. 

This is also where they found details about her total laryngectomy. Car accident at 15 years old. Low speed collision in a residential area, nothing major. But when the airbags were deployed, a piece of the dashboard detached and completely crushed her larynx, rendering it impossible to repair surgically. Miraculously enough, nothing else had been fractured, leaving even her spine unscathed. Doctors had to do a total laryngectomy and a tracheostomy out of absolute necessity.

The records also said that she never could tolerate phonation valves or any of the gizmos that allowed her to mimic speech. Honestly, she thought, how would I have managed them without arms? For now, she did her best to be understood either by articulating exaggeratedly, or taking her phone out and typing on an empty document before stretching her ridiculous t-rex arm in front of her. It felt infantilizing and tedious to say the least.

That’s part of why they had gone out to the mall together, in search of a solution. But also because Catarina felt like she needed to own her body again. If she was to be trapped in this new form, she couldn't spend her days wallowing in despair. Improvise, adapt, overcome, as somebody once said. She had taken a big step in the morning by dressing herself, but communication was her new priority.

Siobhan had driven them to the biggest shopping center in a 50 miles radius in hopes of finding something that could be of any help for Catarina. She was now a fan of the text to speech feature on Google translate, and had found some success while using it with strangers. But the touch screen of her phone was too unpredictable, and her fingers far too clumsy. She was able to move them, yes, but not in a way that was precise enough to become reliable. She needed something more tangible, something with keys.

They stepped into a big electronic store and were immediately approached by a clerk in a bright blue vest. Years of customer service work could not have prepared him for what he witnessed. 

“Hi you two!” His voice was confident, but tinged with a slight tremolo that indicated his uneasiness. “My name is Troy, is there anything I can help you with today?” 

His eyes darted down to her empty shoulders for a moment, ignoring the flowery scarf that Siobhan had tied around her friend’s neck to hide her tracheostomy.

Just a sec, Catarina mouthed as she lifted a finger and walked to reach a nearby TV display stand. Leaning forward, she set her handbag on the floor and fished her phone out of it with her toes before setting it on the stand. Still folded in two, she unlocked her phone using her flipper and scrolled to an already typed-out message on Google Translate. The AI-generated voice filled the space between them.

“Hi, my name is Catarina. As you can see, I was born without arms, and I have had trouble communicating ever since I had a tracheostomy done. I cannot speak anymore. I am looking for a handheld or small device that I can use to type when I need to speak. Touch screens are hard for me, I need something with keys. Can you help me?” 

Her little scenario had taken her the better part of 5 minutes and she had felt the other customer’s eyes on her the entire time. Troy, in the good employee that he was, had his attention on Catarina, but had quickly brushed aside her disability to focus on her actual needs. She rolled her empty shoulder like she always did, never finding a comfortable position to let it rest in, but his eyes did not stray this time. He smiled kindly.

He guided them to a secluded part of the store with devices aimed towards accessibility and user friendliness. Among the knick knacks and useless cash grabs, they found a handful of pocket sized items that seemed to fit what she wanted.

“I think this one could be perfect for you. See, it has a notch to slide a strap in. You could sling it over your head and have it ready in a second.”

Let me see, she mouthed at him, lifting her arm and flicking a finger towards herself. He held it steady as she tested the keys and seemed more than satisfied with how they felt against her fingertips. He went and fetched an adjustable strap in an adjacent aisle and shortened it to fit the length of her arm. Then, he delicately set it around her neck, letting it rest against her augmented breasts.

She walked around the aisle like a kid testing out new shoes and stopped before Siobhan. The typewriter had shifted around slightly, but she brought it back onto her rack rather easily with the strap being so close to her stump. Then, stretching her short arm to her chest, she started typing. 

“Hi. Hello. Good evening. Pineapple. Can I have a coffee please.” She chuckled, the air gushing out of her tracheostomy without much sound. She hit the clear button and typed again. “I like it. Simpler than phone, more raeilbel.” Short pause. “Reliable.” She smiled at him.

It was infinitely simpler than using her phone, and the fact that she could wear it around her neck made it even more practical. Troy let her walk around the store to try it out over the course of half an hour and she looped around the register once she had been entirely convinced. Just as she was fishing inside her purse for her credit card, a nosy voice came up behind her. 

“Well, well, well, if it isn’t my favorite cripple.”

Catarina rolled her eyes. 

Tiffany. 

Catarina ignored her as much as she could, balancing on her left leg while lifting her right at waist height to tap her card on the terminal. She had noticed that Troy had given her the strap for free and was about to type to thank him, but the voice rose again.

“Nice split, Cat. Good to see those ballet classes your mom paid for are still useful even if you never could hang onto the bar.”

Catarina brushed it off again but Siobhan was fuming. “What good were your ballet classes, Cherry tits? I don’t see you on Broadway, either.” Tiffany scoffed and brought her hands up to her chest, visibly hurt. “And lose the resting bitch face, your attitude is enough.”

Catarina instinctively tried to lift her hand to her mouth, which resulted in her stump resting against her chin, and her two fingers ending near her lips. She lowered it again and reached for her typewriter. “Ha. Ha. Cherry tits.”

Doubling down on the insult seemed to work even better than the first time around. Tiffany scoffed and, tightening her coat around her small chest, briskly walked away. Catarina’s grin stretched up to her ears. 

—

3 months later

Folded in half over the countertop, Catarina mouthed at the bread bag, tossing it open and fitting her arm completely inside to grab a slice . She brought it over to the table where she already had a plate set up before walking over to the pantry, and pulled on the yarn string Siobhan had braided and affixed onto the door. She knelt and pushed her arm in between the peanut butter and the Nutella, pressing the latter against her chin. Luckily for her, Siobhan was out for the day because she could never stop laughing when she saw Catarina do that face, with her jaw extended forward. She sat down at the table, balanced on her rump, and put both feet up to unscrew the lid and grab the knife, then expertly spread a generous dollop of hazelnut delight onto her bread. Setting the whole thing down again, she leaned forward and took a bite, rolling her eyes and sighing. What progress she had made in such little time. 

She made quick work of her snack and put everything back where it belonged, putting her short arm hard at work. She had mostly made peace with it, now, and ever since Siobhan had stopped apologizing, the vibe in the apartment had almost gone back to how it had been before the accident. With these thoughts wandering across her mind, Catarina made her way into the bathroom to clean herself up and took a moment to look at her reflection. 

Sleeveless tops had become her go-tos. They had helped her immensely with her self-confidence, so much so that, after crossing paths with her another time, Tiffany had never dared speak against her again. Catarina angled her torso to the right to take a closer look at her armless side. The muscles twitched when she shrugged, still looking for their purpose. There were two small dimples near the articulation, an indication that her developing body had at least tried to do something on this side, and they stretched along with her tensed muscles. She moved her shoulder forward and back, trying to remember how her arm used to work but it was no use. That memory had faded faster than she would've liked. She sat down on a high stool and propped her right leg onto her left knee to bring her foot close to her torso. She pinched her slightly mushy skin, feeling nothing other than her ribs beneath. She looked down at her foot after noticing how naturally she had done the last series of movements and scoffed. Losing the memory of her arms may not have been such a bad thing after all.

She stood up and turned the other way, moving her fingers one at a time. They weren't much, but they were better than having no fingers at all. She lifted her arm as high as she could but reached only the side of her cheek, inspecting her cleanly shaven pit and the tapered shape of her limb before letting it fall at her side. It bobbed once, coming to a stop where it usually did, at the side of her breasts, with her fingers angled ever slightly backwards.

In retrospect, had any of this been worth it at all? A magical misfire, losing two limbs, as well as her voice, but gaining the pair of tits she had longed for? Tiffany sure seemed to be taking it hard, even though she didn’t seem to have retained memories of before. She clicked her tongue and walked out of the bathroom, almost colliding with Siobhan on the way to her room. She shrugged her shoulders, lifting her arm in front of her in a feeble attempt to catch herself against her friend.

Jesus Christ, you scared me. Catarina said, her arm pointed at her heart, even though no sound came out of her mouth. I didn’t hear you come in.

Siobhan smiled softly. “I came in quietly because I wanted it to be a surprise. Come.”

Brows furrowed, Catarina let herself be guided across the apartment and up the collapsible ladder that led into the attic. She swallowed hard. Looking down at the new pentacle drawn on the floor, a single drop of sweat came tickling her lower back.

“Look…” Siobhan said. “Even though I stopped apologizing to you, it didn’t mean I wasn’t still working on a way to bring your old body back.” She reached for her grimoire and flipped over to a page near the end. “I talked to a lot of people concerning our little accident. Anonymously, of course, and they were all pretty eager to help!” She pointed at new overarching lines that criss-crossed each other inside the pentacle. “These will reverse the process that robbed you of your arms, and these..” She showed her interlocking shapes in the middle. “These are protection sigils that will prevent anything else from going wrong.”

Catarina stood in front of her friend, astonished. She had gone through all this trouble again, for her? Siobhan, I… She mouthed before reaching down for her typewriter, which she had forgotten on the kitchen table. God damnit…

“I… I know these last few months were horrible for you, and it’s all been my fault, but you’ve adapted so well to it it’s… Almost insulting to be honest.” She chuckled. “But let me make it up to you. Please.”

They looked at each other for a long time. Siobhan silently pleaded, looking down at the hole inside Catarina's neck, while the latter’s mind raced. She had adapted, yes, that was true. But even the most skilled use of her deformed arm was nothing compared to having two complete limbs to work with. And there was the tracheostomy, too. She rolled her shoulders, wondering what would happen if the spell was to misfire once more. What more could she afford to lose? Could she end up mentally disabled as well? Unable to make her own decision? She shook her head to chase away the intrusive thoughts.

Catarina walked all the way across the attic, going around the pentacle, leaning forward to grab the lighter that rested on the windowsill. She handed it to Siobhan and both girls nodded, hopeful.