Content warning: this story is based on the fantasy that stage magicians with real powers are - without most of the audience realising - actually sawing, slicing or transforming their assistants and volunteers for real, but with the aid of magic that prevents them suffering any lasting harm and which transforms their experience into one they can even enjoy. And of course they’re all restored at the end (eventually, anyway!)
This is part of an ongoing series of linked short stories. Links to the previous parts are given at the end.
With the Dance of the Blades over, the attendees at the Jensen’s Stage Supplies Halloween Party dispersed to chat in groups, or to slake their thirst at the bar, which was now manned by the involuntarily cross-dressed Joe. Finella took the opportunity to mingle, and catch up with old friends.
One of those was Elora, great grand-niece of the long-dead company founder. The forty-something single mother managed the Stores and Shipping Department, and took special pride in making sure Finella’s larger and more unusual orders were well packed and sealed up tight before entrusting them to the courier firm, something Finella was truly thankful for as the consequences of ‘real magic’ leaking out in transit didn’t bear thinking about. But the consequence of Elora’s attention to detail was that in recent years Finella had hardly ever needed to contact her directly. Thus they had a lot to catch up on.
As they talked, Finella made magical tweaks to Elora’s witch costume. Now all that was left was to replace Elora’s rather dodgy makeup effects with something more convincing. Finella rubbed her hands together until they glowed.
“So he had to wear a hat until the horns disappeared!” Elora was saying. “And that took nearly…” She trailed off into a series of nasal grunts, the result of Finella having grasped Elora’s nose inside one closed fist. Elora kept on trying to talk as Finella pulled, slowly lengthening the Stores Manager’s nose and adding an impressive beak-like curve, Finella nodding and smiling at the appropriate points in the story.
“You don’t say?” Finella interjected. “That must’ve been incredibly embarrassing for the poor chap.” Now she moved on to Elora’s forehead, running her warm fingernails across the woman’s brow, leaving deep furrows that added decades to Elora’s apparent age.
A few more wrinkles, a wart or two, and some impressive crows’ feet lines radiating from the corners of her eyes finished the look.
A brunette half Elora’s age walked up. “Hey, great job!” she said. “I’d never have thought you could make Mum even more of an old witch, but you managed it!”
Elora scowled at her daughter. “At least she made an effort,” Finella butted in, rising to her friend’s defence. She glared pointedly at the black headband with cat’s ears which was Emily’s sole concession to the theme of the party. Although Emily worked at Jensen’s too, it was clear she didn’t really want to be here, and especially not with her mother.
“Not a very good one,” Em (as she preferred to be called) replied, returning Finella’s glare. “Else you’d not have had to ‘improve’ it. Not that it’s made much difference. Some magician you are.”
“Don’t be catty,” her mother interjected.
Finella smiled. For those who knew her, it was a dangerous smile. Not knowing the signs, Em blundered on.
“Oh I can be a lot cattier than this!” she cut back. She opened her mouth again for yet another complaint, but stopped. Finella had placed a hand firmly on her the bare flesh of her shoulder. Em scowled and tried to move the offending hand. It didn’t budge.
The two women glared at each other. Finally Finella removed her hand. Em grinned nastily, thinking she’d won the exchange. Then her expression changed. She rolled her shoulder. Rubbed it. Scratched.
“What’ve you done?” she demanded. Finella ignored the question. Em scratched again, and then again. The red lines she was leaving deepened each time, splitting, revealing patches of something black underneath.
By now a crowd had formed. Finella placed both hands on the young woman’s upper arm, took hold of a scrap of loose skin and pulled. A good three inches peeled away, and it was now clear that what was under the skin was shiny black fur, like that of a black cat.
“Hey!” Em exclaimed, but Finella didn’t stop. She kept peeling until she’d removed a stip an inch wide all the way round Em’s upper arm, which she dropped in the smallish cauldron Elora had slung over one arm in place of a handbag. Then she took hold of one exposed edge and rolled the flesh down, peeling the skin off Em’s arm like a glove!
For a moment, Em was too shocked to respond. Then she lifted her arm – or was it a foreleg? – and examined it. Her face fell.
“OK, I guess I deserved that,” she said. “Sorry, Mum. Sorry, Finella.”
“Apology accepted,” Finella replied. “At least I left you an opposable thumb, so you can still hold a glass.”
Em brightened. She flexed her paw experimentally, then looked sidelong at the bar.
“In a moment,” Finella said, replying to the unspoken question. “And I’m buying too. But first I should finish the job.” She paused. “If you agree, that is.”
Em looked at her cat arm. “Well it does look rather odd,” she said, “Just having the one arm like this I mean. So yeah.” She looked thoughtful for a moment. “Actually, it’d be rather cool to have a decent costume.”
Finella had to work to suppress an eye roll. Although Em had left her teenage years behind a good four or five years ago, she still seemed to be as moody as one. First bitchy, then sullen, and now increasingly enthusiastic – the young woman was hard to keep up with. Well, might as well take advantage of Em’s good humour while it lasted, Finella thought, as she led Em back to the twin poles she’d used for several of her all-too-real ‘illusions’ this evening, a growing crowd following in their wake.
Finella had Em stand behind and between the two poles. With practised efficiency, she withdrew a roll of cloth from the bag she’d left there and stretched it across the poles, covering Em from mid calf to forehead. That done, she joined Em behind the cloth and turned the girl sideways.
At Finella’s bidding, Em lifted her as-yet-untransformed arm out in front of her. Finella tapped a switch with her foot, turning on a light that silhouetted the two of them against the translucent cloth, then ran her fingernail around Em’s upper arm, peeling away the skin of the young woman’s left arm just as she’d already done the right. As she did so, the fur underneath – freed from the flattening constriction of its sheath of human skin – sprang up. Those in the front of the crowd would be able to make out this detail, Finella knew, adding veracity to what they could see.
“Elora?” Finella called out as she held the empty tube of shed skin out from behind the screen. “Your cauldron, please?” As soon as her friend placed the cauldron within reach, Finella dropped her disturbing burden into.
Now she moved on to Em’s legs. “You’ll need to take your jeans off for this bit,” Finella mouthed. Em paused, then nodded. Without needing any direction, she turned her back to the screen, undid her tight jeans, then wriggled out of them, wiggling her backside just a little bit more than was necessary in the process, before holding both the garment and her ankle boots out for Finella to drop in the apparently-bottomless cauldron.
Finella turned the girl side-on to the screen again, facing her. Thanks to the cropped sleeveless T that Em was wearing, Finella didn’t need her to remove anything else in order to run her fingernail around Em’s waist. Em winced as her skin split, but then relaxed as Finella started rolling her skin down over her hips towards the top of her low-slung panties. With a subject who gave off the exhibitionist vibes to the max, Finella might have made their shadow puppet show more explicit by removing Em’s underwear first and holding the intimate garment out for all to see before dropping it in the cauldron, but pushing Em too far right now might freak her out as well as damaging Finella’s friendship with her mother. Ah well. Finella would just have to make sure Em’s panties got rolled inside the tube of skin instead, so that they could be discarded discretely.
Still barely over the bumps of Em’s hip bones, Finella felt something impeding her progress, something low on Em’s back. She reached round and felt a bulge just where Em’s spine dived down into the crack of her butt. She stepped in close and manoeuvred the skin there down just far enough for a long furry tail to emerge. Em’s eyes opened wide. Finella enclosed the young woman in a reassuring embrace for a few moments, until she was sure that Em was calm again, or at least as calm as could be expected. Of course that also gave the audience time to take in the silhouette of Em’s new appendage as it swayed behind her and understand the completeness of the transformation she was undergoing. So it was a double win, really.
As soon as Em seemed steady again, Finella reached down again and continued the unrolling of Em’s redundant outer layer until her hips and butt were exposed in all their furry feline glory. Now went down on one knee in front of her.
A quick circuit around and between Em’s thighs separated the rolled up skin from that still encasing her legs. A surreptitious slicing of the wadded skin right through on both sides allowed Finella to lift it away like a set of cut up flesh-toned granny pants. This she did as rapidly as possible, partially because it was hardly the most glamorous part of the skinning process, but also to get it done and dusted before Em could realise her panties had likewise been cut through.
With that done, it was time to get back to putting on a show. The kneeling Finella lifted Em’s left leg and placed it with Em’s foot on Finella’s knee, silhouetting the young woman’s leg against the screen. Then, like a lover peeling a silk stocking off his woman, she peeled the human skin from Em’s leg, right down to her knee, revealing the fur below. Acting on the spur of the moment, she kissed the silken-haired knee as it emerged, before continuing on down until a well-formed paw emerged. Em flexed it, her claws emerging then retracting.
“Cool!” Em exclaimed. The appreciative noises from the audience on the other side of the screen indicated that they agreed.
With one of Em’s legs fully stripped of its humanity, Finella switched to the other. Em seemed to be finding it harder to stand still on one leg, probably because that leg ended in a paw rather than a foot. She had place a front paw on Finella’s shoulder to support herself, and Finella winced. Em’s control of her claws was obvious not yet perfect. But Finella continued regardless.
Now that Em was fully feline from the waist down, Finella stood up again and started on Em’s torso. She had the young woman lift her arms, or should that be forelegs? – up over her head. Then she carefully grasped the edge of skin at around Em’s waist and tugged upwards. As Em’s tanned skin rolled away to reveal her furred torso, Finella saw that Em had grown extra pairs of nipples running in two rows up to her ribs. Her already small breasts had shrunk down to vestigial bumps. Her extra teats were quickly hidden as her black fur sprung upright, though, so they’d not be evident to the other partygoers once she rejoined them. At least not unless she chose to allow close inspection, and frankly that was her choice and none of Finella’s business.
By now Em was had the appearance of an upright anthropomorphic cat with a human face mask and a wig of human hair. For the transformation of her face, Finella chose to position Em sideways on to the screen so that the sprouting of a feline jaw and button nose would best be showcased. Em did wince as Finella made the final cut around her hairline, but all in all she was standing up well to it Finella thought. And she looked positively adorable with whiskers.
The final flourish was for Finella to rip away Em’s fake cat ear hair band, allowing real cat ears to spring up in its place. The screen was just low enough for the audience to see this happen over the top of the material and Finella heard more than a few gasps.
Finella quickly scooped up the discarded bits of Em’s skin and clothing and stuffed them in the cauldron before linking arms with the transformed woman and leading her around the screen to face the audience. Em only stumbled once, and seemed to have got her tail under control too, for Finella only felt it brush her back a couple of times.
Finella handed the bipedal feline over to Elora. “Every witch needs a black cat as a familiar,” she said. “Look after her, and don’t let her go running after any stray tomcats! Oh, and keep good hold of that cauldron. I’ll need Em’s skin to change her back at midnight.” With that, she guided Elora and her furry charge towards the bar and the promised drinks. Something fancy, with a sprig mint in it maybe. And for Em she could easily transform the mint into some catnip.
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Previous parts:
Halloween Party 1: Pumpkin Lantern
Halloween Party 2: Phoebe the Phantom