Stained - Inanimate
By: ThatGuy

Francesca threw open her front door and stormed inside. She was dripping wet, smelling awful and looked frantic. This had not been a good day.

In fact, she didn’t think she had ever had a day so ridiculously awful in her entire life. She must have incurred some seriously bad karma - a distinct possibility, given the kind of things she dabbled in in her free time. If she asked her friends and roommates, they would likely call this a matter of time. But then, her friends were her biggest problem right now, in a sense. This whole day had just been one long pain in the neck, when she hoped it would be simple.

First, her car broke down a half block from home. Gunk burst from the tailpipe and sprayed all over her, and her favorite red dress. A quick “wipe” fixed it at first - that is, using a bit of magic to scour every trace of grime from herself and her outfit - but she had no idea how bad an omen that had been. It was just the start or a long and incredibly nasty day.

She couldn’t get a taxi, and so she practically melted in the sweltering heat waiting for the bus. Which was late, of course. By the time she got to work, her dress was drenched and matted tight against her skin. Plus stained from the wad of chewing gum on the bus seat she accidentally sat on.

Which meant another “wipe.” She had a limited amount of those. Little did she know she would need them all.

The first leg to the day hasn’t been so bad. She got some work done, enjoying the AC, had a nice chat with the cute guy from accounting - the very person she had worn her favorite dress for, of course. And that good streak lasted until lunch, one of her coworkers spilled oatmeal all over her. Oatmeal of all things, at lunchttime! It would have been an easy fix, but when she ran off to clean it she tripped over another coworker who just so happened to be carrying a pitcher full of grape juice. One more “wipe.”

By then she was irritated and extra-careful about any further incidents. She returned to her her cubicle, intending to avoid all dirtiness completely. Her efforts to keep clean were ruined immediately, when her printer malfunctioned. By the end of the day, she and the rest of the print room were absolutely covered in ink. She got out of it clean, but it took the last of her energy to do so. She was out of “wipes,” out of juice and out of patience.

She would’ve just headed straight home after all of that. In fact, she should have. But single ray of sunshine kept her rooted right where she was: the guy from accounting had answered her admittedly obsessive prayers and actually asked her out. Again, this was exactly the reason why Francesca had even worn this dress, and so bad day or not she would’ve been crazy to pass that up. If only she knew…

He took her out to a nice restaurant downtown - with romantic atmosphere, live music, and not to mention beautiful company. It would have been a perfect evening - it was perfect for a little while - until she had the worst run of bad luck yet.

First their waiter had a little trouble opening their bottle of wine - her gorgeous date actually bought her wine, why oh why couldn’t the night have gone well? - and the bottle shattered, spilling highly staining aperitif all over Francesca and her favorite dress. He then tripped like a clown and dropped the remains of the bottle into their gravy bowl, which - you guessed it - flipped over and landed directly on top of her.

That had finally been enough. She was soiled again - in front of her obsession, no less - and this time she didn’t have any “wipes” to wave it off with. She had shrieked with embarrassment and ran off then and there, fancy dinner with the man of her dreams be damned. He followed her out, after giving the waiter a piece of his mind, apologizing and offering to drive her home, but she was so humiliated that she couldn’t stand to let him see her like that any more. Instead, she squeaked out a goodbye and walked away.

But maybe she should have taken his offer, as it just got worse from where. First, she rushed down the street so fast trying to keep people from seeing her horribly dirty self that she broke a heel. Which made her stumble into a ladder, which some shopkeeper was using to paint a marquee. And so, naturally several cans of paint went tumbling down and spilled all over her. Now a mix of white, brown, red and purple, the tripped and fell backwards… falling directly into a trash can and getting covered in its grimy contents.

And when the finishing move: as she finally picked herself off the ground, tears and rotten fruit in her eyes, a car passed by too close to a puddle and drenched her with muddy water.

She arrived home a half hour later. It had started raining heavily by then, but she didn’t care. She was splattered, wined, dined, painted, and trashed, somewhere along the line she was fairly certain she had stepped in something nasty, her true love was probably at home laughing at her humiliation, and between it all she had but one thing on her mind now:

“She’s going to kill me.”

She quickly slid herself out of her dress, which was so matted with gunk that it clung to her skin and made a disgusting “squish” sound as she finally popped it off. She tossed it to the floor, resolving to deal with it later. She was already going to be in trouble, so she might as well make herself feel better first. Grimacing at the thought, she ran into the bathroom and hit the shower for a nice, long rinse.

After a little while she got most of the paint out and she didn’t smell so much like trash, which she was glad for. It was going be easier for her to clean up than others.

Once she was nice and spotless, she decided there was no more time to put it off. For as bad as her day was, there was someone who had just had a much worse one: she had no more excuses not to deal with her dress.

She went back to her room and picked it up off the floor. It smelled so bad she had to hold it at arms length, and it was slipped in her hands. It was multicolored thanks to the paint, stained in more than a few places, and even ripped here and there. She didn’t even know how those tar stains had gotten there. It looked like it had gone through the city dump.

She picked up a squelchy arm, and winced. The fabric was worn and thin with silt, as if it were fusing with the grime. “Oh, god. She really is going to kill me,” she sighed.

But there was nothing for it. She could hardly stuff it into the trash and forget about the whole thing. Well, she could, but she liked to think she wasn’t that kind of witch. Instead, she laid the dress down on the floor (like hell she would put it on her bed) - and recited the right unintelligible words.

The dress shuddered, then whipped into the air. At Francesca’s command, it unraveled itself. Fibers rewove themselves: openings becoming joints, skirt becoming legs, straps becoming arms. Velvety fabric became flesh and blood. A human figure - a woman - jarred to her feet, which weren’t there a moment ago. It was Alexandra, one of Francesca’s housemates. Francesca loved using spells to prank her friends, usually by turning them into things. And when not her nagging friend, Alexandra doubled as one of her favorite things to wear when... fishing for a certain something.

But for the next few hours, she was unlikely to be Francesca’s favorite anything. And vice versa.

Alexandra looked confused for a split second - the usual expression to expect when one returns from an inanimate form - but then her whole body shuddered as a feeling of pure uncleanliness spread over her body. Then she looked down at herself, and shouted at the top of her lungs.

Meanwhile, Francesca was kicking herself. Her roommates had always chided her for using her powers so liberally. Turning Alexandra into a dress had been easy - it always was - and she hadn’t ever expected that anything bad would come of it. Sure, her friend might lose a few hours, but that’s why Francesca only picked days where Alex had nothing planned.

But from the looks of it, Alexandra wouldn’t find her excuses very reassuring.

“What. The hell. Happened!” She hissed, holding her arms - looking bizarrely like a damp scarecrow.

She was drenched, as if she had been caught in torrential acid rain. Her skin and hair was dripping with every single thing that had fallen, dripped, splattered or splashed onto Francesca on their way home. She flicked her arms around trying to throw off some of the grime, but it just wouldn’t go away. Even her skin itself was as stained, just as the dress was - her tan tone blotched with patches of purple wine and white and red paint. There were even traces of the things Francesca had “wiped” away.

Francesca was right: this had not been a very good day for Alexandra. Estimating Francesca’s magic’s strength and Alexandra's usual stubbornness, she guessed that Alexandra likely had her last full moments of human consciousness some time around the sweaty walk to work - which as inanimate objects go was still a pretty long time. She probably didn’t fully remember anything past then, but she still would have felt every single dirty moment in a remote, unthinking sort of way. Now that her mind and memories were flooding back all at the same time, she was overwhelmed. Not to mention pissed.

“It… um… was an accident?” Francesca whimpered. Alexandra’s snarl was showing an awful lot of teeth. “A lot of accidents, actually.”

“You…” Alexandra hissed. “You… you…”

Francesco smiled nervously. She couldn’t help it. “M-me?”

“I am never, ever letting you turn me into anything ever again!” Alexandra shrieked, conveniently forgetting that she hadn’t allowed Francisca to do turn her into time. It was a surprise. More of an ambush. It was supposed to be a simple prank, though Francesca had to admit there was a little more to it than that. Alexandra was her favorite man-catching dress, after all.

But it still seemed harmless at the time. Francesca winced to see her little joke had left her roommate fuming so much.

“I’m sor-“

But Alexandra was not interested in listening. “Let alone letting you wear me!”

She was also forgetting that if Francesca really wanted to transform and wear her there wasn’t much Alex could do to stop her, but not even Francesca was in the mood to bring that up. She felt too awkward to. And at that, Alexandra turned on her heel and stormed out the door - slipping a bit on the pool of gunk she had left on Francesca’s rug, which Francesca kindly didn’t bring up.

The bathroom door slammed behind her. Not long later, one could hear the shower turning on at full power. Alexandra usually sung in the shower, but this time it sounded more like screaming in frustration set to music. Francesca thought the washing machine probably would have been easier, but after the day she had Alexandra deserved the choice to wash as flesh and blood. Francesca knew that she wouldn’t want to spent one more second than necessary as a filthy dress.

Forty five minutes later the shower was still running with no sign of stopping, and Francesca had no choice but to admit that she had really messed up this time. She sighed. It really hadn’t gone well at all. And what’s worse, she wasn’t even done yet…

“I hope Sara and Glenn takes it a little better than Alex did.” She said nervously, uselessly tapping the broken heel back onto her shoe. “I wonder what’ll happen to Sara if I glue this back on…”