“I think I’m having second thoughts,” Samantha said, as she stood naked in a plastic basin in her best friend’s kitchen.

“It's too late for that now,” Beth replied tersely. She was anxious, with one eye always on her watch. It had been ten minutes since Sam had drunk the potion and they had only 4 hours left until their plane arrived. Nothing had happened. Beth sighed.

“Maybe the potion didn’t work,” Sam said hopefully.

The other girl, a witch, looked insulted. “I’ve yet to brew one that hasn’t.” She sighed again. “Wait here.”

Sam, unable to do much else, waited patiently as her friend ran upstairs. It was then that she began to feel the first effects of the potion. A sudden powerful warmth spread out from her stomach to the rest of her body.

“Beth! I think its working!” Her voice was a mix of fear and excitement. The head spread fast to her extremities and, as it did, she began to notice the room rising up around her. Looking down, she watched as her toes spread out and merged into each other. Her feet were starting to look like pancake batter poured into a pan.

Even her toenails seemed to be becoming less solid.

Beth bounded into the kitchen, hairdryer in hand. She looked at her friend with a critical eye, like a baker watching bread rise, only in reverse. Then she looked at her watch.

“You’re not melting fast enough,” she said matter-of-factly, plugging the hairdryer in to the wall.

“I don’t think we should rush things,” warned Sam, as her friend advanced, raising the hairdryer. She felt warm enough already, as the heat inside her was continuing to build. Had her epidermis not recently become a thin coating of liquid, she would have been perspiring considerably.

“Trust me. I’m a professional,” Beth grinned, flicking on the hairdryer and setting to work.

Sam felt the effect of the heat from the dryer immediately. Her chest was attacked first, the stream of hot air being aimed at her left breast first, then her right, both of which collapsed into shapeless goo in seconds, running down her abdomen and collapsing legs to pool at her feet. Her pleas to stop went unheard as Beth made a quick pass over the rest of her torso, melting her abdominals and belly button into a single form. She then turned the dryer on Sam’s legs, working on each intermittently, so that Sam sank quickly but gracefully into the plastic kitchen-sink, into the growing pool of her melted flesh.

The hairdryer-wielding maniac took a step back to admire her handiwork. The remainder of Sam scowled back; her lower body gone, her upper body rapidly losing its distinction.

“Keep your arms inside the bowl,” Beth reminded her, before setting to work on them. Each finger vanished in a little rivulet of skin-coloured gloop. She worked up the arms, until there was a certain Venus De Milo resemblence about her subject. Her torso was now gone, all the way up to where her belly button had once been.

Sam looked ready to cry. She had known that she was going to be reduced to liquid by magic, but she had always expected magic to be instantaneous; nothing more traumatising than a flash and a puff of smoke. But any tears that came went unnoticed. Beth blasted her neck with heat until her head had become one with her shoulders, and then continued on her torso. Eventually the heat from within and the heat from without were too much, and everything below the neck dribbled and glooped and globbed into the bowl, like a snowman in an oven. Her head fell back and sank, and all that was left on the surface of the liquid was her face. It lingered.

“Do you want me to stir you?” Beth asked, putting aside the hairdryer and grabbing a spoon from the worktop.

“No, I don’t want you to stir me!” Sam snapped back, the spoon hanging very close above her liquefied face.

“Fine.” Beth shrugged and sat back, crosslegged on the kitchen floor, to watch the second part of her potion take effect. It was less impressive than the first but no less important to their plans– Sam’s liquid form began to evaporate until steam was pouring off it and there was but half of the original mass remaining. A few minutes later there was a quarter. A few minutes after that, there was just enough left of Sam to fit snugly into a large bottle. Her face still stared up at Beth from the bottom of the basin. It wasn’t happy.

“Okay! I changed my mind! I don’t want to go on holiday! I’ll pay for my ticket! Just change me back!”

Beth shook her head. “You know I can’t reform you until 24 hours after melting. And the taxi gets here any minute. Now stop talking. You’re supposed to be sunscreen. Sunscreen doesn’t talk.” She smirked. “Get in character.”

“I don’t want to be sunscreen! I don’t want to get in character.”

“Alright then,” Beth laughed. “Get in bottle.”

With that, she grabbed an empty sunscreen bottle, a funnel, and a ladle from the worktop. Sam’s face viewed the utensils with dread, until Beth stuck a spoon in it and swirled until there was no semblance of a face, or anything else human, left anywhere in the liquid. Sam attempted to resist the only way now available to her; desperately struggling so that her liquid self slopped and squirmed around in it's basin. Despite this, Beth quickly and efficiently ladled her best friend into the bottle (spilling only a little), sealed it, and lifted it up to the light. The contents were a satisfactory beige - more or less indestinguishable from regular suntan lotion. She left it to stand on the kitchen floor whilst she went to finish packing.

Sam wriggled inside her container. She couldn’t believe she’d agreed to this madness. And just to save money on a plane ticket.

The bottle slow rocking eventually ceased and she discovered that she’d lost even that limited capacity to move. She was totally inanimated.

Beth appeared in the hallway, lugging two people’s worth of holiday clothes with her. The suitcase looked ready to burst. She was wearing a straw hat and sunglasses already, despite it raining outside. She patted the pockets of her shorts and the pockets on her hand luggage.

“Passport… money… credit card… yep, that’s everything.” She made for the door and then clicked her fingers in faux remembrance. “Oh, right! Suntan lotion!” Giggling, she retrieved Sam from the kitchen and slid her into a pouch on her rucksack.

Outside, the taxi for the airport honked its horn. The suitcase was dragged to the doorstep and taken the rest of the way by the taxi driver. As an afterthought, Beth ran back into the kitchen, grabbed the coconut flavouring from a cupboard and poured a significant quantity into the bottle of Samantha. She was supposed to be coconut scented after all.

She climbed into the taxi, shaking the bottle vigorously to mix in the coconut, and set off for the airport.