[a Cloth Wizard story]
(conceived 7/9/16)


A digital rendering of the first dozen seconds of Fugue in D Minor plays as the door creaks open. Light spills into the candle lit room as a female pushes against the wooden entry.

"Here, Babe. Let me do it," offers a male voice. The door swings faster, squeaking louder.

After a glance, the girl steps back, and the boy enters. The girl shudders, "Ch, Chase. It, It wasn't like this the last time I was here. It was more, more --" She tries to describe it with wide circles of her arms.

Chase plops his arm on her shoulder with a confident air. "Don't worry, Janet. A little thing like this won't scare me away," he swings his free arm wide encompassing the whole place.

Janet slips from his arm and lets his hand slide down to hers as she heads to the counter, the one thing she recognizes in the place. Safe, she looks around the room.

Sconces hang from the wall with candles burning. A chandelier adds a little more flickering light. Off in a corner there is a old fashioned end chair with a padded back and a cushion for a seat. Janet thinks that the last time she saw a chair like this was at her grandma's house in Vermont.

Fingers still locked, she looks over at Chase who seems to be bored because he is drawing patterns on the dark wallpaper while looking at her. Janet looks it all over again still trying to wrap her head around all the changes since the last time she was here. /It was way more colorful./

|Clop. Clop. Clop.| Slow steady footsteps approach. Janet notices Chase looking over her shoulder, so she turns to see the newcomer. What she sees is way different from the last time.

Coming from the back room is, in a word, a goth girl. The short lace dress is black as is most of her clothes. A little black top hat sits on top of her head and to one side near one of the two gravity defying pig tails that spiral upward and then back down. /She must have used bottles of mousse and hair spray to get that to stay,/ Janet muses.

Covering her breast is the only thing not goth about her, it is a name tag with the word, Celeste. Her face is pale. Big elaborate jewelry cover her fingers down to her black nail polish. Celeste turns her passive face and red eyes to Janet at the counter.

"Welcome to Stitches," she says in almost a monotone, "How can I help you?"

Janet looks at the clerk's face again. If the red eyes are contacts, and the black hair is a wig, and she was wearing little rimmed glasses, then Celeste could be the hippy girl from before ... whose name was Celeste, too, now that Janet thinks about it. "Hey Celeste. I know what I want. May I have the form, please?"

Without taking her eyes off Chase, Celeste reaches under the counter and slides a paper to Janet who starts filling it out. "How are you doing?"

Chase speaks with confidence, "I'm --"

Celeste cuts him off, "I'm not speaking to you."

A female voice comes from the chair, "I feel fine, but it's hard to tell when you are just sitting here. Was that a boy I heard?"

"Indeed."

"Could you have him sit on me?" Celeste gestures, and Chase sits. "Iiii feel too stiff. Could you soften me up some?"

Chase stands as Celeste approaches, thigh-high buckled black boots clomping the whole way. As if by magic, the clerk pulls a needle from nowhere. Chase figures that it came from one of her lace cuffs. She stabs it down into the cushion.

After a moment, she pulls it back out. She commands Chase, "Sit." He doesn't sit; he sinks into the chair. This chair has become the most comfortable he has ever sat in and finds himself drifting off. A contented sigh from the cushion echoes his sentiments.

"Why are you here?" His eyes snap open. Expecting the goth clerk to be towering over him, he finds to his relief that she is back behind the counter.

Back on familiar ground, he sits up straight, not quite wanting to leave his seat. "Well, Janet said that coming here was the only way we could be together in her room. So, here I am."

He sees Janet look up and glance at him before finishing the paperwork. "There. All done." She slides it back to Celeste. The clerk glances at it and walks to the back.

Janet comes over to her boyfriend in the chair and sits in his lap. Turning, she smiles at him, "Chase. You remember what I said about my parents, right?"

Unconcerned, he tells her, "Yeah, your parents are prudes and won't let you have sex with a boy."

Not quite what she was going for, she trudges on, "Right. They said not to have sex until after marriage. They also don't want boys in my room, either."

Rubbing his hands together and licking his lips, he smirks and says, "But we're going to change that tonight, right?" Looking at her uncertain face, he adds, "You promised if I came here ..."

"Yes, I promised that if you came here, you could go into my room --" The heavy boot steps interrupt her.

Janet looks back to see Celeste waiting with a white cloth draped over her arm, "Come with me." Janet and Chase follow her to a side room. As she walks through the door frame, Janet slows expecting to go through some dangling bead strings. Celeste closes the door and positions Chase near one wall, "Ready?"

Chase nods with a little too much excitement.

Janet hears the clerk say, "Ready, Sew?" /It can't be a person named Sue because she said that last time, too, and there's no one here named that./

The five needles between Celeste's thumb and palm bounce up and down. "Then let us begin."

They spring from her hand, or did she throw them? The first lodges in Chase's throat. He flinches but doesn't cry out. The rest follow spearing his shoulders and elbows.

Turning to Janet, Celeste hands the white cloth to her, "Put this on him."

"No!" He calms himself, "No. I can do it." He tries to grab the material, but his fingers don't bend. In fact the only places that bend are where the needles are. Janet snatches it up before the cloth hits the ground. She slips it over his head, and it covers him from head to toe. No part of him can be seen except his outline.

Celeste pulls an iron off the shelf. Janet, who has seen this before, bites her lip hoping that this will go well.

With practiced movements, Celeste swipes the iron all over the sheet. As she does, a painting of Chase appears on the cloth. She places the iron back.

Gesturing with her head, she invites Janet to join her. Janet freezes at that. It's the same sign the hippy lady and the colonial woman before that, had given her. /It is the same Celeste./

Janet snaps out of her recollection and grabs a corner of the pillow case and lifts with Celeste.

Chase, on the other hand, is all out of sorts. After the two ladies head to his sides, his vision rises higher and higher. Then the room starts to spin. Once the movement slows, he sees on the other end of the room a male cloth mannequin with its arms out trying to keep its body from falling to one side.

Chase reaches up to feel his face, the cloth dummy does the same. He feels fingerless hands touching his nose and featureless face. /This is crazy./ "What's going on?" The seam that is his mouth opens and closes in time with the words.

Celeste crosses in front of him, and Janet comes to where he can see her and looks straight into his eyes. "Chase, this," she says while pointing to the mannequin, "is your body. It has all your senses, except sight which is," She switches her pointing finger to aim at him, "right there on the sheet."

Janet continues, "I told you before that Mom and Dad won't let a boy into my room. I really doubt that they'd let a boy pillow into my room either."

"Pillow?"

"Yes, pillow. I told you all of this before. Weren't you listening?" On the sheet, Chase nods. Behind Janet, the dummy does a full head lifts and drops, bending at the neck.

Celeste enters Chase's field of vision carrying another cloth, this one more colorful, over her arm. She adds in her monotone, "He was probably thinking about sex with the way he's been eyeing you like meat the whole time you have been here."

Janet shakes her head. It's obvious to Chase that she's disappointed. His nervousness outweighs his guilt.

Celeste offers her arm, "A little help?" Janet grabs a corner and they unfold. Chase catches glimpses of green, gray, and skin tone. As the two ladies lift the cloth, a green haired face comes in for a kiss. That's all he gets to see before darkness.

When light invades again, his own expressionless body slides away from him. Chase notices that his pillow case is hanging on the wall by clips. He turns and is facing the mannequin again. He figures he is hanging from the wall like his other self is.

Speaking of his other self, Celeste pulls it down and folds it up in front of him. With tired eyes, she tells him, "You'll get your body back when you return."

Janet gets in front of him. Her eyes stare at him, distant. She builds with more and more excitement. At last she bursts, "Oh, you are going to be the best pillow ever. You are Akina, my favorite character from Mecha Star Soldiers. She pilots the giant robot named Sirius."

"Wha? Wha?"

Janet turns from her boyfriend to the talking pillow behind her and then to Celeste who just returned. In one hand she has a pair of scissors in the other another of those needles that keep appearing and disappearing, "I suppose I should do something about his mouth?"

Wistful, she looks back at him, "yeah, I guess."

With deft movements of stabbing with the one hand and catching with the scissors, Celeste not only seals his mouth but puffs the lips, too.

Then she spins up into a flurry of motion. Before Janet's eyes, the mannequin gains breasts, tucks on the sides making a slender waist, a little letting out on hips making them a little plumper, and adjustments to the face making him look more feminine. Janet wants to turn to explain it all to Chase, but Celeste is so mesmerizing.

Before long, Celeste bumps the arms back to the sides. The needles jump from her fingers trailing thread and plunge into Chase's inner arms. By themselves or by some magic, they zip back and forth stitching them together.

While the tools flash along their length, Celeste has time to deal with other things. With a big snip and a little needle work, Chase's crotch smoothes over. The arms that are sewn to its sides jerk and twitch.

Janet turns to the sheet with her favorite character on it. "Did that hurt," she asks.

'Akira' looks frantic and gestures with her arms all while trying to tell her something.

"I'm sorry. I can't hear you. Your mouth has been sewn shut." She points to the dummy. "Are you okay?"

Resigned, 'Akira' deflates and nods. "Did that hurt?" The pillow case shakes her head. "Okay, good."

She turns back, all the needles jump back to the clerk. Janet gives the body a good look. The dummy is all sewn together including the legs.

As Janet admires Celeste's handiwork, the dummy vibrates as much as it can. Behind her, the anime girl is livid with arms flailing.

She looks over at Celeste. The seamstress' face shows no emotion or much of anything, "Ready?" Janet nods and hugs the cloth effigy. She finds that this time there is something different. Her head is in Akira's chest. Janet wants to ask about this, but this is the only way to get Chase to calm down.

Sure enough, the girl on the sheet blushes and melts into the hug. Seeing the arms drift down to her sides, Celeste reaches around Janet to pull the five needles out of the dummy. In turn, Janet feels the movement and breaks the embrace.

Together, they move the cloth and place it back on the cloth mannequin. "You look so adorable." Janet admires her pillow before continuing, "For the moment, you still have movement in your eyes. Once we re-attach you to your body they will be locked. So don't close your eyes. I want you to see my room."

Celeste is quick on the draw with the same iron from before. Swiping it all around, the painting on the pillow case disappears returning to its original white. Once all color is gone, she lifts the cover off to reveal the blushing mech pilot pillow.

"She's perfect, Celeste. You are so amazing! I think she's even better than the other ones. But one question, why is she so much taller than me?"

Expressionless she says, "Height is harder to remove and replace after the change. It messes with the body ratios."

"Oh, that makes sense, I guess." Janet tucks the pillow under one arm and heads toward the door. Before leaving she turns back, "I suppose I should pay before taking my treasure home, huh?"

"Indeed." The two make their way to the counter where money is exchanged and Janet races home. Adrenaline enables her to jerk the door open to the first notes of Fugue in D Minor.

Celeste walks to the chair and speaks again, "Since you two are satisfied, as per our contract, you remain here until we change the decor again. Enjoy your vacation, Mister and Missus Walters." She finishes zipping the zipper closed removing the last bits of humanity from them, for now.