Chapter VIII    


    Cecelia had folded her legs into a triangular stand with her rectangular desk top compressed into a small mirror glass. “It burns some energy,” she explained to Kahri through illustrious, reflective lips, “but all I have to do is think of what I want to be and my body will obey.”

    “That’s a... that’s a very nice makeup mirror... it’s quite realistic too...” Kahri stammered, examining Cecelia’s perfect wooden detail. She extended a finger and slid it along the bezel of her glass, receiving the smooth touch of a fine woodcraft. In response to her friend’s slithering stimulus, Cecelia let out a petite whimper, noting to Kahri that her receptiveness to contact increases as her form simplifies. “Erm, sorry, I-I can’t directly control my sensitivity. It goes down the longer I stay in one form though.”

    Curiously, Kahri lifted Cecelia, spurring a shaken sputter from the small beauty tool. “Wow, I have uh... I’m feeling really good over here...” she admitted. “A-actually just put me down... I shouldn’t be doing this now I-I’m really hammered.” At that, Cecelia’s observer bent down and gently set her on the fuzzy white carpet where she constructed skyward and into her human form without a hitch.

    Kahri inspected the reformed woman in front of her as if to verify that she’d completely reverted from being a makeup mirror. “S-so... you can be... you just...”

    “I take the shape of whatever I guide my mind into envisioning, or whatever my—”

    “You’re... you’re like a shapeshiftah!” beamed Kahri. “That’s amaaazing, how did you learn to do all this?!”

    “Well, I...”

    “No, no, tell me later girl, I wanna see what you can do! Can you be a... a cute puppy for me?” she requested, encouraging Cecelia to morph. Bending down to all fours and sprouting fur all over, her body waned, eventually mimicking a young golden retriever. Impressed and elated, Kahri gave the new canine a few ear scritches. “Who’s a good girl? You are, Cici, aren’t you? Yes you are, oh yes you are!”

    Regrowing into human form, Cecelia halted Kahri as she was about to utter another suggestion. “There is one thing I’d like to show you,” she started. “I just discovered this power, but I think I can transform other things too.”

    “REALL—”

    “I think,” emphasized Cecelia as she led her friend to the kitchen. Acquiring a bottle of Jack Daniel’s from the liquor counter she assembled, she focused intently, sensing the increasing activity inside and out the object in her hand. She felt it soften, stretch, and round out, the complexion of the glass turning from crystal clear to emerald green as Kahri viewed in awe. Inside the bottle, she sloshed the whiskey around until it dimmed to a red deeper than the Pacific, while the bottle’s label brightened up to a white with minimal gold logos and text.

    Kahri placed her hand on the former whiskey bottle and observed its texture, noticing the reconditioned glass and paper hadn’t lost any integrity across the change into an everyday bottle of wine. The textures were preserved. The hardness remained. Even the sound of her nail clinking against the bottle’s base was accurate.

    “You are something else, Cecelia... I can’t tell you how starstruck I am. I only wish you’d-a told me sooner! My best friend can be anything she wants... she could be... Cici, try being a black girl like me!”

    With a smile, Cecelia set her freshly prepared wine bottle back down on the counter and rolled her shoulders. Her body... her body didn’t change at all. “Uh...”

    “Cici?”

    “I...” Cecelia snapped her eyes shut and focused on the form of a curvaceous, pillowy woman of color, expecting her skin to ripple and transform as her body redefines itself. However, Cecelia only shifted in her imagination. “What the... I... can’t!”

    “What’s wrong?”

    “I don’t know Kahri, I’ve been African-Americans before, and it’s only a human-to-human transition...”

    “Could you try being... uh, that Latina maid from earlier...?” proposed Cecelia’s companion, stoking a roiling sensation throughout the shapeshifter’s torso. But the feeling was only placebo, for once again, no physical changes occurred on Cecelia.

    “I... I can’t...” Now seriously worried, Cecelia’s voice began wavering as her eyes opened and locked into Kahri’s, despair building in her gaze. “I can’t shift... why can’t I shift?!”

    Kahri rested a palm on her shoulder, her fingers traveling along Cecelia’s expensive shirt. “Don’t worry,” she consoled, “you... might just be a lil tired. You did get pretty tipsy tonight, so how ‘bout you sleep it off and try again tomorrow, ‘kay?”

    Cecelia nodded, softly closing her eyes as she attempted once again to transform into another woman, to no avail. Kahri was quick to catch on. “Cici.”

    “Okay... I’ll try again tomorrow.”

    “And you won’t try again tonight?”

    “I think I-I’ll just sleep as an object tonight.”

    “That gonna hurts in the morning?”

    “N-no, the change back is like a wake-up stretch.”

    “Okay. I think I’m gonna leave. If you need me, I’m right here.”

    A faint grin emerged on Cecelia’s mug. “You’ve always been.”

    “That’s what friends do!” replied Kahri, smiling with her friend as she wrapped her in a trusting hug.

    “You take care of yourself, Kahri.”

    “You take care of yourself. Don’t be gettin’ into trouble with those powers of yours, as fantastic as they are.”

    “I won’t. Especially after today’s... housekeeper incident.”

    “Bye Ceece,” Kahri snickered as she left the house.

     

    Δ

     

    It was past one in the morning, and time doesn’t move backward. Cecelia meandered around her dwelling as she tried to solve the mystery on her hands. Here and there she would close her eyes, zero her focus, and attempt a transformation. She couldn’t help it if she tried, but on the fourth failed attempt, she concluded that she should sober up and retry sometime else. I did promise Kahri... ugh, I need to rest.

    Cecelia knee herself well enough to figure that in a state like this, sleeping in her bed would be too warm for comfort; she’d lose consistency from her own heat, causing her temperature to increase, causing additional loss of consistency and continuing the vicious cycle. Thankfully for her, there were always the trusty fridge and garage for her to catch z’s in.

    Considering her options, Cecelia’s go-to alternate sleep routine was to fill the vacant space in the left half of her garage by duplicating her car’s form. Though, bearing in mind her intoxication, Cecelia couldn’t trust that she could be both intricately complex and sufficiently stable for the time being. And she didn’t exactly want to transform into a tool or a lawn chair or... really anything that would belong in the garage.

    So she mentally rustled through the fridge. Shapeshifting into cheese was as simple as it was pleasurable, but that pleasure was a side effect she was for once not in the mood for. Milk, half-and-half, iced tea, and seltzer get scratched off her list too because she wanted to keep her solidity. Transforming into meat had never been her thing, and jellies... any jelly would probably amplify tomorrow's hangover.

    Then Cecelia physically opened the fridge to be faced with a case of strawberries. Perfect.

    Parting the halves of the clamshell container, Cecelia haphazardly extended her torso while simultaneously condensing herself into a much smaller size. She managed to climb onto the shelf holding the berries after a lengthy affair of bending and contortion. Her elongated left arm being the only part of her outside the refrigerator, she grasped one door shelf, then the other, in order to properly close herself within the cold environment. The LED lights faded out.

    Navigating solely by touch as she shrank further, Cecelia crept to the side of the strawberry case and rolled onto her side. She absorbed her clothing into her body and began to adhere her limbs: her forearms slowly bonded with her thighs, her feet gradually combined, and her elbows stuck to her torso.

    Cecelia giggled to herself at the twinges of arousal spurred by her buttocks melding together as they took on a red hue. The vibrant coloration crawled across Cecelia’s malleable flesh, cultivating diminutive golden seeds in its wake. Her hands receded into her knees, which themselves attached to her shoulders. Her breasts dwindled into nonexistence, their milk being absorbed through Cecelia’s claylike physique and repurposed as sweet juice. On the inside, the structure of a ripe fruit was building while her head sank into a crater formed by the rounding of her body. Her head liquefied fully into a uniform slimy goo, filling in the crater and providing a pink gradient from the red of her sides to the white of her top. From that white top grew Cecelia’s short blonde hair, except that hair was quick to bunch up and style into the proper berry style: a little crown of green leaves.

    Cecelia extruded the last of the crucial seeds onto her ruby skin, tapering her butt and feet into the proper pointed shape while wiping away any human outlines or creases she had remaining on her strawberry form. She elasticized her way into the pen of fruits just like herself, spooling out a leaf to click the clamshell lid closed, then she wriggled into comfortability and tried to nod off.


 

 
Cecelia deserves a good night’s rest after all the afterparty chaos. As a strawberry, she looks quite sweet — what a delicious little fruit.