Chapter XVIII

The amount of concentration required for Cecelia to operate her nifty autopilot system exhausted her slowly, wearing at her energy reserve like a rasp file wears at wood. En route to El Paso, Cecelia pulled over in the middle of nowhere to a seventy-five mile-per-hour highway where everyone drove around ninety, her secret optic swiveling to watch the traffic fly by. The autopilot had made her feel, maybe counterintuitively, disconnected to it all. She didn’t feel closer to her truck but farther from it. After all, both the truck and Cecelia were objects. They could communicate, but they could not empathize or even have emotions. Just like her GMC, Cecelia was inanimate... but unlike her GMC, she was also lost in thought.

A little run of transformations would be nice, commented Cecelia internally. Her eye rotating the other direction, she noticed a few cows roaming the vast pasture, their barn a ways off. She’d half a mind to join them, but decided against it since abandoning her truck would be too risky and there was always the potential of a farmhand noticing a random woman somehow going bovine. Sighing, the seat cover liquefied onto the seat bottom as a black clay, drawing up and out into the truck’s owner. Her autopilot apparatuses melted too, and Cecelia collected them through the soles of her boots, leaving no trace of the haphazardly constructed motors. She then smiled and willed some focus into the Sierra’s chairs, fusing them together as they darkened to an almond brown. The large, thick mass became much softer, settling into an exceptionally cushy couch that could ‘eat’ whoever sits on it. Cecelia finished it with a lap safety belt, which she fastened before heading off in the direction she came with a course for home.

Δ

Kahri’s prediction was met when she opened Cecelia’s front door; nobody seemed to be home.

“Okay Ceece, I’ll play your little game,” she announced to the hallway after about a minute of trying to find the hidden changeling.

“What if I am a little game?” responded a phantom voice from the left. Kahri made her way to the living room, a space notably larger than the family room, and started sleuthing for anything out of the ordinary. “A little game, huh... well...” It caught her eye just then. “Aha! You never had a Wii!”

A few seconds of silence passed, then water started running from the Wii’s CD slot like a faucet. A small puddle formed on the carpet, though it quickly wriggled itself free of the floor’s fibers and filled out into Cecelia’s fit frame. It added more and more details until it was sufficiently defined, at which point she grabbed the stray Wii console. Taking a bite, the spongy texture and sugary icing of a cake was revealed. “I see you found me... want a piece?”

Kahri was awestruck. “Uh... how did ya...? The Wii wasn’t originally a cake...”

“I transformed it just before I had a bite. It’s vanilla,” stated Cecelia plainly.

“Well, uh... I’m a little full. Sorry. Another time though.”

“It’s all good. But, I am warning you, I can make some tantalizing cakes.” Transforming the game console into a round board, Cecelia arced on top of it as she set it down, first shaping herself into a square devil’s food cake then proceeding to morph into a round Bundt cake form. The donut-like dessert towered into a white wedding cake with sugar pearls and a fondant flower, only to collapse and become a cherry cheesecake oozing with sticky red syrup.

Blushing and giggling, Kahri lifted the board to her eye level, but it melted out from between her hands. Cecelia sculpted herself from the creamy deluge with a grin. “Still don’t want a taste?” she taunted.

“You’re quite the... baker, Cici, but ion know ‘bout eating you.”

“Ha, I know about eating me. I’m delicious. But I wanted to ask you something else too... wanna go for a drive?”

“That’s more like it. Hey... if you can, could you be somethin’ classic? I’d love to drive a classic car.”

Cecelia put her fingers to her chin. “I’m gonna need more than just ‘classic car’ to go from here,” she chuckled.

“Alright... I got it.”

The two headed to the garage, where Cecelia took her keys off the hook and backed her Mercedes out onto the driveway behind her work truck. Parking, she reentered the garage and closed the door. “Promise me one thing with this,” she said to Kahri.

“Yeah?”

“Don’t scratch me, or any cars that aren’t me.”

She scoffed. “Deal.”

With that, Cecelia drove all her focus into the shift. Her hands and feet cracked with four loud <POP>s into thick rubber tires sitting on whitewall tires with red and chrome rims. She slammed herself to the concrete below her, spreading her limbs as they became axles. By now she was quivering as if she’d just completed a strenuous workout, but in reality she was trying to suppress most of the pleasure that threatened to derail her changes. She let a moan escape her as her sex folded over and over on itself, filling out into a well-oiled differential. Then her torso, neck and head exploded outward into a long, wide rectangular shape, the whole frame coloring itself an illustrious rouge within a second. Next, the frontal end lowered with the weight of a motor, and Cecelia’s weight would increase further as she worked rapidly on her form, from the leather seats to the many chrome accents to the coupe doors. Mirrors grew from the windshield once Cecelia had conjured it, while further back, her convertible roof and spare tire materialized in her gigantic trunk. “I love this part,” she stated before stretching her mouth into a blindingly silver bumper and combining her nostrils into an upper grille. Her eyes shut, leaving turn signals and two pairs of headlights present when they ‘opened’. Cecelia added some final details, like taillights, door handles and a hood ornament to complete her opulent Cadillac look.

Kahri couldn’t be more giddy. As a pair of keys extended from the steering column, she made herself comfortable on the wide, plush leather seat. Once she was in position with the mirrors properly adjusted, she gripped the key and attempted to crank, but Cecelia stopped her.

“Hey! One,” she started, “you don’t have the garage door open. And two—”

“Yaaah! ... oh, that’s erm, right, you’s not a real car...”

Cecelia felt a rush of excitement at her friend’s words. “Mhm... but when we get on the road, you won’t remember that.”

“Uh-huh...” Kahri opened the garage door and returned to her seat.

“The second thing I was gonna say is you have to tap the gas a little as you start me. I’m carbureted, so I need something to feed me the fuel. If you want I can just—”

“No, no I can do it. You’re... you’re just my Cadillac. Nothin’ else. Just a really nice classic car I bought at auction last summer.” The shock absorbers briefly vibrated.

“Yeah, yep... I’m just a... just a beautiful Caddy...” Cecelia replied, her intake valves fluttering.

“Ima call you Noelle.”

Following Noelle’s roaring ignition, she and Kahri backed out of the driveway and sped off into the sunset.

The only real danger here is someone mistaking Cecelia for a real cake... but from Cecelia’s point of view, that would simply be bonus points.