The Joneses - Presets 22-30

The next morning, Mr. Jones wakes his wife by pointing the Universal Remote at her and hitting ‘Restore’.  The years return to her swiftly, familiar wrinkles returning to her face even as her hair streaks with grey.

Mrs. Jones moans disappointedly.  “Oh, I can’t say I care for all these creaky bones after a night like that.”

Mr. Jones chuckles.  “You were quite vigorous.  Wore me entirely out - I should be the one complaining of tired bones, not you.”

“Perhaps we both should try it, then.”

Mr. Jones knots his necktie with long-familiar motions.  “Perhaps.  But not now.  Work calls, as always.  Have a nice day at the shop, dear.”

Mrs. Jones creaks out of bed and totters over to her husband to give him a hug and a kiss before he goes.  “Have a nice day, yourself.”

“As long as the TPS reports get done on time, I shall.”

“Don’t be too hard on your underlings, dear.”

“I just wish they could get the cover pages right.  Is that so much to ask?”

“Of course not, dear.”

Once her husband has gone, Mrs. Jones walks over to the remote.  Would it really hurt to be just a little younger for the day, she wonders.  Before she knows it, she is already at Preset 5.  She poses in front of the mirror, turning back and forth.

“Oh, they’d notice this much younger for sure.  Pity.”

She hits ‘Restore’ once again, sighs, and starts her day.  She’s thankful for the half-pot of coffee waiting for her in the kitchen, and sips it slowly over breakfast.  The remote is never far from her mind. At the shop, the other salesladies notice her odd behaviour, and try to draw her out on it.  Mrs. Jones smiles, and shakes her head.  “Thoughts of spring,” is all she says.

By closing time, she’s feeling jittery but decides to forge ahead.  She stops her manager just as she’s about to leave.  “Margaret, can I have a word?”

“Sure, Linda.  What’s up?”

“I’d like to take a few days off, for... personal reasons.”

“Sure, it’s quiet and some of the younger girls could use the hours.  How long?”

“Through Sunday?” Linda asked tentatively.

“I’ll pencil it in.  Thanks for asking, most of the young’uns would just disappear and call later if at all.”

Linda looks shocked.  “I’d never do that to you!”

“I know.  And that’s why you can have the week, and as much more as you need.  Is there a problem?”

“N... no, not a problem.  Maybe... an opportunity?”

“You and that husband of yours work entirely too hard.  See if you can’t get him to take some time off, too.  You two should have more fun.”

Linda smiles and her eyes light up.  “That sounds perfect.  Now if only I can convince Steven.”

Back at home, Linda finds a message from her husband on their answering machine.  Working late again.  She isn’t surprised, the days reports are due have always been busy ones for him.  So she digs through the pantry to find something nice that she can make for dinner, that will keep well in the oven until her husband comes home.

Once the meal is cooked, eaten, and cleaned up after, Linda looks at the clock and sighs.  It’s barely even six, and Mr. Jones isn’t likely to be home for several hours yet.  She can’t stand it any longer.  She leaves a note on the kitchen table, telling Mr. Jones where his dinner is (the oven) and where his wife is (the bedroom).

She finds that trying to aim the remote at herself is quite inconvenient while she’s also reading the controls, but eventually realizes that aiming at her left hand works just as well.

Then she tries to figure out how to go directly to a preset.  There are so many of them, and the only buttons she’s sure she understands are channel-up and channel-down.  So she calls her daughter.

After a bit of chit-chat about their respective days, Linda gets to the point.  “We’ve tried out a few of the presets.  Eighteen was... fun.”

“Didn’t really want to hear that, Mom.  Can I possibly persuade you to stop experimenting?”

“Of course not.  Not after the night I had last night.  My goodness.”

“Still not wanting to hear about that.”

“Fine.  Is there any way to go directly to a preset, rather than just up and down?”

“Well...  We’ve got a few ways, but it’s a bit fiddly and...  You’ve used ‘Restore’, right?”

“Yes, just this morning.  Oh, and a few days ago when I accidentally used it on your Dad.”

“Right.  It turns out that ‘Restore’ works both ways.  It pops you back to whatever preset you had the last time you were restored.”

“Oh!  Well, that’s not too bad.  So we can work our way through the list, a bit at a time.  Thank you.”

Stacy sighs heavily down the line.  “Don’t blame me if you don’t like what you find in there.  Well, the ones after thirty, anyway.  Up to that point it was like that when we got it.”

“Oh, surely it’s nothing that terrible.”

“I swear, I’m going to leave her like this for a week.  She did this on purpose.”

“What was that, dear?”

“Nothing, Mom.  Just... try not to think less of us.”

“Stacy, sweetie.  I never could.”

“I hope so.”

Thus reassured, Linda starts working her way up the presets once more.  She takes her time, posing in front of the mirror after each change, trying to spot the differences.  A shallower wrinkle here, a few less strands of grey there.  And after about preset 4, substantially fewer aches and pains, which are quite the relief to lose.

Linda stops at the same 21 she’d reached last night, and poses in her much-too-skimpy outfit.  She shakes her head, and is quietly glad that this wasn’t Stacy’s idea.

Linda next tests the Restore button, popping back and forth between her old, careworn body and the bigger-chested, skimpy-clothed one.  Once reassured that it does work as her daughter described, and confident that she understands it, she waits.  She wants to share the changes with her husband.

“Where is he?  Bother.  We’ll miss our shows.  Wait a minute...”

Linda skips out to the living room, and is blissfully unaware of the show she gives to passers-by while she leans over and figures out how to navigate the listings, and set up recordings.  Still, as her daughter had promised, it proves a simple process once she’s done it a few times.  She rechecks the listings and can see the recording icon next to their shows.

“Well.  That’s TV settled for the night.  Now what to do?”

She points the remote at herself.  “Maybe just one more...”

Preset 22 changes the skimpy clothing to something Linda considers a bit more acceptable.  It’s still sexy, and cut too short for her tastes, but it doesn’t feel like she’s trying to emulate a street-walker any more.  Her chest looks bigger than before, even bigger than preset 21.  She feels warm, and fans herself idly while she waits.

Linda peeks into the kitchen.  Still no Steven.  The siren call of the remote is hard to ignore, and soon she has it pointing at herself once more.  Up one to 23, and Linda squeaks with alarm.  She’s naked, and the living room drapes are open!

When she arrives in the bedroom, she’s panting, and not just from the exertion.  Every move she makes with this new body feels so... so...  She stares at her reflection, thoughts lost.  She has only ever seen such a sexy looking woman once before, when she discovered Steven’s cache of girlie magazines.  She’d been put off by the fact he had them, but curiosity had led her to at least flip through the stack.  The women on the covers were curvy and chesty in ways that she knew she never could be.  She’d been a little jealous, but reassured herself that it was mostly airbrushing that made their skin so perfect.

Linda preens in front of the mirror as she remembers those covers.  She looks better than any of them, as far as she can tell.  Bigger boobs, plump lips, round curves, gorgeous waves of blonde hair, and truly flawless skin.  She can feel herself getting aroused by her own reflection..

“Oh, Steven, why aren’t you home yet?”

Linda looks at the clock.  Is it really only just going on seven?  Waiting for Steven like this is going to be sheer torment, so she reaches for the remote.  ‘Restore’.

Linda sighs, and settles onto the bed, clothed once again, grey, old and creaky.  The fire in her belly banks itself, reducing to mere embers of its former heat.  But it doesn’t go away, not quite.  The memory of how she’d looked, how she’d felt... she can’t shake that.

“What is wrong with me?” she whispers to herself.  “Would I rather be number 23, and look like I came right out of a girlie magazine, or Linda Smith, aging salesclerk.”

When she puts it that way, there is only one answer.  She points the remote at herself, and hits ‘Restore’.

Linda stands before the bedroom mirror, posing, naked.  “Hello,” she says, in a clear, sweet voice that Linda had never heard from herself before. “I’m Linda.  No, that’s not right.  This isn’t a Linda.  This is...”

She runs her hand through the waves of blonde hair that preset 23 has given her.  “Honey?  Yes, I like that.  Hi, cutie.  I’m Honey, and I like to...”

Linda’s eyes go wide. Was she really just about to say that?  “I am Honey, and I like sex.  No, I love sex, I crave sex.  Stephen, where are you?”

Linda steps away from the mirror, backing up all the way to the bed.  She tries to ignore her body, but as she slumps backward onto the bed, she knows it’ll be a losing battle.  Her wish to wait for Stephen to explore this new form wars with what her body is demanding from her.

She scoops up the remote, and her finger moves toward ‘Restore’, but stops.  She can’t do it.  “Not creaky old Linda.  There must be something else...”

Preset 24 is the same body, with the same demands.  For a moment Linda is relieved that her body isn’t betraying her will even worse.  Then she notices the ‘clothes’.  Straps of leather that don’t even come close to adding up to a dress, or much of anything else but an excuse to show off her body.  Linda stands again, and returns to the mirror, remote in hand.  She stares at herself, open-mouthed.

She would never ever wear such a thing as Linda.  It covers none of her private parts, and instead artfully frames them.  She feels even more exposed than she had been when she was naked in the living room, earlier.  Heat flushes her cheeks, and she looks away from the mirror.

“I’m straight.  Why am I so...  No.  Linda is straight.  Honey...”  She looks at the mirror once more, and traces the straps with a fingertip.  “Honey likes this.  A lot.  And Honey isn’t going to wait for a man.”

Another touch on the remote, and the leather straps web their way down her arms and legs.  At her wrists, ankles and neck are heavy bands of leather, with sturdy D-rings.

Linda hooks her finger through one of the metal rings at her neck, staring at Honey in the mirror.  She gives it a tug.  Solid.  “If this was tied to something, I’d be helpless.  Does Honey like being helpless?”

Honey does, and finds out how much as preset 26 adds long heavy bars connecting her wrists to her neck, and spreading her legs wide.  She struggles against the bonds, panting with arousal.  Her grip on the remote nearly slips, and she hobbles over to the bed so she can drop it onto the soft surface.  It lands facing her, and she can see her name across the top.  ‘Linda “Honey” Jones’

“I am Honey,” she says firmly, and the name changes again.  ‘Honey Jones’.

It takes a little wiggling, but she manages to touch the channel button once more.  Her leather outfit is replaced by a solid black PVC one, shiny and squeaky.  Her arms are folded back on themselves, her hands pressed against her clavicle.  The PVC is sucked so tight against her skin it has formed a vacuum seal, she cannot move her hands, just waggle her elbows a bit.

Honey tries to get up, but soon realizes her legs are pinned in the same way.  She is quite stuck, barely able to move about, unable to touch herself where she desperately wants to.  Rolling over and rubbing herself against the bed provides scant relief, but it’s all she has.

After half an hour of torment, Honey finally hears Mr. Jones enter the house.  Linda’s fantasy comes crashing around her ears.  She is mortified at the thought of Steven finding her like this, but she’s helpless to change it.

He eats his dinner quietly, she can barely hear the scrape of knife on plate.  Too soon, she hears the creak of his chair as he gets up, his steps on the floorboard approaching the room.

“Hi, honey, I’m... Wow.  Linda?”

Linda nodded, face bright crimson.  “Yes,” she squeaked.

“What did you do?”

Linda angled her head toward the remote.  “I got curious.  I’m sorry.”

Steven picks up the remote, and aims it at his wife.  “Preset 29?  You have been busy.  But why does it say ‘Honey Jones’?”

“That’s what I named this body.  Honey.  I don’t feel like a Linda.  I don’t know if I want to be Linda any more.”

“Oh.  What... what does Honey want, then?”

“Honey wants to be fucked like a whore.  I want you so bad it hurts.”

Steven’s eyes go wide at his wife’s language, then he grins.  “You don’t have to ask twice.”  He strips out of suit, tie, shirt and shorts, tearing off two buttons in his haste.  

He approaches his wife, and starts to laugh.  “There’s just one problem.  You’re kind of covered up.”

Honey pants, “Use the remote.”

Steven scoops it up from his heap of discarded clothing.  “Up or down?”

“Honey says up...  Oh my!”

Steven’s jaw drops.  The bondage gear is gone, but ‘Honey’ is even more helpless.  Her arms and legs are gone, leaving little rounded nubs in their place.  Not even a scar, it is as if she’d been born without limbs.  It makes her breasts even more prominent, as if they needed the help.

“Oh, honey.  Are you OK?”

Honey squirms on the bed.  “I will be if you stop talking and start... Oooh, yes.  Oh!”