Uzzi rose with his alarm, to find no warm spot where Charlie had been sleeping beside him.  It took him a few minutes to remember where she was.  Inside Artie, finally getting a proper night’s sleep.  He threw on a bathrobe and headed out to ask Artie to bring her back.

Uzzi stared at the couch in confusion.  No Artie.  “Need coffee.”  He shambled to the kitchen, and soon had a steaming cup in hand.  After he’d drunk half of it, he returned to study the couch.  It looked like Artie, except there was no head.  And there was a very peculiar pillow that looked a lot like Mel’s breasts.

Remembering what Shirley had done to Mel the night before, Uzzi started to worry.  “What on earth did you two get up to?”

Uzzi considered the matter, and decided the best course of action was to free Artie.  That much he recalled how to do.  He pulled the couch out from the wall, and found the collar’s buckle in back.  Opening that left the collar free in his hands.  After a few worried heartbeats, he saw the leather start to recede.

A minute later, Artie and Charlie were sitting side by side on the couch.  Charlie stretched and got up.  “I feel amazing.  How long was I in there?”

“All night,” said Uzzi.  “You needed the sleep.  But now we have to get going.”

Artie sat on the couch and watched them prepare for the day.  It knew there was something it had to deal with, but it was having a difficult time remembering how limbs worked.

Artie staggered to his feet as Uzzi and Charlie were heading for the door.  “Wait!” he croaked.

Charlie turned to look at him. “What?”

“What about Mel and Shirley?”  Artie pointed to the torso lying on the couch.

Charlie cursed.  “We have to go.”  She stepped up to Artie, putting her hands on his shoulders and looking him straight in the eyes.  “Whatever needs to be done, I know you can do this.  You might not think so, but you can.  Got it?”

Artie nodded, and watched them go.  “Got it,” he murmured softly.

His first test was to poke Mel and Shirley with a cushion.  When it did not vanish into them, he breathed a soft sigh of relief.  He picked the torso up, grunting slightly at the weight.  It felt solid enough.  Better yet for his hopes, he noticed Mel’s nipples crinkling and hardening.  So there was someone in there, who could feel...

Artie blushed to realize where one of his hands was gripping, and he quickly set the torso down again.  “Okay.  Right.  You’re alive, that’s a good start.  Now I just need to visualize you two separating.”

He approached them, hands out... then hesitated.  His mental image wasn’t of Mel and Shirley.  It was of a latex toy he’d seen that resembled the two.  Every time he glanced at them, that image came back.  He growled at his traitorous brain, and went to the kitchen to eat some cereal.  He studiously ignored the couch and its passenger, and tried remembering all the lazy mornings he’d spent with Shirley.

As soon as Artie returned to the couch, that damned toy was the first thing in his mind once more.  He groaned, and then went in search of a blanket.  He draped it over the torso to hide the profile.  Then he went back to Mel and Shirley’s room for a few pillows to hide the profile and make it look more like there was a woman there on the couch, sleeping under the blanket.

Only when he could fix Shirley firmly in his mind’s eye did Artie dare to reach under the blanket and touch the torso.  He pushed that image as firmly as he could, and soon Shirley was sitting up, pulling the blanket around her.

“Hey Artie.  Uh...  What’s going on?  Oh right, Mel was my boobs and then got her revenge.  What was all that about?”

“The collars got too close,” said Artie.  “I’m just glad you’re okay.  Um, where’s Mel?”

Shirley dumped the blanket off, and found Mel in her lap, or at least a part of Mel’s torso.  “Come on Mel, time to come out...”

Both of them watched and worried, but soon the torso started to grow.  It acquired a head, and Mel grinned up at them.  “Hey, Shirley.  Didja have fun with me?”

Shirley gave her a watery smile.  “Yeah.  Kinda screwed up when we got home, and got sucked into you.”

“Cool!” enthused Mel.  “Wait, why are you two upset?”

“The collars had some kind of adverse reaction,” Shirley explained.  “We all got stuck.  We might have been stuck forever, but it looks like we got lucky.  Artie, where’s the leather collar?  We should keep them far apart.”

Artie hunted around, and found the leather collar on the side table where Uzzi had left it.  He looked at it, sighed softly, then went to the kitchen and set it on top of the refrigerator.  “There.  That should keep it away from your collar.”

Shirley frowned.  “Where is my collar?  Did it fall into the couch?”

They spent a little while searching for it, then Artie got all flustered at standing beside two naked women and asked plaintively if they could at least put robes on.  Mel giggled and agreed, and Shirley went with her.  When Shirley shrieked, Artie dashed into their room.

“What’s wrong?”

Shirley pointed at a robe piled in front of the mirror.  “Mel vanished.  I tossed a robe to her and... foop, gone.”

“Was she still wearing the collar?” asked Artie.

Shirley shrugged.  “Not that I saw, but still...”  She approached the robe, and touched it gently.  “Out you come... woah!  Hey, Mel.”

Mel tumbled out of the robe and onto the carpeted floor.  “Uh.  Hey.  What happened?”

“Don’t touch anything,” said Shirley.  “Let me look at your neck.”  Shirley groaned at what she saw.  A band of the skin of Mel’s neck had turned to pink latex, as if the collar had become part of her.

They suggested various visualization exercises to get the collar to come free, but it refused to separate from Mel.  Worse, any time she touched something smaller than her, she melted away into it.  Wearing clothes was impossible.

Artie suggested a different tack.  Mel could only merge with one thing at a time, so he suggested she try only merging like Shirley had the first time, leaving her face exposed.  That only partially worked, as it left Mel unable to speak.  While Artie was chewing on that puzzle, Shirley worked with Mel to get her only partially merged with a pillow.  After a few more tries, Mel ended up with her upper body sticking out of a pillow, only vanished from the waist down.  Better yet, she was able to handle clothes like that, and put a bra and a blouse on.

Shirley set her on the end of the bed and grinned.  “Like this, I could almost imagine you’re normal again.”

“Maybe you could merge only a finger or toe?” suggested Artie.

Mel shrugged.  “I guess.  This was tricky enough.  I can manage without legs for a bit, and try your idea later, okay?”

Shirley hugged Mel tight.  “Okay.  We’ll get through this somehow.”

Once Shirley and Mel had eaten, the three of them sat together on the broken down couch.  Shirley put her hand on Mel’s shoulder.  “Imagine partially emerging from the pillow.”

Mel yipped in surprise as half of her legs appeared.  “I could never do that when you told me.  What did you do?”

They tried a few more times, and found that even partially merged, Mel had no ability to separate herself... but that anyone touching her could do so.  Worse, the moment she was free of the pillow, she immediately vanished into her bra.

Shirley very carefully extracted Mel from her bra, leaving her breasts partially merged with it.  “There.  Mostly human.”

“Sure,” said Mel.  “Until either of you touch me and imagine the wrong thing.  I can’t go out like this.  What if some stranger touches me?   Or worse...” she shuddered.  “What if my ex finds me?  I bet he’d love to turn me into a toy.”

Shirley nodded.  “I’ll have to keep you here as my toy instead, then.”

“Doesn’t Mel have a job?” asked Artie.

Mel shrugged.  “Temp office work.  I’m already fired for being late, but it’s easy enough to get another slot.  Besides, how can I go into an office when I’m likely to get sucked into my chair or keyboard?”

Artie giggled then.  “You should take Shirley up on her job offer.”

Mel turned to her sweetie.  “Job offer?”

Shirley blushed faintly.  “I made twice my usual in tips last night, due to your breasts.  I’d pay you half my tips.”

Mel cooed, and leaned in to kiss Shirley.  “Sounds like my perfect job.  How much did I make?”  When Shirley named the figure Mel’s eyes went wide.  “That’s more than I make temping!  Heck yeah, sign me up for the boobie plan.”

Shirley hugged her tight, and a moment later was holding a pair of breasts embedded in Mel’s bra.  “Um, oops?”

“You heard her,” chuckled Artie.  “I doubt she minds.  Though if it’s like the other times, she’s already mindless.  It’s like the collar is stuck in the second stage behaviour.”

Shirley nodded slowly.  “That makes sense.  You got stuck in the couch, right?”

“Yeah.  I had a month’s worth of fade-away pass in minutes.”

Shirley dumped Mel in Artie’s lap, and dashed off.  Before Artie’s blush had fully bloomed, she was back clutching a slip of paper.  “There’s a warning here, other than the ‘don’t mix magic’ stuff.  If you leave the collar on for more than a month it bonds to the user.  Crap.  It doesn’t say how to reverse that.”

They rescued Mel to tell her the bad news, though she didn’t seem terribly upset.  “Oh no, I’m stuck as my sweetie’s clothes or breasts, whatever she wants to turn me into.  How terrible!”  Mel giggled.  “It may have its downsides, but being your boobs more than balances it out.”

Shirley hugged her tight.  “I’m so glad.  I’ll still call and see what I can do.”

“Don’t worry on my account.  I like being your boob...”  Mel was cut off by her body compressing to a mere pair of breasts once more.  Shirley pulled her top off, and put Mel on.  A little concentration shifted Mel from the bra to her chest.

Artie was blushing, but was still watching avidly.  “Going to keep her like that for now?”

“I have an expensive call to make, and she’ll fuss if she hears how much I’m spending to try to get her free.”

“What call?” asked Artie in confusion.

“The collar guy gave me a number for a spell-breaker.  But... even a consult is ferociously expensive.”

Artie paced nervously while Shirley was on the phone.  Several times he passed through the kitchen and looked longingly at the couch collar.  

Shirley sighed softly as she hung up.  “Okay.  Could have been worse.  He believes that we’ve seen the worst of the interaction between the collars.  So it’s not like letting them touch will make things any worse than they are now.”

“With the bonus that I get to be a full couch,” noted Artie, reaching for the leather collar.

“Yeah, there is that.  He also gave me the name of the company that most likely made the collar.  They may know how to unlock this stage.”

“That’s good, right?”

Shirley sighed, and shook her head.  “They’re particularly exclusive, and don’t like to talk about the failures that ended up in the wild.  I’d need to know someone with real pull to get answers out of them.  And I don’t.”

“Maybe Charlie or Uzzi do?” asked Artie.  “Can I be a couch now?”

Shirley chuckled softly.  “Sure.  I’ll go put some clothes on so Mel doesn’t accidentally touch you.  And write up a note on how to fix things in case she does.”

*** *** ***

Charlie was nonplussed to hear Shirley’s news, but a good night’s sleep had improved her mood substantially.  She still groused about the situation at work, but claimed she was handling it “her way” instead of blowing up.  The grin she got when making that claim made Artie glad she wasn’t directing her attention its way.

Charlie and Uzzi pooled their contacts, and called in a few favours, but didn’t get much.  They found that the collar Shirley had was a bootleg copy of a failed template, one that the company believed had been destroyed.  They were annoyed that it was out in the wild, but unsympathetic to the use of knockoff magic.

Mel took the news well, and made it very clear she was happy to be Shirley’s breasts, or panties, or pretty much anything at all.  She even offered to merge with one of Charlie and Uzzi’s favourite toys.  Uzzi was interested, but a look from Charlie shut the idea down.

Things settled down after that.  Mel stayed close to Shirley when they were home, often merged into her breasts or lingerie.  Shirley’s tips increased even further when she figured out how to use Mel to enhance her breasts and her butt at the same time.

Charlie worried.  Mostly about her job, but she directed her frustrations at Shirley’s treatment of Mel often enough that the Uzzi had to intervene.  He suggested she get another good night’s sleep, and Artie was happy to oblige.

Charlie spent every other night sleeping in Artie for a couple of weeks, and came home at the end of the month with a huge grin on her face.  Thanks to keeping her cool at work, her manager had been very pleased with how she’d done.  He credited all her customer referrals to her, debiting them from Tom’s standing in the competition, and that had left Tom dead last.

It turned out the boss had used the ‘fire the last’ as a motivator, and to see how his team would perform under pressure.  Tom had pissed off enough customers and abused the trust of all his peers, not just Charlie.  As a result, he’d been fired that very day.  Since he was the biggest thorn in Charlie’s side, she was elated at the news, and demanded that Artie leave the couch so she could hug him properly.

Artie had been stuck for a week at that point, but agreed to be set free.  Mel gave him a hug, after Charlie did.  “I missed you, Artie.”

“I’ve been right here...”

“Yeah, but I can’t touch you because of the collar.  It sucks.”

“You know what else sucks?” asked Shirley.  “Not being able to wear my own magic collar.”

Charlie laughed.  “You want to be a toy, too?”

“There’s a particular toy I want to merge with partially.  I think Mel would like that.  I know I do when she does...”  Shirley gave Mel a leer that made the curvy woman blush and grin.

“Maybe if you forced her to merge with the collar, you could wear it?” suggested Artie with a laugh, dismissing the idea almost as soon as he’d voiced it.

Shirley shrugged, and put her hand on Mel’s shoulder.  “Worth a try...”  The pillow Mel had merged to her belly tumbled to the floor, then Mel compressed in Shirley’s hands.  Arms and legs were the first to go, and Shirley carried her to the couch to finish the job.  Mel purred happily as her body dwindled further, first to a bust, then to just a head.  When all that was left was a little bit of neck, she was still purring.

Then there was nothing left but a simple pink collar, sitting in Shirley’s hands.  “Woah.  Maybe this will work after all.”  She unbuckled it... and Mel tumbled out into her lap.

Shirley looked from the collar, to Mel, and back again.  “Holy...  Artie, you’re a genius!”

Mel giggled and danced around, pulling Artie into a big hug and kiss.  “I’m free!  I’m...  Aw nuts, I’m free.  I liked being your toy, Shirley.”

“I’m pretty sure we can arrange for that.  But for now... it’s my turn to be the toy.”

Mel dragged Shirley into their bedroom, and it was several hours before Mel or Shirley were seen again.

When they emerged, Charlie was waiting for them, an unfamiliar, almost tender expression on her face.  “Can I ask a favour?”

Shirley’s eyebrows lifted.  “You’re not one to ask for anything.  So yes, whatever it is you want.”

“I...”  Charlie’s cheeks pinkened slightly, surprising Shirley and Mel further.  “I would like to borrow the collar.  What you just...”

“Oh, right!  Uzzie likes...”  Shirley buried her smirk, trying desperately to keep it to a simple smile.  “Of course.  Important safety tip – keep it away from Artie.  Unless you’d like to be stuck, anyway.”

Charlie shook her head frantically.  “I’ll be careful.”

Shirley popped back into her bedroom, and returned with the collar in hand.  “Here you go.  Have fun!”

Charlie disappeared into her room, with Uzzi following eagerly behind.  He returned a few minutes later, asking for Shirley’s help.

Shirley giggled.  “She merged all the way, didn’t she?”

“Yeah.  How do I get her back to normal?”

“Oh, sweetie.  I’m pretty sure normal’s off the table now.  After the fun Mel and I have had, going back to vanilla just doesn’t feel like an option.  Right sweetie?”

Mel snuggled a little closer against Shirley’s side, and patted the arm of the couch the two of them were lounging on.  “I want to do it while I’m your boobs.  Or other parts.  So... yeah.  Screw normal.”

“That’s not what you... just said,” giggled Artie.  “You’re screwing abnormal.”

Mel and Shirley snickered, then Shirley gave Mel a long, lingering kiss before getting up to help Charlie.  “The trick is to carefully visualize the change before you touch the object.  Helps to be naked and not touching anything else too, or you might end up with merged with your underwear.  Which has its perks too, if you leave your face in the right spot.”

“I heard that!” giggled Mel from the couch.  “We’re trying that next.”

Charlie was more than happy to be rescued from her mistake.  And her next one as well.  Shirley giggled after that.  “Look, it’s almost like you want to be turned into a toy for me to use on someone else.  Just merge yourself with it again, and I’ll be happy to oblige.”

Charlie stared at her open-mouthed.  “You... what?”

Shirley rolled her eyes.  “Oh come on, you’re the one that drove all this poly stuff in the first place.  I’d love to use you on Mel.  Or even Uzzie here, if you’d unbend about that.  Heck, I’d even be game to merge with Uzzi as his breasts or... well, anything else he’s willing to try.”

Charlie looked away.  “I’ll think about it.”

Shirley grinned, and patted the muscular woman’s arm.  “That’s better than the reaction I got last time I asked.  C’mon, let’s get you merged the way you want.  Hold my hand as you try, I’ll see if I can guide you a little.”

That ended up with Charlie melting into Shirley’s hand.  She sighed.  “Okay, one more try.”

“You sure?” asked Uzzie.  “We could have fun with her like that.”

“And if she hates it?”  Shirley willed Charlie free.  It took a little while, and some encouragement from Uzzi before Charlie emerged.

On the next try, Shirley held Charlie’s strap-on, helping to guide the visualization from the other end.  That worked, though Charlie’s blush when she realized just how Shirley’s hand felt was epic.  Shirley gave her a quick kiss on the cheek.  “Once you’re done with Uzzi, come find me to continue our discussion.”

Charlie stammered a non-reply as Shirley skipped out of the room, closing the door behind her.

Shirley hopped onto Artie, and pulled Mel in for a snuggle.  “While those two have their fun, how about we do the same on top of Artie the Smartie here?”

Artie grinned at the name.  “I’d like that.”

*** *** ***

The promised discussion with Charlie didn’t happen that night.  Mel went back to spending most of her time collared, with the main exception being snuggle time with Shirley on the couch.  She was happy to “work” for Shirley, and even more so with her ability to start saving some money.

A couple weeks later Charlie emerged from her bedroom on a Saturday morning to see Shirley juggling something that looked like leather balls.  “Where did those come from?”

“Artie has learned a new trick.  These are all Mel.  Bits of Mel.  To be honest, the best bits.”

“Is that... safe?  She’s in parts!”

Shirley dropped all three balls in between the couch cushions.  A moment later, Mel hopped back out, naked as usual.  She gave Artie a big kiss, then snuggled up to Shirley.  “Thanks, Artie.  That felt amazing.  Think you could put all three in one ball next time?”

“Sounds like fun,” agreed Artie.

Charlie studied the couch.  “You look good.  Happy.  Mel and Shirley are treating you right?”

“Oh yeah.  Remember last night when I wasn’t the couch?”

“I had wondered.”

“Stuck as their pillow.  So nice...” sighed Artie.

Charlie chuckled indulgently.  “I’m glad you three are getting along.  Uh... that’s kind of what I want to talk about.”

Shirley raised an eyebrow.  “Charlie, uncertain?  This is new.  Oh, is this about the pink collar?”

Charlie nodded.  “Yeah.  I want to try it again.  To become part of Uzzi, and let him... do what he wants with you.”

Shirley grinned hugely.  “Aw, but we can’t do it on Artie.”

Artie chuckled softly.  “I’m sure Mel and I can find some way to pass the time.”

Mel giggled giddily and practically dove into Artie.

Shirley stood up, and gave Charlie a hug.  “Thanks.  I know this is hard for you.  If you’re not completely sure...”

“I’m not.  But I want to try it.”

Shirley darted off to her room, and returned with the collar.  She held it out to Charlie.

Charlie took the collar, studying the innocent-looking loop of pink latex in her hands.  “Am I making a mistake?”

“You’re opening a door to a wonderful world.  It’s a weird world, but if Mel wasn’t currently a small leather ball, she’d tell you it’s well worth it.  As do I.  And hey, next time we can have Uzzie merge with you, giving you his...”

Charlie blushed, and then smiled.  “Oh!  That does sound...  You’d like that?  I’ve never figured out why you put up with me.”

“Because Uzzi loves you, and I love him.  And you, to be honest.”  Shirley took Charlie’s hand, and started pulling her toward Charlie and Uzzi’s room.  “This is going to be great.”

And it was.

THE END

PS: They lived happily, weirdly, ever after.