Or, "She Can Be Whatever She Wants"
Commission for bvw1979
This is a side-story to the “What Dreams May Become” series, as specified by bvw1979. Thanks for all the suggestions, bvw – down to the very "she can be" subtitle! I know you've been waiting a while to see all of these TFs in a story, so I hope you enjoy.
For those of you who have never seen Peter Gabriel's "Sledgehammer" video, which is sung in this story, you can view it on YouTube if you're interested: <da:embed id="g93mz_eZ5N4" profile="youtube" width="560" height="315">
The phone rang, and Roman looked surprised. We rarely received phone calls. “Corrie, I need to pause you.”
“Be my guest,” I answered. It was Friday night, and Roman had turned me into a dvd box set of nature specials. I have no idea how he did this, but he was very wrapped up in watching me, so I happily sat inside his dvd player, twirling contentedly.
“Okay, if you need to leave, just put the key under the rock, and I'll pick it up later. Good luck, and thanks for being such great tenants.” Roman clicked down the phone. “Corrie, the Martins are moving out of my parents' house. I need to get over there to get the key back. I'm thinking I clean up a bit too. Even though I'm renting the house, I never did clean out the attic after my parents died.”
“Oh, I had a bunch of stuff I wanted to be this weekend,” I pouted, finding myself back in human form. But I felt...strange. My arm squeaked against my side, and I looked down in delighted shock. “What am I?” I asked, running a plasticy dark hand down my chest.
“You're latex.”
“Only latex?”
“Yup.”
“Why?”
“Because I wanted to do this to you.”
He grabbed my arm and started to roll it up. Yes, he was rolling up my arm towards my neck. “You like?” he asked.
I studied the curlicue that now hung off my shoulder. “Do the other arm too.”
He obeyed. “Sit,” he instructed, and he rolled up my legs next.
“How weird is this?” I giggled. “I'm made of latex! I feel like, I don't know, a roll of thick tape or something!”
“There are so many things I want to do to you,” Roman murmured. He picked me up and began to crush me into a moaning, writhing black ball. He knew all too well that I loved being spherical. “Thanks, Roman. Listen, if I go with you, can you make me into stuff at the house there?”
“Whatever you want, my dear. All weekend. Ah, that Corrie Smyth. How people envy her. After all, she can be anything she wants.”
“Oh, Roman! I could kiss you!” I cried, not that I could as a ball, of course.
“I want you to kiss me all over my body. All at once,” he demanded, and a strange metamorphosis ensued. From my round figure, I was growing larger, but oval. I seemed to be turning reddish, and slightly wrinkly. Roman worked his hands over me, pushing me into some unknown form and making me quiver.
The explosive ending sealed me in this form, and I was lying on the floor, about the size of Roman, who lay down next to me.
“What am I?” I asked, but those very three words answered my question. I had spoken them out of...all of me. I was a huge pair of lips.
“There. Now you can kiss me all at once. You even have some nice red lipstick on you.”
I could feel the giggles surfacing, and Roman placed his hand on me. “No giggles,” he warned with a smirk.
“Come closer,” I said in an enticing voice, and Roman pressed his whole body up against me. I kissed all of him, leaving him in such an embrace that he came up gasping for air.
He looked down at his lipstick-stained body. “Great. Now I need a shower.”
Back to humanity, I followed my husband into the bathroom. “Wanna be something while I wash?” he offered as he undressed.
“Yes,” I said without pause. “Remember you made me melting chocolate? I want that again.”
“Well then, into the tub with you!”
Ah, the feeling of change! I stood there, and, at the perfect speed, my flesh was becoming chocolate. For a moment, I stood tall, hardening into a fine statue. My lips froze, cutting off my moans of pleasure, and I shuddered until I was incapable of movement. Then, I was melting, losing all resemblance of a form until I sloshed into the tub, a delightful cocoa-colored bath.
Roman, meanwhile, had stepped into the shower. “Out of the lipstick, into the chocolate!” he called to me. My surface rippled with my laughs.
When Roman finished and turned off the water, I called, “Come on in me, Roman.”
Roman stepped out of the shower and grabbed a towel. “Hey, try this. I made it you you can solidify a bit. Try to re-form some of yourself.”
“How?”
“Just push yourself into human form.”
Easier said than done, I thought, but he was right. I was able to push myself up, getting back a chocolate head and arms, so I was kind of half a person sticking out of a chocolate puddle.
Roman took on a lascivious look, and he stepped into me, turning white and melting. His upper body now stuck out of the chocolate mass, and he put his odd fluffy arms around me. “I'm made of whipped cream,” he purred in answer to my questioning look.
“And your eyes are cherries?” I asked in amusement.
“Sure are!”
I pushed my chocolate arm straight through his whipped cream chest, and he caved in somewhat. “I was wondering how you even stayed up like that!” I commented.
“Oh, what the hell,” he grabbed at me, pulling me back down into the rest of me, and we both melted into a delicious tubful of chocolate and whipped cream. We swirled around so much that we basically ended up as one light-brown, swiftly-hardening liquid.
Mmm, I bet we're one delicious dessert, Roman pointed out in his thoughts.
I love being things with you, Roman, I added. I really did.
“So, welcome to the house I grew up in.” Roman retrieved the house keys from under a large rock by the front door, and we entered. The house was an unassuming 1940s ranch. It was well-kept up, although the furnishings could have used a bit of updating. I found some of the art on the wall rather annoying, especially the wood-carved wallhangings of the words, “Home”, “Love”, and “Peace”.
I laughed my 'evil' laugh. “Roman, you should turn me into a word and hang me up next to these.”
I fell to the floor and hardened in such a quick rush, I hadn't had time to breathe. A laughing Roman picked me up and showed me off in front of an ornate mirror. Oh, Roman, you're ridiculous! I chided him. I was a wooden carving of the word “word”. Then I shifted into a longer word, “Ridiculous.”
“Yes, that's better. I like you as a bigger word.”
“My big 'R' feels funny where you're holding me,” I commented. “Hey, I'm a talking word now?”
He placed his hand over my features. “Yes, your face is on the top of the 'R', so I guess you're feeling that. Like it?”
“It's actually a very nice form. Could you keep me this way a bit?”
“As 'ridiculous'?”
“Sure. I'm nice and long, and wooden...”
“Which you love.”
“Yup! Wood...not to hard, not too soft...I'm just hard enough.”
“Okay.” He swiped his hand across my face and I kissed at it with my wooden lips. “Let's go upstairs, Mrs. Ridiculous.” Cradling me in his arms, he trudged us up a dusty flight of stairs and we entered the attic. Even to my limited ability, I could smell the mustiness of the room. Boxes upon boxes were piled to the ceiling in some places, and I couldn't imagine how Roman would get through it all.
He set me down on a creaky old table, and I watched him stalk around, surveying the belongings from decades before. Then he walked into an alcove area and pointed out a sink. “You know, to this day, I've considered making this attic into a room. I wonder what it would look like if I put a wall here? That would make this into a bathroom...”
“Turn me into one to find out,” I suggested. Ever since I had seen Roman turn my stepfather into a wall, I secretly ached to see what that felt like.
“You can be whatever you want to be, huh, Corrie? Okay,” he picked me up and placed me where I was to stand as a room divider. “Word to wall. That should be fun.”
My form creaked as I stretched. I was softening while growing in every which way. I got a bit thicker front to back, but I was also getting so tall, and so wide...When I hit the ceiling and side walls at the same time, I toughened into sheetrock. But I could feel that Roman had left me my features, just like he had done to Dave, my stepfather.
“Oh, Roman, this is great! Dave must have loved it!” I yelped. But I noticed that, unlike my stepfather, I could actually push out my face a bit when I spoke. It was almost like one of those horror movies where a face partially comes out of a wall...The idea sounded scary, but apparently Roman appreciated it very much. He came over and nuzzled me like he was a cat. I bet he would be such a handsome cat – I'd have to ask him to become one.
“I still hate Dave, you realize,” Roman muttered, walking through a doorway that had just formed on my side. “Yes, this would be a great room. I really should clear some junk and fix this up. I could use the income.”
So that was one of Roman's income sources. Renting out the house. Made sense.
I observed him working while I reveled in my nice, flat form. We spoke here and there, but Roman basically toiled away, forming a 'junk' pile, which was relatively small, and a 'save' pile, which was relatively large.
“How will you save that all? Where will you keep it?”
He winked at me. “Miniaturize it and bring it home. The perfect solution. And the junk,” he focused on the pile, and it shrank into a small, translucent sphere, which he held up to me. “I think it makes a nice opal.”
I studied the newly-formed stone. It was perfect. “Wow!” I mouthed.
“Another income source. This will fetch a load of money!” he stuck it in his pocket. “I am the most environmentally friendly person in the world. My recycling skills are simply out of this world.”
I started laughing. Laughing when you're a wall feels downright weird. I can't even explain it, except to say that all of you is kind of vibrating...Just weird.
Roman continued to work. At one point he held up a strange metal contraption. “Oh, my God. I forgot all about this!”
“What is that?”
Roman inspected it, a bemused expression on his face. “This is a train track. I made it myself.” As it was circular, he was able to place it around his head.
“Why are you putting it around your head?”
“You really want to know?”
“Uh, yes?”
“Okay. Past story coming. I warned you.” Roman sat down on a tattered old chair. “Back in the '80s, my mother asked me to help out a cousin named Bobby. He was sixteen, and he was talking about killing himself. He said the world was 'boring and unmagical'.”
“You and suicidal people, Roman. They always find you,” I inserted. I wondered how many people he had helped like this.
“Yup. Anyway, my mom thought that my sharing my ability with him would add some 'magic' to his life.”
“And did it?”
“Oh, yeah. He's a billionaire lawyer now with four kids. Once in a blue moon he'll visit and be stuff. Last time he was here I turned him into a sleeping bag. He was really comfortable.”
I cringed. “You used him?”
“Oh, Corrie. You know what it's like being an object. He just needed to be used. And after all, he's my cousin.”
“Younger cousin,” I uttered. It still struck me as a little bit uncomfortable.
“Anyway, the train track. There was this video that came out, called “Sledgehammer”?”
I looked at him blankly.
“By Peter Gabriel?”
“Never heard of him.”
He sighed. “Before your time. Well, I'm more of a classical man myself, but Bobby, my cousin, became obsessed with that video. When I shared my ability with him, the first thing he wanted to be, before anything else, was, well, that video.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Oh, you need to see it. Lots of transformation-like stuff.”
“Okay...”
“Yes, so, we re-enacted it. I had to learn the whole damned song. Anyway, that's what we needed the train track for.” He fingered the metal thoughtfully.
I still didn't understand the connection.
“Here.” Roman pulled over a table so it was eye-level with me. Then he turned into a laptop.
“What are you doing?”
“Letting you watch it on me,” came his voice through his speaker. There were some humming sounds in his machinery. “I'm searching the internet to show it to you...Here. Watch.”
The song was kind of catchy, and I watched the man sing while little trains and planes floated around his head, thus the train track. He became fruit, and clay, and...
“Oh, my God,” I said as it ended. “I want to be ALL of that.”
Roman grew back into a very stunned human being. “You want to re-enact it too?”
God, I sure did. I found myself growing human as I spoke. “I didn't mean now. You have work to do.”
He glanced at his watch. “Well, it is getting late. Maybe we'll do that tomorrow.”
We walked downstairs into the kitchen. The refrigerator was empty, save a box of baking soda. Roman conjured up a pizza from an old napkin, and we ate in silence. His mind was on his work, while mine, as usual, was on transforming.
“Roman, can you make people invisible?” I queried.
He pulled himself from his thoughts. “Well, yes, but...”
“But what? Do it to me!”
“Don't you want to finish your pizza?”
I jumped up from my chair. “No!”
I was queasy, and I gaped at my body. It was growing transparent, but not how I had expected it to. I almost felt like I was bobbing mid-air... “What?” my voice echoed around the room, and I was no more.
“That's how I make you invisible.”
“What happened to me?” my ghostly words came from the empty space that was me.
“I turned you into gas. Solid to gas. Gas is invisible. You're oxygen. I'm just kind of reeling you in so your molecules don't scatter all over. It's like I'm holding you together.”
It seemed like my body was all there, but it was...floaty. There was a continuous pleasant buzz through all of me that was different that the usual 'afterglow' I experienced after being transformed. I was lighter than air, and I felt myself rising.
Roman leaped up, trying to pull at me, but his hands met with nothingness. “Don't do that. I might loose you. Here, be more solid.” I descended down to the floor as I gained some substance. Only now I was made of slimy goo.
“Oh, Roman. I love when you do this to me!” I cried.
“Hug me, oh goo-girl!”
I danced (well, oozed) into his outstretched arms, and expanded here and there as he embraced me on different parts of my body. “I'm melting in your arms!” I announced, and I subsequently fell to the floor, a shapeless puddle of ooze. “You know I love this stuff,” I smiled, pushing my face from my amorphous form.
Roman got down on the floor beside me. “And I love when you envelop me.”
Just as I had on a previous occasion, I slithered up onto him, engulfing him with my gelatinous form until he was completely covered by me. Anyone who could have looked at us would have seen a very contented imprint of him through my transparent form.
Roman stood before the bed in the bedroom. “Damn. There's no linens for the bed. I'll have to change something.”
“Wait, remember we were a bed?”
“Yes, but...”
“How about we turn into a waterbed?!” I thought this was the coolest idea, and Roman agreed – on one condition. He wanted to be the water, and I'd be the bed.
“Try this.” He coaxed me to the floor, pushing and flattening me until I was a thick plastic bed-sized rectangle. Then he dove into me as water, sealing the small entrance hole closed behind him. He was growing, filling me with his liquidy form, and I was moaning from the bliss of expanding...
Fuller and fuller I grew with Roman until I was taut and solid. “Sleep well, little waterbed,” his words sent ripples through my insides. It tickled like hell.
“Sleep well, water,” I tittered.
Roman was setting up an old video camera he had found. It had a pile of blank video tapes beside it, and they seemed to be in working shape. “I hope we can find a VCR to watch it on later,” he muttered. “Otherwise we'll have to transfer it to a dvd or to the computer.”
“Can't you transform it all?”
“I guess, but it's here. Let's use it. Now I'm going to create the video around you. I'll try to let you get the most changes. I guess I have to be Peter Gabriel since I know the song. Damn it, I can't believe I'm going to do this again,” he concluded in a grumble.
I hugged my arms to my chest in anticipation, and then gave a yell as I fell to the ground, now a toy train. “Now there's some pictures of sperm and stuff in the beginning which I didn't bother to do with Bobby. I just started with the singing part. So... lights, camera, action!” Roman cried, starting up the camera and then sitting in a chair.
He made the same gestures as the singer in the video had, and then he began the song. I never realized how musical he really was.
“You could have a steam train
If you'd just lay down your tracks,”
Roman sang, and my little train body was traveling up the tracks that wound around his head. Then I shrank into a paper airplane, continuing to dart around him.
“You could have an aeroplane flying
If you bring your blue sky back.”
Roman turned blue, which almost made me laugh, but he continued on quite seriously. I expanded into a bullhorn, and he sang through me.
“All you do is call me
I'll be anything you need.”
He held me to his ear, and I shrank away to almost nothing, re-forming as a seatbelt coming around both of his shoulders.
“You could have a big dipper
Going up and down, all around the bends,”
I became not one but two clay-like cars, bumping up against his head.
“You could have a bumper car, bumping
This amusement never ends.”
In a flurry, I found myself as leaves, a fish, and the aforementioned sledgehammer. Meanwhile, Roman's head had turned to glass and I was 'breaking' it. Then he was back to normal, singing all the time. He obviously had put a lot of thought into this for Bobby, and honestly, I was impressed.
“I want to be your sledgehammer
Why don't you call my name,
Oh let me be your sledgehammer
This will be my testimony.”
Then I was fruit. All kinds of fruit, and Roman was joining me, and we swirled about, eventually forming one face made of fruit, and Roman continued to sing that way. It kind of reminded me when I had turned into a fruit cocktail once, but it wasn't quite the same.
“Show me round your fruitcage
'Cos I will be your honey bee,
Open up your fruitcage
Where the fruit is as sweet as can be.”
Then we both collapsed into a whirl of fruits. Roman got his body back, while I became wood and built some kind of wall in front of him. He opened up a little portal in me and sang through it.
“I want to be your sledgehammer
Why don't you call my name
You'd better call the sledgehammer
Put your mind at rest.”
Roman then became clay. He went through all kinds of metamorphoses as a claymation character. It was kind of cool – until he made me a headless dancing chicken. As in the video, we both danced that way. Not one of my favorite transformations, I have to admit. I wonder if Peter Gabriel knew any shapeshifters.
“I'm going to be-the sledgehammer
This can be my testimony
I'm your sledgehammer
Let there be no doubt about it
Sledge sledge sledgehammer
I've kicked the habit
Shed my skin
This is the new stuff
I go dancing in, we go dancing in.”
I now had turned into several backup singers.
“Oh won't you show for me
And I will show for you
Show for me, I will show for you
Yea, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I do mean you
Only you
You've been coming through
Going to build that power
Build, build up that power, hey
I've been feeding the rhythm
I've been feeding the rhythm
Going to feel that power, build in you
Come on, come on, help me do
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you”
After dancing with a bunch of furniture, most of which was me, Roman sat back in his chair to finish the song.
“I've been feeding the rhythm
I've been feeding the rhythm
It's what we're doing, doing
All day and night.”
Roman had turned into a man made of stars, and he walked off, ending the song.
Fully human, I clapped, truly amazed. Roman, now beet-red, clicked off the camera. “So?” he muttered. “What do you think for an old timer like me? You realize I'd never do this for anyone else again. Ever.”
“Well, I'd say a lot of planning went into it. But, Roman, I had no idea you could sing!”
He grew a shade redder. “I'm not the singing type. I'm the instrument-playing type.”
“But you have such a lovely voice!”
Declining to answer this, he pulled the tape from the machine and dug through some boxes. “Yup, here's the old VCR. My mom was good with saving things. Let's see if we can hook this up and watch.”
We hastened downstairs, and, with transforming a few wires here and there, we were able to watch ourselves on the twenty-year old TV the Martins had left behind.
“Want me to turn you into something to watch?”
I looked at my husband, and such love poured through me that I almost wanted to burst. “I want you to shrink down and let me be a cocoon around you. Could you see like that?”
“Should I be a caterpillar? That's fun. It'll be more comfortable too.”
“Whatever works.”
Roman started the video, and then we were both shrinking. Roman was elongating as he diminished, ending up as a plump caterpillar which I quickly enveloped with my silky threads. I held him tight, and we both watched that way.
Viewing our transformations was something else entirely. When one knows that these are not special effects but real, live changes, it's really overwhelming. I mean, I experience them, I witness Roman changing, but seeing my own self turn into, a fish, for example...It's cool.
After we finished watching, we returned to our human forms. “Ah, that was refreshing,” Roman stretched his arms wide.
“Roman, seriously, I'm really impressed that you were willing to do that,” I said.
“Hey, I might be an old young-looking hermit living in the woods, but I can get up on the times when I need to,” he chuckled. “Although the 1980s is not quite the times anymore.”
“Thanks for going through that for me. I know it was hard for you.”
“Well, yeah, like I said, I'd rather be a piano and have someone play me,” he looked into my eyes expectantly.
I smiled. “Get me some music, and I'll play concertos on you, Roman. It's just been a while since I played piano.”
“I have tons of music. I play too, as you know. We'll switch off.”
“It's a deal,” I agreed. “Meanwhile, let me help you go through your stuff.” He had a lot more work to do, and I felt guilty about just lying around as objects.
At dusk, we walked outside to survey the property. Roman entered a scruffy area where some brown, thorny twigs poked from the ground. “This used to be my mother's rose garden,” he said sorrowfully. “I miss her. I miss it.”
I studied the twigs, feeling his sadness. Would you like one to be here again? At least for a few minutes?”
He turned to me, a grateful look on his face. “Oh, would you?”
“'She can be anything she wants to be.'” I quoted. “And I definitely want this.” No sooner did I finish, than my feet dug into the soil, turning into roots. Somehow they were spreading underground. And I felt myself bursting from the surface in various places, forming several rosebushes with one central root system. I was reaching toward the sky from each spot, opening up my leaves and poking out my thorns.
And then a sweet smell permeated the air. I was blooming. Everywhere.
Roman inhaled deeply, tears in his eyes. “Thank you, Corrie.” He lay down beside me, and fell asleep.