By Prender

TF (ice-cream)

Carlie walked past the shop, turned at the corner, then walked past it again. She saw the sign: “Aurora Potions.” This is ridiculous, she told herself. Just go in. They wouldn’t have a shop if they didn’t want to sell things.

Damn it, she was going to do it. This had been a fantasy of hers for some time, and today, this afternoon, right now it was going to become reality.

Today, she was going to turn into ice-cream.

***

She winced as a bell rang when she pushed the door open. She’d have preferred to just linger quietly, exploring the shelves stacked with bottles. But as she entered a girl peeked out from behind a curtain, a girl with pink hair. She must work here, because she took her place behind the counter, on which a large black cat sat dozing.

Carlie flushed. She turned to the shelf nearest her, hoping to spy what she was looking for. Most of the bottles, though, seemed to be for love potions. She turned to another shelf. Invisibility serum …  Shrink yourself … Become a table lamp … Ugh. Who’d want to be a table lamp?

“Can I help you?”

Carlie jumped, and turned to find the pink-haired girl there.

“Uh …” she stuttered.

“It can be a bit intimidating looking for a special potion,” the girl said in a friendly manner. “I keep arguing for more signage on the shelves, but Aurora — the owner, you know — won’t have it. She says that when people are looking for something, they often find something they want even more. Right, Franklin?”

The cat opened one green eye, then closed it again.

“Lazy old beast,” the girl said affectionately. “I’m Lily, by the way.”

Carlie plucked her courage. “Ice-cream,” she mumbled.

Lily frowned. “Three doors down.”

“Pardon?”

“Three doors down. The Gelato Bar. All your gourmet ice-cream needs can be satisfied.”

“Oh. Oh! No!” For some reason Carlie got the giggles. “No, I don’t want to eat ice-cream. I want to be ice-cream. You know?”

“Oh! Sorry!” Lily broke into a grin. “That’ll be over here with the food potions.” She bent over the shelves, stacked with bottles. “Cakes … candy … lollipops … spaghetti …”

“Spaghetti?!”

“Not one of ours. It’s a surprisingly good seller, though. Ah! Here we are! Ice-cream. Now,” Lily looked up at Carlie. “What flavour?”

For some reason the choice of flavour had never occurred to Carlie. She thought for a second. Vanilla? Obvious and a bit boring. She might never do this again, after all. Be adventurous. But the idea of becoming chocolate just seemed wrong. “What about strawberry?”

“Strawberry it is.” Lily plucked a bottle off the shelf and took it to the counter. She named the price. Carlie hadn’t been expecting it to be cheap and it wasn’t, but neither was it cripplingly expensive. At that price Carlie would contemplate buying it again, but keeping it for a special occasion.

As she handed her credit card over, a moment of panic shot through Carlie. “Hey, wait. This won’t turn me into ice-cream permanently, will it?”

“Not at all. Just for a few hours,” Lily assured her. “And you can change back at any time. Just say the magic word ‘restore’.’’

“Say? Won’t I be ice-cream?” Carlie looked quizzical.

“Yeah, but you can also push yourself to the surface of the thing you’ve become. Like when I’m a cup of tea, sometimes I’m just tea, but sometimes I’ll bring myself to the fore and the tea will have eyes and a mouth. Handy to be able to yell at some big ol’ cat who has a liking for green tea.” Lily tickled the cat behind the ear. “It’s all in the instructions book. Please read it carefully before you use the potion.” Lily handed Carlie a paper bag. “Thanks, and come again!”

***

An hour later …

If anything Carlie was even more nervous than before. Her heart was beating like some Goa trance anthem.

She stood in front of a mirror in her bedroom. She’d read the instructions book at least twice and she felt she was ready. She’d removed all her clothes; the instructions hadn’t said she should, but it just seemed appropriate. She cast a quick look at herself in the mirror. Nice! she thought. The gym work was paying off, and if she was never going to be a fitness model, she thought she looked pretty cool … although not as cool as she was going to be, she giggled.

She held the bottle of potion in her hand. Light from the window lit it up, and she watched the strange swirls in the crimson liquid.

This is it, she thought. This is the potion that’s going to change me, make me something different. Something not human … or living.

The thought excited her no end.

Was she really going to do this?

Hell yeah!

With a determined motion Carlie pulled the stopper from the small bottle and drained its contents in one gulp, as the instructions had suggested.

Nice! she thought. Or at least, not disgusting; she’d feared it would taste nasty. It was kind of like a cherry coke, she thought.

A warm feeling started in her belly and rapidly spread through her body. Then a kind of tingling began. And just when it faded … she changed.

The first thing Carlie noticed that she was shrinking. For a moment she panicked; has they given her the wrong potion? She didn’t want to be small! But then a new feeling swept over her. Suddenly her body felt … cold. Not a bad cold, a shivering in winter cold, but a wonderful crisp chill, as if being cold wasn’t just natural, it was the best thing ever.

And as the room seemed to expand around her, she felt her body changing too. Her arms grew tiny and rapidly withdrew into her sides. Her neck collapsed and her head joined with her body, which was quickly swelling up into a ball … no, wait, two balls. Her breasts split apart and then each was absorbed into one of the balls she was becoming.

Carlie laughed. The things happening to her body — they should horrify her. But they felt amazing, ultimately freeing. For 25 years she’d always been a woman. Today she would be something different.

She realised that her legs had shrunk together and detached themselves from the rest of her. She could still sense them, though, and noted they were not swelling up like her body. Instead they were becoming metal. With a start she realised her crotch has joined them and was swelling out to contain the rest of her. Then she got it. They were becoming a dish for her to sit on, the kind of old-fashioned silver goblet she used to see in diners.

And the change was over. Carlie was now an ice-cream. Two scoops of strawberry ice-cream sitting in a silver bowl. Three separate items, yet all were somehow Carlie.

For a few minutes Carlie was content just to lie there, being ice-cream. How amazing! She didn’t feel the need to see, hear or speak. Oh God, she’d really done it. She’d taken the potion. She changed. She’d been a woman, made of flesh, muscles, bone. And now she was strawberry ice-cream, made of milk, sugar, flavouring. She could feel the essence of what she was, of her ingredients.

She recalled what she had read in the instructions of imposing herself onto her new form. She thought hard (and how was it she was thinking, when she had no brain or nervous system now?) and tried to concentrate on making her ice-cream form more … well, her.

She opened her eyes and … wait. Eyes? Yes, she had eyes! And a mouth. And somehow she could hear too. She looked into the mirror she’d transformed in front of.

Oh God, there she was! A stylish goblet with two scoops of ice-cream, and one of the scoops had eyes and a mouth — not human eyes and a mouth, of course, that would be weird and kind of disgusting, but eyes and a mouth like someone had traced them in the pink surface.

For a few seconds she stared at herself before laughing in triumph. “You did it, girl! You’re an ice-cream now! Oh God, this is incredible … The only thing that could make it more incredible is a spoon!”

With a jolt she realised she had an almost overwhelming desire to be eaten, to have someone take a spoon and scoop her up, put them into their mouth and swallow her. She’d read in the instructions that when you transformed into something you could take on the attributes of that thing, so if you became a cat you’d want to catch mice, and if you were a vacuum cleaner you’d want to suck up dirt. So as an ice-cream, she wanted to be eaten.

Not going to happen today, she thought, but maybe someday she could trick one of her friends into eating her. What would that feel like? To slide down a throat into a stomach? The idea had an almost sexual tinge to it.

Once again Carlie admired herself in the mirror. So lovely to be two scoops! Maybe next time she tried this she’d change to something a little more shapelier … like a waffle cone. Or maybe an ice-cream sundae, with nuts and syrup coating her? Or a banana split! No, wait, what about becoming ice-cream, then being plopped into a milkshake, spinning together with the milk … oh man!

It was then she felt the little ray of sunshine.

Carlie realised that where she was sitting was in the direct path of the sunlight that spilled into the room. And as the sun got lower in the sky, more sunlight would fall on her.

She would melt.

For a second she was shocked, and a shiver of fear ran through her. She was going to melt? She was going to stop being two lovely cold scoops of ice-cream and become … what? Was it going to hurt? She considered speaking the word that would end her magic transformation and change her back.

Just as quickly, the fear was replaced with excitement. She didn’t think she’d always be cold, did she? Obviously, ice-cream melted. It was perfectly natural. She was in the sun, and all that would do would speed up the process. And after all, she’d already transformed from girl into strawberry ice-cream. Going from cold ice-cream to melted ice-cream — from solid to liquid — would be just another transformation.

Carlie welcomed the sun and its heat. When the first little beads of milk appeared on her she could have cried. It was happening! She was melting!

More sun crept into the room, gradually raising her temperature — something assisted, she realised, by being contained in a metal dish. A little pool of liquid gathered in the bottom of the bowl. Carlie realised this, too, was herself.

How exciting to soften, to gradually become liquid, to slowly warm to room temperature! It was like being immersed in the best bath — a bath made of yourself. For a second she regretted not videoing her transformation … although really, what would someone watching the video see? A bowl of ice-cream melting. Not very exciting … except to Carlie … because the ice-cream was her!

As she became more liquid, Carlie made a thrilling discovery. She wasn’t just turning into a milky fluid. She was also evaporating! Little bits of her were floating off her surface into the air … How wonderful to be not just lying in a bowl, to also be the bowl, to be solid and liquid, but also in the air, invisible, as evaporated ice-cream! Amazing to be in so many places, to be so many different things, and yet feel all of them at the same time …

“Oh God, I’m almost all melted!” she called to her image in the mirror. “I can feel my centre getting softer and softer — and I’m floating too, in the air — and I’m just about to collapse — oh, oh, here I go!”

And now she was all liquid, floating in the bowl that was her ass and pussy and legs. It was harder to keep her eyes and mouth now, but that was okay, because being so fluid — having no real form at all — was bliss. She retreated and really inhabited the liquid, just lying there, content to let all traces of Carlie drift away and just be this pink mess.

The sun went down and the room grew dark and quiet.

How long had she been transformed? A couple of hours, at least. Soon she’d change back. She’d be a woman again, with arms and legs and boobs, and she’d be Carlie again.

Somehow, it seemed so limiting now.

Ice-cream. She’d become ice-cream. And tomorrow she’d go past Aurora’s Potions and walk in and thank Lily for helping her, and perhaps they’d discuss what she could be next time. And yes, there would be a next time.

Ice-cream, cakes, cookies, candy … even becoming spaghetti sounded wonderful now.