The door slowly swung open, and on Raven’s face, confusion turned to fear when she saw Doctor Mercurial, and she jerked back, shoulders bumping the back of the box. The bag was gone, and her legs were free enough to walk, but her arms were still bound together, with straps around her back holding them to her stomach. Black streaks ran down her face from tears that had dried a while ago. The way her lips pulled back made her look disgusted, but he was pretty sure she never looked any other way.

Merc stood aside, and gestured invitingly out into the room. Raven hesitated, then timidly stepped out of the box, eyes darting around from prop to prop before spotting the two bodies lying on the floor. She cried out and started to backpedal before running into the edge of the vanishing box. “You killed them?!”

Merc shook his head, chuckling. “Your friends aren’t exactly here right now, but I assure you, they’re fine.” He retrieved the stick and cross from his pocket, held them out, then lifted them, and Gossamer’s body folded over, then slowly rose to its feet, hands pointed outward daintily and eyes staring vacantly forward. A little more puppeteering, and it came over. Its step had weight, but not quite enough, leaving it hard to tell just how much the ribbons were supporting it. He raised its hand toward Raven’s cheek, but she cringed back, so he paused, then lay its hand on her exposed side. “Does that feel like a dead body to you?”

“Then what have you done to them?” she quavered. “And what do you want with me?”

“They’re all just out of their bodies at the moment, and I’m borrowing this one. Don’t worry, Gossamer was happy to help.” He tipped its hips to pose it cutely, and brought up its hand as if blowing a kiss. “If you’re close at all, I’m sure you understand.

“As for you…” he placed the puppet controls back into his pocket, leaving Gossamer’s body in that pose for now, and stepped to the center of everything, and gestured to the taller Mismade box. “I want you to step in that box.”

Raven stepped up to get a better look at the box he was gesturing to. Tall enough for her to stand in, red, with a purple abstract shape which suggested a female form, and eight broad, rectangular blades leaning against the side, glinting in the candlelight.

She scurried to the door as fast as her bound legs could take her, and slammed her hip into the crash bar. Too unsurprised to be disappointed, Merc strolled after her. This time, the door wouldn’t open. She hit it a few times more, then bent down to try to push in the flap, trying to find a way to manipulate it with the limited range of motion in her arms.

Grabbing her by the straps around her back, Merc yanked her off her feet and started dragging her back. She twisted, and he pulled her closer so he could wrap an arm around her. She tried to kick and stomp on his feet, but a quick dance backwards kept her off-balance, with her feet in front of her. Finally, he threw her into the Mismade box, and snatched the katana from its stand. Though she started to lunge to try to make another run for it, she halted seeing the tip of the sword pointed right at her chest. A quick little poke at her shirt encouraged her to stand up straight and step back into the box.

Defeated, she didn’t try to make another move when he put the sword away, and closed up the box.

“You know,” he said as he took a knee and took up the first blade, “you really should relax!” He punctuated the word by pushing it between the bottom two segments, just below her knees. She started to cry out again, but her voice turned to confusion. “You’re not gonna die, and none of this is gonna hurt.” He slipped through its mate, forming a bottom for the thigh segment.

She didn’t make another sound as he continued, working his way up the box. The blades split her thighs at the top, then her waist near its narrowest point. The last pair separated her head from her body.

With that finished, he puppeteered Gossamer’s body to stand in front of the other Mismade box. This time when he put the controls away, he ended the trick, the ribbons unwrapping themselves and withdrawing toward the ceiling, leaving it standing straight and still. He picked it up by the hips, set it in the box, and set to work cutting it up, too.

“You still in there?” He remarked as he lifted the top box from Raven’s stack, and set it on the floor, turning back to retrieve her chest. “This is going to happen either way, but it’s always much more fun with an audience.”

Each other box he flipped open after he moved them, leaving the foot boxes in place. He placed Raven’s hips across from her face, with her chest, thighs, and Gossamer’s face all in her line of sight, then sat down on her hip box, and waved the door blocking her face open.

That Raven was staring blankly, passive and withdrawn, was no real surprise to Mercurial. However, surprise slowly rose in her eyes as she stared at her body displayed in front of her. Her jacket rustled as she moved her arms experimentally, verifying for herself that what she was seeing, and indeed what she’d just felt, was real. With nothing new to fear, a hint of wonder was creeping into her eyes. Merc just sat there, and savored the moment.

Finally, her eyes met his again. “Why are you doing this?”

“Because,” he replied, springing back to his feet and heading for Faline’s body, and the unique prop that contained it, “I made a deal. You four get ‘beauty, admiration, money, and hot boyfriends’, Faline will be prom queen, and I get your bodies and souls.”

Faline’s body lay on its back, with drawers covering its chest and hips, but the handles were on the side. He drew out the chest one first, leaving her bodice hanging over a chest that didn’t come close to filling it, then the hip one, the thighs laying flatter against the bottom of the box as it came out, the skirt fitting much more loosely.

“This isn’t what we were offering,” Raven commented as he worked, no doubt considering sex a small price to pay to keep her body.

Merc sighed, walking around to the other side of the box. “I know.” He sat up Faline’s body, and pulled up its knees, threading his right arm under them, his left going under headless body’s arms. It looked much more like the body of an obese man as he lifted it out. “I was trying for ‘Faustian Pact’, ‘you’ll get what you asked for but it’s not worth the price you pay’, but it takes some serious nuance to keep that distinct from ‘evil genie’, ‘be careful what you wish for’ territory.” He lowered it carefully to the floor.

As he strolled back to the collection of Mismade boxes, he found Raven’s eyes working as she tried to figure out what she’d just heard. “You’re… not really the devil?”

He chuckled, pulling out the sword again. “It wouldn’t be the first time someone called me that, but no. I’m a magician.” He made a pair of quick diagonal swipes toward Raven’s chest box, and her shirt, jacket, and bra split everywhere they needed to to drop to the floor of the box.

Raven gasped in surprise, and her hands snapped to her breasts, but she soon turned to stretching her arms. “But if you’re a magician, a human, you’re not bound to contracts the way the devil is, are you?”

“It’s true,” he replied, making the same swings at Gossamer’s hips, discovering she had a pierced clit. “To an extent, I could just take what I want and go. You have a very nice body.”

He put the sword back in its stand, and picked up Raven’s chest box, carrying it to the drawers prop. “But that gets old, you know? It’s more fun to play along.” He inserted the chest box into the other prop. “And depending on how this all plays out, I might get something even more valuable than another tight tummy or big pair of tits.” He caressed a hand down her bare stomach.

“W-what’s that?”

He shoved in the drawer, then raised the upper side on its hinge, revealing a chest that had just gained three cup sizes, and lost a shade of color. “Someone who wants to belong to me. Or in this case, at least someone who feels like they owe it to me.” He lifted the chest box back out, and brought it back to where he got it from.

For most of the time Merc spent giving Gossamer’s hips an ass, Raven stared slack-jawed at her new chest. Distracted as she was by probing and weighing the assets, she didn’t notice her legs being reassembled until he yanked the blades from under her knees.

“What happens to me now?” she inquired with worry. “You can’t mean to just let me go.”

“You’ll find out soon,” Merc teased. He closed the door on Gossamer’s hips and picked them up.

“What are you- oh, geez!”

Merc stacked Gossamer’s hips on top of Raven’s legs, and pulled the blades. The legs of her pants crumpled to the floor. A chuckle rose from deep inside him. This part was always fun.

“My legs!” Raven cried. “I can’t feel my legs!”

“No. You wouldn’t. They’re not attached to you anymore,” Merc casually informed her as he went back for her chest.

“Give them back! Please!” she pleaded.

“Oh, don’t you worry,” he chuckled. “Let’s see if you can follow the logic.” He placed her chest on the top of the stack, and pulled the blades.

“Oh! Ohhhhh!” Her boots stomped against the floor of the box as she verified she had a whole body again.

Merc did her the favor of tossing the reassembled portion of the box open again, letting her see her mostly nude body. The waist and thighs borrowed from Gossamer lined up with Raven’s better than they should, showing only a difference in skin color. The props were designed to be lenient.

As Raven inspected herself, verifying as best she could from her vantage point that everything was accounted for, Merc went to the foot, chest, and thigh boxes for the spare parts of Gossamer’s body, closing each one by one, then collapsing them, blade meeting blade and sides folding over on top.

When he did the same to Raven’s former hips, it got her attention, and her eyes widened in alarm as he approached her. “Hey! Hey, wait a minute, don’t-!” Her protest was cut off when the box collapsed.

Her fists clenched and arms tucked in by her sides, frozen in fear.

Merc closed the last box, containing Gossamer’s head, and placed it on top of the stack. He closed the door, and pulled the blades.

When he opened there, the newly assembled body stood relaxed, arms hanging by her sides, face staring vacantly forward. He stepped forward, and caressed a hand down her side, over her hip and to her thigh. He wondered how Raven would have responded, if she could. She was still in there, after all.

He withdrew the stick and cross from his pocket, and the ribbons descended from the ceiling, wrapping around her waist, wrists, ankles, and the neck above her.

He walked her out of the box, and knelt her in front of the narrow table holding the minds of Gossamer and Jezebel, then slid the table up so the notch was around that neck.

Of course, it wouldn’t do at this point for Jezebel to see these props. Raven hadn’t figured it out on her own; it seemed “Satan is a magician” was the first conclusion over “a magician has fooled you into thinking he’s Satan”. Still, there was no point in tempting fate. He stowed everything he wasn’t using back through the curtain, including Gossamer’s mind, one of the black-trimmed red boxes, and all the shredded clothes, and came back with a full-length mirror, which he placed ten feet in front of Raven.

That taken care of, he placed the other black-trimmed red box around the empty head, and settled the soft, blue glow of Jezebel’s mind into it.

Her hands came up, stopping short of checking herself. No doubt, she could already feel the difference. If nothing else, she felt the comfort and energy of health.

With a smile, Merc lifted the box away, took her hand, and helped her to her feet.

Jezebel stared at the mirror, took a few unsteady steps forward, and placed a hand against her cheek.

After a long, hard minute of staring, her shoulders shook, and she began to cry, never taking her eyes off the mirror. Perhaps she didn’t dare.

Doctor Mercurial stepped up behind her, and laid his hands around her arms. She leaned back into him, her hand clutched at his jacket, and she whispered “Thank you.”