Seconds And Irregulars : 8

A Fit-4-U Tale
By Iolanthe Portmanteaux

What a disappointment! Ozzie, fully expected this experiment would be simple, easy, a walk in the park. He believed that exposing Fit-4-U as a sham and a fraud would be as straightforward as trying on a garment that DIDN'T fit, and that would be the end of it. So far, that's not what was happening. The pieces that had the least chance of fitting him – the lingerie – were not only perfectly in place on his body, but also were the most comfortable clothes he'd worn in his life. Much as he didn't want to admit it, he liked the fit so well, he didn't want to take them off.

And yet... he sighed as he surveyed the rest of the maid costume. There had to be something here that didn't fit. Something that he could wave in Camille's face and say, "SEE?"

It was discouraging. He pulled on the ankle socks, since they were so tiny. Of course, he had the same experience as with the lingerie.

Oddly, it never occurred to Ozzie that his foot actually shrank, in the same way that his legs and chest shrank, in response to the clothes. It continued to frustrate him. He kept imagining he was inches away from discovering the secret, only to find he was more distant than before.

It was only natural that he wouldn't see the simple solution. Who ever heard of people's *bodies* changing to suit the clothes they wore? No one! It was always the other way around: you choose clothes that fit. There was also the option of altering the ones that don't. Altering the clothes, that is. If anything changed, it was always the clothes.

"I feel like I've fallen down a rabbit hole," he said aloud, complaining to himself as he cast a bewildered look at the array of clothes that surrounded him.

Dispirited, he hardly knew what to try on next. "The damn thing ought to come with instructions!" he groused. More or less at random, he picked up the blouse, a white item with short puffy sleeves and ruffles around the breasts.

The experience was a repeat of what happened before: his arms became more slender, his shoulders narrowed. Even his hands changed. It was maddening. In Ozzie's mind, he watched each article of clothing expand, lengthen, grow... but if he measured it by holding it against a piece of furniture, he'd see that the clothes hadn't changed at all. Still, he could not draw the sum.

Even though Ozzie plainly witnessed every change as it happened, in real time, he steadfastly refused to believe that it was his own body that was changing. He clung to his feeble excuse of optical illusions and the slimming effect despite all evidence to the contrary. Even the lovely pair of breasts, framed perfectly by the bright white ruffles and lace of his blouse, and supported with panache and confidence by the magilon bra, he eyed them with dismay, but refused to believe they were actually a part of him; that those two perfect pillows were his own; that everywhere that Ozzie went, those breasts were sure to go.

Another thing that Ozzie was too caught up to be aware of, too pig-headed to realize, was the fact that he couldn't resist putting on one piece of the costume after another.

There was no going back, either! Once he donned a part of the maid costume, he didn't consider for a moment taking it off again.

His eyes were on the shiny black bodice, but his hand caught hold of the bright white petticoat. Unsure of the order of operations, he hefted one, then the other, picturing one going on, then the other. How could he know which way was the right way?

In the end he figured that the bodice came next... but how, exactly? Naturally, he wearily observed that the damn thing looked small enough that he could wear it as a hat. The lesson was getting tiresome. Yes, each item looked too small, but somehow fit. This one, though, this one might finally be the exception. After all, as he noted earlier, it came with ties, and a built-in corset. The irony of a corset with a guaranteed fit was not lost on our Ozzie.

Relying on his previous experiences with the magilon clothes, he didn't bother to loosen the bodice's ties. He slipped both arms inside, and worked his head and shoulders into the chimney. He wiggled, he wormed, he writhed his way inside until...

... he got stuck! No! No!

Ozzie fell into a full-blown panic. He couldn't get out of the damn thing! His hands were well out of the tube of cloth and boning, high up in the air above his head, so they were useless in helping him escape. He couldn't reach down or back with his hands, ironically free as they were. If he clenched his hands, if he closed his fingers, they held nothing but air.

He threw himself to the floor and thrashed about in a mad frenzy. He tried to drag the side of the bodice against the floor, against the chair, against the wall. He rolled himself into the hall and tried to get some friction off the carpet.

Nothing worked.

Breathing hard, he stopped and lay still. What was he going to do? What could he possibly say, if Camille found him like this, in this state.

He was stuck. Well and truly stuck. "Caught, like a rat in a trap!" he exclaimed.

But what to do? What to do? If Camille did come, she'd have him out in a moment. She'd just tug the damn thing off him. Ozzie racked his brain. There had to be a way! If only he could work his shoulders free...

He must have looked ridiculous, lying there on the floor, dressed in a tiny pair of gray panties, a matching bra, and two white socks with frills around the ankles – while his upper body was cocooned in a cylinder of cloth, reinfoced by boning, held tight by a long, criss-crossing lace.

It's like a fucking Chinese finger trap! he observed morosely. Seems like, the harder I try to get out, the tighter it squeezes me.

Was that the way out? The same way you free yourself of a finger trap? Relaxing? The trick to the finger trap was to relax; to stop fighting and pulling. The helical braids of a Chinese finger trap squeeze tighter and harder, the more you pull on it.

Could that work? This wasn't the same kind of thing; after all, it wasn't braided. It was just a tight tube of... of what? Of magilon. Whatever the hell *that* was.

Still, it was worth a try. Ozzie rolled onto his back and took a few long, slow breaths. Then, as he exhaled, he tried to squeeze his upper chest and shoulders smaller, to bring the skin of his back inward, then the same in front. Could he work it down his body? No – his breasts were in the way, whether they were real or not.

Ozzie kept at it, slowly, patiently, breathing slowly, doing his best to make space between his back and the bodice, his shoulders and the bodice. Then, an inspiration: he pushed his head down toward his chest, like a turtle retracting. Then he pressed his face against the material, and tilting his head back, dug in with his chin, pushing up. Progress! At last!

Now that he'd found the trick, he kept at it, patiently, fighting to keep the panic down, because it was still there, ready to overflow and overwhelm him.

At long last, once he'd freed his shoulders, it wasn't too hard to get his head and arms free.

He celebrated by shouting various swear words, imprecations, and incoherent babbling while he shook off the unpleasant sensation of being trussed up.

He ran downstairs to grab a beer, for comfort's sake. While he stood in the kitchen in his underwear and ankle socks, popping open the beer bottle, he became acutely aware of the sliding glass door that stood next to the refrigerator. There was no one there, and the door only opened to their backyard, but even so... if someone caught sight of him like this...!

He dashed back upstairs with his beer, still terrified by the experience of being swallowed up by the bodice.

While he drank, he considered the thing. He recalled seeing Camille often stepping into a dress, even if seemed far more logical to put it over your head.

Could he do the same?

He pulled the bodice to himself, and first, before anything else, he loosened the long shoelace-like tie, thus enlarging the corset to its maximum diameter.

He *did* want to put the thing on; he had a positive desire. After all, the bodice was shiny and black and cool as all-get-out. Plus, as he'd noted earlier, there was the built-in irony of a corset with a guaranteed fit. The thing was made to squeeze a woman into a smaller size! What kind of "fit" guarantee could it have?

The back of the garment was effectively split in two parts, each having a set of eyelets running down the length, and joined by a long black lace, like a larger, finer version of a shoelace. Like a shoelace, it criss-crossed down from top to bottom, leaving the loose ends dangling.

Ozzie, in no way anxious to repeat his imprisonment, undid the lace as far as physically possible, rendering the bodice a huge drum-like shape. He stepped into the center before he began tightening the lace, taking in much of the slack, until the bodice was large enough to pass over his hips without touching them.

The fitting of the bodice was a lot less dramatic than the other pieces so far. Ozzie took in the slack in the corset's lace, at first so the bodice would stay in place and not fall off. Then, bit by bit – and not looking for a tight fit – he kept working the criss-crossed laces from top to bottom until he ran out of slack. Once he reached that point, he tied them off at the bottom.

Ozzie felt more at ease about the bodice now – this time, he knew his way out.

Next came the petticoat, which fastened by a simple pair of buttons. It took no effort at all to put it on. After all, the work of shaping Ozzie's waist was done by the bodice, so here he simply did up the buttons and was that was it! Since the petticoat spread out, umbrella-like, Ozzie missed the effect it had on his hips: making them wide enough that he could rest his hands on them.

The skirt followed; the apron after that. Each fit immediately, since they followed the petticoat.

That left only the shoes, and the shoes revived Ozzie's hopes of at last finding something – one thing, at least! – that didn't fit.

"Here," he said to himself, as he lifted one dainty foot (already altered by the little ankle socks!), "this will be like Cinderella... or one of her wicked stepsisters! These shoes were made for a child! A small-footed child, at that!" But to his dismay, his foot slipped in with ease – as though the shoe was created specifically for his foot. The second shoe followed suit.

Astonished, unable to speak or even think, he tried to stand up straight, and had to whirl his forearms in circles to keep his balance. What was the point of these heels?

Of course, you, the reader, you understand perfectly well a fact that hadn't yet penetrated Ozzie's thick skull: None of the clothes had changed. Not one iota. It was Ozzie's body that changed, part by part, until HE became the perfect fit, the guaranteed fit for the French Maid Costume he'd been rash enough to order.

By now, his transformation was nearly complete.

Wobbling back and front, waving his arms to keep from falling, he tried to get a look at his feet, and nearly fell on his face. Even if he'd mastered standing in high heels, he couldn't look straight down to see his feet. The fullness of his petticoat lifted his skirt to almost twice the width of his body. So he lifted one foot, meaning to bring that foot in view, but instead he found himself hopping on his other foot, unable to stop until he crashed into the wall.

He wedged his backside into the corner formed by his recliner and the wall, and hanging on to his props, he was able to raise his foot and take a look.

Now, finally, as he gaped, open-mouthed, stupified, he began to catch a glimmer of what had really happened: his body had changed.

And yet, he resisted. He couldn't accept it, not even the idea of it.

In Ozzie defense, what happened to him was simply impossible. We can't judge him too harshly. After all, if you read such a thing in a story, you'd say it was implausible. You'd throw the book down in a huff and leave it there.

Ozzie didn't have that luxury. He was still in the thick of it, and his adventure was only beginning.

Right now, for instance, he managed to keep his balance and take a few steps, realizing as he did so that the shoes were remarkably comfortable!

"It's the damnest thing!" he exclaimed aloud. "These are the most comfortable shoes I've ever worn!" He took a few experimental steps here and back again. "I don't know why women complain so much about wearing heels!" he declared. "I could wear these things all day!"

He did feel a touch of embarrassment about his spontaneous declaration. These were, after all, womens clothes that he was enthusing over. But at the end of the day, Ozzie was alone.

And yet, he did have a sense of shock. He had a sense of how far he'd come down a road he never intended to take.

And worse of all, he had to admit that there was something at work that he didn't understand. He didn't understand it at all.

Well, now he'd put the costume on, in its entirety. (Or so he thought!) His next logical step would be to take it all off and see what state the various pieces now found themselves in.

Remembering his bizarre experience with the length of the bra band, it would be smart to take measurements of each piece while on his body, and then after taking them off.

Camille, he remembered, kept a measuring tape in the junk drawer in the kitchen. It was the soft kind, meant for measuring hips and waists and clothes.

And so, Ozzie manfully trooped toward the stairs in his tiny high heels, taking small steps, lifting his feet high.

Since his full skirt blocked his view of his feet, Ozzie came dangerously close to tumbling down the stairs before he'd even begun his descent. He saved himself by grabbing hold of the newel at the top of the handrail. Then, carefully carefully, he eased his toe forward until he found the edge of the stair, and working blind in that way, made his way down.

After negotiating a half-dozen stairs, Ozzie caught a glimpse of his legs, from the knees on down, in a mirror hung opposite to the stairs. At first he froze, thinking he'd seen a cute young woman. He felt attracted, but at the same time afraid of being discovered.

Of course, in the next moment, he knew it was himself, his legs, his feet, and – descending by degrees – he was able to take in the sections of his new body: first: toes to knees, second: knees to waist, third: waist to neck–

and there he froze. It was too difficult to take in.

Until that moment he hadn't had any sense of how small the bodice had taken in his waist, or how breathtaking his breasts had become. But the sexy, elegant hourglass created between the belling of the skirt, the contraction of the waist, and the presentation of those pert, perky breasts – framed as they were by white ruffles and tasteful lace trim – was undeniable.

The view filled him with dismay. He took his hand from the bannister to feel his new mammaries. They were sensational. Perfect. Not overlarge. In fact, they were somewhat small, which made them all the more appealing. Like a twin pair of apples. "But they're... real!" he whispered, shocked and amazed. "They can't be!"

His legs, too, were as he thought: long, smooth, slender – and hairless! How had that happened? "It must be that damn body wash!" he growled.

At the end, as he descended farther down the stair, his head came into view. In a sense, it was the worst part of all, because it didn't match the rest. His head was his big old, goofy Ozzie head. His head was always oversized, but he never resembled a bobblehead doll as much as he did now.

"Too bad the damn maids don't wear hats," he groused, meaning to joke, but even he didn't see the humor in it – or the error in it.

Ozzie was not a man who cried often, if ever, but he certainly felt close to tears right now.

"Gotta get this damn thing off," he told himself. But first, the measuring tape.

It took a bit of fumbling and searching and digging around in the junk drawer. After all, it was a catch-all. In the end he did find it: a soft yellow tape with metal tips on each end, inches marked out in large black numbers.

While he was here, in the kitchen, it wouldn't hurt, he told himself, if he brought a beer along with him when he climbed back upstairs.

In other words, the kitchen gave Ozzie the idea of beer, and the idea of beer made him think of the bathroom. Ozzie needed to pee again.

There was a half-bath off the kitchen. A little tight, but he managed to shove himself in there, with his full skirt all around him.

Facing the toilet, he lifted the front of the skirt, holding it high, as high as he could. He didn't want to ruin the merchandise by peeing on it, did he!

And then... when it seemed that things couldn't POSSIBLY get any worse... Ozzie tried to hook his thumbs into the top of his panties, but he couldn't get a grip. Each time he flicked his thumbs down at the waist, they'd pass over it without getting a grip.

"What the hell?"

He tried pinching the material, but that didn't work either. It was as if the panties were painted on.

He ran his hands around the leg openings, but there, too, the underwear behaved like a second skin.

It wasn't that the underwear was tight; not at all. It was as though it had become a part of him.

"Fuck!" he shouted. "Let me out of here!"

Fumbling absurdly, he knocked one of his funny bones on the bathroom door jamb. Clutching his elbow, he had to back out of the littlest room. His dress was so full, it didn't allow him to turn around.

Once out, back in the larger space of his kitchen, he tried to kick off his shoes. No go. Clutching the counter, he reached down and grabbed his right foot. No matter how hard he tugged or twisted, the damn shoe would not move. "It's like it's glued on!" The left shoe was equally resistant.

Now, Ozzie was well on his way to freaking out.

He tried to untie the apron. No go. He tried to untie the goddamned bodice. It was a simple knot, like the knot he used to tie his shoes, but it wouldn't come undone. He snatched up a pair of kitchen scissors and tried to cut the apron, but it didn't work. He couldn't slide either scissor blade under the material. The petticoat, the blouse, wouldn't unbutton, and the skirt was impervious to cutting.

"I'm fucked," Ozzie observed, and stepping over to a support post they were unable to remove during renovations, Ozzie knocked his head against it: once, twice, three times. It didn't help anything.

He clenched his fists and shouted at the top of his lungs, an inarticulate cry of frustration and dismay. Then he clattered around the whole first floor, examining himself in every mirror he could find, large or small, and in every mirror he saw the same desperate man, caught in the same predicament.

He crumpled to the floor, an adorable arrangement of white lace frills and black, shiny, silk-like material. Well, he was *almost* adorable – he still had his big, fat Ozzie head.

Then, he remembered: he'd left a beer on the kitchen counter. He ran to it, opened it, and returned to his seat on the floor.

He wasn't the kind of man who'd let despair get in the way of a cold beer.