A RELUCTANT SPIRIT: A SPIRITED BATH

By Ingrid Halb

In this story we join Astrid and Hanna as they contemplate the after effects of a wish. The two girls quickly come to grips with the situation and Mike gets to watch.

“Would it help if I said I was sorry?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

The small Asian girl, who had started the conversation, Choe Ha-Neul or ‘Hanna’ as she would be known to her American classmates, was perched on top of a barstool idly sipping from a champagne glass. The bar itself curved about a third of the way around a large but still somewhat intimate cabana, the interior of which was primarily illuminated by candle light, although a significant amount of illumination came from the few scattered tiki torches situated just outside. The focal point of the cabana was a large sunken hot tub occupying most of the central floor space.

Astrid Gjelsvik, the blonde Nordic girl who had answered her, was reclining in the hot tub her head laid back in a rest with a wet towel draped over her eyes. An empty champagne glass stood within easy reach of her left hand. She was topless, wearing only a bright pink bikini bottom, the color of which flashed through the ripples of the water. Hanna was similarly dressed except the maroon of her swimsuit better complimented her Asian skin tones. They had been here for several hours now and if the night air proved too chill for their exposed flesh, there was always the hot tub to warm them up again. That and a seemingly endless supply of liquor and fine wines from the bar.

Hanna sighed, gazing out the window at the moonless night. It was dark but the stars shone brightly which helped to outline the shape of a large building, probably the mansion they had been in prior to their current situation but difficult to tell what with a few hidden light sources deep in the house adding ghostly illumination to only a few windows. The cabana was clearly within the property of this estate. And somewhere within that estate was the little man’s vessel, probably.

“Do you think that’s the same house we started at?” Hanna asked nervously.

“Yes,” Astrid hissed with impatient irritation.

Hanna remained unconvinced.

“You know, we can’t even be sure that we’re in the same city,” she said.

“I said I didn’t want to talk about it,” Astrid replied.

Quiet settled in on the cabana broken only by the occasional splashing noise as Astrid shifted her position in the tub. Hanna considered her companion and by comparison, herself. Aside from the obvious similarities in gender and dress, they bore little resemblance to each other. Astrid was a big girl, not fat, but buxom with a lot of womanly curves in all the appropriate places. Her hair lay golden even plastered wetly across her shoulders. Her breasts were floating partially exposed and Hanna could just see the pink areolas and nipples as they occasionally broke surface.

Her boobies are bigger than mine, she thought, comparing her well proportioned apple-sized breasts to Astrid’s impressive grapefruits. She’s got to be at least a D cup if not more, she estimated, and briefly considered sneaking into the changing room to check the tag on her European friend’s brassiere. She looks so mature while I look like a little kid, she pouted. The fact that their passports listed them both as age 19 seemed a poor joke to Hanna. I’m going to get carded till I’m 35, she decided dejectedly, punctuating the point by finishing her glass of wine in one gulp.

She was not entirely fair in her self-appraisal. While definitely slimmer and decidedly shorter than her friend, she had a lithe flexible look about her and was not without her own set of generous curves. There would have been little difficulty in either girl getting escorted past the waiting lines and into any nightclub in town.

“Do you want some more champagne?” she asked, lifting a half-empty bottle.

Astrid’s response was to reach out without lifting the towel off her face and hold her empty glass up without comment. It was a little presumptuous. Hanna did not mind as she hopped off her barstool to go and fill her friend’s glass. She felt responsible for their current situation and was willing to go to great lengths to make it up to her. Besides, with her friend’s eyes covered, she could linger in her contemplation of the blonde bombshell lying in repose in front of her. She made sure to pour slowly, wondering what great lengths her friend might consider appropriate.

“Thanks,” Astrid said, breaking the moment.

“S’okay,” Hanna replied, retreating back to her barstool.

Astrid took the towel off her eyes and sat up to sip the wine. This had the effect of lifting her bosom clear out of the water. Once again, Hanna was struck by the piercing blueness of Astrid’s eyes and lowered her gaze in shy response only to become entranced by the way the water ran off those large breasts. She quickly gulped her newly filled glass and turned to stare outside, telling herself that it was just the night air that was bringing tenseness to her nipples. She heard her friend sigh as she slid back into the water. The mental image was perhaps more distracting than the actual sight, but she kept her attention focused outside the cabana.

A flash of light darted across the heavens.

“Hey, did you see that! A shooting star! Let’s make a wish,”

“NO!! No wishes!” Astrid lurched out of the tub and strode towards Hanna, grabbing her roughly by the shoulders and shaking her vigorously.

“You and your stupid wishes are what got us stuck here in the first place!” she shouted in the smaller girl’s face. “No more wishes!”

Hanna was stunned silent, confused by her own feelings as much as the violence of the moment. There was fright involved, or at least a startle reaction, but that was counter-balanced by a warmth low in her belly that may have been due to the vision of a dripping wet Norse goddess looming over her but seemed to be more related to liking the feeling of someone bigger and stronger grabbing and forcing her attention. She regretted when Astrid let go.

Astrid turned her attention to the door of the cabana, pulling and pushing furiously but uselessly on the frozen door.

“I said I was sorry,” Hanna said, slipping into the welcoming warmth of the hot tub.

Neither girl could stay out of the tub indefinitely. It seemed to calm and restore them, almost nourishing them. They were linked to it somehow. Hanna had only been out of it lately because she had been trying to avoid being in close proximity with Astrid. Now that the blonde girl was out of the tub, Hanna felt tremendous relief in the grip of the warm waters. Probably a result of the wish, she thought, calmly watching her friend’s futile efforts to force the cabana door.

“It won’t open,” she said, taking a sip from Astrid’s wine glass, watching her friend’s ass jiggle attractively as she tried to force the door. She began to surreptitiously touch herself under the water as she contemplated her friend. The bright pink string of Astrid’s thong disappeared enticingly between those immaculate cheeks and Hanna wondered what it felt like. Her own, more conservative bikini bottom felt quite natural and she could only wonder if Astrid felt the same.

“The door won’t open, the windows won’t break. The only places we can go are the bathroom, the changing room, the bar, and this tub. We’re stuck.” Hannah said, summarizing their situation between sips.

Astrid’s shoulders slumped as she let the door handle go in defeat. A brief moment of intensity had her grab a whiskey bottle off the bar and fling it against one of the surrounding windows, but it only bounced harmlessly, not even smudging the glass. Astrid continued to pace the room.

“We have to get in there. Get that vessel, and you have to conjure up that little genie of yours again,” she muttered with an air of desperation.

“He never said he was a genie,” Hanna pointed out languidly, finishing off Astrid’s drink.

“Well whatever he is, we need another wish.”

There was a tone in Astrid’s voice that Hanna found endearing.

“I thought you said no more wishes,” she teased.

Astrid shot her a sharp look that seemed to soften and drift downward along Hanna’s floating form.

“What I wish is, I wish this door would open,” Astrid said, turning a little too quickly away and giving the door a few more useless tugs in frustration.

What was that? Was that a look? Hanna wondered. That would be… interesting. She leaned forward on the edge of the tub, resting on her elbows, her wet naked breasts on full display.

“So what would you do?” Hanna asked coyly, her head tilted slightly to one side. “If that door suddenly opened wide for you, what would you do?”

“I’d… I’d go up to that house and get that vessel is what I’d do,” Astrid stumbled on her words trying to not look at the half-naked wet Asian girl talking to her from the hot tub.

“Looking like that? Don’t you think you’d better get dressed first?” Hanna said, pointing at the dressing room.

Astrid blushed remembering the tiny dresses and stiletto heels that waited for them there.

“I have a hard time picturing me wearing those things,” she said meekly.

Hanna had no trouble picturing Astrid in the pink patterned micro-mini tube dress that was clearly meant for the bigger girl. In fact, it brought a warm feeling to her that had nothing to do with the hot tub.

“Well, is it easier for you to imagine me in that shiny red backless number with the slit on the side up to my hip?” she asked, drawing her finger along her thigh as if to illustrate.

Astrid blushed even deeper. This was getting fun, Hanna thought but then she wondered if perhaps she had pushed her friend too far. The truth was that neither girl was going to get dressed any time soon. Something compelled them to stay the way they were, mostly naked, lounging around the hot tub.

“Besides,” Hanna offered in a more conciliatory tone. “That door isn’t going to open for another week.”

“A week’s so long,” Astrid whined. “You know we could get deported by then.”

“I hear Korea’s nice,” Hanna said with a shrug. “Besides, you might like Sweden.”

“Norway,” Astrid snapped.

“Whatever. The point is, we’re legal. We’re nineteen, we’re freshmen in college, and we have passports and student visas. Nobody’s deporting us unless our grade point average drops. And we’re definitely going to kick ass at ‘English as a Second Language’.”

“Can’t you be serious? I was born in this country.”

“You were born is some unpronounceable town about two miles from the North Pole. And I could seriously use some more champagne, give us a fill.”

Hannah held up her glass while Astrid resigned herself to filling up both their glasses, taking a long drink then sitting down beside the tub.

“This is nuts. This is nuts. This is nuts.” Astrid clasped her knees to her chest with one arm, holding her wine glass in the other as she rocked back and forth beside the tub.

“Hey, calm down Astrid, it will be all right.”

“Don’t call me that! My name’s not Astrid, it’s Alvin! Alvin Graham. I was born in 1965 in Springfield, Illinois. I’m not Astrid Gjelsvik, and I was not born in Stavanger, Norway. This is not me. This is not me!”

“Yeah, and my name is not Choe Ha-Neul, I’m really Harold Chambers and I was not born nineteen years ago in Daegu, Korea. Get over it. It’s the wish. We’re stuck.”

“What if... what if someone comes here and finds us like this?” Astrid said, looking nervously at the door. “I mean, what if… what if a MAN came here and found us? What would we do?”

Astrid spoke the word ‘man’ as a stage whisper that she was afraid to say too loudly. Hanna could almost hear the capital letters
that Astrid gave it. What if a man came here? Hanna had not considered it till now. The way she was feeling, she figured she would be up to a little experimentation. Take the new equipment out for a test drive, sort of to speak. More interestingly, why was Astrid wondering about a man coming here?

“I don’t know,” Hanna replied conspiratorially. “What would YOU do if a man came here?”

Astrid rewarded Hanna by blushing even deeper. This was definitely fun, Hanna thought. I bet it would be even more fun if a man was here and I teased him the same way. Would a man blush as easily, she wondered?

“Come back in the hot tub,” she said. “It will calm you down.”

“How could this wish get so screwed up?” Astrid moaned, sliding her body back into the tub.

“Oh I don’t know, ‘a week in a hot tub full of international co-eds’, what could possibly go wrong with a wish like that?”

Astrid laughed, weakly.

“Yeah, what could go wrong with that?” she said, the regret clearly audible in her voice.

Both girls were now in the tub. Hanna had sympathy for what Astrid was going through but right now the nearness of the bigger girl was causing her heart to race and touching herself was not going to be enough this time.

“You know, there could be benefits to this,” she tried to appear casual as she let her foot reach out under the water and brush against her friend’s leg. Astrid gave a slight start but other than a quick shy look at Hanna, she made no protest. Hanna felt emboldened and began to run her foot along Astrid’s calf. Astrid’s breathing seemed to pick up and while she avoided eye contact, Hanna noted with a smile that her nipples were now as taught as her own.

“It’s only for a week, and we do get an endless supply of some of the finest champagne as well as any other fancy liquor we want.” Hannah had exaggerated the flick of her tongue as she said the word ‘liquor’ then slowly licked her lips after taking a sip of her wine.

“I’m dry,” Astrid whispered in a small voice.

“Here, let me,” Hannah offered leaning over her friend to retrieve the bottle from Astrid’s side of the tub. She was literally lying in the bigger girl’s lap as she reached over for the bottle. She also made sure to use Astrid’s inner thigh as a brief handhold before sliding back, to sit close beside her, her right hand resting lightly on the blonde’s shoulder.

“Here we go!” Hanna said sprightly, with the wine bottle in her left hand and a big smile on her face. “Just say when.”

The wine glass was almost overflowing before Astrid said ‘when’. Both girls sipped. Hanna’s legs lay lightly over top of Astrid’s under the water and with Hanna’s arm around her shoulder, Astrid got the distinct impression that the Asian girl was sitting in her lap. Astrid had time to admire the dark burgundy color of Hanna’s toe nails, the color matching exactly the finger nails of her left hand, now holding the wine glass. Her right hand was not visible, but Astrid could feel it ruffle her wet hair then move to her right and begin to slowly massage her shoulder. Hanna was leaning into Astrid now, their eyes locking. Astrid could feel the movement of Hanna’s bicep and forearm across her back as the smaller girl continued to massage her right shoulder. Astrid could feel her own heart pounding as she fell deeper into the brown pools of Hanna’s eyes.

It seemed almost automatic. Hanna put the wine glass down and moved to hold Astrid’s face with both hands while she slid up to kiss her passionately with open mouth. Astrid froze for a second before her own mouth opened and her jaw muscles seemed to move of their own accord. She did not know where to put her hands. She had a wet nineteen-year old Korean girl in her lap French-kissing her and did not know what to do with her hands. She finally settled on putting them on Hanna’s lithe back, feeling the interplay of her friend’s muscles before clasping her tightly to herself. Hanna gave a little high pitched ‘oomph’ but their kiss continued unabated with their breasts pressed firmly together.

Finally the kiss was broken by Hanna, only so that she could sling her leg over and straddle Astrid, bending over her face to face as she delicately kissed her in between phrases.

“You know... there’s something... I remember... about that wish... it wasn’t just a hot tub... full of... international... co-eds... it was a hot tub... full of...’horny’... international... co-eds... Do you feel horny...? Astrid?... Do you?”

“If this is horny...” Astrid breathed heavily. “I’m definitely feeling it.”

Both girls smiled at each other and kissed one more prolonged time before Hanna sat up still straddling Astrid. She reached down and took Astrid’s hands in hers, marveling at the interplay of finely shaped fingers and delicately shaped nails. Her own burgundy colored nails contrasted beautifully with Astrid’s pearly pink, as she took the Scandinavian girl’s hands and pressed them against her own breasts. Arching backwards, she felt her own wet hair brushing against the small of her back. There was nothing like this that could have ever happened in her old life and she wanted this to go on forever.

If she were a man, she would have ravaged the girl below her but she did not feel like a man. She was smaller, and weaker than the Viking goddess she spread her legs around. And the feeling of those strong hands kneading her breasts was making her melt. Instead she folded like a lotus onto her companion, anointing her with kisses and the fluttering of her hands and lips along the curves and crevices of the female form below her.

Astrid’s mind was spinning. Her hands stroked along Hanna’s breasts, hips and thighs. So young. So firm and warm. This all felt so familiar and yet so new. It seemed like triumph and surrender at the same time when Hanna collapsed on her in a flurry of kisses and caresses. The touch of her lover’s fingers found new experience everywhere. New feelings were building up in her, gaining warmth, gaining strength. She squeaked in surprise when she felt Hanna’s lips take in her nipple, alternately kissing, and sucking and flicking the sensitive nib with her tongue. Hanna’s hand massaged the unoccupied breast while her other hand was somewhere lower. Astrid could hear soft feminine coos and moans but was not sure who was making them as her own hands were reaching across Hanna’s back, massaging the firm round derriere and exploring between the thighs of the small girl riding her.

Hanna could feel the rising pressure in her to the point of distraction but tried to keep her lips actively engaged with Astrid’s breasts as she fought to catch her breath, one hand on Astrid’s breast, the other searching the inside of Astrid, the thong pushed aside, her fingers gently penetrating. At the same time, the feeling of Astrid’s hands massaging her from below and behind, slipping in and out of her was pushing her to the edge and she was afraid she would not be able to last much longer. But she could not stop writhing and rubbing her chest against the slippery girl below her.

Just then Hanna heard Astrid gasp and felt her shudder. Astrid momentarily stopped moving in her distraction but the feeling of her clamping down on Hanna’s fingers inside her was enough to push Hanna over the edge as well. She felt her own breath catch in her throat and she too began to quiver as waves of feeling swept over her. The waves seemed to crash a very long time and momentarily she forgot where she was. Eventually the waves did ebb but the feelings were still reverberating through her as both girls lay there, smiling and kissing as they stroked each other’s face and hair.

Neither girl said anything, just grinned and stroked each other, flushed and gazing into each other’s eyes. There were no right words for what they had just gone through. There was just the moment and the feeling. And the gentle caresses, which touched on the echo of those waves they had felt. That echo never completely stopped and slowly it began to build again as the girls continued stroking and kissing. Both knew what was happening. Both knew they were starting again. They were ready, but neither girl was in a hurry. There was urgency here but there was no need to rush. They had all week.

----

Mike Rankin was having a very good day. Not only did he have like the easiest score in the history of breaking an entry but he also got a front row seat as those two foreign chicks did a lesbo scene right in front of him. In freaking amazing! God damn shame he had to leave before they were done, but as it was he had a hard time hopping walls and low crawling with a woodie that wouldn’t quit. God damn that was awesome. He had come within a hair breadth of leaving DNA evidence behind. Plenty of fodder for future wank sessions. Freaking awesome!

He was less impressed by the sudden appearance of a 3-foot tall slightly portly man in Middle Eastern garb.

“Whaa!! Who the hell are you?” Mike demanded trying to hide his ill gotten gains under the bed with his foot.

The little man bowed to the new owner of the vessel.

“Good evening, Sir,” he said. “I am the spirit that manifests when you activate that vessel which you have most recently acquired.”

The little man had started in on his standard introduction speech but he was greatly distracted by the vast eddy of unconnected magic that seemed to curve in on itself around this man.
1
“You came out of this,” Mike said in disbelief, holding up the little man’s vessel. It was not really a question but Mike needed a moment to wrap his head around what had just happened.

“In a matter of speaking,” the little man acknowledged.

Like most mortals, Mike was completely unaware of the natural flow of magical lines surrounding our normal day to day world. The little man could detect those lines and what he saw was far from normal. There was a swirl of magical eddies that rotated ominously through the room. And as the little man watched, they began to coalesce into a single spiral. This was bad.

“Like magic. You just showed up from inside of this.”

“Like magic, yes, but not exactly from inside. Allow me to explain…”

“Poof! There you were. Magic!’

“Please, there is a potential for great harm here.” The little man was worried. Mike was not at the center of the vortex but it seemed he was caught in it. Clearly he had had a brush with unfinished magic and it clung to him now seeking to complete the circuit. Great delicacy would be needed to pluck him from this danger and for that he needed Mike to watch what he said.

“Can you do any other tricks?” Mike asked, oblivious to the little man’s concerns.

“I don’t do ‘tricks’,” the little man answered, impatient with trivialities while he tried to save this mortal’s reality.

“Listen,” he said finally getting Mike’s attention. “There is great danger here. You must be very careful what you say next.”

Mike looked nervously around for a second and waited over a prolonged silence. “Why?” he finally asked carefully.

“Because what you say can trigger great but unpredictable change.”

Mike waited another long period of time before responding.

“How?” he said carefully, his eyes darting around the room.

“There is a tremendous amount of unstable energy about this place. If you were to carelessly utter a phrase in the proper format it would trigger a wish of profound impact, possibly impacting a tremendous number of people.” The little man was not exaggerating. He had seen these kinds of eddies before. This was loose wild magic, thrashing around looking for a place to connect.

“A wish?” Mike asked skeptically.

“Yes,” the little man replied. The normal introductions would need to be forgone. This man needed to be interrogated immediately. It was vital to find the origin of this mess. If it could be reconnected there it would minimize the effects.

“Like magic?” Mike persisted, still ignorant of his current situation.

“Yes,” the little man replied, desperately trying to trace the lines as they gathered speed around the room.

“I thought you said you didn’t do tricks?” Mike asked in a peeved voice.

“Please,” the little man answered impatiently. “We need to determine the origin point of this energy. Have you been to any high school football games or swim meets.”

“Well, not in the last ten years,” Mike said trying to remember how long ago he had dropped out of school.

“Okay, how about a daycare or maybe a car impound lot?” the little man asked.

“Nooo,” Mike answered slowly in a drawn out tone. This little man may be magical but he seemed to be off his nut.

“Middle Eastern harem?” the little man asked, smiling hopefully.

“Okay now, that’s just weird,” Mike replied.

“How what about an estate? Like a mansion. Have you been inside any fancy homes of any kind?”

At this point Mike suspected he may be involved in some elaborate police sting. Definitely a weird one though. Still, he glanced around the room more suspiciously and spoke for any potential microphones.

“I like many people have been in numerous situations like that before but I am sure I have an alibi for the particular home you have in mind and of which you speak. Hypothetically, that is.” He stated in an exaggerated voice, expecting someone to barge in waving a badge and gun.

The little man was far more interested in the pending magical emergency than any of Mike’s past petty criminal escapades.

“Excellent! Do you know a Harold Chambers or an Alvin Graham?” he asked.

“Who?” Mike asked, confused.

“You may know them as Choe Ha-Neul and Astrid Gjelsvik.”

“What!?” Mike asked even more confused.

“How about a hot tub, do you remember a hot tub?” the little man prompted.

“Oh yeah!” Mike relaxed in the fond memory of his recent voyeurism. “Those two dykes! You know them?”

“Yes!” the little man cried more in triumph than in answer to Mike’s question. “Good, we have found the origin point. This is excellent.”

“Excellent is right! They were totally hot!” Mike spoke lost in the memory. “Man, I wish I was in on the beginning of some of that kind of action right now! Know what I mean?”

“As you wish,” the little man intoned formally, pessimistically hoping that this particular cluster would end reasonably well.
Instantly, the magical lines snapped in on themselves, pulsing in bright magical spectra around Mike. This circularity worried the little man but he saw nothing he could do until this resolved itself. To Mike, it seemed as if the room around them had flashed to slate black empty space with nothing in it but the little man and himself, brightly illuminated with no visible light source. It seemed like someone had thrown a switch sending power to a giant set of bass speakers without actually playing any music through them. There was nothing but this great potential in the dead air around them.

“What happened?” Mike asked in that echoless space.

“You uttered a properly formatted wish,” the little man said with resignation in his voice.

“A properly what?”

“A properly formatted wish,” the little man sighed. “With the object ‘I’, meaning ‘you’, and the action to be ‘in on some of that kind of action’, meaning the sexual encounter you observed, and a time frame of ‘in the beginning’, which I am not yet sure how that will interact with the original time frame of ‘one week’. But you may or may not find yourself back in time by one day, or not. Also, you chose not to include any qualifiers, so we do not have that particular complication in mind while we consider the possibilities. Do you understand?”

“No,” Mike answered honestly.

“You are going back to the hot tub,” the little man clarified.

“For real?” Mike answered nervously. “You don’t think they’ll like, call the cops or something? I’m just saying, a strange guy showing up and all. Most girls would freak. Not like anybody stole anything, nothing like that, but they might think I’m like an intruder or something. You know how girls are.”

“Trust me,” the little man said. “You’ll fit in.”

Mike was skeptical but at that point a shudder passed through his body and it seemed a ripple passed through the slate black nothingness that surrounded them. Soon it became apparent that walls were materializing around them in the form of a small room.

“What’s this place?” Mike asked.

“This would be the changing room of the cabana,” the little man answered analytically. “Kind of appropriate really, given the situation.”

Mike did not know what the little man was talking about. He seemed to speak in riddles. The small room they were in shimmered briefly and took on more detail. Mike could make out a couple of benches and tile flooring. It definitely was starting to look like a changing room, with open faced lockers and an attached shower area. There seemed to be a bathroom area on the far side of the showers, but Mike was distracted by the mirrors. For the life of him, he could never remember being in a locker room before that had a full length mirror in it. That just seemed odd.

Another ripple passed through the room, this time causing Mike to shudder uncontrollably for awhile.

“Aahh. Whoa. Damn, what the hell was that?” he cursed, before addressing the little man. “Are you getting taller?”

“That,” the little man answered, breaking his silence. “That was the magic fitting you in to this reality.”

“So what does that mean?” Mike asked.

“It means that you will soon be reunited with those two girls in the hot tub,” the little man replied.

“Really? And you’re sure they won’t freak out on me?” Mike asked hopefully.

“They are going to welcome you with open arms,” the little man remarked.

“That totally rocks!” Mike said with great enthusiasm. “This magic stuff is pretty all right.”

Just then he noticed that somehow he was now barefoot and he watched in growing alarm as his clothes began to dissolve.

“Hey! What’s going on?” he cried trying to grab his pants and t-shirt as they seemed to blow away into the air. Only his boxers remained to cover him. “What happened to my clothes?”

“They are probably in the locker by now,” the little man answered calmly. He seemed more relaxed. This particular magical pattern was settling down into a well defined pattern. The wild magic had reconnected somewhat near to its source and the threat of broad scale magical changes had dissipated. Mike on the other hand was smack in the middle of some fairly intense local changes.

“You do not want to be fully clothed in the hot tub, do you?” the little man prompted.

“I suppose not,” Mike replied nervously. The material of his underwear had changed to resemble that of a swimsuit, which made sense to him, but these seemed to cling snuggly to his legs and waist instead of hanging loosely as they had before. They also seemed to be shrinking, riding low on his hips and climbing higher on his thighs. He was also put off by the day-glow green color they had turned into. It seemed inappropriate.

Glancing up at the lockers he noted that clothes had indeed appeared in three of them and he stepped over to see if his were there.

“I think we’re in the wrong room here,” Mike called over his shoulder to the little man. “This is the girls’ changing room.”

“Yes,” the little man agreed. “Yes it is.”

The three lockers definitely contained women’s clothing. The first locker on his left had some sort of pink patterned robe which after a moment he recognized as a strapless tube dress, although he was not quite sure why he recognized it. The underwear was folded neatly on a shelf and Mike noted the strapless bra. More accurately, he noted the large cup size of the strapless bra. Healthy girl, he thought wondering if he would get the chance to meet her. There was also a purse and pair of silver colored strappy mules with a three-inch stiletto heel. He wondered how women managed to walk in these things.

The second locker also held a purse and shoes. Unlike the first pair, these shoes were black open toed platform pumps. What impressed Mike was that even though the size was clearly smaller than the first pair, these must have had at least a four-inch heel. She must be short, Mike reasoned. The dress that hung neatly was red and felt slick to his touch. It’s an open back halter top with a slit skirt, Mike noted. And if that’s real silk, this would be expensive. It did not seem to cross his mind as to why he was considering the relative costs of material in women’s clothing. All he could think of was that those thigh high lace printed stockings looked great in black and totally made the outfit

The third locker kind of disappointed him. There was a simple denim miniskirt, short but plain and a skinny black belt with a silver buckle in the shape of a flower. There was also a sleeveless cotton shirt with an open collar. It was white with a dark-green border around the neck and along the hem. The underwear was white and conservative with only a moderate amount of lace. The shoes were open toe sandals, well worn, with at most a two-inch heel. For some reason this embarrassed him. The other two outfits were stylish and sexy while this just looked plain. It also looked like it belonged to a high school teenager and did not have any of the grown up sophisticated feel of the other two.

Even the purse had seen better days. I mean, how plain was brown. Mike opened it up and glanced inside. He could see a brush, a compact, and some cosmetics and what looked like a wallet or maybe a checkbook. The other purses looked more expensive and he bet they held a lot more money in them. The idea of stealing them surfaced from the back of his mind, but he dismissed that thought. It seemed an invasion of privacy to poke around those purses. This purse though gave him no such qualms. If anything he felt kind of possessive about it. Poking around deeper he found what looked like a passport.

“You know, I think this girl is from a foreign country,” he mentioned aloud, and then cleared his throat. He seemed to have picked up a bit of a tickle there, and coughed a second time.

“She soon will be,” the little man replied.

That seemed an odd response, but Mike was distracted from questioning it by noticing that the hair on his legs seemed to have completely disappeared all of sudden. This drew attention to the fact that his swimsuit was now considerably smaller than any Speedo trunks he had ever worn before. He also felt the tickle of something like hair brushing across the back of his neck and touching the tops of his shoulders.

At that moment a massive ripple passed through him causing him to spasm several times in rapid succession.

“Unnh!!” was all ‘Mike’ could utter in that moment. It took a moment for him to gather his breath. “What the hell was that? “

“It will not be long now,” the little man consoled. “From now on things will start to seem normal.”

“What?” ‘Mike’ managed to squeak out but the little man did not answer.

For ‘Mike’ the weird feelings did not end there. There was this creepy crawly pulsing feeling in the nipples causing them to go erect. And as they tightened they expanded, the areolas widening and darkening as they pushed away from the chest, fatty tissue filling in behind them. The remnant of swimsuit was now visible to ‘Mike’ as no more than a triangle of fabric centered on the crotch with strings tied on each hip in an elegant bow. And that triangle seemed to meld closer to the hips with every breath.

“Oh my God! I’m a girl!” she shrieked, her hands rushing up to clasp her expanding breasts.

Why do they always shriek like that, the little man wondered wincing at the noise.

“Of course you are a girl, what did you expect making a wish like that?” he said.

“I what? How? I mean… what? Expect this?! How? HOW??!!??” she repeated clutching her own breasts as she stared wide-eyed crazy at the little man.

The little man sighed and tried to calm the girl down. The magic was settling and while still moving, it posed little immediate threat to the current situation.

“Listen,” he said. “You did make a wish right? Even though I warned you, you went ahead and made a wish, right?”

“… I… I guess,” she stammered, noting in spite of herself that the sea-foam green nail polish on her nails was a little chipped and would need re-doing. At least it matched her toes.

“And what was that wish?” the little man prompted.

“I don’t remember,” she whispered, seeing and feeling her hips fill out. God they looked fat, and her thighs were even worse.

“Was it not something about ‘getting in on that kind of action’?” the little man prompted again.

“I guess so,” she answered weakly, dropping her hands to her smooth but firm thighs.

“And exactly what kind of action was that?” he asked.

“Two girls?” she answered plaintively, raising her hands to feel the rapidly lengthening hair falling from her scalp, holding it in front of her face. It was red, she noted.

“Two girls, yes,” the little man agreed. “So if someone were to grant you your wish for some girl on girl action, what would that wish make you?”

“A girl?” she offered questioningly.

“That is right. And what are you now?”

“A girl?” she repeated. “Wait,” she said, shaking her head. “Are you telling me that I just got turned into some kind of a lesbian?”

“No!” the little man reassured her. “No, nothing like that, at all. You are just very, very horny, like Ha-Neul and Astrid. Thanks to a previous wish, by the way, nothing to do with you. Well, something to do with you as it turns out, but believe me, if a man showed up, the three of you would be all over him.”

Somehow this failed to reassure her.

“Anyhow, “the little man continued. “This reality is almost fixed in place, and your change is almost complete. I think you will find whatever you need to know inside your purse over there. And since the vessel is well away from your possession, I guess this is goodbye.”

“What ?” she started.

“Yeah, this no longer concerns me,” he apologized. “Not my choice, magical rules and all. You are kind of on your own though. The girls are through that door there, so once again, good bye.”

“No! Wait!” she shouted. “You can’t leave me like this.”

But the little man was already gone.

“You are going to turn me back, aren’t you?” she asked the empty air. There was a slight echo off the tiles but no other response was forthcoming.

Cautiously she made her way back to the purse and once again examined the passport, opening it up with a sense of dread. She saw the picture of a girl with green eyes and red hair that reached well past her shoulders. Melissa Ryan, female, she read, born nineteen years ago. The words seemed to reverberate inside her head with familiarity. She was Melissa Ryan, even though she had also been Mike Rankin.

Moving to the full-length mirror, Melissa saw that she did indeed match her passport. She was a nineteen-year old girl with red hair past her shoulder blades and piercing green eyes. I’m beautiful, she thought. But I’m a girl, she added rapidly. Standing there wearing nothing but a bikini bottom, it was hard to argue differently. Her taught body with average breasts and decent hips looked more athletic than anything else. There was also a youthful vibrancy about her that promised great adventure.

My teeth are straight, she thought looking in the mirror. And I’ve got a bit of tan. That’s important, isn’t it?

Taking a deep breath, she opened the door of the changing room and walked into the focal point of the cabana where Astrid and Hanna waited for her.

“G’day,” she said to the two girls. “I’m Melissa, and I think I’m Australian now.”

“Hi Melissa, I’m Hanna. Cute accent,” Hanna said.

“I’m Astrid. Would you like a drink?” Astrid asked.

---

The little man watched from the darkness of the estate as Astrid and Ha-Neul welcomed Melissa into the sorority of the hot tub. The situation was bad. Not as bad as he feared it could be but still worse than he thought it would be once the changes that had engulfed the former Mike Rankin had started in earnest.

Harold Chambers had started it, even though he was now Choe Ha-Neul. There had not been enough bodies or magical energy around when Harold had wished for a hot tub ‘full’ of international co-eds. The magic reached out and changed him and his friend Alvin.
It had also changed Mike Rankin, although that was probably a good thing. From a 27-year old petty thief into a 19-year old college student was not such a bad deal. Unfortunately, Mike’s wish referred to being in on the beginning. This had the effect of tying the magic back in on itself very near its beginning. Not quite at the very beginning though, there was an offset by about a half day.

What made the situation really bad was that the magic had become self triggering. It no longer required a wish. Such was the power of sex acts and circular wishes, the little man shrugged. He had seen many cursed pools before but this was the first time he had been involved in creating one. But it stood outside the realm of his vessel. This was unrelated magic now and not his concern. He had noted those six empty lockers though. This particular magic pool would not be satisfied until it held nine bodies for the full week. That was the extent the word ‘full’ held on this hot tub.

Doubly unfortunate was the under lap. Once an individual girl had spent her assigned week here within the confines of the cabana, she would be free to leave and resume her new life. The under lap meant that it was highly unlikely that the hot tub would ever be full for an entire week straight. Nine people simultaneously? For an entire week? The little man doubted this curse would be lifted any time soon. That meant that this magical hot tub would likely continue a very long time, ensnaring the new and magically unaware that stumbled onto its location

Still he wondered, what would the long-term impact be of all those magically created international co-eds with the source of their transformation staying open? Once their individual weeks were up they would be spreading out to Universities across this land, fulfilling the co-ed part of their transformation. Then, once their educations were complete, they would return to their home countries. Trails of magic would follow them as long as this cursed hot tub continued. The reverberations from this pool would be felt in many lands.

The little man shrugged again. He had done what he could. The rest would be reported up the chain to the international desk for higher beings to consider. In the meantime, someone else had found his vessel. He needed to appear and warn them against making wishes. They never turned out the way one thought.

THE END