Some Enchanted Girlfriend by Donna Lamb 1. Waking Up I woke up that morning with a hangover; the sun coming in the window seemed to hurt my eyes, even with them closed. I hunted for the pillow to pull over my face but at first I didn't find one. What I pulled across by eyes turned out to be a hairy arm that didn't belong to me.

That took a moment to sink in. Still with my eyes closed, I felt of the arm. It seemed enormous. Had I gotten drunk and ended up in the bed of some professional wrestler, I wondered. Or I would have wondered if I'd been able to rub two coherent thoughts together.

The arm moved down to my shoulders and with a spastic motion, dragged me against a hard, hairy, warm body. A voice grunted and another voice squeaked a protest.

I seemed to be the owner of that second voice. I squinted an eye open and looked across a messy bedroom at a blurry digital clock which seemed to read WV 90:9 o'clock. "That can't be right," I said out loud. My voice sounded thin and squeaky and my tongue felt thick and furry.

"Ow, my head," said the deep rumbly voice. "Stop shouting." The heavy arm lying across me twitched again, squeezing the breath out of me.

A nasty taste came up in my mouth, forcing me to struggle. "Let me go!" I tried to push against the arm but the effort made my head pound and my stomach heave up. "Let me go! You better! I'm going to puke!"

We rolled around on the bed, partly tangled up in bedclothes, trying to sort out which limbs were whose. Naturally, I fell off the bed. The jarring impact would have been worse but I seemed to have landed my ass on the missing pillow. Still, the shock sent lances of white hot light through my eyeballs and left me incoherent and whimpering.

"Are you okay?" the deep voice asked.

"No," I said. I tried to open my eyes but the sunlight still hurt. "It burns, it burns!" I said. "Nasty bright daystar! We hates it! We hates it forever!"

The voice chuckled then said, "Ow! Don't make me laugh."

I got one arm up to shade my eyes and squinted up at him. It was him, a him, that is--dark tousled hair, beard stubble, crinkles around the eyes and corners of the mouth, olive skin and tea-colored eyes. A truly enormous face, frightening for the sheer size of it if it hadn't been for the slightly goofy smile and the narrow gap between the two front teeth. Big teeth, though.

"The better to eat you with," I said.

"Are you okay?" he asked again in his rumbly voice.

"No," I said. "I'm halloonisating there's a hairy-ass giant in my bedroom."

He pulled himself up and looked around. "Um, this is my bedroom."

"Worse yet," I said. I moved my head the wrong way and another sunbolt screwed its way through my skull. "Ay, caramba!" I smacked myself in the face with my own arm trying to protect my eyes.

"You are funny," he said. "I remember that you're funny." He chuckled like someone dropping rocks into a rain barrel.

"That's funny," I said. "I don't." Frowning made my head hurt so I just rested my forearm across my face. "Remember that is...." Who the heck was this guy and how the heck did I get in his bed?

He seemed to have heard the question I didn’t ask. "Uh, we met at a club.... Damned if I remember which one." His deep voice seemed to be getting further away. "Gotta whiz," he added.

I felt sort puffy, as if I had been over-inflated by a careless balloon-animal artiste. My stomach protested that it contained nothing but acid and fumes. When the tinkling evidence that he had found the bathroom reached my ears, my bladder burned hot and urgent. "Ow, wow, ow!"

My eyes popped open, distracting me from other pains with needle-like rays again. I rolled under the bed to get away from the sunlight, amazed that it sat high enough for me to do that.

"You sound like a kitten with someone pulling your tail. Where did you go?" The last part said from considerably nearer.

I could see his big, hairy feet. Coarse black hair grew from his toe knuckles, or whatever you call them on toes, and a hairy leg-warmer started just above his ankle and continued up. "I'm under the bed," I said, scooting along on my back toward the bathroom. "Stay out of the way and you won't get hurt." It would have sounded more threatening if I could have managed to stop squeaking.

He laughed.

I rolled out from under the bed right in front of him, got my hands and knees under me and decided not to try to stand up just yet. I felt misconnected, as if someone had plugged my 5V DC brain into a 120V AC wall socket. Nothing felt right or looked right. My hands looked wrong, my fingernails shiny. "Some party," I said.

"Oopsy-daisy," he said. "Don't throw up on the carpet, love." He bent his hugeness down, picked me up and set me down on my feet which I barely got under me in time.

I grabbed his big hairy forearm in both hands and squeaked some more. "Don't let me go! I'm...I'm...." I looked up into a mirror over a dresser and saw the tiny little blonde being held up by the enormous swarthy giant.

Seeing that almost scared the piss out of me.

I tried to clamp my legs on it but it wasn't there and I knew what would happen next. "Get me to the john, quick!" I said.

We barely got there in time. When I peed it made a sound like pouring water out of a cup. I looked up at him. From that angle all I could see was... Well, his big, huge, enormous... sausage. His dick. Of course, we were both naked.

"I'm dreaming," I said.

He laughed. "You're not going to fall off the stool, are you?"

"Uh, no." I looked away. A full-length mirror on the back of the bathroom door showed a small blonde girl sitting on a toilet while being held upright by a giant. I reached a hand up and felt of one of my tits. Then I sort of fainted. Okay, I fainted.

* * *

Some Enchanted Girlfriend by Donna Lamb 2. Getting Up I came to under a blanket with a cool cloth on my eyes. My head didn't hurt quite so much so I tried to sit up. The mirror on the dresser showed my round little chin, turned-up nose and bright blue eyes. "That's me?" I squeaked.

I thought I might faint again so I lay back down. I could hear someone moving around in another room somewhere but I seemed to be alone in the bedroom. I used my hands under the blanket to explore. I cupped my breasts in my palms; they were bigger than that by quite a bit. My waist tapered down then widened back out to some substantial feeling hips.

“Holy shit,” I whispered.

I felt a moist little slit in my groin, a bit further back than I expected, surrounded by soft folds and tender places. My arms and legs were smooth and soft and my butt felt like I had two spongy half cushions under my skin. My face felt smooth, too, and lots of curly, pale blonde hair covered the top of my head and tickled my shoulders and back.

I sat up and looked in the dresser mirror again. "That girl is me?" I said in my squeaky voice. I frowned, even though it hurt. I didn't remember being a girl, in fact, I distinctly remembered being a guy. A guy who had to shave every morning, who worried that maybe he should start taking Rogaine, who could write his name in the snow....

"My name?" I said aloud. What the heck was my name? "Ow!" Frowning to concentrate still hurt. "I've had bad hangovers before but...." It wasn't funny. I tried to lie still until the pain stopped.

Had I had bad hangovers before? Sure. Back in college, when we initiated the new guy into.... We all got drunk and puked and.... What was his name? What was my name? Heck, what was the college's name? The more I tried to remember the hazier it seemed to get; I couldn't think of any names at all except a fat guy named Bluto–or was that a character in a movie?

But I'd definitely been a guy.

Harry the Giant came back into the room, this time wearing baggy men’s underpants. Boxers, I mean. Nothing baggy about him at all. When he walked through the doorway, the dark wavy hair on his head apparently brushed the frame at the top. The curly dark stuff all over the rest of him somehow emphasized his muscles. I did keep noticing his muscles; they looked–heroic.

“You’re awake,” he said.

“Maybe. Is your name Harry? Harry the Hero?” I think I smiled at him.

He laughed. “You’re still funny.” He scratched the pelt on his stomach and grinned at me. “No, my name is Tim. But you can call me – Tim.”

“Ho, ho,” I said. Sitting there, I realized that I had no clothes on. I followed his gaze, looking down at my chest. I glanced back up at him and he met my eyes, grinning a bit. “Uh, have you seen my clothes?”

“I was going to ask you that,” he said. “You didn’t arrive here naked last night, did you?”

“Damfino,” I said. Feeling a bit exposed, I pulled the sheet up to my neck and glared at him. “All joking aside, could you please get my clothes?”

“Honest,” he said. “I’ve looked all over the apartment.” He mimed looking around. “Do you remember what you were wearing?”

I snorted. “No, I don’t remember... lots of things I don’t remember. What the....” I trailed off, not wanting to say that I remembered having been a guy. That would sound loony. I’d looked in the mirror and if a tiny blonde with big tits and reddish pussy hair had claimed to be a guy, I wouldn’t have believed her either.

That bothered me, too. The hair on my head was almost platinum and I had red curls downstairs. Wtf? I felt pretty sure that my hair should be brown in both places.

I looked up again to see him frowning at me with a scary intensity. I heard a growl. “Don’t eat me!” I said. Well, it was the first thing that occurred to me.

“Huh?” he said, glancing down at his own middle.

“You look–and sound!–like a hungry ogre,” I said. “I duwanna be breakfast.”

He grinned. “Too late, I think we both had breakfast earlier. Though my stomach disagrees.”

I didn’t want to think about that, either, especially after I glanced toward the sausage he kept in his boxers. I didn’t mean to look, it just happened. I’d seen it before. I think I groaned.

“No,” Tim said. “I was just trying to remember your name. I don’t usually go to bed with a girl without knowing her name. What’s wrong?”

I put one hand across my chest and the other in my lap. “I’m sitting here naked and I don’t remember my name, either,” I said. Okay, I sort of blubbered that line. The sudden tears caught me by surprise.

“Oh, no, hey,” he said, reaching for me. “You don’t need to cry. It’ll be okay, you’ll remember soon. Jeez, how much did we drink?”

“Why ask me? I don’t know that either,” I wailed. I tried to dodge him but he folded me up in his hairy arms and pushed my head on his shoulder. I would have felt more comforted if I hadn’t known just where his sausage was.

God, he felt strong, though. I could squirm but I knew I couldn’t budge him, his muscles felt like warm steel. And squirming might cause the sausage to, um, similarly harden.

Too late. I felt the hot, rubbery heat of his dick against my leg. And a hotter, fuzzy damp feeling in a place where I shouldn’t have a place. My body wanted to tell me it felt nice but my brain kept trying to hit the panic button.

I wanted to run away, screaming but I couldn’t. So I did the next best thing, I cried some more. He patted me and said the sort of things men say when they are holding a naked crying woman in their lap. I stopped after a bit but I had to resist feeling around to see just where the wooden sausage had gone.

Maybe my reluctant interest in Topic S communicated itself to Tim. "Mmm?" he murmured into my hair.

I clenched my jaw in order not to make some sort of affirmative noise because I knew exactly what would happen if I did. And I knew it too would feel nice.

“Mmm?” he said again, rubbing my soft, tender cheek with his day-old stubbly one.

I felt my nipples crinkle up from the chills running up and down my spine. I had to get away before I said yes but trying to squirm loose still seemed like a bad idea because I could already feel Mr. Stiffy against my leg. “N-n-no?” I managed to say and pushed against him with hardly enough strength to move a lace curtain, let alone a brick wall like Hairy Tim Whosis.

He sighed and held me away from him to look me in the eye. “Better?” he asked.

Had I only imagined the invitation I thought he had made? “Better,” I agreed but it still didn’t feel safe to nod or say yes. One little mistake here and I knew I would end up on my back with my legs spread.

And the worst thing was it didn’t actually sound that bad.

* * *

I’ll never understand women, even if now I am one. Especially now. Some Enchanted Girlfriend by Donna Lamb 3. Kissing Up

Tim let me go and I managed to move away instead of...well, I’m not sure what my new libido had in mind exactly but I felt the eagerness to experiment. He looked at me curiously before moving to one of the chairs; not the heavy straight chair at the dresser but the office style at the desk in the corner.

As soon as he moved away, I felt like I had missed a chance I should have taken. But he looked at me again and grinned and I knew suddenly that he would be back in a heartbeat if I said or did the right thing. Or the wrong thing, depending on how you looked at it.

So, of course, I went all reluctant again. I’ll never understand women, even if now I am one. Maybe especially now.

But how? How had it happened? And would I ever get a chance to think about it with Tim, huge and hairy and reeking of hormones, in the room? Distracting just to watch him sit down and boot up his computer.

He got his calendar program up and running, and grinned at me. “Good news. It really is Sunday. I don’t have to be at work till Monday.

“Um,” I said, trying for terse intelligence.

He yawned, scratching at the fur on his chest. “Wanna go back to bed? It’s only six-thirty.” He turned the computer off without shutting it down. It surprised me that I knew what a bad idea that was.

“I’m in bed,” I said, stalling.

“You’re on the bed,” he said. “I meant, go back to sleep.”

Sleep, sure.

He’d loaned me one of his t-shirts, a black one with a funky looking silver “11” on the back. It fit like a nightgown, falling over my knees where I sat in the middle of the sheets. I pulled a pillow into my lap and held it so it hid the bumpy parts of my chest. “Uh-uh,” I said. “I’m not going back to sleep until I know who I am and where my clothes are.”

My clothes?

I glanced again toward the dresser. What kind of clothes would a cupcake like the one I saw in the mirror wear? Something pink and revealing, I felt sure. I made a face and then quickly made a different one; the first face had looked entirely too pouty. And too cute, much too cute, sheesh.

He grinned at me then sighed and ran a hand through his short, curly black hair. “Seems a shame to waste a Sunday morning not sleeping in.” He stretched and yawned, almost clobbering the ceiling with a casual fist and causing palpitations in my chest.

I took a deep breath, I needed it.

“Tim,” I said. “If I knew who I was – if I had any damned clothes! – I’d be out of here and you could sleep all day!” Okay, maybe the pouty look would work. “Could you please get dressed and get out of here, so I can think?” I tried to give him puppy dog eyes.

He frowned. “You can’t think while I’m here?” He flexed a wrist, just a wrist! And a muscle as big as my thigh in his forearm bulged like a submarine coming up to look around.

I shook my head. It was true. Something about having a hunky young giant in the room made it hard to think, and hard to think about why it made it hard to think. And I didn’t want to think about if it made it hard for him to think with me in the room.

We’d both taken aspirin and drank tall glasses of water or that last thought would have made my head hurt again.

I took another deep breath and tried not to look at him. “If I can just think for a bit, I can maybe remember who I am and call home for someone to come get me?” I said.

I didn’t really have much hope of that because I did remember being a guy and what the hell could I remember that would explain how I came to be a girl? Well, if it could happen, it must have some sort of explanation, I supposed. Other than the obvious one that I had gone stark, staring, bonkerino.

He frowned at me again. “I don’t want you to leave.... If I go out, you’re going to be here when I get back?”

I rolled my eyes, hugging the pillow to me. “Where am I going to go with no clothes on?”

He grinned at that. “How the hell did we get you in here without your clothes? You didn’t just magically appear, did you?”

Maybe I did just magically appear. It made as much sense as anything I could think of. I shook my head. “Just go, okay? Go get some breakfast and when something opens, see if you can buy me some clothes.”

“You’re not hungry?”

“You can bring me a donut.”

“What kind of clothes? And I don’t know your sizes.”

“I don’t either!”

He almost laughed. I wanted to hit him but I didn’t think I’d do any damage with the pillow, or anything else in the room for that matter. Nothing less than a sledgehammer seemed likely to dent his pelt.

“Please,” I said in my squeaky voice, trying the puppy dog eyes again.

He sighed. “Okay, okay.” He got up and moved around the room, getting dressed. He pulled some blue shorts out of a drawer in the highboy and put them on, one leg at a time without sitting down. A red t-shirt advertising some pizza place with a gold logo came out of another drawer and he put that on, too.

He sat back down at the computer desk to put on some crosstrainers without socks and I had to take a deep breath. Watching him get dressed had been having the oddest effect on me, like I wanted to take his clothes back off again.

Of course, in his red, blue and yellow, he looked like a comic book superhero, spoiled only slightly by the wads of hair sticking out of the gaps at neck, thigh and upper arm. The furriness made me think of the guy with the knives in the back of his hands but my Harry the Hero was too cheerful for a mopey mutant. And too tall for that particular one, jeez, he was tall. Sitting down, I decided he must be nearly as tall as me standing up.

Which explained why the bed was so high off the floor. And he had the surface of his desk set where it would be above my waist, everything built to the scale of his largeness. I’m short, now. He must be six-foot-six or more and at least a foot taller than me.

He saw me looking at him and grinned again. “Think I should shave?” he asked. He rubbed a big hairy hand across his face making a noise like harvesting corn.

I shook my head. When he’d held me in his lap earlier, I’d felt his stubbly cheek against my face and the memory sent chills down my spine. “Just go, okay?” I said.

“Okay,” he agreed. He stood up, towering over me, hesitating.

Oh, shit, I thought. He’s going to bend down and kiss me. I can’t get away, I can’t stop him, what do I do?

He did bend down and I felt myself rise up on my knees to meet him. His lips felt warm and dry against mine and just the tip of our tongues touched. My nipples crinkled again and I pulled the pillow tighter against my chest as I sank back down on the bed.

“I could go with you if there was anything for me to wear besides this t-shirt,” I said. Part of me definitely didn’t want him to go but it was a part I had never had before I woke up next to him less than an hour before.

“Sorry,” he said. He leaned more forward, resting his knuckles on the bed like some hairy, horny apeman. He wanted another kiss and I wanted to give him one–wtf!–but I pushed myself away.

“Just go,” I said. “You...we...you’ll never get out of here!”

He straightened up, laughing. He put keys, a wallet and a phone into a black hipbag around his waist, then paused at the door to baby-wave at me. “You like scones? There’s a Starbucks down the block.”

“Yeah, okay,” I squeaked.

He left the bedroom and I heard him go out the apartment door and pause to check the locks.

I sighed in relief, though part of me felt grumpy at not going with him. “Why couldn’t one of his other girlfriends have left something wearable behind?” I complained out loud.

Then pulled the pillow up and hid my face in it. What was I saying? Other girlfriends?

* * *

Some Enchanted Girlfriend by Donna Lamb 4. Picking Up The idea of being Tim’s girlfriend disturbed me. And the idea of Tim having other girlfriends annoyed me. And the idea of being annoyed at the thought of Tim’s other girlfriends didn’t just disturb or annoy me – it scared the cross-eyed shit out of me.

Because I knew what that annoyed feeling was–I was actually getting jealous of some other women in Tim’s life that I had never met and who might not even exist. Oh, come on now, you know they exist–how could he not have tons of girlfriends? Just look at him, I told myself.

And I did mentally, picturing the way his ass looked in those shorts as he left the apartment. The way his back made a diamond shape above his waist. How his arms, just his arms, seemed bigger than my whole body. His muscles, who knew I liked muscles? Magic muscles. Omigawd.

Something else occurred to me. Omigawd!

I’d done it again, thinking of women as other women! Which meant I thought of myself as a woman. As Tim’s girlfriend with the sole and unshared privilege of admiring his backside, his back, his arms, his neck – his sausage, too.

“Crap! Crap! Crap!” I said aloud.

I looked at my reflection in the mirror above the dresser. Yeah, no doubt about it, “I’m female.” I pulled the borrowed t-shirt tight across my chest and looked down and then in the mirror. My nipples had gotten hard again thinking about Tim’s butt and other parts.

“How the ever-lovin’ freakin’ shit did this happen?” I squeaked.

I jumped off the bed and ran out into the living room that opened right off the bedroom. I could feel my titties bounce every time my heels hit the floor and it wasn’t really pleasant. “Oh, jeez, I’m a fricken cow!” I stopped because it was getting uncomfortable.

I crossed my arms under the bags of flesh on my chest and glared around the room. Better nobody laugh at the tiny girl with the big tits. Okay, then.

Tim seemed impossibly neat for a bachelor; I hadn’t spotted a pair of underwear on the floor or a dirty dish on a shelf yet. Even his bathroom gleamed. Maybe he had a maid come in to clean.

I pictured a cute brunette in a pink and white maid’s uniform and gritted my teeth. She was smiling at him! The slut!

I needed a distraction before I went completely round the loop-de-loo and ended up feeling jealous of myself! I glared around, trying to focus on something, almost anything.

The carpet in the bedroom had been a two-tone figured slate color. The living room rug repeated the slate but added gold and burgundy accents to the figures. It looked expensive.

As if to prove the point, the long wall of the living room had a huge HD television, probably wider than I was tall. A dining table big enough for six took up the room directly under the windows and a small kitchen lay around the corner of a neat little breakfast bar.

I explored. Okay, I snooped.

I found a neatly sorted stack of mail on a small table between the bedroom door and the kitchen. Tim’s last name seemed to be Geelman and his middle initial was C. Or maybe it was Gellman. That seemed more likely. I said it out loud, “Timothy C. Gellman,” and someone giggled. Me.

I don’t know why I did that but saying his name out loud made me smile. And giggle, jeez!

I looked in the refrigerator. A bowl of grapes, a carton of 2% milk in the door. A wrapped package that turned out to have thinly sliced roast beef. Another package of intensely smoky smelling bacon.

Wait a minute. Wasn’t Gellman a Jewish name? Maybe not, or at least, Tim didn’t keep kosher. I spent a moment wondering how I knew the right term, was I Jewish? Who knew?

I had noticed Tim’s circumcision–for crying out loud, we’d been naked in the bed together–but thinking about it made me blush. And giggle again, dammit! “I’ll have my salami with cheese,” I said aloud and giggled some more.

Crisper full of fresh-looking veggies, doors full of condiments, bottom shelf holding six bottles of Sam Adams Boston Lager and four cans of Coke Zero, freezer full of good quality frozen entrees and a carton of Tin Roof Sundae Ice Cream. My favorite!

Wait! I had a favorite flavor of ice cream? Nice. Did that help me remember my name? Nope.

But how did Tim know? It must be his favorite, too! And now I was giggling again, just fricken thrilled that Tim liked the same kind of ice cream I liked, for pity’s sake!

“You are so hosed,” I said out loud. “Those magic muscles are on your brain and how you going to get them off?”

I tried to distract myself from my obvious, excessive, juvenile, boy-crazy girlfriendness by more exploring.

A door at the back of the kitchen proved to open on a tiny laundry room which must be back-to-back with the bath in the bedroom. Some part of me thought, nice design and some other part thought, how would you know, you dumb little girlfriend?

And another locked door in the kitchen probably opened to the outside hall where Tim had gone. Thinking of that made me feel lonesome so I backtracked to the big window wall in the living room.

A balcony outside filled the angle between a similar wall in the bedroom and I could see a deserted courtyard below and some other balconies across a blue-green swimming pool. It looked nice outside but until I had some clothes that actually covered my nether parts, I didn’t want to risk a wind blowing my dress up over my head.

Dress? Well, the damn t-shirt I wore. It hung on me like a tent. I tried to pull the neck around to see what size it was but no, I’d have to take it off to see that. Not just now.

“Bet he’s got a 20-inch neck,” I said aloud. And fricken giggled again! “Oh, jeez,” I complained. “Do I have to be such a girl about him?”

Okay, he seemed like a really nice guy, with muscles, and he hadn’t taken advantage of me, well, not after I woke up, and, and.... I remembered a line from an old movie, “He’s large.” I blushed–and giggled again, of course.

Wait! Where had I seen that movie? Who had I been with when I saw it? I remembered we had laughed at parts of it and yawned at other parts. What was the fricken movie, anyway?

The critics hated it. The fat sarcastic guy and the skinny sarcastic guy on Sunday night. What the heck were their names? And the name of their show?

It would be just too lame-ass if I could remember their names and not my own! Okay, so I wasn’t quite that lame-ass. I couldn't remember anything else.

I went back into the living room to look into the mirror over the little telephone and mail drop table. My blondeness seemed very evident–my reflection looked as dumb as a rock with a seagull sitting on it. “What am I, stupid?” I asked. “Don’t answer that.”

“Olive!” I said suddenly. Olive? Wtf did olives have to do with anything? Martinis? Salad? Pizza? Huh? I had it on the tip of my tongue, not just olives; something olive or olive something.... Oh! The girl in the movie, the brunette!

The phone rang. It scared me since it was right in front of me but I snatched it up and put it to my ear. “Hi, Tim,” I said.

I know I damn near cooed and my nipples crinkled again. I put a knuckle between my teeth and bit on it to keep from giggling. Large Tim with the magic muscles. Stop it!

“Hey, babe! How did you know it was me?” he asked in that deep, rumbly voice that made me want to pee on myself.

Can you die of self-inflicted cuteness? Some Enchanted Girlfriend by Donna Lamb 5. Hanging Up

 
“Well, who else would be calling? It’s not even seven o’clock yet,” I said. How did I know it was him, though? I hadn’t done any thinking about it at all.

He laughed and I did giggle, I just couldn’t help it.

“Which do you want; a bowl of oatmeal with fruit, cream and maple syrup, or a bagel with egg, ham and cheese? And what goes in your coffee?” He asked.

“Uh, oatmeals,” I said. “I love oatmeals.” I do? And I call it oatmeals? Is it possible to die of self-inflicted cuteness? “But not in the coffee.” I giggled.

He laughed again and I forgot to be annoyed at myself; making him laugh was worth embarrassing myself.

“Okay, babe,” he said. “How do you like your coffee?”

“Hot, sweet and creamy,” I heard myself purr. Crap. Crap. Crap.

He made the sound of rocks being dropped in a rain barrel again. I stopped myself from wriggling just from hearing it.

“Have you remembered anything? Uh?” he asked.

“Olive oil,” I said. “No, I mean, Olive Oyl.”

“Huh?”

“What’s-his-name’s girlfriend....”

“Oh. Popeye?”

“Yeah, Popeye’s girlfriend.” I blinked. The one-eyed sailor from the frat party? No, wait, that can’t be right. A cartoon sailor. I went to a frat party with a cartoon sailor?

“I yam what I yam,” Tim said, in a growly voice.

I shook my head, pulling myself back from the brink of nonsense. “Not him, her. Olive Oyl, I remembered her.”

“Uh-huh. What about her? I don’t think your name is Olive.”

“She said something. I remembered. In a movie. She said something in a movie and I remembered it.” But it wasn’t a cartoon movie, wtf?

Silence.

I stood on one foot and then the other for a moment; for some reason my feet hurt.

“What did she say?” he asked.

“I can’t tell you,” I said, remembering just in time what it was she had said that I had remembered and why I couldn’t repeat it to him. She even sang a song about her large boyfriend and his – largeness.

Tim laughed again. “I’m coming right back with the coffee and stuff, okay? Then maybe I’ll go find you some clothes somewhere. Only place I can think of open early on Sunday is Walmart. That okay, babe?” He seemed amused.

“Anything,” I said. “Walmart. Really?”

“What?”

“Eww.” I made a face. Mostly to be funny and try to make him laugh again but from looking around his apartment, he could afford to buy me clothes someplace besides fricken Walmart.

He did laugh then said, “Coffee’s up, be right there,” and hung up on me.

I stood holding the phone a moment, then put it back on the little table where I’d found it.

Leaning against the wall, I picked up my feet, one at a time and rubbed my insteps and my heels. They hurt, a burning sensation that wasn’t at all pleasant. And my tits hurt, obviously whoever I was, I didn’t go around barefoot or braless very much.

Whoever I was?

I stepped over to the breakfast bar and climbed up on one of the stools, folding my arms under my boobs again to give them some support while I got off my feet.

Whoever I was?

Well, obviously, I was me. But the me I sort of remembered was a guy. Not a girl with big tits and sore feet. Who couldn’t remember her name.

Okay. Now wait. Wait.

Trying to follow a thought I had, I rubbed the insteps of my sore feet on the rungs of the stool. That felt good. And stretching my feet out like I was standing on tiptoe felt good. High heels, I thought, I probably wear high heels all the fricken time.

I looked at my legs. Very smooth and girlish and shapely, especially when I flexed my calves and extended my dainty little feet. My hands and feet both seemed small, even for a short girl. My toenails were all neatly trimmed and looked shiny but without any polish on them. I’d already noticed that about my fingernails.

I held my hands out, looking at them again, fingers spread where I could see the nails. Definitely longer than a man would wear them and shiny. Could you make nails shine without putting polish on them? “That’s what those little sandpaper boards are probably for,” I said aloud. Or maybe not, what did I know?

I shook my head. I didn’t want to think about stuff I didn’t know, I wanted to think about stuff I didn’t remember.

I did remember being a guy. And I didn’t know things a girl ought to know, except some things that might be wired in like how to look cute. Really? It did seem to be easy to do unlike remembering names.

I wondered if Tim thought I was cute.

Try to stay on one line of thought besides that one, I told myself. Sheesh. Of course, he thinks I’m cute; he’s a guy and I’ve got tits. I glanced down at them, they might be a bit large for just cute.... Heck, they might be big enough to take me out of the cute category entirely. I worried for a moment that they were too big, that Tim didn’t really like them being so big.

Focus. Focus. Focus.

I’m a girl, I reminded myself again. I don’t remember being a girl. Amnesia can do some funny things but I never heard of anyone forgetting what sex they were. And it wasn’t that I just didn’t remember sitting down to pee, I remembered being a guy with all the apparatus and appurtenances thereto encumbered.

So.... So? How could that happen? If I used to be a guy, how come I’m a girl now, I wondered. Things like that just don’t happen in real life.

That would leave hallucinations and delusions. But I didn’t feel crazy. “Maybe a bit ditzy,” I admitted aloud. “But, jeez, it takes some getting used to!” If any girl ever had a right to be a ditz, I felt that I did. And I seemed to actually be enjoying it, which also worried me a bit.

“So, like, I’m so blonde!” I said aloud. As good an excuse as any and better thinking I’m crazy.

I tried pinching myself but that hurt. “I’m not asleep, I’m not crazy, I.... What does that leave? Drugs? Hypnosis? Aliens? Magic?”

I remembered having been hypnotized once. This didn’t feel like that because when you’re hypnotized one part of you is still in on the gag and you’re just agreeing to let the other part of you get fooled. It’s like a real intense game of pretend when you were a kid; if your mom calls out that it’s dinner time, the game has to end.

How the heck could I remember having been hypnotized back in high school when I couldn’t remember my own name? I remembered the bleachers near the football field, the cool wind that blew because it was October. But not my name or the name of the high school?

Or how I turned into a blonde cupcake and got into Tim’s apartment without any clothes? It didn’t make sense.

Drugs might be a possibility but I couldn’t figure out how to test whether I might be drugged. Wait and see if it wears off was the only thing I could figure out. But I didn’t feel drugged.

Which left the possibility of something like aliens or magic. Or maybe alien magic. And those possibilities were just weird, worse than drugs because they might never wear off and there might never be an explanation. I might be stuck being a girl for a long time. Forever! And never know why!

Ouch. Talk about depressing. Or well, no, I wasn’t depressed, just annoyed. Fricken magic aliens shouldn’t mess with me!

I turned around and looked up at the door just before Tim knocked and called out. “I’m back! Wanna come get some stuff, babe?” I heard him put a key in the lock and turn it.

“Sure!” I said, jumping off the stool and running for the door. I’d known he was there before he said anything and how the heck did I do that?

Some Enchanted Girlfriend by Donna Lamb 6. Filling Up We sat on the big plush couch and ate oatmeals and drank coffee and Tim had got himself a ham-and-egg-and-cheese bagel, too. Got to feed those magic muscles, I thought and damn near choked trying not to giggle.

“You okay, babe?” he asked. He put a hand on my thigh and gave it a light squeeze, causing my toes to twitch. He took up most of the gigantic, grey leather couch, of course, and I had sort of wedged myself into one end with my legs draped over one of his.

I nodded, afraid to actually say anything. He smiled and squeezed my leg again.

I have no idea why I sat where I did but it put me within easy reach. I thought of that before I sat down and still I sat there. Go figure.

He finished his sandwich and took a big slurp of coffee. I made a face at him, I’m not sure what kind.

He grinned and asked, “What?” How could such a big guy have such cute expressions?

“Do you have to make that sound when you drink your coffee?” I asked, pretending to be exasperated at him. “You practically inhaled your oatmeals, too. Jeez, I’m tryna eat here?”

“Disgusting, huh?” He winked at me.

“Sort of.” I probably blushed and covered it by staring into my bowl. Really good oatmeals, btw. I could feel my ears getting red and a hiccup trying to giggle its way up from my middle.

“You’re from New York. Or Philly or Connecticut, one of those eastern cities, huh?” he asked, surprising me.

“Why... why do you say that?” I didn’t have to fake being startled.
Was I from New York? It felt right but I couldn’t be sure about it.

“I knew ‘cause of how you talk,” Tim said. “Tryna, wanna, jeez, dis, dat.” He grinned at me.

“I don’t say dis and dat and Connecticut isn’t a city,” I said. I handed him my bowl. “You wanna finish my oatmeals?” I’d eaten more than half but felt full, and those really were some disgusting noises he had been making.

“Sure, babe,” he said. He gave my leg another squeeze and took the bowl. “Good stuff.”

“Uh-huh,” I said. “You say you think I’m from New York?” I thought about the courtyard I had seen out the window. Palm trees. “Meaning we ain’t in New York now, so where are we?”

“You don’t know that?” He finished off the bowl of oatmeals in three noisy bites. “We’re in Marina del Rey. Part of Los Angeles, sort of.”

“Oh,” I said in a small voice, fairly sure I’d never heard of the place. “It’s on the water? How the heck did I get here?”

“Yeah, more boats than houses. And I still don’t know how you got here. What’s the last thing you remember?”

“Eating oatmeals,” I said, trying to look innocent.

He snorted. “I meant, before you woke up this morning, silly.” He gave me another squeeze on the thigh.

I decided I might be beginning to like that but it didn’t help me remember anything. I squinted at the ceiling, “Hofest, onnicer, I only dall fown when I’m vinking drodka,” I said.

Tim laughed, sat up and pulled me into his lap. I said something intelligent like, “Yike!”

“You’re a nut,” he said. “I like that in a girl.”

And he kissed me again. Holding me there in his lap, what could I do? Okay, I kissed back. I mean, I’d looked at myself in the mirror, I’d gone to the bathroom. I’m a girl. Kissing a guy is just a natural thing to do, right?

Wow.

When we came up for air I discovered that he had his hand under the t-shirt I was wearing for a dress, and... and he was doing things down there. “When I talk do your lips move?” I asked him between gasps.

He didn’t get it but he smiled anyway. “Uh-huh,” he said. I squinted into his face and almost busted up laughing, despite what was going on down below. His look of horny concentration was pure concentrated horniness.

“Uh,” I said. “Are you trying to avoid getting me some clothes?” I asked.

“Uh-huh,” he said. “Yeah, babe, sure.” I thought he hadn’t actually heard what I said. “Clothes would just get in the way, huh?”

“Uh-uh-uh,” I said, or something like that, sort of a mix of a giggle and a gasp.

After that, I don’t really remember what happened. Okay, I do and it was fucking amazing, or vice versa, to coin a phrase. My first time, sort of–at least that I remembered from the catching side.

The huge couch made sense now. We finished up with me lying on top of the fur rug of his middle, probably because he weighed as much as two of me plus a kid sister. If I had a kid sister, she better not come near him, like in the song.

I didn’t want to think too much about what we’d done; far as I know, when I used to be a guy, I was straight as a missionary, maybe straighter. And it looked like I still could qualify as a card-carrying heterosexual, just one who had changed precincts.

He stroked my hair and made contented noises I could hear rumbling in his chest. After a minute of drowsy peace, he asked, “Did that help you remember anything, babe?”

I started to giggle then we laughed so hard we fell off the couch except he caught us and eased us onto the slate-and-burgundy carpet, nuzzling each other and still chuckling.

“Yeah, right,” I said. “Cure amnesia with the old beef injection.” I lay on my back with him over me, propping his head up on one elbow.

The t-shirt I had been wearing as a dress had disappeared and I vaguely remembered tearing his shirt off of him. Okay, yeah, I did that. From where I lay, I could see his shorts hanging from a corner of the 67” HDTV. I did not know how they got there, I swear.

He lazily stretched one leg over my ankles and caught my wrists with his free hand. “Got you,” he said. With no effort at all, he held me motionless, I could barely wiggle my middle.

This caused the damnedest reaction in me, like someone had wrapped my groin in a heating pad. “I’m–I–are you? We’re going to do it again?”

“Soon,” he promised, bending down to kiss me. “Recharging. You know guys aren’t ready again quite as soon as girls.” He kissed again, just little nibbles with his scratchy cheeks brushing my lips in between and making me nuts.

“Uh-huh.” I licked my lips myself. “Yeah, I know.” And I did, one of the advantages of being a receiver seemed to be not needing time to get ready. Well, some girls needed time to get hot for it. Evidently, not me.

“Am I gonna be your cupcake?” I asked, whispering.

He liked that. “If you wanna be, sure.” He chuckled, that noise he made deep inside, laying up against him I could feel it as much as hear it. “Long as I get to lick the frosting, huh?”

I giggled. Sure. The thought made me squirm.

He let me go then and rolled onto his back, the evidence of his need for a recharge lying across his leg like a sentry half asleep at his post. Even not quite ready, it looked ginormous, not just built to scale with the rest of him, maybe a bit over-sized.

“God,” I said. “That went inside me?”

He chuckled. “I thought you liked it. You certainly sounded like you liked it.”

I giggled some more, too awed to actually blush. “Yeah, I liked it, I guess. Uh-huh, oh, shit, yeah.” I nodded, feeling blonde to the bone and smarter than peel-and-stick kitchen tile.

He laughed and pulled me toward him. “You want to hurry things along a little bit?” he asked, pushing my head down toward his middle.

Oh, and I knew exactly what he meant by that, too. I didn’t feel at all nauseated or turned off by the idea either, in fact, my mouth started watering. Face it, I told myself, you’re not just a girlfriend, you’re a complete slut of a girlfriend.

I started to crawl through the brushy growth on his chest, turning my own bottom up toward his face. “If I’m going to have a taste of your gander, I want you to sample my saucy goose,” I said.

Well, when all was said and done, a half-hour or an hour or whatever later, guess what he wanted to do? Right. Go back to bed, to sleep. Men!

Some Enchanted Girlfriend by Donna Lamb 7. Lying Down “But you promised to go get me some clothes,” I whimpered. I didn’t have my pouts organized yet, but I think this might have been a number seven.

“Babe,” he rumbled, “it wouldn’t be safe for me to try to drive right now. I need a nap. It’s still early, you know.”

I tried logic. “But if I’m still naked when you wake up, you know what’s gonna happen.”

“Well, eventually,” he rumbled from the floor, “I’m going to have to go into work, Monday morning.”

I tried physical force. I pounced on him, looking for a ticklish spot in the forest. “We are not going to fuck the clock around! You’re going to get up and and go get me some clothes!”

He snickered. “But I like having you around naked. It’s –convenient.”

“You–you–you!” I sputtered.

He wrapped a hand as big as my head around my leg and pulled me off of him. With his magic muscles he could do anything to me and the thought of that made me horny all over again. But he really wasn’t interested in third or fourth helpings of sex just yet.

“That’s it!” he said, retaliating, holding me down and going for my ticklish spots without searching at all. “I’ll bet your parents were like the early Pilgrims and named you for one of the virtues. You know, like Prudence or Chastity. Good thing they didn’t name you one of those, huh?”

“Huh?” I said between squeals and giggles.

“No they named you after the most important virtue for a girlfriend, Convenience,” he said as he blew bubbles in my navel. He showed me a thoughtful leer. “Connie for short.”

“Connie!” I sputtered. “Connie!” I squeaked.

He sat up, scooped me up and stood with hardly any effort, balancing me on his hip like a toddler.

“My name is Connie, isn’t it?” I said. Nothing like being swung around like a bag of groceries to calm you down.

“Uh-huh. Apparently.” He walked toward the bedroom. “I got to thinking, you being here naked was just too convenient.”

“How con-VEEN-ient,” I muttered. I snuggled up against him. Despite the teasing, I trusted him that my name was really Connie, it sounded right. I almost remembered it, almost remembered being called Connie before. Wait–a guy named Connie?

“So I thought,” he said, ducking through the doorway, though he wasn’t really tall enough, quite, to need to. “So, I thought, how could you get here, naked?”

“Um,” I said. “Oh, shit.”

He nodded. “You must live in the building. And when I was going to Starbucks, I stopped to lock the door on the outside and discovered two sets of keys in my grouch bag. One set numbered 517, which is this one. And the other set numbered 415.”

“You rat,” I said. “You knew this when you got back from Starbucks?”

He nodded. “Before I left, actually. I went downstairs to have a looksee. It belongs to Constance Catewood, that’s you, I guess. There was a little pile of mail on the kitchen counter, most addressed to C. Catewood. I didn’t snoop. Much.” He grinned at me.

“Ho, ho,” I said.

“Well, I had to find out what the C stood for, it could have been Cupcake for all I knew.”

“Hee, hee,” I said.

“Anyway, the flat is what they call a studio-plus, like this apartment but smaller with only one room for living room, dining room and bedroom. It’s cute, you’ve got blue-green carpet and a bed with yellow and turquoise curtains around it.”

He kissed me. I kissed back, a bit distracted. “You’re still a rat for not telling me sooner.” It sounded nice and I wanted to see it, but it didn’t actually sound familiar.

He nodded. “I should have told you before I took advantage of you, huh?” He waggled his eyebrows. “At least before I went and licked the frosting?”

I giggled at that, annoyed, but hey, it was funny. He laughed.

“Well, it would have been polite, if you knew,” I said. The more I thought about it, the more annoying it felt that he hadn’t told me.

“I’m sorry, I guess I just enjoyed the situation, a naked girl trapped in my apartment.” He grinned and I pretended to try to bite him.

“So,” he said, standing me on the bed, on my knees. “If you take a bath and let me get a half-hour nap, you can wear a t-shirt upstairs and we can find out if your bed is big enough for both of us.”

“Oh,” I said. “Well.” I wanted to go to my own room right then and see the bed with the curtains. “You’re a meanie.” I pouted again, though mostly for show. Actually, a bath sounded good.

“Honest, babe,” he said, scratching his furry backside, “I really need a nap.”

“Okay, okay,” I said. “Wimp. Slacker.” I put my arms around his neck and gave him a kiss. It felt like a natural thing to do, though only a few hours before I would have been freaking out to even think about it.

My feet still hurt and I took a moment to climb down off the bed without stressing them. Tim crawled into the bed behind me, reaching across to give my ass a pat.

“You’re not going to have the right kind of shampoo and you probably have to use carpet cleaner on that hide of yours. I want a bubble bath. Meanie. Who’s going to scrub my back? Rat.”

He chuckled. “There’s some kind of bath beads under the sink. From when I moved in, I brought a bunch of stuff from Mom’s house and I think I got her box of bubble bath.”

“For reals?” I said. “You’ve got a mother?”

“Ho, ho,” he said sleepily. “Give me half an hour, babe, forty-five minutes, ‘kay?”

“Yeah, okay.” I glanced back at him before going into the bathroom. He looked like a big old teddy bear getting ready to hibernate as I closed the door.

Some Enchanted Girlfriend by Donna Lamb 8. Soaping Down Constance Catewood. The name did not ring any bells. Connie, on the other hand, did. I looked in the mirror over the wash basin. “Hello, Connie,” I said. The blue-eyed blonde reflection nodded and wrinkled her nose at me. “Too cute to live, too dumb to die,” I decided.

The standard-sized tub in the bathroom looked way too small for Tim the Hairy Giant but little old me would be fine with it.

I looked Tim’s shampoos over and decided they would not be good things to put on my hair if I had my own bathroom nearby. I could wash my hair later. So I started some water running in the tub to get hot and snooped around the medicine cabinet, drawers and doors to see what I could find.

My feet, boobs and back hurt and I really was looking forward to a nice relaxing hot bath. I bet in my apartment, I had an even nicer bath than Tim, maybe a jacuzzi. And lots of bubble bath, girls are supposed to like bubble bath and I seemed to be a girl. “With a capital GRR,” I said aloud and giggled to hear myself.

First thing just inside the door was a walk-in closet nearly as big as the rest of the bathroom. One side held the usual assortment of men’s clothes, including three blue suits and one black, slacks, polo shirts and dress shirts, shorts, warm-up suits and sweaters. Boots and shoes filled a rack on the floor.

Everything in humongous sizes, of course. I checked one of the shirts and it was a size 22! A 22-inch neck on my boyfriend, it made me shiver, my waist probably wasn’t much bigger than that.

Boyfriend? Crap. Crap. Crap. Luckily, I seemed to have the attention span of a kitten on a sugar high and got distracted before I could worry about my mental slip, too much.

At the back of the big closet, a locked cabinet got my curiosity up but the intriguing thing was the completely empty right-hand side.

It had two bars for half of the nearly six-foot length and one bar with shelves above and below for the other half. And nothing hung from any of the bars, nothing sat on the shelves unless on the very top one where I couldn’t see because I’m so fricken short. I tried to jump up but that hurt my feet and my boobs so I gave it up.

The thought occurred to me that Tim had recently had a roommate who had moved out. Hmm.

I checked and the water had got hot enough to close the drain, pour in some of the cheap bath beads from under the sink and adjust the temp with some cool water. I tried to fasten my more-than-shoulder-length hair on top of my head but gave it up as a bad job. Someone who remembered having been a woman all her life probably could have managed it without a clip or rubber band but I had no clue.

The sound of the water running had changed making me think the bath might be nearly full so I went back and turned the tap off.

I grabbed a bath sponge off a shelf above the tub, clambered over the porcelain rim, and sank into the almost too hot suds with little sighs and giggles as the water touched and penetrated places where I didn’t remember having places. I sank down to my chin, just touching the other end with my toes, holding my hair up with one hand.

For awhile, I lay there, soaking, watching my boobies float amid the bubbles. That felt weird, real and unreal at the same time. Like having a name I didn’t remember, “Constance Catewood.” I tried saying it aloud. Had Tim said, Catewood or Gatewood? It didn’t sound right, either way. “Connie,” I said. Now that.... That was different.

Connie was a name I recognized, my own or someone else’s, someone I knew. I tried a variation, “Connie Catewood.” Still not familiar. “Catewood, Gatewood, Kate Wood.” Kate Wood?

Now that sounded familiar, too, did I know someone named Kate Wood? I think I did, but nothing further about names occurred to me and my hangover headache threatened to come back. Maybe the water was too hot after all.

I splashed around a bit and forgot about holding my hair up long enough that I got the ends of it wet, so I sat up to keep it out of the water. I used the sponge on appropriate parts, it did feel good but I didn’t want to linger since to be honest some places felt a bit tender and over-used. Who knew that could happen?

I thought about what had happened and my reactions for a bit. I still had the conviction that in some way, at some time, I had been a guy. But I couldn’t deny that at the moment, I was definitely female. I looked female, I felt female inside and I guess I acted female since Tim didn’t seem at all put off by me.

The idea that I had been male just might be a delusion brought on by drinking too many tequila and sloe gin shooters. Yuck. I rather wished I hadn’t imagined that particular combination.

But why hadn’t my memory problems cleared up? Real amnesia, unlike the disease television characters get, is usually traumatic, limited and temporary. And where did I know that from?

College. I vaguely remembered attending a college, an ivy-covered institution in “one of those eastern cities” like Connecticut. I smiled.

Tim was so cute sometimes. And I felt so attracted to him it scared me. I hadn’t really been surprised that we ended up having sex, it had been pretty obvious that that’s how we’d spent the night, too. And frankly, from the moment I’d looked at him this morning, I’d been thinking about doing it.

A noise from outside the bathroom startled me until I realized it must be Tim snoring. I rolled my eyes and giggled. It amazed me how fond I felt of the man on only a few hours acquaintance and even after he tricked me by not telling that he’d found my apartment.

Or had he? If I used to be a guy, how could I be this Connie Catewood person? And I didn’t just remember being a guy instead of a girl, I remembered being taller, stronger, older. Older? WTF?

Yeah, older. I’d seen myself in the mirror and looked at my body. I might be as young as nineteen or as old as twenty-nine but surely not any older than that. And yet, I remembered what’s-his-name, the guy with the ski-slope nose and the shifty eyes, being president. Or maybe not, what I remembered was him resigning.

I must have been in grade school then. How old would that make me? What year was it? Who was president now?

The black guy? Shit, there’s a black guy president, I must be fucking ancient. When did that happen? I couldn’t remember and then I did. Nine-Eleven, war in the Middle East, charismatic black guy runs against the establishment and gets elected.

Heck, that’s almost as weird as what happened to me. But thinking of Nine-Eleven made me shiver despite the hot water.

Saved by a short attention span again. I decided that I’d better get out of the tub before I got wrinkly, so I stood up and rinsed off with the shower nozzle thing and climbed out. I’d managed to keep more than just the ends of my hair from getting wet so it should dry soon.

I drained the tub then wrapped a gigantic towel around me like girls in the movies are always doing. It took a couple of tries to get it right but my boobs kind of ended up holding it up. Who knew?

Anyway, I sneaked out of the bathroom, checked on Tim, still snoozing, and traipsed into the living room. The bath had relaxed me so much that I could feel how tired I was now. My arms and legs seemed to weigh a ton.

Well, if Tim could do it, I thought, maybe I should too. But if I crawled up into the bed with Tim, I felt certain what would happen when he woke up. Um. And that would delay us going down to see my apartment.

The last thing I remember thinking was that I could climb onto that big old couch where we had been doing the deed and close my eyes for a bit so I could think about it. Scha, right.

Some Enchanted Girlfriend by Donna Lamb 9. Falling Down I had to get this paperwork done by four-thirty so I’d have time to change clothes before five o’clock in order to go home. Except, I wasn’t wearing any clothes. Maybe if I closed the door to my office no one would notice. But my office didn’t have a door. And the taller the Tim in my furbox got, the bigger my tits got and the worse my back hurt!

“Mr. Conway,” the boss said from the little cat-shaped paperweight on my desk. “Have you finished those figures yet?”

“Uh, no sir,” I said, picking up the cat and trying to talk first into one end of it and then the other. Both ends smelled like fish.

“Well, hurry up!” he said. “You know, you’re supposed to jump out of the cakewood tonight at the executive bake-off, jake-off, back-off! And how can you do that if you don’t have the right figures, figure, figures – figure, I mean.”

“Oh, is that tonight, sir?” I said. “I’ve got such a Wimpy hamburger and my feet hurt, too. I wanted to just go home and feed my bear – I mean, beartrap – I mean, bear.”

“We had to have that bare put to sleep,” he said. “You know that. He licked off all the frosting on the cupcakes in the employee lounge and went rabbit. Foaming at the moose and chasing tail. We just can’t have that. The company will get you a nice pussy instead.”

“But sir,” I said. “I think I’m allergic to fish.”

“Oh, you,” said his sexretary. She wrinkled her pink little nose and wriggled her pink little ears and jiggled her pink little jugs. “Doesn’t any bunny nohow to smell, tell, fell if your rabbit is?” she asked.

“Conway! Conwa-a-ay!” someone yelled.

“Connie Conway, Connie Conway!” the fat bully who lived in the treehouse by the wooden gate sneered at me.

“My name is Billie. Bill. Will. Willie. Willard Conway, not what you said,” I told him.

“Yeah, but you’re not a willie, you’re a big sissy, pussy-girl, so we’re all going to call you Connie.” And all his big fat bully friends were falling out of the treehouse and yelling “Connie Conway!” at me. “Connie Cunway! Cunnie Cumway! Bunnie Bunway!”

And then I had to ride my bike down a long tunnel with the bullies behind me and my boss riding in the basket in front of me and yelling, “If you don’t get those numb, dumb, rum, plum, gum, hummer, dumber, summer, numbers done, you’ll be pedaling your grass, glass, mass, pass, ass down Eighth Avenue in the virginity of Twenty-First Street. See the Willie. And you know what you’ll be eating?”

“Eat sum broccoli, dear,” said my mother. “You never eat enough, one two three, oh, dearie, times tables when you come over.”

“What did you say, mommie?” I never call her mum, it’s not aloud.

But she had changed to my Aunt Chris from East Virgin Way. “That nice Dr. Fraud visited yestiddy, well, he’s not that nice. He said yore maw was tryna stringle you with her aporn strange. Did you ever hare such a nigglewit? Taste this otter choke cookie, Billie, what does it taste like to you?”

We both nibbled a bit. “I think it tastes like cum,” she said.

My boss was lacing me into a corset and his sexretary was turning the key on my roller skates. “Tight as you can, Splendid, we don’t want his tits to fall off and roll into the crowd,” said my boss.

“It’s not easy having wheels,” I said.

Wendy Splendid did what she did splendidly and wriggled, jiggled and giggled. Then she started putting roller skates on my hands, too. “The more wheels the better,” she said.

“I thought that was the bigger the wheel, the sluttier the sexretary,” I said.

And she said, “Oh, you.” She put a blindfold on me, too, but I could still see. “Jose Canoosie?” she asked.

“Yes, but aren’t the dongs early this spritzen?” I said.

I skated around for awhile on all fours and won sixth prize as a float in the Bummer’s March. They hung the medal on my butt because I skated backwards into the bay. Then they took me to New Jersey and strapped me into the electric chair.

“How does it fit?” asked my boss.

“Like a bunny,” I said. “Like a Welsh rabbit all covered in cheese, I lost my poor meatballs, when somebody squeezed.”

The chair had the biggest wheels of all and Wendy Splendid to push it down the Boardwalk in Atlantic City. “I’d rather have the Scottie dog,” I said.

“Oh, you,” she said. “It’s the thimble, thumble, mumble, crumble for you, y’know. No cakewood because that’s the way the cookie feels, pop goes a measle.”

Aunt Chris passed us going the other way, carrying a bag full of money with two tycoons to carry her butt wrinkles. “I won the blottery, slottery, sluttery, Billie, Willie, Millie. Connie, Bonnie, Bunnie. I got nothing but bread so I’ll have to eat cakewood. Ain’t it grandstand hot dog, mustard runny eggs Benedict Arnold the pig? Hee haw!”

The bookstore wasn’t open so I rolled around the back and found the White Rabbit, all crunched up like a jam sandwich, hold the pickles, hold the lettuce, special mojos don’t regret us, all we cash is that you pet us.

Kate Wood opened the back door and complained, “Oh, my aching back, side order of blue cheese sprinkles, crinkles, minkles. Smells like winkles in here.”

We rolled inside and she said, “Take these chains, pains, Janes. Manacles, panicles, vesicles, Checkoff, Horschack, Kolchak, Karnak, Anzac, jumbuk, good luck, let’s fuck.”

But neither of us had a skate key and Joni Mitchell drove a little yellow taxi backwards into the bay, singing bye, bye, Miss America the Splendid, spend it, blend it, bend it but don’t break it off the pigskinless wienerstiltskinful of shit. “You’re so full of shit your eyes are blue, glue, shoe. All God’s chillin’ got to Choos, Jiminy. Bimini, criminy, it’s by Eminee.”

We bought the shoes with the five-inch heels and the fuck-me backsling, sting, sing, swing, then we passed a gatewood going out and the sign said, “You got to have a wienership to get inside, no long-haired dickless willies need apply the pancakes, brakes, jakes, makes no nevermind, Porta-Potty, morbidity, Guinevere.”

So I turned around and Wendy Splendid turned into Kate Wood and turned into Connie and turned into me and she said, “You’ve got to wake up and do the right thing, Spike, Mike, Dyke. Otherwise, I’ll have to stay dead, in bed, gimme sum head, and you’ll be stuck, boy, don’t be coy, Roy, you’re just a fucktoy, now. How does your banana, Stan?”

And I said, “There must be thrifty ways to learn to like liver.”

“You’ll find out,” she said. “You’d better, butter, mutter, putter, futter me, fetter me, let it be, feathers are free to fly away.” And she turned into a moth with no shame because there ain’t no one to give you no...scream, dream, moonbeam.

The nightmare shattered into a thousand million pieces like a kaleidoscope map of the galaxy.

I woke up on the long gray limousine, uh, couch, all tangled up in my towel. At least I knew where that was.

The dream began fading away before I could sort out any of the images to see if they made sense as memories. Maybe some of them were memories of me before–before whatever it was that happened to me happened. But some of them seemed to be more likely to be memories of Constance Catewood, who seemed to be me when I looked in a mirror now.

I shook my head to clear the cobwebs away. “Maybe we’re not in Nebraska either, Koko,” I said. Then I looked up just in time to see a small multi-colored cat fall from somewhere onto the balcony outside.

Some Enchanted Girlfriend by Donna Lamb 10. Getting Down The cat landed unhurt and my shriek didn’t appear to have awakened Tim. I rushed to the glass door in the window wall and opened it, taking a look up to see where the cat might have come from. Nothing up there but the bottom of someone else’s balcony, at least twelve feet up. The cat, a little calico kitten, immediately started washing its paws.

I felt the towel around me begin to slip and grabbed at the sort-of-knot I had made under my left arm to save it. The cat paused in its washing to look at me sideways and curled its lip as if disgusted at what it saw.

I started laughing while moving back from the window to retie the towel. I didn’t close the door and the kitten followed me in, looking around with the air of a spoiled child slumming in the home of a less fortunate cousin.

I re-adjusted the towel and sat on Tim’s hassock, leaning down to get a better look at the little cat. “Aren’t you a brave one? How did you even get up there? Did you come from the apartment upstairs?” Okay, I admit this was said in a cooing voice like one would talk to a baby.

The kitten, with one blue eye and one green looked at me and said, “Don’t be an ass.”

I sat up straight on the hassock and stared at the animal. “Pardon?” I squeaked.

“Talking to me like that,” said the cat. “No one else’s around, you don’t have to put on an act.”

It turns out that I am crazy, I thought. I swear, I looked around the room to be sure we were alone like the cat had said. Then I whispered, “You can talk?”

The cat rolled its eyes. Her eyes, I seemed to remember from somewhere that calicos are always female. “Of course I can talk. Hell’s Little Fiery Dumplings, what’s wrong with you?” The voice sounded rather cute but the attitude was like that of a waitress in a New York coffee shop. Gimme your order, awready, I got tables.

“You’ll have to excuse me,” I said to the cat. “I haven’t been myself this morning. I woke up in bed with a strange man, I can’t remember my own name and now a cat is giving me the redass. I feel an attack of the screaming heebie-jeebies coming on.”

“Hell's Pimple Pads,” said the cat, stepping back. “You’re not Catewood!” Or did she say, Kate Wood? The little thing puffed up like a three-toned dandelion and hissed at me.

“Oh, go fizz yourself,” I said. “Either I’m haloonisating again or there really is a talking cat. And if so, said talking cat can explain herself or go fall off another balcony.” I laid back on the hassock and threw a hand over my eyes in my best Scarlett O’Hara parody. “I’m so confused, all I need is another pussy giving me attitude.”

The cat made a dash toward the still open balcony door. I had to raise up and turn sideways a little to see her but she stopped halfway to look back at me. “You don’t know who you are?” she asked, sounding like she didn’t believe me.

I nodded. “Well, I found out about half an hour ago that my name is Constance Catewood and I live in apartment 415 but other than that, I’m completely lost.” The dream didn’t help, too confusing. “And if you’re my cat, how come you’re up here instead of downstairs? Did I smuggle you in last night in the pocket of clothes I wasn’t wearing?”

The kitten washed a paw. “You’re not making any sense at all.” She looked at the paw and gave it another lick. “You look like Kate Wood, but you don’t talk like her and you don’t know who I am, do you?”

I shook my head. “I’ve never met a talking cat before, I’m sure I would remember that.”

“I’m your familiar,” said the cat. “Or, I was Catewood’s familiar. And....” She stretched her neck out and sniffed of me. “And you’re in her body, but you aren’t her!” At that the kitten put back its head and began to wail, a high-pitched yowling of surprising volume coming from the tiny body.

“Sh, sh, sh!” I said, straightening up and reaching for the little animal. “You’ll wake Tim!”

“I don’t care,” said the cat, dodging. “Is he the one that’s been snogging you?”

“Well, yes, I guess you could say that–except you’re a cat and cat’s don’t talk.” I made another grab for the kitten but she forded when I expected her to dodge.

“Clumsy boob,” she said and bounced out of reach.

“Leave my boobs out of it,” I said. All I needed was for me to go one way and them another and I'd fall on my face. I tried to change direction and ended up rolling off the hassock and out of the towel. I lay there on the carpet, naked again and more than a little disconcerted. I realized just how little sense anything that had happened that morning made and wanted to start yowling myself.

The kitten dashed up and whapped me on the cheek with a soft paw. “Hell's Toaster Pastries in Seven Infernally Delicious Flavors,” said the cat. “I can’t hurt you! The bond!”

I scooped up the tiny thing in my hands and brought it close to me. “I’m sorry that I’m not who you think I ought to be, but believe me, it’s just as distressing to me as to you.”

The cat sniffed and struggled but she could no more escape my grasp than I could Tim’s. “Go ahead and kill me, then. Get it over with, that magical backlash last night already cost me two of my lives but I’ve got a spare or three.”

I chuckled. “I’m not going to hurt you, little Muffins.”

“My name is Ogen, not Muffins,” hissed the cat. She tried to bite me but it didn’t hurt at all.

“You’re so cute!” I said, cuddling her against my cheek.

“Oh for pity’s sake! Knock it off!” she complained. She began to purr. “Oh, now look what you’ve gone and done. You got my motor started.”

“Too cute!” I said, partly because it seemed to annoy the little fuzzball and she really was that cute and even cuter when complaining.

I didn’t realize what position I had ended up in, kneeling on the carpet, bent over to hold the kitten to my face with my posterior pointed at the bedroom door. I didn’t realize, that is, until I heard Tim say from behind me, “What am I looking at?”

Some Enchanted Girlfriend by Donna Lamb 11. Sitting Down “Is that a cat?” asked Tim, his voice still thick with sleep. I looked back over my shoulder. At least he hadn’t asked if that was a pussy, because I’m sure I would have collapsed laughing. Instead I just waggled my butt at him.

That got his attention, he looked at my posterior and smiled, the flirt. But he looked so much like a big old bear standing there scratching the fur around his navel that I almost laughed anyway.

“It’s a kitten,” I said. “Say hello to Tim, Muffins.” I sat up and held the tiny calico cat up toward him.

“My name is Ogen,” said the cat. “And the giant can’t hear me, you stupid, ignorant body thief.” But she didn’t stop purring. Of course, she didn’t need to move her mouth to talk, though sometimes she did. I just heard the voice in my head, I assumed. Yeesh, don’t think about that being crazy. Though it did sound a lot like the tall actress with the deep voice who had that show with the four old ladies living Florida.

Damn. Why couldn’t I remember names from my past without a lot of effort?

Tim distracted me by kneeling next to the hassock. I sat up, putting my eyes at about the level of his navel.

He had pulled on a pair of shorts so there were no tempting cat toys in sight. “Kitten huh? Where’d you get him?” He stuck out a huge finger and rubbed that spot on the top of a cat’s head that acts like a purr volume knob, turning the kitten up to eleven.

“Whatever you do, don’t tell him the truth!” the cat warned me. I almost couldn’t hear her possibly imaginary voice over the loudness of her actual purring. I think the little puffball had a Marshall mini-stack under the fur.

I considered Tim’s question and Muffin’s warning. I hadn’t told Tim that I was originally a boy, or at least thought I was, and he hadn’t told me that he’d found out my name, or the name of my body, right away – so why break such a tradition?

“It’s a little baby girl cat,” I said. “And I found her on the balcony.” I had to giggle because of keeping a secret. Well, would he believe me if I told him that the cat talked but only I could hear her?

“I’m allergic to cats,” said Tim. He pulled back his hand and looked at the end of his finger as if expecting it to have broken out in purple land mines.

“Oh, good! But that’s another thing,” said Muffins. “Last night I was a tomcat but...”

“You too?” I said.

“Yeah, but not kittens for some reason,” said Tim reaching out his bratwurst-sized finger again to tickle the kitten under the chin.

“Hell’s Pilot Light! Nothing ever goes right for me,” complained the kitty.

“Are you allergic to cats too?” asked Tim.

“Oh, no,” I said. “I don’t think so, but someone I know is. At least, I think they are, if it’s who I think it is and maybe if it isn’t. And if I could remember who it is, or isn’t, it might be important but since I can’t, I don’t suppose it is, huh?”

Tim and Muffins looked at each other. Tim said to the cat, “She talks like that all the time, doesn’t she?”

“I know,” said Muffins. “Drives me crazy. Wait.... What’s going on?” She looked sideways at Tim then at me and made an actual cat noise, a confused sounding, “Ma-a-ao?”

“Were you talking to the cat?” I asked Tim, wondering if he actually could hear the cartoony deep voice the cat spoke in.

“Sure,” said Tim. “He looks like an intelligent beast. Do you think he’s hungry? I’ve got some roast beef he might like.”

“She,” I reminded him. “You hungry?” I asked the kitten.

“I suppose so,” said Ogen. “And rub it in, why don’t you?”

I grinned. “I think she is hungry, she’s giving me that sad, little kitten face.”

“That’s not why!” protested the cat. “I’m just pissed off. Hell’s Deodorant Urinal Cakes, you’d be pissed, too, if you had any sense left.”

“Are you sure it’s a girl cat? It can be hard to tell with kittens, sometimes,” said Tim, using his magic muscles to stand up and tower over us.

“It’s a calico,” I said. “Calicos are always females.”

Tim stuck a big paw down to help me up. “Always female?”

“Uh huh, it’s a law of nature or something.” I wrapped my free hand around his thumb and he lifted us up to stand beside him. At that moment, I realized again that I had no clothes on. And my feet hurt. And my back.

I danced around a bit, trying to stretch out my calf and foot muscles. “I’ve got to get some clothes to wear, and shoes,” I said, looking down and noting, not for the first time that I could only see my feet by looking around my boobs. No wonder my back hurt.

“You’re not even wearing jewelry,” said the cat. “You realize that with no protection, when you fucked the giant anyone with nine senses could see you – all over the city? That’s how I found you here, since you didn’t have sense enough to be at home.”

Wow, I thought. I gave a show to the whole city? How many people had nine senses? And what were numbers six through eight if nine was the ability to see people fucking miles away through walls and hills and everything?

I wanted to ask questions but with Tim there I would look like more of an idiot than usual – like an idiot talking to a cat. Especially if I asked some of the hard ones I wanted to ask. So I took my frustration out on the cat. “Is my little fuzzy Muffins hungry?” I cooed. “We’ve got some nice beefies for the kitty-kitty puss-puss.”

“Knock it off!” said the cat. She struggled, trying to get away but it took no effort at all to hold her safely without hurting her. In fact, I used my thumb to rub her tummy and she got overcome by a fit of purring again.

“Hell’s Diaper Pail,” she muttered.

Tim lead the way to the kitchen. From the back, he looked like a pair of legs carrying a pyramid upside down. Wow. Double wow.

“Loud purr for a little cat,” he commented.

“Oh, yes, Muffins is a little purr box, isn’t her?” I cooed, remembering to torture the cat.

“Send me back to Tartaros, I’m too old for this kitten stuff!” said the cat. “And my name is Ogen!”

“Now don’t you worry, little baby pussycat. Old Tim is gonna fix you some nice num-nums.” Okay, I’m terrible.

“Knock it off, Catewood,” warned the kitten. “The Compact keeps me from hurting you even if I want to, but I can always piss in your lingerie and crap in your hair while you’re asleep!”

“Okay, okay,” I said. I wondered what sort of lingerie I owned. Knowing me for only part of a morning, already I suspected that I had a lot of the naughty kind–probably received as gifts. “Just having a little fun.” I grinned at Muffins and chucked her under the chin. She hissed at me. Sheesh, what a grouch.

“What?” said Tim.

“I don’t think the kitty likes babytalk, she wants down.” I bent forward to put the cat down but forgot about my boobs. When they swung forward, they not only changed my balance, they startled me by appearing in my vision like twin submarines surfacing to throw out depth charges and I sat down on my keister in the middle of the kitchen floor.

A leg cramp right then didn’t help either. Two cramps, one in each, causing me to point my toes like a ballerina.

“Snerk, snerk, snerk,” said the kitten, landing on her feet.

“Are you okay?” asked Tim again.

“Uh huh, I’m just not used to not wearing shoes, I guess.” Heels, I needed some shoes with heels. Well, I’m short so I probably wear them all the time. “I need a bra, too.”

“No comment on that,” said Tim, grinning. He helped me up again and I leaned on him while we tore off pieces of roast beef to put in a bowl for Muffins. Somehow this ended up with lots of touching and stroking and eventually kissing. Between Tim and I, not the cat.

Muffins ate her beefies then sat on the floor and nearly washed herself bald. She kept an eye on us as we progressed from kissing to groping. “Hell’s Prophylactic Ointment for the Prevention of Genital Chafing,” she commented.

Some Enchanted Girlfriend by Donna Lamb 12. Coming Down I wore another of Tim’s t-shirts when we went downstairs later, after a suitable interlude. I felt so excited about seeing my apartment that I had to not talk at all for fear of bursting into non-stop giggles.

I carried the kitten and Tim wore his grouch bag but had my keys in his hand.

Muffins ragged on me. “Are you going to keep fucking the giant?” she asked in that mother-in-law voice.

I nodded, smiling like someone who has recently been finger-banged into a daze.

“Hell’s Thimble Keepers. I keep forgetting you’re not Catewood. This is just all messed up,” said the little cat. “And you’ve got to get back in the protection of your Compact before someone nasty sees these bonfires you keep lighting.”

“Huh?” I said.

Tim said, “I didn’t say anything,” just as we reached the lobby at the end of the hallway.

The massive double doors to the stairwell next to the elevator looked like they weighed a ton each, but Tim opened them with casual might; oh, them magic muscles. How the heck a little person like me was supposed to use the doors in an emergency I couldn’t imagine. Maybe adrenalin?

Going down the stairs with my boobies bouncing on every step was not an experience I wanted to repeat. I resolved to always take elevators from now on, if available.

Muffins complained. “Hell’s Bell-Bottom Ladies’ Knickerettes! Quit hitting me with your tits!” So, of course, I took an extra little bounce on the next step and regretted it immediately. That hurt, sheesh.

“Ow,” I said and Muffins made a kitten noise that might have been a snigger.

“Are you going to keep the kitten?” Tim asked as we exited on the right floor.

I nodded and shrugged at the same time, which seemed to distract Tim for a moment. Oh, yeah. Boobs, again.

He shook it off as we arrived at my door. My door! I suppressed a squeal by jiggling. My feet and back hurt but I didn’t care, I had my own door!

“The problem with kittens is that they grow up to be cats,” Tim said, handing me the keys while I handed him the little cat.

“Oh, yeah?” said Muffins. “Well, the trouble with giants is... they are so obviously too damn big already! Hell’s Notions and Buttons and All Kinds Sewing Needs!” Regardless, the little beast snuggled into Tim’s palm and began purring again when he stroked her side with his thumb.

“Which key?” I asked him. Both were silvery metal and marked with the same number, 417.

“They’re both alike. You shouldn’t keep the spare with the master, you know.”

I put one of the keys in the lock and tried to turn it, one way, then the other. It wouldn’t turn. I looked up at Tim.

He reached down and turned it easily. Those magic muscles. “Sticks a bit, needs some graphite on it later, huh?” He opened and held the door for me then had to duck a little to come in himself. “Huh?” he said behind me and fiddled with the lock some while I walked in.

I hoped I’d start recognizing things. In a way, I did since it was laid out just like Tim’s apartment one floor up but not as deep or wide. The colors were all different, too.

The one big room had a large bed against one wall, completely curtained off like something in a movie about Victorian times. The other wall had a small dining table against it and an alcove held a desk, a computer and a television, small only compared to the one in Tim’s place. Bookcases covered every other available wall space, though the ones near the TV seemed to hold CD or DVD cases instead.

Right inside the door, the tiny room that in Tim’s place held a stacked set of laundry machines and some storage, instead had a little vehicle like a golf cart for one person parked inside it. The hot pink paint job and mauve leather seats looked cute but what the heck was it doing there and where was I supposed to do my laundry?

Who could I ask all my questions? Muffins? Not with Tim there unless I wanted to convince him I wasn’t just delightfully kooky but an actual nut case. And okay, maybe I was. But the little scooter-thingy bothered me as being just way the heck out of the ordinary. Like waking up with tits, fucking giants, and talking cats was normal.

Tim put the kitten down and she scampered immediately through an open door into the bathroom. I peeked inside, the layout was completely different from Tim’s but had similar fixtures except the tub was truly huge. Nice.

“Well,” said Tim, looking in over my shoulder. “That’s big enough for you to swim in.”

“Big enough for you to use as a tub, you mean, instead of just a shower,” I said. I giggled. “I could scrub your back.”

“We’ll have to try it out,” he said.

“Do you mind?” the kitten complained. “I’m using this room?” Sure enough, she was standing in the small litterbox under the sink glaring at us.

I giggled and turned away. The door to the walk-in closet was also open, just around the corner, and I stepped in, fumbling for a light switch on the wall. Tim reached past me and flipped it.

No half-filled closet space here. I walked in, looking around with my mouth open. Tim didn’t follow but bent his neck to see through the doorway better. The openings here didn’t seem to be as high as the ones in his apartment or he’d grown another four inches since we came down.

“Wow,” he said. “You’ve got a lot of stuff.” An understatement from an overgrown philosopher but he was right.

One wall seemed filled with glittering gowns and dresses and what could only be described as costumes. A rhinestone cowgirl outfit, a mermaid-like costume with fins, a bridal gown. On second glance, the nearer end seemed to contain more normal looking dresses, tops and skirts and the far end held the costumes.

In between the two ends, a dozen or more items that appeared to be very fancy corsets or bustiers hung on funny-looking frames that kept them stretched out into their rather exaggerated female shapes. It looked like a chorus line of nearly two-dimensional strippers.

Under the corsets, or whatever you call them, about two dozen shoes and a few boots spilled a bit haphazardly about with some of them on a couple of shoe trees, some under or on a shelf at the very bottom and a few in boxes. Not one of the visible heels looked any less than four or five inches and some looked impossibly high for my tiny feet.

Another couple of shelves above the clothes held hats, wigs and boxes. Wigs? Long blonde ones, short black Oriental-looking ones, wildly bouffant red ones, even a brown one with the kind of braids that princess wore in that movie about the guy who breathed through an accordion on his chest. Damn names.

The opposite wall of the – calling it a closet seemed wrong, the boudoir? – the dressing room had a long vanity table with lights and mirrors and shelves and cabinets above and below and at each end. Most of these seemed full of cosmetics, half of which I didn’t have the slightest idea of what you used them for. The farther end had a tall cabinet with little drawers, some of which were open and spilled out necklaces, bracelets, bangles and beads.

But the real shocker was the far end of the room where a fine selection of manacles, chains, masks, ropes, scarves and, um, other toys hung from hooks or lay tumbled on shelves. Okay.

I began to wonder just what I did with my life besides owning a talking cat who seemed to think I made magic light shows when I fucked.

Speaking of which, Muffins bounced into the little room, noojing me around the ankles. “Get rid of the giant, we have to talk,” said the cat.

“Hmm?” said Tim, looking around.

I could see that all this stuff might give him the wrong idea about me – or worse, the right one.

Some Enchanted Girlfriend by Donna Lamb 13. Stop Over “Hell’s Little Wieners in Habaá±ero Sauce, is he still here?” asked Muffins coming back from a quick tour of my apartment. “You’ve got to get rid of your hairy sex ape or we’ll never be able to figure out what’s going on!”

I’d managed to talk Tim all the way to the door but he’d found something interesting – the door itself. “It’s a deadbolt. You have to have the keys to lock it, inside or out. But see, it’s got this lever on the inside that you can lock it with and then it can’t be unlocked from the outside.” He demonstrated. “That’s cool. And the deadbolt uses the same key as the lock in the doorknob, so you only need one key.”

“Uh-huh,” I said. “Say, where are my keys?”

“Oh,” he said. “I think I put them back in my grouch.” He rummaged in the zippered bag he wore on a belt while I leaned against the kitchen counter and tried to stretch the kinks out of my legs. “Here they are.” He pulled out the set of two identical keys on one of those little slip rings.

“Okay,” I said, reaching for them. “Thanks.” But he didn’t drop the keys in my hand.

“I think I should keep one of your keys,” he said.

I looked up at him, and up and up some more. Standing so close to him reminded me of just what a man-mountain he was. My butterfly mind hopped to a new subject. “How tall are you?”

“Huh?” he said. “What’s that got to do with it?”

“Oh, nothing I guess,” I said, remembering that I was trying to get him out of the apartment so I could get dressed and have a long talk with my cat. Okay, that sounded weird.

“I’m six-nine, six-ten, around there,” he said. “How tall are you?” He grinned at me.

“I dunno,” I said. “What do you think?”

“You’re just a little smidgen of a girl,” he said, still grinning. “Are you even five-foot?”

“About that, I guess,” I said. “But I usually wear heels. I think.” I popped up on tiptoe to demonstrate, which caused my boobs to take a little bounce which caused Tim’s grin to get even wider which caused me to giggle because it did funny things inside me when he grinned like that with all the evil thoughts of what he’d like to do to me just bubbling in his eyes.

My nipples had all crinkled up again and must have showed through the t-shirt I wore like a couple of turkey timers popping out of my butterball boobies. I needed a cold shower–or something to distract me from my hairy paramour. How did I turn into such a bimbo airhead in only a few hours?

“Practice,” I said aloud.

“What?” Tim looked a little startled.

“Practice,” I said, trying to make some kind of sense of my outburst. “I wear heels for practice in being taller?” I hadn’t meant that to sound like a question but he nodded solemnly.

“That oughtta work,” he agreed, his eyes twinkling. “Then when you grow up, you’ll be ready.”

While we talked, he had separated the two keys and now handed me the one still on the little ring. Not having any pockets, I laid the key on the counter, wondering vaguely if I should make a fuss about him keeping one of the pair.

“That’s so you don’t lock yourself out of your apartment,” he explained. “I’ll get a copy of one of my keys to give to you, too, huh?”

“Uh, sure,” I said. Wow. Exchanging keys. I had to think about that. I needed to talk to my cat and think about things. Life seemed to running along at freeway speeds and my brain hadn’t taken the training wheels off my bicycle yet.

Speaking of which reminded me of the little cart thing in the closet/laundry room but before I could go off on another tangent Muffins pounced on one of my toenails in an excess of kitten frustration.

“Kick him in the goolies if you have to, but get rid of the giant!” said the cat. “Hell’s Egg Timer, girl! We’ve got to talk!” She batted at first one toe then another when I wriggled them.

“Mousies!” I said aloud to embarrass her for acting like a kitten. “Get them mousies!” According to her, she couldn’t use her claws or teeth to hurt me so it was just a funny thing to do. I stood there, wriggling and giggling and probably jiggling and driving my cat crazy and maybe my new boyfriend, too.

“She’ll be good company for you on those cold lonely nights when I have to work,” said Tim with some sort of hidden amusement.

“Huh?” I said. “You work nights? I thought you said you had to go into work Monday morning?”

“Sometimes I work late,” he said. This seemed to amuse him, too. For a solid plank of a man, he seemed to be easily amused. It made me want to tickle him but I knew where that would lead.

The kitten must have read my mind because she hissed, sat back and stared up at him. “You, out!” she said and it sounded like she said the same thing both in my head and out loud.

“Okay, okay,” said Tim, laughing. “Baby, you want to get dressed,” he added to me, “and we can go out for lunch. You like soul food?”

“What? Like hog jowls, chitlins and collard greens?” I must have looked astonished. And I still wasn’t used to being called baby.

“No, more like catfish filet, smothered pork chops and barbecued ribs. There’s a place not too far away that makes really good stuff and they serve big enough portions for a guy my size. You can probably get by as an appetizer.”

“You mean with an appetizer,” I said.

He waggled his eyebrows. “How about I come back in a couple hours and we go out to lunch? The soul food is one option or we could go for something else?”

“Uh,” I said. “Well, yeah. Sounds good. Um. What should I wear?”

He looked down at me standing there in his borrowed t-shirt. “You look fine to me now,” he said, grinning.

I rolled my eyes. “You’re no help. Okay, what time is it?”

“About ten, I’ll be back around noon. ‘Kay?”

I nodded. Then I stood up on tiptoe and put my arms up. He bent down and we kissed and I decided that being Connie Catewood, or Kate Wood or Baby or whatever the hell my name was, had turned out to be a pretty good deal.

“Hell’s Patented Barnacle Remover,” said Muffins. “Catewood, back away from the giant! He’s got his hands under your dress!”

“Mmm,” I commented. Dress? Oh, the t-shirt. And yeah, he did. I tried to move back but the tide came in and forced me closer instead. “Tim,” I murmured. “You.... We.... I....” Damn, but I’m articulate when it counts.

Tim broke the clench himself. I still had my arms up over my head–he’s a tall fucker, I’ve mentioned that–and he had both hands under the t-shirt when he simply pulled it off over my head. And he laughed, a sort of deep, “Bwha-ha-ha!” Then a chuckle of real amusement.

I did step back then and almost landed on my keister again but he caught me by the wrist and easily held me up.

He held up his trophy. “I had to steal something and this is actually mine,” he said, still grinning.

Naked again, I tried to act cool about it. “Why do you have to steal something?” I asked, resisting a weird urge to hide my tits with my hands. That wouldn’t have worked well anyway, even if I had six arms; my hands are small and my boobies are not.

“Oh, I never got around to telling you what I do, did I?” He opened the door behind him and sort of walked sideways part way through. It looked like a rhinoceros trying to be sneaky but he may have just intended to hid my nudity from anyone out in the hall.

“You’re a thief?” I asked, astonished again.

“Not really,” he said. “But I am a super-villain.” And with that, he stepped out and closed the door behind him, still chuckling.

Some Enchanted Girlfriend by Donna Lamb 14. Roll Over “What humans do getting ready for sex is just disgusting,” said Muffins after Tim finally left. “All that face rubbing and groping. No yowling, no chasing, no biting, it’s just wrong.”

I giggled, struggling with the lever that would lock the door without the key. “Sounds like fun. We’ve been skipping those parts but I’ll remember next time. And what do you know, you’re only a kitten?”

“Well, I’m a kitten now, but last night I was big old tomcat,” she shivered. “Now I’m female again.”

“Again? Ow!” I almost twisted my thumb off pushing that stupid lever that Tim had made seem so easy. I ended up sucking on it, the thumb, and glaring at it, the lever; still not sure I actually had it locked. Wasn’t it supposed to go all the way over?

I needed to sit down; my thumb, back, boobs, feet and legs all ached. The kitten followed me around the corner of the kitchen where I climbed up on one of the stools at the breakfast bar. Tall chairs, really, since they had backs which I appreciated at the moment.

From the higher position, I noticed that the dining table seemed covered in booklets and small packages of objects, and several bins or containers of more objects. Like the table of someone who does a lot of craftwork, I wondered what the heck I had been making. It didn’t look like macrame, more like amateur jewelry.

Muffins settled on the floor in front of me, tucking her cute little white paws under her. I smiled at her because she looked so sweet but she had the grumps still. She said, “Yes, female again. I’ve been female before, I remember all my past lives. Unlike humans, we bound spirits don’t lose our memories when we transmigrate and only partly when we reincarnate into a new form.”

“Spirits? Transmicro-whosis? Is that what happened to me?” I blinked rapidly, trying to process a weird factoid told to me by a talking cat.

“This is gonna take a long time to explain, isn’t it?” said the kitten. She stood up, stretched, turned around, sat down and began to wash. “Okay, first of all, you don’t remember this but your body is that of Constance Madeline Catewood, a sorceress.”

“Not a witch?”

“Don’t interrupt. Yes, Catewood is–was?–is also a witch. They’re different things.”

“Different how?”

Muffins glared at me.

“Sorry,” I said. I rubbed the instep of my foot on one of the rungs of the stool. That felt good. I sucked on my thumb and wondered what Tim meant when he claimed to be a super-villain.

Muffins started talking again. “You, or your body, Connie Catewood, also known as Kate Wood, two names, sometimes... Wait, that’s not important yet. Um,” she gave a lick to a paw and rubbed it on her ear.

I wished she would hurry up. I wanted to wash my hair and take another bath and then finally get some clothes on. And in an hour or two, Tim would be back and we could go to lunch. I yawned. Maybe another nap, too. Maybe I’d have another weird dream but hopefully, not one as frightening as the last one.

It didn’t occur to me to wonder why I no longer felt freaked out by waking up with breasts, a vagina, a boyfriend and a whole new life. I was cool with it all, somehow. That ought to have worried me, but it didn’t.

But Muffins kept talking. “Okay, something else, first. Your mind, I don’t know where you came from but my numinous sense tells me that you are Catewood and you aren’t.” She looked up. “It’s confusing.”

“You’re telling me?” I rolled my eyes and suppressed a giggle.

“What do you remember?” asked the cat.

“Uh, not a lot. Waking up this morning in bed with a hangover and hairy giant. Tim, the giant, I never found out the hangover’s name. Before that, it’s kind of blank.”

Muffins frowned at me. Do cats actually frown? They would if they could and Muffins could so she did.

I went on. “But for most of the morning, I’ve been convinced I was male before I woke up. I mean, yesterday or whenever it was. Uh?” I thought there might be something else I remembered but it faded away. I’d had those odd dreams but I didn’t think those really counted and I couldn’t really latch onto the memory of them very well. Slippery things, dreams.

Muffins looked thoughtful and nodded with both ends, down in front, up in back and vice versa, except she got distracted by the movement of her tail and whirled in place, twice. “Hell’s Pocket Fisherman! What the fuck keeps following me around?”

“It... She... You....” I pointed with my left hand and put my right in my mouth. I tried to answer that way, nothing came out but garbles. Then I got seized by such a fit of giggles that I had to ease myself off the stool and sit on the floor before I could try to stop laughing. I took my hand out of my mouth and went, “Hee, hee, hoo, hoo, -hic-, hurkle, hurk, ha, ha, hoople, -hic-, heef, hee, hoo!”

Poor Muffins got greatly offended by my laughter, fluffed up all of her fur and backed away from me. “If you think something is all that funny, take a look at the DVDs in the corner. Those ought to really crack you up!”

I reached for her to try to make amends, I knew she’d forgive me if I could get her to purr, but she dodged away.

I had the hiccoughs, too, and could hardly communicate. “Don’t be -hic- like that, Muffins. -hic- Aren’t we friends? How -hic- how can you be my famil-hic-iar if you’re going -hic- going to be such a stranger?”

“My name is Ogen!” said the little cat. She hissed and spat at me, a tiny fluffball of pissed-offedness. And every bit as funny as her chasing her tail.

Still stifling giggles, I got up on all-fours and tried to crawl after her but she scooted away and disappeared through the door to the bathroom. I ended up distracted by the sensation of my boobs wobbling under me, bumping me on the arms and generally making me feel like an inverted camel with upside down humps.

“Don’t say hump -hic-,” I warned myself. “Moo-hic-oo!” Camels don’t say moo but cows do and I felt udderly ridiculous. “Hee, hee, hoo, -hic- ha! How the hell -hic- did I get such big tits? I’m small and -hic- skinny but I’ve got big boobs and a big -hic- butt. Ow.” The hiccoughs were getting violently painful.

That did it. Hiccoughs that hurt were funny, yes, but not that funny. I rolled over on my back and finally got control of myself. “Whee! Hic! Ow!” Well, eventually.

I lay there for a moment catching my breath, looking at the stucco on the ceiling and wondering again if I had gone insane or fallen down a rabbit hole, or fallen down the hole of an insane rabbit. On a whim, I kicked my legs in the air, waved my arms and squealed, “I still don’t have any clothes on!”

Somehow that helped.

After a bit longer just lying there, feeling the woof of the carpet warp my bare bottom, I sat up, crossed my arms under my boobs for support and knee-walked over to the corner to look at the DVDs Muffins had mentioned. “I’m looking at the DVDs, Muffins, uh, Ogen?” I called out.

“I hope you shit on yourself,” said the still pissed-off cat from somewhere in the bathroom.

“Huh.” I said. I pulled out one of the jewel cases and turned it to show the title and cover art. It showed a very busty, cute little blonde, naked, tied with ropes and scarves to what looked like an airplane seat.

I recognized the blonde. “Wendy Splendid Stars in Bound for Pleasure,” the title read.

“Hell’s Finest Kind Little Green Apple Tarts,” I said. “That’s me.”

Some Enchanted Girlfriend by Donna Lamb 15. Call Over It’s rather a shock to discover that you’ve had a career as a pornstar that you didn’t know about. The Wendy Splendid movies ran the gamut from bondage with ropes and scarves to bondage with chains and science fictiony devices.

I particularly liked the cover of “To The Moon, Windy!” where I wore one arm and one leg of what looked like a spacesuit, suitably held in clamps, while a fat guy and a skinny guy gloat over me. Yes, “my” name was misspelled in the title. Most of the covers did have a sense of humor and frequently had some travel tie-in with planes, trains, cars, trucks, spaceships, boats, motorbikes and amusement park rides on the cover. No golf carts.

“Wow,” I said. “I’ve got a ouevre.”

Other than restraints, I didn’t seem to wear much in my movies. Corsets, bustiers, high heels and jewelry seemed to be all that were required of the plots. If they had plots. I had a cravat and a set of bunny ears and nothing else I could see on the cover of “Wendy Spendit Goes to Sidneyland!” The name changed more than once.

I noticed something else. The jewel cases, about forty of them, sat in an order on the shelves. The order seemed to be chronological, as my stardom developed from, “Certain Blondage, Introducing Brenda Splendid” on the left end through the name change to Wendy with the second movie, to “Wendy Splendid Stars in Blondes on a Plane” at the right end. My name and my tits on the covers seemed to get bigger from left to right.

Well, no, they’re both the same size. I checked.

“Making porno movies makes your tits get bigger?” I asked no one. It might, I supposed, if your boss insisted you get plastic surgery. I felt of my boobs experimentally but they seemed like big bags of fat, muscle and breast tissue with no hard insides. And I couldn’t find any scarring either.

“Maybe I magicked them bigger,” I half-joked. If I’m a sorceress or a witch, maybe I’m not joking at all.

I debated putting one of the discs in and watching at least part of it but decided not. I thought I had a pretty good idea of what sort of scenes I would see and the thought of seeing myself, my current self, tied up and presumably, well, fucked, did strange things to me already. Better not find out just how much that might turn me on.

“Turn me loose, blubber,” I said aloud, the punchline of some old parody song I once heard. I put the discs back and rubbed my sore tits but stopped that because I liked it too damn much. “If today is any measure of my, uh, tendencies...um, I may be in the right business?”

Holding the last disk, “Blondes on a Plane,” I cocked my head and chirped in a suggestively succulent baby-doll squeak, “I’m sure if you don’t have a ticket we can work something out, Mr. Harden Traveller!” And I winked.

I knew without having to play the disk, that was an actual line from the movie. Shivering as if someone had taxied a jumbo airliner over my grave, I put the disk back and started to turn away from the corner.

Something else caught my eye, though. Pushed into a narrow vertical space beside the oak cabinet supporting the big screen TV was a contraption that looked a lot like a folded-up wheelchair. I wondered if the wheelchair had leg and arm restraints built in, like the one I seemed to remember from a dream I’d had.

I decided I didn’t want to find out since just seeing the device made my already aching legs and back tremble with weakness and fatigue. I knew something about that chair that I didn’t want to remember. I didn’t turn my back on that corner but instead scuttled backward to the middle of the room before turning around.

I gave up trying to puzzle out what the pattern of my new life meant and went looking for my kitten. I found Muffins in the dressing room, struggling with pulling a necklace free from a pile of tangled up jewelry hanging out of one of the drawers near the wall of bondage toys. She tugged it loose just as I came in.

“You need to put this on. Quick,” she said. Odd how she could talk clearly with a mouthful of metal.

I picked up the ropy and surprisingly heavy chain. Nine smaller chains dangled from it, each a different length and ending in a setting for a shiny but rough-edged stone. “What?” I started to ask.

“Just put it on!” snapped the cat, bouncing on her front paws and waving her kitten-stiff little tail behind her like a flag pole.

“Okay, okay,” I said. Long enough to go over my head, I had no trouble putting it on, though some of my hair did get tangled in the links for a moment. The dark stones with their glittery bits lay in a rough semi-circle against my boobs when I had them arranged. “What’s going on?” I asked.

“That fucking light show you gave earlier finally attracted something,” said the cat. It nodded in the general direction of the window wall in the bedroom/living room. “I can rell it out there but it hasn’t found you down here yet. Good thing you didn’t boff the giant on the kitchen counter earlier.”

Rell? Somehow I knew it was a way of recognizing an aura, and that it felt a little like reading a smell. The seventh sense? “Uh?” I said, intelligently.

So the cat explained. “It’s probably an atavistic revenant of an ancient sacrificial fertility cult, native or alien. Either that or the lingering spirit of some burned-out sixties hippie freak. They get pretty hungry for sex after a few decades.”

“Well, I wasn’t inviting either of them to drop in for free samples!” I squeaked. The fucking cat was so matter of fact and the DVDs and wheelchair already had me slightly freaked. I tugged on the chain. “This will help?”

Muffins rolled her eyes. “The chain is forged from a piece of ChimẠtumbago stolen from an Incan treasure by a reprobate priest in sixteenth century Spain. The stones are Australian fire opals dug up a hundred years ago by brujos in Mexico from the ruins of a Toltec city. The necklace was assembled in New York by a death camp survivor named Cohen using only the tools available to a jeweler in pre-Roman Palestine.”

“Sure,” I said.

“It’s big juju against spirits breaking and entering a home with intent to maul.” Muffins sighed. “Just wear it.”

“Okay, okay,” I said. I fingered the stones with one hand while idly dipping the other into a bowl of rings and earrings. Ooo, sparkly things. “What do....” I don’t remember what I started to ask because a noise from the outer room caused me to turn suddenly, spilling the bowl across the countertop.

It sounded like a bird flying against the plate glass window. A bird the size of a condor, maybe.

At almost the same time, something played a melody I sort of recognized. “What’s that? Is the monster ringing the doorbell? I didn’t know we had a doorbell!”

The kitten cocked her head listening. “Sounds like ‘Just a Girl’ by No Doubt. That’s the ringtone on your cellphone.”

I tried to scoop the spilled jewelry back into the bowl I was holding near the edge of the table. “I didn’t know I had a cellphone, either. Where the fuck is it? Do I have to go into the other room to answer it? Is that bird thing gone?”

“Bird thing? Your cell is on your bed where you left it last night,” said the cat. “Before you vanished yourself and blew me to Hollywood with the backlash from that spell you tried to work.”

“I did?” The phone rang again. “Which bed?”

“Your bed,” said the kitten, keeping it simple. “The bed with the curtains around it in the outer room.”

“Oh.” Whatever was outside hit the window again, shaking my nerves with a booming shudder. The phone rang again, too, cheerful, snarky tune. “Go get the phone for me,” I said.

“Hell’s Neverfail Charcoal Lighter Fluid! Do I look like a dog?” hissed my little fuzzy companion. Annoyed she whapped a loose earring with a paw and sent it over the rim of the bowl back to safety.

“Maybe they’ll call back,” I suggested. The phone kept ringing. The beaky monster I imagined kept banging on the window. The necklace and stones resting on my breasts seemed to be getting warm. I put the bowl down.

“It can’t get in,” said Muffins. “Answer the phone.”

I peeped through the door to the bedroom. The windows, like the bed, were covered in curtains and I could see nothing. The kitten hopped down from the dressing table and followed me.

I rushed across the six feet or so to the bed, feeling like a scout advancing under enemy fire. The necklace bounced on my boobs and my boobs bounced on my chest. I grabbed the curtains and pushed them open.

Inside the curtains, the king-size bed was big enough to be another room. Someone had discarded an odd collection of clothing and jewelry across the pink and white coverlet. What looked like a partially mummified body, all brown and gnarly, lay with its head on the pillows, a ringing cellphone in its claw-like hand held against a shrivelled ear.

“I think that’s for me,” I said.

Some Enchanted Girlfriend by Donna Lamb 16. Reach Over The dessicated corpse-like thing on the bed nodded and turned stiffly to hand me the phone. It moved its mouth, too, making a noise like the wind rattling the top leaves of a palm tree. Now I know what the heebie jeebies sound like.

I took the phone and wiped it off carefully with my hand in case the creature had breathed on it or whatever mummies do when they stop breathing. Then I opened it and pushed the answer button.

About the time I raised it to my face, the condor-thing on the balcony outside hit the window again with a sonic-sounding boom that would have done the space shuttle proud. The curtains keeping me from seeing Rodan actually moved a little.

“Eep!” I said very clearly into the mouthpiece.

“Kate?” a liquidy voice asked. “I’m downstairs and your intercom still isn’t working. I need to be buzzed into the building?”

“I don’t know?” I said. “Uh, who is this?” The thing on the bed leaned toward me as if trying to hear. Naturally, I leaned away. Up close it smelled like deep-fried road kill. It even had a crispy, crackly coating that I realized might be the remains of clothes–or skin.

“Who’s this? Are you okay? Kate?”

I turned away from Mr. Styx to keep from blowing chunksout of what I’d eaten last week. I had to swallow hard several times before speaking.

“Well, I’m not actually okay. I’m afraid I’m not feeling like myself today. I mean...” I trailed off and covered the phone. Kate? She called me Kate? “I thought my name was Connie?” I said to the cat, feeling like a complete and utter fool.

I looked down avoiding even a glance at the apparition beside me. Muffins didn’t seem to be bothered by deep-fried, freeze-dried, warmed-over death at all. Maybe the animated corpse counted as a new statement in home decorating. “Is that Harlette?” the kitten asked, ignoring my question.

“Harlot?” I said.

“Harlette. She’s your acolyte.”

“My what?”

The phone made noises and I put it back to my ear. “Harlette?” I said.

“Yeah?” she answered. “Kate, if you buzz me in, I can come upstairs and give you a hand at whatever.” A note of tired and routine exasperation crept into her voice, not quite snarky.

The balcony monster made another booming attack on the window and I flinched. “Yeah, okay,” I said. I couldn’t imagine what another person, even an acolyte might be able to do but live human company would be nice.

Mr. Styx scooted closer to me on the bed, his head slowly twisting sideways as if it were about to topple off his skinny neck. He made that noise with his mouth again, creeping me out. He? I took another look. Jeez, yeah, he–with what looked like the stump of a broken twig in the groin area–why the fuck am I looking that close?

It suddenly occurred to me that I had a cellphone; I could be taking this call from anywhere. Like away from monsters. I’d been leaning against the bed to save my aching feet and calves but I quickly moved away, heading for the kitchen and the doorway to the outside hall. I thought I’d seen a plate with an intercom grill and some buttons on the wall next to the door.

“Did you buzz yet?” the voice on the phone asked. “It’s not opening. Oh, wait, someone is coming out, I can get in.”

“Sorry it took so long,” I said. “I’m a little tied up in something right now.”

Harlette, assuming that’s who it was, giggled into the phone. “Aren’t you always?” Noises like a heavy exterior door being opened and someone with a deep voice murmuring something. Harlette continued. “Oh, thank you. Wow, big guy, I mean, huge. Oh, I’ve got the truck if you want to take your little go-kart thingie to the shop today.”

Huge guy? Tim? Take the go-kart to the shop? It was broken? No, the intercom is broken. The window boomed. Mr. Styx said, “Gah?” a clear question that probably meant something like, “Where did the live one go?”

I forged ahead, toward the kitchen. Muffins followed me ahead of me. “The red button is the buzzer, the green is to talk but it’s broken,” she said.

“Aren’t cats colorblind?” I asked.

“I dunno,” said Harlette. “Ask Ogen.”

Ogen was Muffins real name, I remembered. Muffins didn’t bother to answer the question, what a change, she just rolled her baby blue eyes at me. If she weren’t so cute I’d have been tempted to punt her against the wall.

I found the intercom panel by the door and hit the buzzer button to release the lock downstairs.

“Oh, thanks,” said Harlette. “But I’m already in, waiting for the elevator.”

“Oh, oh, yeah? Um, the big guy, opened the door for you? He have black hair and magic muscles?” I blushed, I don’t know why.

She giggled. “Well, yes, on the black hair. I didn’t think to rell him for magic? But muscles out the yin-yang. You know the guy?”

“Yeah, you could say that,” I admitted, still blushing. Where was Tim going? Maybe I should send Harlette after him. I could use a super-villain if he was on my side, for sure.

Harlette giggled again. “I’m going to hang-up now, I’ll be up there in just a minute or two. You need help getting ready for work?”

“Okay?” I said and closed my phone when she closed hers. Work? On a Sunday? What kind of work? I looked down at the kitten. “She knows you? I mean, that you’re a magical cat that talks?”

“Hell’s Noisemakers! Yes, she knows me and I’m a bound spirit, not a magical talking cat!” Muffins looked most adorably cute when she was most annoyed by me. And most annoying.

“Yeah, well,” I said. I glanced up and saw the thing on the bed again. I sort of dodged without moving much, looking at it–him, Mr. Styx–was very hard on the nerves. He had lain down again, this time with his head near the edge of the bed, his lipless mouth open and the holes where his eyes should be–the fuck!–he did have eyes sunk in those awful holes in his face! He’s got no eyelids and he’s looking at me!

I turned my face to the wall and swallowed hard several times. “I’ve got a ton of questions,” I said. But right then, I had trouble thinking of what to ask first.

Muffins yawned and washed a foot.

The monster at the window gave a half-hearted attempt to break in again, like Vinnie Barbarino shrugging into his jacket before a threat–a matter of form, not substance. Mr. Styx made a soft noise that I realized might be what a mummy sounds like when it wants to get your attention. A sort of “Erf?”

I looked down at myself, except for the necklace I was still naked. It seemed almost normal by now. Well, except for the tits. Compared to everything else, even the girl-cow look counted as normal. “Should I get dressed?” I asked.

“It’ll be easier if Harlette helps,” said Muffins. “That’s what she usually comes over for.”

It is? She does? Every question answered caused another couple of questions that needed asking. The cumulative unreality of the morning approached the screaming and foaming at the mouth point but luckily I felt disconnected from everything. I didn’t need to make noise or bang my head on the wall. Maybe I’m going into shock, I thought. Oh, good, if I faint I won’t have to find out what happens next.

“I’ve got a ton of questions,” I said again. Mr. Styx made a new noise, a garbled mutter that sounded like a cactus trying to talk.

Outside, down the hall, I heard the elevator arrive. A pressure I hadn’t been aware of suddenly went away and I turned and stared at the curtained windows.

“Hell’s Charm School Debutante-style Wart Remover!” Muffin yelped. “The creature outside has relled Harlette! Open the door so she can get in before it finds her!”

I reached the door in one step and tried the knob. “It’s locked!” I squeaked. I struggled with the lever I had used for locking it without the key. It wouldn’t budge, I couldn’t move it at all.

Outside the door, somebody screamed. Harlette, my acolyte, whatever an acolyte was, the monster had her. I couldn’t move the lever to unlock the door and–I’m ashamed to say it occurred to me–maybe that was a good thing.

Harlette screamed again and this time I joined her.

I felt a dry breath on my shoulder. I started to turn around, not knowing what to expect. An apparition of stick-like bones and rope-like flesh loomed over me.

It’s a good thing I’m short. Mr. Styx had no trouble reaching over my shoulder to flick the lever and unlock the door. His fingers looked as if they would snap off but had a gnarly strength to them and he worked the lock with ease.

I fainted anyway. Someone caught me and I prefer to believe it was the kitten.

Some Enchanted Girlfriend by Donna Lamb 17. Take Over I came to moments later, sitting on the floor, propped against the wall, still naked–legs spread wide as if I were posing for a publicity shot from a Wendy Splendid movie.

I hadn’t been completely out, I knew that Harlette had rushed through the unlocked door and screamed again when she saw Mr. Styx. Things faded a bit after that but I could hear Muffins and Harlette talking.

At first, I didn’t know what they might be saying and I imagined that they were talking about me. Since Muffins called me Connie and Harlette called me Kate and Mr. Styx called me, “Hhhrhhh...” it must have been a strange conversation, even for an imaginary one that probably never happened.

After I bumped my head against the wall a few times and finally got a clear channel, I didn’t know who they were talking about. “I think you scared him,” said Muffins. Him?

“I scared him? What did he do to the boss lady?” Harlette asked, her liquidy voice making splashes on a few rocks. “Is he gone?”

I decided they must mean Mr. Styx, who appeared not to be dead but only mostly dead.

They were in the kitchen alcove, talking, just a yard or so from my bare naked feet. They didn’t seem to realize I could hear and see them.

Muffins scampered down the hall to look. “He went back to bed,” she reported.

Harlette stood near the sink, a tall woman in a pale green, tailored leather skirt suit with a combo of the blackest hair and whitest skin I’d ever seen in Southern California. She had large, green, slightly slanted eyes, a tad too much chin and nose, long legs and a small waist–a nice slim figure without my abbondanzas. She fairly dripped with jewelry and oozed sex. After opening and closing her mouth several times, she finally said, “She’s sleeping with him?”

“No, no,” said Muffins. “Well, she was but....” The kitten scampered back and paused in front of me to peer into my face. “You awake?”

I made a noise and waggled my feet. I seemed to lack the coherent intelligence to form an actual reply.

Harlette asked, “What the foghorn was that thing in the hallway? It kept muttering something about sucking on my wheelbarrows or something.”

Muffins shrugged, which isn’t easy if you have teensy-weensy kitten shoulders. “The ghost of some sex addict from Hollywood, I think. Probably died of autoerotic asphyxiation while watching one of Wendy’s movies so he’s doomed to keep looking for her to finish his cumming and going. You want to help me get her up?”

Harlette towered over me. “How long has she been running around naked?” she asked.

I wanted to tell her that with tits like these, you don’t do any running and especially not naked. A person could get a contusion that way.

“Since last night when the excrement hit the aficionado,” said Muffins.

“That was her?” Harlette carefully squatted down on her heels and looked me right in the face. “What were you trying to do?” she asked. “You lit up the whole city, and twice more this morning, Kate.”

I tried to lick my lips but my tongue was stuck to the back of my teeth. My mouth felt as if it needed a “Fresh Tar” warning sign like city construction crews put up on a street fifteen feet before you get the crap all over your car.

Muffins joined Harlette. “The problem is, that’s not Kate.”

I made feeble motions with my hands and tried to get some moisture going in my mouth. I felt stale and dehydrated, like the onion salt cheap steakhouses leave on your table. Oh, fuck, I’ve got mummy rot from Mr. Styx touching me, I thought.

Harlette examined me. “Button nose, blue eyes, blonde haystack hair, slutty overbite, Christmas Day Parade tits; this isn’t Kate?”

“Use your third eye,” said Muffins.

The remark about the slutty overbite stung. I tried to glare at Harlette but she gave a good impression of staring at me with both eyes closed. “She is Kate,” she said, but she didn’t sound certain. When she opened her eyes I had the weirdest impression I could see a third eye looking out of them from the back of her head.

“She is and she isn’t,” said Muffins. “She’s mostly Kate but there’s someone else mixed in there and she doesn’t remember who she is, exactly.”

“‘M okay,” I managed to croak.

“Get her some water,” said the cat. “Old Willie’s touch seems to have parched her some.”

Willie, I thought. I know that name. Mr. Styx’s first name was Willie? The Right Honorable Mr. Willard T. Styx, Esquire? Willard? Why Willard and not William?

Harlette ended up bringing me two glasses of water which I gulped down quickly. “I would have thought you could cross a desert, just living on the nourishment in your humps,” she commented. That smooth, bubbly voice could actually be irritating, I decided.

“Ogen,” said Harlette, in the middle of me drinking the second glass. “If she’s only mostly Kate, where’s the rest of her and who else is in her body?”

“Hell’s Best Bitters! I don’t know!” said the little cat. She paused to wash a paw and rub it on her eyebrows to get her coolth back.

I remembered that Ogen was Muffins’ spirit name. Yay, me.

“And what happened to you?” Harlette went on, talking to the cat. “Yesterday you were an old grey tom with one ear and today you’re a cute little calico kitten. It’s an improvement but surely not voluntary.”

“Can we get her vertical and talking some sense before I go into the details of what I think happened? That way I won’t have to repeat things,” said Ogen/Muffins.

“Well, I think I can get her vertical, at least,” said Harlette. Her face had a perpetual expression of cool amusement built in, and that voice–I decided I could learn to dislike her quite easily, acolyte or no.

She scolded me, “What are you doing without your boots and corset and jewelry? You’re letting all that power from all those men watching you screw the co-pilot go to waste!”

“You’re my acolyte,” I said. She’d called me boss lady earlier so acolyte had to be a subordinate position.

“Uh-huh,” she said. “You’re supposed to be teaching me to grok sex magic and how to use it to become rich and famous so I can open a bookstore–pardon me, a book shop–on the beach and ride around the boardwalk in a little go-cart. Sound familiar?”

I suddenly remembered what acolyte meant, a ceremonial assistant. Someone who lit candles and carried the altar cloths in a church or temple. Helped the priest get dressed. Or did similar things for a magician. It could also mean someone who did such things for a teacher, as a student of mysteries.

I smiled at her. Holding up one middle finger I said, “Grok this, snarky.”

She laughed and I liked her better for it.

Some Enchanted Girlfriend by Donna Lamb 18. Make Over I still lay on the floor–a discarded life-size silicone love doll. Nearly life-size, seven-eighths scale, at least, like the Red Light District in Sidneyland. I didn’t have enough strength to move much more than one arm and some face muscles. I felt limp, useless and washed out, a water balloon that had missed its target and lay burst and empty on the lawn while the kids found some other game to play.

If I hadn’t been so dehydrated from the mummy touch, I think I would have started crying.

“Let’s get your boots on first,” said Harlette. “That ought to give you the strength to stand up. I’m surprised you lasted this long with nothing to keep your energy in.” She headed for the closet, leaving me lying in the entry hall.

I shook my head and said, “Okay.” Whatever. I really did feel low on energy but how would wearing boots help?

“She snacked on a giant earlier,” said Muffins. “Big evil-looking moose puncher on the next floor up. That’s why the bonfire they lit was so bright.”

Moose puncher? Snack? I didn’t know which to be more annoyed at, the implication that I was a cannibal or the one that I was a moose. I’m too little to be a moose. Bambi. I’m more of a Bambi.

I waggled my feet in annoyance again. If I weren’t lying helpless on the floor, I could have worked up a real pissed-off attitude.

“I think I met him downstairs, he let me into the building, if it’s the same guy,” Harlette said from inside the dressing room. “You feeling a little piratical today, Kate, honey?”

“Yo, ho,” I said. She didn’t get it but I heard Mr. Styx laugh, drily. It sounded like a boy scout trying to start a fire with only one stick. Mummies have a sense of humor? I kind of felt grateful that I couldn’t see him from my position on the floor.

Muffins crawled up on my thigh and butted my tummy with her round little head, purring like a nutbar. I tried to pet her but my hand ran out of energy and I sort of smooshed her down against me. I could feel the purring as much as hear it. “You keep doing that, I’m going to go to sleep,” I said.

“Kate, oh, Kate,” said the kitten, still purring. “What did you get us into?” Her little feet pushed against me, flexing, the points of her kitten-sharp claws just touching my skin.

“Wish I knew,” I said. A yawn interrupted another thought on it’s way to my brain. Even though the idea actually had something to do with brains, I knew it was gone; just a dehydrated wisp of a notion left. The kind of thoughts Mr. Styx probably had, whispery things that wouldn’t let you sleep and kept tickling your feet....

“Hosiery,” said Harlette. She ran a fingernail up an instep to my calf and down the other leg. “You going to wake up enough to let me help you get dressed?”

I sighed and nodded, about all I had the energy for. The kitten in my lap gave a little sigh too and shook herself awake.

“I’m just about used up,” said Muffins. “Not enough of me to keep both of us up and moving. Hell’s Buttery Biscuits but I’m tired.”

“Your cussing always sounds like an infomercial,” I said, giggling a little.

“Can you think of anything more damnable?” asked Harlette. She had rolled a lacy, silky, something onto her hands. “Point your toes,” she said.

I did and moments later I stared down at my legs, encased in shimmering–nylon, I suppose, though it looked like silk–with a lacy froth high on my thighs.

Muffins yawned and stretched and got her claws away from the danger of making runs in the fabric. She trotted to the end of the little hallway and looked toward the bed. She froze there, staring, her stiff little kitten tail sticking up like a handle. “Is he singing?” she asked.

We all heard it then, a rhythmic sigh with percussive tooth snappings on the downbeat. “The fucker is singing,” I said. I felt goosebumps popping out all over me when I recognized the tuneless rhythm and style.

“What is he singing? It’s a freemason waltz!” said Harlette. She stopped working the pink-and-lavender-suede boot that only the gayest pirate blade would have ever worn onto my left foot and stared down the hall, too.

I had to clamp my own teeth on the answer. Mr. Styx was singing “Clementine” in a fake Southern accent with howlings and yodels, a Huckleberry Hound impression like my father used to do. And he couldn’t carry a tune any better than Dad but at least he had the excuse of no vocal cords.

And I knew this how? I could hear Dad’s lugubrious voice in my head, singing a duet with a pile of kindling. But I couldn’t see him, couldn’t remember what he looked like.

“Hell’s Sweet Lemon Drops, that’s annoying,” said Muffins.

“It’s micro-fashion annoying,” agreed Harlette.

Mom would have thought so too. I tried to sit up straighter, taking in as deep a breath as I could manage. “Knock it off out there!” I squeaked.

The “singing” stopped. After a beat we all heard a dry-whistled “Hhhr-hhhy!” as apology.

Harlette laughed, a gurgle that sounded like high quality gin being measured for a seductive martini. No trace of panic or wonder in her voice.

I wanted to scream, There’s a talking cat and a mummy doing cartoon voices in here! But I didn’t have the energy, and it really didn’t seem that important. We’re all nutbars, I decided. This is the locked ward at the state hospital and the reason I can’t move is I’m in a strait jacket.

Muffins turned and bounced toward me, a calico ball of kitten delight. “You’re awake?” she asked.

I nodded. I knew what she meant. Not just awake as in not asleep but awake as in aware of things. And I was very much aware that everything around me was real, however much I didn’t want to believe it. But something else had changed.

I could already feel a new source of energy surging up from the arch of my left foot, forcibly flexed and constricted by the boot. As if the foot were now a rock in a waterfall, diverting some of the flow in an arcing rainbow.

Harlette worked quickly to get both boots on me, lacings tightened all the way up past my knees where the floopy “pirate” tops flopped over. The boots felt amazingly comfortable, despite the stiffness and constriction. They were my boots and I had worn them before, I knew this.

“How’s that?” Harlette asked.

“I’m good,” I said, my voice sounding stronger, even to me. “It’s like magic,” I added because I knew it wasn’t just ‘like magic’, it was magic. As magical as a talking kitten and a mummified rapper.

She gurgled another laugh, then helped me up so I stood braced against the wall while she laced a matching corset made of velvet, leather and steel around my middle. The boots bent and turned my feet so that I stood almost on tiptoe. The tall heels gave me six more inches of height, and yet, I didn’t feel any discomfort from wearing them.

I felt like a bottle being filled with some invisible fluid that was kept from running out again by my new restrictive clothing. How did that work, anyway?

But the most amazing things were the new sensations. I could rell Harlette’s mint green aura, Muffins’ polychrome gunpowder, and even through a wall, Mr. Styx glowed black-and-tan, ink-and-paper. The numinous Sun shone through all the floors and ceilings above us, the ultimate source of light and life and everything good.

At a distance, I could even see the Moon, behind the limb of the Earth; a week past new, She would be rising as the Sun reached zenith. The Planets, too, far away reflections of the Sun’s glory. And tiny Stars, unbelievably far and yet so bright. The universe sparkled all around me and every spark tried to whisper secrets in my ear.

Harlette stood behind me, tightening my laces. Holding my hair up, out of her way, with my arms over my head, stretched up and onto my toes, I still had no problems with balance. It seemed marvelously natural, something I had been doing for a very long time.

The corset and heels together made me arch my back, thrusting my chest forward and my rear, up and back. At the same time, built-in cups that didn’t quite cover my nipples pushed my boobs together and higher, making me feel as if I ought to be nailed to the prow of a ship, breasting the waves.

The faster, shallower breathing I had to do increased this illusion; at the same time I imagined becoming lighter, hollow, where the power I sensed flowing in from somewhere could be held within me. I didn’t need a boat, I had become my own vessel. Okay, I winced at that mental pun, but it felt true.

My waist shrank as Harlette pulled the cords, tighter and tighter. She checked every few iterations, using her hands to see if she could span my tiny middle. By contradiction, the smaller my waist got, the larger the power-containing volume inside me became.

Harlette tied the cords off with bows. She held up both hands, middle finger and thumb tips touching to make a single circle. “Nineteen and one quarter inches,” she said. “Perfect.”

I turned around, taking little steps to do so because my waist and ankles would hardly bend. I kept my elbows at my side, using my hands and forearms to keep my balance; it seemed the right way to do it..

The restrictions and limitations of my costume freed and empowered me. Dressed like this, I could not run, I could take only small steps but my senses had expanded and energy filled me. What could I do with that power, I wondered?

I tried the stunt with my third eye, looking into Harlette and searching out the truth about her. My two eyes, which I had not realized I had closed, popped open. “You’re a boy!” I yelped, startled.

“No shampoo, Einstein,” she said. “Sex magic at the higher levels always requires someone who has crossed that river.”

“Oh,” I said. “Sure....” I trailed off. I remembered being a boy, but.... Had Kate also been a boy at some time?

Some Enchanted Girlfriend by Donna Lamb 19. Wear Under Not wearing panties felt naughty, different than just being naked. I looked naughty in the dressing room mirror and I discovered that I enjoyed that. I had to suppress giggles almost every time I saw myself in the mirror. I began to doubt I’d ever been anyone other than the girl I could see.

Harlette had wrapped a tight little mini-skirt around my hips, it came down far enough to be decent if I didn’t bend over or spread my legs much but the lace tops of my hose showed above the boots and below the skirt. A light, translucent band-type top covered my nipples but left them sort of visible. The velvet corset showed between the top and the skirt, too.

We’d gone into the dressing room to pick out jewelry and so Harlette could do my make-up. After admiring my reflection, I sat down in the chair with my legs stretched out in front of me, ankles together, while she worked. Before we got started, though, I picked up Muffins the cat and put her on the dresser.

“Talk,” I told her.

She sat down and began to wash. This didn’t keep her from talking at all, of course. “First,” she said, “do you know who that Willie guy out there is?” Meaning Mr. Styx, the mummy in my bedroom.

I shook my head. “I’ve got some ideas but I’m not sure.” I thought he might be the original me, or at least my body, but that didn’t make any sense at all. And how come he did such an uncanny impression of my father singing “Clementine”? Of course, being a mummy, pretty much anything he did came under the heading, uncanny.

Despite being infatuated with my reflection, I still remembered having been a man. I didn’t want to think I’d been Mr. Styx but what was another absurdity before lunch?

“Okay, last night, Kate was using that guy to help her power a spell,” said the kitten. “She made a sex battery with him, her yin with his pitiful yang.”

At first I thought the cat had said ‘yen’ and ‘wang.’ Made sense either way. “Kate meaning me?” I asked, trying to keep things straight.

“Well, you, but you’re not all Kate and all of Kate is not you.” She stuck a back foot in an ear and stirred till her eyes rolled up. “Do you remember anything?” she asked calmly as if she practiced her auto-lobotomy skills everyday.

I nodded. “I remember some things but not specific stuff. And, and some of it seems to be from someone else’s viewpoint.” I didn’t like saying too much about what I remembered. It wasn’t so much that I thought I’d sound like a nutbar if I discussed it but I didn’t want anyone to think I was a chewy one.

“Hell’s Labradoodle Sanitary Patrol,” said Muffins. “We may never sort this out.” She still had a foot in her ear and a this-space-for-rent expression but that didn’t seem to effect her speech.

“Why didn’t she–I mean you, I mean Kate–why didn’t Kate call me to come help with a spell?” asked Harlette. She held a set of earrings up, hoops that looked like they might be nineteen-and-a-quarter inches around, too. “I went to Santa Monica to a new club but it was dead there.”

It occurred to me that in this bunch, that might not be a figure of speech. I had a mental image of a hundred or so Mr. And Miss Styxes slow dancing. I decided not to ask.

Earrings. Well, why not? But such huge ones? I nodded at the hoops and Harlette put the first one in. I pretended that it made me lopsided and flopped my head over to the left. I got one of Harlette’s gurgles as a reward.

Muffin shook her head, dislodging the foot from her brain. “It was kind of an emergency. This fool, Willie Convoy, Conrad, or something, came to her as a client. He had sex problems, of course, and she agreed to help him because he had a spark of talent.”

Sex problems. Why did that not surprise me? But talent? Magical talen? I wondered but I didn’t say anything, yet.

“How’s that an emergency?” asked Harlette. She balanced me out, both hoops grazing my shoulders if I moved a millimeter, and selected another pair of smaller hoops. To my surprise both of those went on the right side, apparently to make nice jangles.

“Frank Zed,” said the kitten, like it deserved a drum roll.

Outside, in the bigger room, Mr. Styx did make a noise, a rattling, sighing, thrashing about gasp; the sound someone who refused to scream might make while riding a bicycle full tilt into a blackberry hedge.

“Got his attention,” commented Harlette. She picked out a string of pearls for another piercing in my left lobe. Just how many holes in my head did I have? Did I have too many? Did I need more?

The noise out in the bedroom continued for a bit but eventually faded. Mr. Styx did not make an appearance in the dressing room just then. Good thing, too, it was entirely too close in there for someone who smelled like a pork barbecue gone terribly wrong.

“Frank Zed. Should I know the name?” I asked. I felt I almost did. I could see two images in my mind. A stylized FZ where the upper bar of the Z connected with the lower arm of the F in a circle that looked like the lens of a camera–or the barrel of a gun. The other image had a strongman kneeling and supporting a ballerina, the two of them contained in an outlined FZ.

I knew I had seen both images recently. They must be trademarks, I decided. One or both of them had been on the DVD cases I’d looked at earlier, that’s where I had probably seen them.

“He’s the producer of the Wendy Splendid videos,” said Harlette, confirming my guess while supplying my left wrist with a dozen or so thin bangles. “Company name FotoZed. His real name is Fernando Zettolini and his father and uncles are mobsters in Toronto, Canada. Carl Zed, Bobby the Pump Zetto, Nick Zetto. He goes by Frank Zed.”

I blinked. “They have mobsters in Canada?” I said.

“Of course they do,” Harlette commented. “It’s a civilized country. Mobsters are what you get in civilized countries. Elsewhere they call them gull-spanking warlords.” My right wrist got five bracelets, more substantial than the bangles on the left.

I held a delicate little hand out flat and waggled it to express my skepticism. Canadian mobsters saying, “Youse tryna be a wise guy, eh?” It didn’t seem likely.

All of the pieces of jewelry appeared to have some sort of affect; not the auras of living beings but something similar. I shook off the wonder of the jewels and the sociological speculation about or neighbor to the north and tried to get us back on point. “What about Zed?”

“He wants you back. Wendy, that is,” said Harlette. “You’re easily his biggest star, thirty nine movies in two years and every one of them still making him money. There are collectors out there who would buy any new Wendy Splendid movie. They’ve got a new girl using the name but everyone knows it ain’t you.”

“And,” said the kitten, “because you used magic when you made them, every time someone watches one and gets hot, but doesn’t cum, you collect the orgs.”

“Orgs?” I blurted. Royalties on porn? Hooda Thunkett?

“Orgs are the theoretical energy unit of sexual magic. It’s like a quantum bet on a cosmic dice table, cum or don’t cum.” Harlette’s explanation just confused me. What the heck did people use for chips in that game?

I looked back at the kitten. She crossed and uncrossed her eyes and I almost missed what she said next trying not to get a giggle caught crosswise.

“That’s right. Frank’s been wanting Kate to sign a new contract since the old one expired. But there’s no advantage to you, er, Kate, since you’ve pretty much got all the orgs you can use, now. The same people watching new videos wouldn’t generate much more....”

Mr. Styx at the doorway interrupted. “Hhhh. Rrrr. Hhhy, rrr. Rhr hhh hrr ryrh, yrrrrhrrhhh!” he said, gesturing earnestly with his bony, stick-like hands.

“He’s a creepy frond-licker but I think he’s trying to tell us something,” said Harlette.

“Tutankamon’s fallen down the well?” I gasped. Don’t hold your breath in surprise while wearing a tight corset–you run out of air real fast.

Behind him somewhere, my cellphone played “Only a Girl,” again. Mr. Styx slumped, like a tower made of popsicle skeletons when the glue softens. “Rhryrhyhh,” he said. “Rhh hyh yh.” He lurched away.

“Did he just say he’d get it?” Harlette asked.

“Hell’s Pimple-Encouraging Potato Crisps, I think he did,” said Muffins.

“Go get the phone away from him before he scares some credit card telemarketer out of her panties,” I said.

Harlette looked at me, gurgled, then dashed out of the dressing room to do as I had ordered. Hey, having an acolyte could be nice, I decided.

Some Enchanted Girlfriend   by Donna Lamb   20. Find Under Harlette returned with the phone but closed it with a snap. “Must have been a wrong number,” she said, grinning. “No heavy breathing at all.”

“Hee-hee, Ho,” I said. She still didn’t get that, so I just grinned back. “Mr. Styx frighten them off?”

“Nah, I got it before he said anything. But whoever it was didn’t talk much. Just one word, really. 'Beauty.' Is that one of your clients petnames for you?” she asked.

I didn’t know, so I just shrugged.

Muffins rolled over on her back and waved her paws in the air. “I don’t like it,” she said.

I rubbed her tummy, it seemed like the thing to do. “What don’t you like, baby Muffins?” I cooed. She tried to scowl at me but cats can’t do that when they’re tummies are being rubbed.

Mr. Styx appeared in the doorway. “Yhh ryryhh hhh ry ryhr,” he said distinctly. Then he wandered off.

“Gumdrops,” said Harlette. “It scares me that I’m starting to understand him.”

“He said he was going back to bed?” I guessed.

Harlette nodded. “You, too? Creepy old string-saver.”

“I don’t like that, either,” said the kitten, her purely vocal purrs almost drowning out her mental voice. “But ‘Beauty’ on the phone might be a warning from someone.”

“How?” I said. “What don’t I know?”

“Your magic is based on the realm of sexual energy,” said the cat. “The generation, containment and release of human erotic impulses and drives.” She glanced at me. “Kate’s magic was, that is.”

“Hmm,” I said. I noticed that the faster I strummed her tummy, the louder her purrs got. She’s just a furry little ukelele, I thought.

“But there are other realms,” said the spirit voice of the kitten, who appeared to be blissing out on my virtuosity.

“Like what?” I asked.

“There are realms and realms within realms,” said Muffins, speaking as Ogen the spirit. “Super realms like Light and Darkness. Life and Death. Subrealms like Erotica and narrow micro-Realms like Collectible Card Games.”

“Snurf,” I said, choking back a giggle.

“I’m not familiar with a snurf realm,” said Muffins. She didn’t seem amused which made it twice as funny.

“I thought she said smurf,” said Harlette. “You know, short, blue men who don’t get enough?”

“No wonder they’re blue,” I said.

“I’m positive there is no smurf realm,” said the kitten.

Harlette continued decorating me with jewelry, rings, necklaces, anklets and a little jeweled barrete for my hair, all during this exchange. I watched in the mirrors and enjoyed the ministrations of my acolyte, distracting myself from giggling at the stuffy attitude of the calico kitten.

“Is a wittle baby Muffins kitty wike her belly rubs?” I cooed, just to be annoying.

“Yes,” said the cat, “but I promise I’ll hate you in the morning.”

That did get a giggle from me and a gurgle from Harlette so I sang a little nonsense playground song for the kitten:

“There’s a place in France
Where the kitties all wear pants,
And the dogs run around
In their long evening gowns.
They’ll never catch their tails that way.
They dance all night and sing all day.
 
“Na, na, nah, nah, nah,
Na-na, na-na, na-na, nah!
 
“There’s a place in Greece
Where the kitties all wear fleece,
And the dogs run amuck
‘Cause they’re just out of luck.
They chase their tails and sing this song,
All day wide and all night long.
 
“Na, na, nah, nah, nah,
Na-na, na-na, na-na, nah!
 
“There’s a place in Spain
Where the kitties all are sane.
And the dogs can say meow
‘Cause the cats have taught them how.
And some wide day or some long night,
They’ll catch their tails but never bite.
 
“Na, na, nah, nah, nah,
Na-na, na-na, na-na, nah!
 
“There’s a place I know,
It’s where all the kitties go.
And the dogs will be there, too,
If you hurry, so can you.
Where nights are long and days are wide,
You be the groom, I’ll be the bride.”

“Hell’s Haberdashery for Headless Heads of State! Knock it off!” said Muffins. She’d finally had enough so she sat up and started washing herself.

Harlette and I both laughed and sang the chorus anyway. Singing in a corset leaves you kind of light-headed and I felt giddy but pleased with myself.

“What were we doing before the Broadway number?” the cat asked.

“You were telling me–uh–what actually happened last night. How’d I end up up in Tim’s room, naked?”

“Huh?” said Harlette. “I missed something? That hunk-a-lunk I met downstairs? Hnnh. No wonder he had such a satisfied smirk on his mug. Oh, yeah, you mentioned that you set the night afire with him.”

“And the morning,” said Muffins. “That’s how I found you so quickly,” she said to me. She stuck a foot straight up in the air and began licking it from the thigh down to the toes.

All the while the spirit voice, Ogen, went back to telling what had happened. “You used Willie Corvair, or Kate did, to bootstrap yourself into the astral domain for a looksee because you thought someone, Frank Zed specifically, might be planning something. I went along for the ride and Willie-boy clung to your tail by dint of what talent he had himself.”

“It’s a nice tail,” commented Harlette.

“Really?” I said. I felt absurdly happy for poor Willie but confused by the apparent connection between us. Mr. Styx and I, Kate and Willie–scrambled souls?

“Yes, really,” said Harlette.

“Please,” said Muffins. The kitten opened her eyes and did that cross and recross thing again. It always made her look like a candidate to get her own animated cartoon show someday. This time I noticed that when she uncrossed them, the green one had swapped places with the blue one.

I almost lost the next couple of sentences in wondering if she were doing it on purpose and if not, did she know it was happening. And then I wondered if it was really happening, I mean, I didn’t consider myself –a known nutbar– to be a reliable witness at all.

Muffins got back to the point. “You went up to the astral domain and took a look around. Nothing relled of danger, so you pulled Willie up to you and began giving him his second lesson in tantric sex.”

“On the astral plane?” asked Harlette as if that were scandalous. I wondered if it were or if she was just having fun pretending to be shocked.

“You had the idea that with a little more power you could do something to make sure Zed would leave you alone,” said Muffins.

“What was it?” I asked. This all sounded a bit like something from a book I read about Mexican witches back in college. I didn’t know what questions to ask. I didn’t even know which college I’d gone to.

“Zed, or somebody, had a counterspell ready. Maybe an ambush. I didn’t see it coming,” Muffins admitted. “You and your student were completely involved and the attack came so quickly, you just had time to say, ‘Zed!’ before the blast tore me away from you. It looked like whatever it was had shredded you both to soul tatters–Kate and Willie, that is.”

I blinked a few times. Soul tatters sounded bad.

“I landed, back in my body, in an alley in Burbank where a pair of coyotes tore me apart before I could get my wits about me.” Definitely reminded me of those books about the Mexican witches. Maybe those weren’t fiction?

“Wait,” said Harlette. “You landed in your body–in Burbank? Jingle bell sausages! That’s like twenty-five miles away.”

“Yes,” said the kitten. “Teleportation. I’ve never gone that far under my own power before. It took me hours to get back here and I used up another life trying to cross the freeway.” She sighed with both spirit and kitten voices. “Something else, the coyotes used Death Magic on me; I barely escaped being banished from this Plane.”

“Carp noodles,” said Harlette. She had finished with the jewelry and begun picking out makeup. Lipstick, eyeshadow, foundation, powder, gathering the little tubes and bottles in her left hand.

“I found Kate, well, you,” Muffins indicated me, “by following the glow you made in the ether with that giant. I couldn’t rell you directly till I got close, then I teleported onto your balcony, his balcony and discovered–um, I’m still not sure what I’ve discovered.”

Muffins and I stared at each other for a bit. “So, who am I?” I asked.

The kitten turned around twice and managed to step on her own head. “Ouch,” she said. “I think you’re using Kate’s body–and Kate’s brain–and Kate’s powers–but you’re not Kate, not inside.”

I had to say it. “Do you think I’m Willie?” I had to ask.

“I don’t know,” said Ogen/Muffins, staring at me. “But Mr. Styx out there isn’t Kate either. I don’t know who you are and I don’t know what happened to Kate.”

We stared at each other for a bit too long. The kitten looked worried instead of cute. I wanted a deep breath and a giant to hold me and keep me safe.

Harlette held up the handful of cosmetics she had gathered. “I’ve got a new spell,” she said. She waved the tubes, bottles and brushes over my head and said, “All you cousins, scram, all you Percherons, gee. All you pterosaurs, fly, and all you mastodons, flee!” Then she touched me on the forehead, the tip of my nose and my chin.

Some Enchanted Girlfriend by Donna Lamb 21. Breathe Under Then she kissed me, full on the lips. I’d spent the morning kissing and being kissed by Tim–and Harlette kissed differently. Hotter, more forceful, just as passionate but without the gentleness that Tim used. I liked it but I guess that’s no surprise.

I didn’t have the air for long kisses and I pulled away after half a minute or so. “Woo!” I gasped. “That part of the spell?”

“Mmm,” said Harlette. “You might say so. But you don’t kiss like Kate, either. Anyways, look in the mirror.”

I did, Harlette’s spell had done my makeup in an instant and perfectly. Well, it looked good to me–and I spent some time looking at myself. Eyeshadow, mascara, lipstick and some stuff I didn’t even know what it was called, all by magic. Now maybe I wouldn’t have to learn all that.

“I’m impressed,” I told her. And my nipples were still hard, but I didn’t say that. Had Harlette once told me she used to be a guy, or maybe was still really a guy–um, where it really mattered? At the moment, I couldn’t remember. Maybe it didn’t matter, my appetites seemed a bit omnivorous.

Of course, the question might be who sets the table and who gets to be lunch.

She cocked her head this way and that, looking at me, then smiled. “It came out beautiful, I think. I get better with it every time. I used a daytime scheme, not as dark or dramatic as you would want for night time.”

Uh-oh. I tried to imagine the kiss that would go with a night-time version of the spell and shivered. Darker and more dramatic, oh my.

The kitten pounced on the bottles and tubes as Harlette set them down, letting them roll across the dresser top. “Kill! Mine! Kill! Mine!” squeaked Muffins before getting control of herself. She immediately fell to washing and pretended nothing had happened.

Harlette hid her face behind some of the clothing hanging in the closet. I did something similar; I giggled and pointed at the cat.

After we recovered, Harlette asked, “Are you going to open the bookstore, pardon, book shop, today?”

“Do I usually open it on Sunday?”

“Well, duh!” she said. “Why have a book shop on the boardwalk if you’re not open on Sunday?”

Boardwalk? Visions of Coney Island danced in my head for a moment then I remembered that Los Angeles did have a boardwalk in a few places, even though some of them weren’t actually made of boards. “Venice?” I guessed. My brain seemed to be getting re-integrated, I had less trouble remembering the names of places now, at least.

“Uh-huh,” she said. “If you ask me, you keep the shop just to have an excuse to go down and flirt with the musclemen.”

“Probably,” I agreed. A kind of map in my head showed how to get to the book shop, less than a mile away, really. I could see the green-and-white awning and the craft-cut wooden sign in the window, “Buxom Books” with the outline of a busty woman lying on top of the letters, back arched, high heels in the air. Uh-oh. Another sign in the other window said, “Books for Grownups.”

“It’s an adult book store?” I asked.

Harlette waggled a hand, “Soft core, the city won’t let you handle the hard stuff in that location. Like you can’t sell your own videos there, the Wendy Splendid stuff?”

I blushed. “Oh, my!”

“But you’ve got an order desk with catalogs. I do the shipping on Tuesdays.” She grinned, “You still sell pretty good, what with mail order and internet, I must ship out fifty or sixty videos a week, plus the books. FotoZed handles mail orders, too, and all the wholesale.”

“Zed. That’s the guy that attacked me?”

Harlette frowned.

Muffins put in. “Well, he wants you back working for him. And he tried to send some muscle down to harass you. Last we heard, one of those guys is still selling photos of his zebra-striped ass down in Tijuana and the other is living under a bush in the People’s Park in Berkeley–when he isn’t in jail for public urination.”

Harlette gurgled.

“What? Did I do something to them?” I asked, a little alarmed.

“People ought not mess with witches and sorceresses,” said Harlette. “Kate gave them some erotic compulsions they’ll have to work off, unless some other mage undoes the geasá£.”

It sounded like she said something halfway between “guess” and “geisha” with a French-fried noise on the end but I knew how it was spelled–hah!–and what it meant: magically-enforced obligations. Their two fates sounded as if they were each refusing to follow the geas and suffering an alternate punishment from their own conscience.

“Wow,” I said. I didn’t know how I knew what I did know, but I knew that I knew it.

That little story made me feel relieved that I apparently wasn’t Kate. She didn’t sound like such a nice person all of a sudden–at least, not if you annoyed her. At the same time it bothered me that the details of what happened seemed both familiar and alien to me.

“Maybe Zed hired some magical help?” I suggested.

“Not many mages will work for money,” said Muffins. “At least, not the good ones. You wouldn’t. Power and knowledge are what magic-users seek, money, just money as money, is easy to get.”

“It is?” That startled me. Somehow, disrespect for money seemed to offend some part of my inner self, or some old part of what used to be me. Whichever. I didn’t want to chase my tail down that particular bunny burrow so I tried to change the subject.

“What about Mr. Styx? What did he have to do with all this, what happened to him and–well, is there anything we can do to help him get better?”

“Besides teriyaki sauce,” Harlette suggested. We all glanced toward the outer room where Mr. Styx supposedly had climbed back into my canopy bed–the site of his dessication.

Muffins looked thoughtful, crossing and recrossing her mismatched eyes again, so cute and silly-looking, but I tried reminding myself that a powerful intellect and an otherworldly spirit inhabited the tiny kitten body. I still giggled but I felt nervous doing it.

“Mr. Styx, Willie Compost-or-whatever, is a bit of a mystery. His talent, from what Kate said, was auto-redaction. Maybe that’s how he survived what happened to him.”

Auto-redaction? It took me a moment to work that out. “He’s a shapeshifter?”

“No, or he wasn’t–but that’s where his talent lay.”

“You mean he turned from jerk into jerky all by himself?” asked Harlette.

“No,” said Muffins. “He and Kate were locked in a tantric cell. When the ambush started, Kate tried to use all the power available so she could to protect them. When things went in the bottle, she tried to bail out and get us all to safety. Somewhere in there, Willie must have instinctively grabbed some power and tried to survive.”

No one said anything for a bit.

“Well, shake me out and beat me for a rug,” said Harlette finally. “Maybe he’s not a complete Jeffries Tube.”

“Maybe,” I paused to get another breath. Wearing a corset takes some getting used to. “Maybe he could tell us something important if we helped him restore himself?”

“Maybe,” agreed Muffins. She turned around twice and started licking herself somewhere that made me wonder what it would be like to be as flexible as a cat. I would have gotten completely distracted and forgotten all about poor Mr. Styx if not for Harlette.

“He looks like all the juice has been sucked out of him,” she said. “You’re the Juice Lady, Boss Lady. Maybe you can give him some juice?”

“How?” I paused for air again. “How would I do that?”

Muffins twisted and turned to get a better angle on her licking and fell off the countertop into my lap. I giggled then hiccoughed because the giggle going out collided with a breath coming in.

“Oh, now she’s going to do you,” said Harlette with an evil wink.

The giggles-mixed-with-hiccoughs began to get interesting. Little zings and zowies went through my anatomy and I didn’t know whether to squeal or moan. “Hickety hooper?” I said, helpless for the moment and enjoying it like a kid’s first tilt-a-whirl ride. “Hickety, hoop! Hickety koop!” Ooo, that was a real good one.

“Now look what you’ve done,” Muffins accused Harlette.

“What I did? You’re the one fell off the table into her possum-catcher!”

Mr. Styx appeared in the doorway, looking very interested in what was going on. Maybe he wanted to read the book later.

“Ry yry hrrrh yr hrrrr rry hy rrrr hr?” he asked.

I wanted to tell him that if just looking at him didn’t scare me out of the hiccoughs, jumping at me and saying boo probably wouldn’t work either.

“Hinklety Honk!” I said.

I tried to stand up to get more air. The sensations had become psychedelic, the world opening up like somebody’s oyster to show the slick little piece of meat inside. My nipples throbbed and my pussy purred. “Hickle, hinkle, hicklety hoo?” By which I meant something like, “My brain, my brain, my beautiful brain, it’s melting!”

“She needs a circuit breaker on that thing,” said Harlette.

“Hell’s Pretty Pink Pastel Possum Plaster! Do something! She doesn’t have any idea how to handle that kind of power! She’s sucking energy from anyone who’s ever seen any of her videos!”

I had the impression, real or imagined, that I had somehow synchronized the wanking of thousands of men, and a few women, watching my Splendid videos all over North America not to mention the rest of the world.

“Hinkle, hook, hookety-hickety-hinklety, hinkle,” by which I meant something like, “Holy shit! It’s a million disk seller! We’re going double platinum here!”

“It’s a megaorg power surge, millions of tiny organ solos!” said Harlette.

Lonely men in apartments and flats, cottages and motel rooms, hogans and igloos, yurts and fezes rubbed their dicks and thought of sticking their stiffie in my fuzzy blonde bijoona. Wait a minute, I think a fez is a kind of hat. And what the fuck is a bijoona?

“She’s cumming but her spell is keeping them from doing so! So they keep trying and giving her more power and her spell keeps getting stronger!”

“She’s like the frozen pot sticker Energizer Bunny in reverse!” said Harlette. “Good thing I didn’t put her in the really tight corset or the tall high heels, huh?”

Fuck, yeah. Not that I wasn’t enjoying the whole thing but I felt like just a little bit more of this and they’d have to wash my brains out of my panties–except, I wasn’t wearing panties, I remembered.

Time went non-linear and I saw the next few scenes in out-of-order snatches as I cummed in and out of reality.

Harlette helped me stand up then she kissed me again, half-rescue breathing, half-seduction.

Muffins ran around in a circle but she wasn’t the pussy who was in trouble.

Mr. Styx lurched through the door into the dressing room like a re-animated Ted Cassidy.

The men who imagined fucking me had ten thousand sets of eyes and ten thousand hands and a single cock two miles long.

Some time during all of the jump cuts and quick fades, Harlette’s tongue grew long enough to lick my skull clean from the inside and I stopped thinking at all.