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Some Enchanted Girlfriend by Donna Lamb . Part 3 - Over . “Hell’s Little Wieners in Habañero 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.

* * *

“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 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 out 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 cersa, 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 laughing. “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- 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.”

* * *

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 bit. 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 Chimú tumbago 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.

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!” Muffins 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.

* * *

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.

* * *

I still lay on the floor—somebody’s 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?

* * *