Stranger Danger

A soft chime rang out in Jake’s room as he stepped out of the shower; a pleasant little jingle that he briefly mistook for a harpist on the beach. Only belatedly did he realize that the sound was coming from the little control panel by the elevator door, and that it was some kind of doorbell.

He approached it and pressed the receiver button.

“Hello, love,” Leah’s voice called through the speaker. “Care to send the lift for me?”

“Sure,” He agreed, pressing the button to allow it.

When the door opened, he’d expected to find Leah as he’d always seen her before; immaculately dressed and made up, balanced on high heels and looking every bit a TV star on a million dollar contract. But when Leah stepped out, she did so barefoot, in a loose fitting t-shirt and a dark pair of yoga pants that conformed to her ass. Her face lacked any concessions to makeup and she kept her hair tied back in a ponytail.

“What?” She asked as she saw the look on his face. “You think you’re the only one who wants to be comfortable?”

“I guess that makes sense,” He finally managed, “I just…aren’t we being filmed right now or whatever?”

“I don’t really give a damn if we are,” She said, placing the pizza on one of the coffee tables dotted throughout the room “All the hens have been seen off, and I want a bloody break.”

Jake watched as she did this, and even more as she proceeded to unpack a plastic bag that included beer and a handful of snacks.

“This is nice but…it seems a little excessive if they’re only going to be gone for four hours,” Jake said.

Leah shrugged.

“If they aren’t causing trouble, I don’t plan to rush them,” She said, popping open a beer.

She sat Indian style on his sofa. She really was stunning, he realized; perhaps even more so in this approachable, down to earth way she presented herself now. He took a slice of pizza and sat beside her.

“Holy shit,” He mused, “It’s so warm still. How’d you do it?”

Leah giggled.

“We plucked you out of your world, warped you into all manner of things and your breaking point is that we can keep the pizza hot?”

Jake shrugged.

“Fair point. It’s really good, though. Thank you.”

She waved a dismissive hand, then turned on the TV.

“So how does this work?” He asked. “Each channel is assigned to one of the ladies?”

“Not exactly,” She said as an ad for laundry detergent marched across the screen. “We’re rerunning footage of the show so far, until one of the girls is near their intended target. Once she’s fixated on something, we cut to her. If there’s more than one, we switch channels.”

“I…guess that makes sense. Seems like it’ll get pretty crowded.”

“Not as much as you think,” Leah said. “Four hours is a lot of time for everyone to spread out.”

The ads ended, and the show resumed. A bunch of women Jake recognized were playing a drinking game around the cheesy tiki bar by the central pool of the hotel.

“Am I watching what they all did last night?” He asked.

Leah nodded.

“Ryan started it.”

“He would. The game was sort of his invention.”

He watched Ryan lead the proceedings. Yes, he could see his best friend in the curvy blonde bombshell. It was in the way she carried herself. Her verbal cadence. Ryan really was speaking with a beautiful woman’s mouth. Very strange…

He was about to comment on this when Hannah dropped her question about intimate female relations. He shut his mouth, then, and reflected that maybe this made for pretty compelling television after all.

“Woah. Farra? Really?” He said when she took a pass on answering.

Lindsey snorted.

“That woman’s lived a fully bloody life,” Leah said. “Really, I’m surprised that you’re surprised.”

Jake was, though not half as much as when Emily was called out.

“Really? She’s never told me anything about that.”

“Uh oh,” Leah lilted, “Trouble in paradise?”

He gave her an irritated glance, and continued watching…only for the screen to cut away to his ex. She was sitting in some sort of park he only vaguely recognized, perched on the lip of a fountain with a cup of coffee in one hand, the other in her purse.

“Where is she?” He asked.

“Our logs indicate that she went to Balboa Park in San Diego,” Leah said. “I couldn’t even begin to tell you why. I did a little background research on her and nothing indicated that she’d ever been there.”

“The two of us went there a long time ago on vacation,” He said.

He leaned in closer to the screen.

“I wonder what she’s doing there now…”

*****

Hannah sipped her coffee, her hand curled round the little pistol in her purse as she tried to steady her breathing. She was anxious, conflicted, and very, very turned on.

She didn’t know anyone in San Diego; hadn’t even been there since the two days she and Jake had spent there on their first, magical vacation they’d spent their first real, lucrative adult paychecks on. That was precisely why she’d picked it. After giving a great deal of thought to who she could bring herself to transform, the only answer she could reasonably come up with was a bunch of strangers.

Intellectually, she knew that wasn’t really any better. The collection of trinket salesmen, food stand cooks, tourists and locals she watched milling about the park weren’t people any less than anyone she knew. She was sure they all had lives and loved ones who would be impacted by the changes she was about to unleash. She knew all that…but she also knew she didn’t have to confront it, either. She could fire her shots, ignore the consequences, and leave before she had to seriously look any of it square in the face.

Or at least she’d told herself the previous night when she’d formulated this plan. Sitting here now, staring out at her would be victims, she was beginning to have her doubts. For that matter, what would even happen if she did pull the trigger? A bright laser beam? Some sort of flash? Would it even be possible to do this inconspicuously?

One thing at a time, Han she reminded herself. First, she needed to figure out who her targets were even going to be.

Luckily, it didn’t take long for an option to present itself. An attractive dark haired woman walking her dog had moved to a nearby set of bushes. She wore a pair of yoga pants that outlined her shapely ass and legs, along with a tight fitting top with a low neckline. The dog hunched and did its business. When it was finished, the woman gave the dog’s leash a yank and began to lead it away.

Well… Hannah thought, Let’s at least start out on a karmic note.

Hannah shifted toward the stranger, turning her back on most of the park. She drew her purse in close, ensuring that, if she drew the gun, she could do it against her body where nobody behind her could see.

“You gonna clean that up?” Hannah asked the woman, motioning to the mess she’d left on the ground.

It seemed to take the woman a second to realize the comment was directed at her. When she did, she scowled.

“If you care so much, why don’t you get it?” She said, “Otherwise, mind your own business.”

Hannah smiled sweetly.

“I was hoping you’d say something like that.”

She slipped the gun from her purse and leaned back slightly, holding it against her stomach. The woman froze for a second, a look of terror crossing her face as she apparently thought a real gun was being drawn on her. She seemed to relax as she saw it for the toy laser pistol it appeared to be.

Oh, honey…if only you were getting off that easy.

As the gun settled on her, some knowledge of the woman instantly dawned in Hannah’s mind. She was Alanna O'Connor, a nail tech. She apparently did this sort of thing a lot, and Hannah got the sense from targeting her that she was both rude and self centered.

Perfect.

What happened next was one of the strangest sensations of Hannah’s life. The world around her seemed to slow to a crawl. In the meantime, an image of the woman formed in her mind as easily moldable clay that Hannah could shape into anything she desired. She had a godlike level of control over this image. She could transform her mind, her body, her history and even her very existence itself, all with a simple thought or a little push of will.

She decided to focus on the first of these, and designed a simple curse for the errant dog walker. From now on, every time she left her dog’s shit on the ground, she’d become a little more doglike herself. It would start with small traits like wearing collars, or shaking her ass when she was happy. But it would escalate the more and more she did it. Eventually she’d come to see her boyfriend as an owner, start going about on all fours, forgoing clothes and barking.

Hannah wasn’t a complete monster, though. Each stage in her progression could be undone by cleaning up after her dog the next time. If she actually learned some respect for the world around her (or at least managed to put two and two together), she might be able to avoid any lasting changes entirely. Hannah also made sure that the increased oddness of her behavior would be recognized as completely normal and excused, with her eventually being seen and treated more as the dog she’d increasingly come to emulate.

Finally, Hannah made sure that once the gun was fired, Alanna’s memory of their confrontation and seeing the pistol would be erased. She’d be left to figure out the cause and mystery of her increasingly strange and uncontrollable behavior herself.

“What the fuck is your…” She began to say, but stopped when Hannah pulled the trigger.

Time resumed its normal pace as she fired. There was a soft pink flash, and a soft pink beam came racing out of the gun so fast it was almost impossible to track. It struck Alanna on her bare midriff, cutting her off mid sentence. Her eyes went distant for a moment, before refocusing, giving Hannah just enough time to stow the gun.

When Alanna came to, her posture shifted. She looked stiff and uncomfortable. That same control Hannah had been given over the stranger confirmed her changes to her. She was aroused now; powerfully, and perpetually, and there was nothing she could do about it. She was in heat, and would remain that way until she either figured out what had caused her sudden predicament, or until she got herself knocked up.

“What are you staring at?” Alanna sneered.

“Nothing,” Hannah said, taking a sip of her coffee.

“Weirdo,” She spat, walking off with her dog into a life that either could become radically altered, or merely inconvenienced by intermittent but easily corrected bad behavior.

In truth, Hannah wasn’t much less turned on than the woman she’d just transformed. For the sake of her conscience, she was glad she gave Alanna away to reverse what was happening to her; though she supposed there would eventually come an event horizon in which her own changes became too radical to turn back from. But a deeper, darker part of her reveled in the idea of the pretty brunette being led around the park on a leash, naked and admired as the pretty pet she’d been reduced to. She was ashamed by the extent to which that thought excited her, and even more by how much she wished she could see it.

“It won’t come to that,” She said, before realizing she’d spoken aloud.

She breathed and shifted, straightening her skirt. She’d used up one shot. She had two others. She knew she should probably quit with the damage she’d already done. But weren’t they being judged on the totality of what they did with the guns rather than any one, individual change. Wouldn’t taking only one shot be forfeiting an advantage? Or was that just an excuse?

Her head reeled with conflicting desires and feelings. She needed some air.

Luckily, she was in a good place to get it. The park was beautiful, and huge. The day was lovely. Maybe she’d just take a walk. After all, what was the rush?

*****

“Jesus,” Jake whispered as he watched the spectacle unfold.

Though all the action had taken place without words, Jake understood her intention and the transformation she’d made as though he were reading Hannah’s intention through the television. He didn’t understand exactly how this worked, but the change she’d made to the dog walker had come through loud and clear.

“Good for her,” Leah said admiringly, before taking a bite of pizza and adding, mouth now half full “I hate those kinds of people.”

“I mean, so do I, but that’s still pretty fucked up,” Jake said.

He knew at least part of his ex’s motivation was to please the audience. But he wondered how much her own transformation had influenced it as well.

“I didn’t think she’d have it in her. That…I dunno, meanness, I guess,” He said.

It was disconcerting, but confusingly, arousing as well. He shifted uncomfortably.

“This show will surprise you,” Leah said, taking a sip out of a beer bottle. “I wasn’t expecting your little mouse of a sister in our top finishers, but she’s sitting pretty at number three in our popularity rankings all the same.”

Jake blinked in surprise.

“Megan? Really?” She asked. “I mean, I guess she’s pretty attractive now but…she’s Megan.”

Leah shrugged.

“She’s adorable. Kinda hard not to root for her a little,” She said. “Besides, that shy personality with that knockout body? What a combo.”

Then, as if the very thought had summoned her, Megan appeared on their television screen. She was walking through a public park, nervously looking around at the stares she thought she was drawing. Jake didn’t think she was actually drawing that many; she didn’t have the confidence the actually sell her new body yet. But he saw, watching her now, the full potential of just how beautiful she could be in her new state.

He leaned in, watching closely. Unconsciously, his knee began to bounce in a slow, nervous rhythm.

“Are you worried for her?” Leah asked gently.

Jake nodded.

“She’s my sister. She means a lot to me.”

Leah sat straighter, placing a hand on his back.

“She’ll be fine, love. Give her some credit.”

Jake relaxed a bit, but kept a laser focus on the screen, hoping Leah was right.