The wild cards

During the break:

“I swear to God, Cass, I had nothing to do with this.”

“I believe you, Bob. You’re not organized enough to pull something like this off. I’m still pissed.”

“For fuck’s sake, I’m pretty sure covering the shifts is sort of irrelevant now.”

Kayla sits with one leg tucked up so that her left foot is dangling behind her right ear, clearly playing with her transformation. “C’mon boss, it could be a lot worse. I mean, you were complaining that the last vacation you got was with Ray’s parents and…” she stops, as Cassie glares daggers at her.

Through this banter Darlene has been sitting with an amused smirk on her face, clearly attempting to go with the flow while trying to hide the fact that time with Bob as she is now is something she’d very much like to explore.

Alicia also seems to be amused with the byplay, and seems content to observe her old student for now. Bob was always very intelligent, though shy until she talked him into going out for the school musical. With his vocal talent and penchant for physical comedy he ended up stealing several scenes, although it’s clear that the broken man in front of her failed to live up to his potential.

“Excuse me! Can we please address the fact that we’ve all just seen someone literally use magic?” KJ’s outburst comes on the tail of her slowly evaluating the situation. Her big eyes are narrowed to slits in some combination of rage, terror, and amazement. “We’ve been kidnapped, probably ****, **** into this charade, and now we’re very likely hallucinating.”

“Darlin’ I did a lot of LSD in the late 90’s. We haven’t been ****.” Bob interjects this with a bizarre amount of calm. “I’m pretty sure that this is a coma dream, and you’re all hallucinations. Sort of a ‘life flashing before my eyes’ situation. Occam’s Razor makes that the least hypothesis.”

“Mr. Dobbs, while I’m pleased that you took something with you from high school, isn’t that viewpoint just a little bit solipsistic?” Alicia’s interruption stops Bob in his tracks.

“It may be, Ms. McDaniel, but the alternative is ridiculous. That this is real, and there is a person or persons who have brought all of us here to feed their perversions, and for some reason have chosen me of all people to be the beneficiary of those perversions. So I’m looking at it through the lens of Pascal’s Wager.”

“Go on, Mr. Dobbs.” Alicia smiles, clearly seeing where he’s going with this. Bob is still as brilliant as he ever was.

“If this is real, then going along with it makes sense, as from what we’ve already seen, our captors have infinite power, or might as well for all that matters. After what we’ve so far witnessed there’s nothing we can do to alter the course we’ve been set on, so our best bet is to work together to make sure that no one gets hurt any more than the bare minimum.”

“And if it’s not real?”

“Then it makes the most sense to go along with it because if this is all a creation of my dying or comatose mind, then once again there’s not going to be anything to derail it.”

“You make a good argument, Bob. Wager on the side of reality because if the ‘reality’ proves to be false then we don’t really lose anything.” Alicia had already come to a similar conclusion herself, but based on the theory that she had slipped fully into dementia. “One more question, Bob.”

“Sure.”

“Did I really play that dramatic of a role in your fantasies?”

Bob’s blush is all the answer she gets as Heidi chooses that moment to materialize in a puff of snowflakes in the center of the room.”Places, darlings. The cameras roll in 3… 2… Action!”

Everyone is immediately teleported back into their seats with varying degrees of discomfort.

Heidi directs her thousand watt smile to the camera. “Welcome back dahlings! So, Bob, any ideas who our next lucky contestant is?”

Bob, having firmly established to the best of his ability that the best course of action is to play along decides to give it a go. “Hrm. Knowing the way this has been going, is it my favorite bartender?”

“No Bob, Rodney doesn’t qualify for the two points we were looking for, although we did consider him briefly. You’ve never been attracted to him.” Heidi giggles. “Oops! I wasn’t supposed to let that one slip.”

Darlene’s eyes go wide as the implication of that statement sinks home, but holds her tongue. Heidi goes on with her introduction script. “Seven years ago you started working at Highwood Senior Living as a cook and waiter. Your first day there you made friends with one of the residents when you asked what she wanted to drink for lunch and she responded with ‘whiskey press’.”

Jesus! Not a resident! Not Mattie.

“Over the intervening years you’ve grown quite close to her, and she has come to view you as one of her grandchildren. You’ve met only one member of her family, her granddaughter.”

Bob visibly sighs with relief. “You grabbed Morgan?”

Heidi grins. “You do catch on quick. Morgan, come on out!”

Morgan is stiff in her movements. Unlike the others she’s not in a dress, but a business power suit, albeit one that looks like it was stolen from the ‘80s, replete with shoulder pads and a knee length pencil skirt. Her short hair is plastered down to her head with approximately three cans of AquaNet, and she looks for all the world like she’s ready to walk into a business meeting. “What the fuck am I doing here?”

“Hrm… I think… yes.” The snow globe is once more upended. “I know it’s kind of old hat by now, dears, but I do so want an even playing field.”

As the snow clears Morgan stands altered, although the changes are far more subtle than some. Pounds have dropped away from her midsection emphasizing her breasts and ass and giving her more of an hourglass figure. Those assets lose a bit of their sag, riding higher and perkier than before. Her eyes seem bigger, but that’s due to the bags she’s been carrying under them getting unpacked. Her face smooths out as several years worth of poor nutrition disappear from her diet. She was already a very good looking woman approaching middle age but now she stands an extremely attractive 20-something.

“I hope you like it, Bob. We’re doing this all for you. Please take a seat Ms. Shultz.”

For her part, Morgan is stunned by the changes. She felt the fat melting from her body, the weight of the stress from her job and the divorce lifting from her. The only stresses in her now were her situation and her grandmother’s plight, and if the strange woman was to be believed, then the first could lead to a resolution of the second. She calmly takes her seat.

“I believe we’ve built enough tension that we can just move on to our final contestant. Bob, you barely know this person. In fact your interaction with them has been so limited that the only thing you really know is their name, occupation, and that you have a strong desire to possess their body. Our wild card choice…”

Bob’s mind whirls with possibilities; if what he’s seen so far is any indication the powers behind this could have literally plucked anyone off the street. If he’d found them attractive at any point they were clearly fair game. So who…

“Robin Mason, come on down!”

Who?

Confusion fades to recognition as the non-binary redhead walks into the room wearing an off the shoulder green knee length dress that plays well with their complexion. The overall elegant effect is offset by the green suede eighteen hole Doc Martens and fishnet stockings adorning their lower half. The wavy red hair that initially caught Bob’s attention is styled so that the shaved right hand side is clearly visible. Full lips curl into a curious smile as they make their way to the last remaining seat before the fire.

Heidi waves her hand one more time, producing only a small shower of snowflakes. “And since Mx. Mason is our wild card, I’m not telling you what I did to them. But I will let the audience in on it.”

A subtitle pops up on the screen:

Robin has been gifted/cursed with powerful pheromones that will cause **** arousal in anyone exposed to them. The aroused state will not necessarily be directed toward Robin. Prolonged exposure will result in unstoppable lust. Robin is not themself affected by these secretions. Should Robin become aware of the exact nature of this transformation, they will be able to stop the pheromone production for limited amounts of time with an effort of will.

“Now we have everyone here, there’s one last transformation to perform.”

The confusion in the room could be cut with a knife. “Heidi, I thought you said that was all the contestants.”

“Yes, Dahling, it is. It’s your turn.”