Warning: Not Like You To Say Sorry

Lilly refused to let go of Zen’s ankle.

Skirts flapped as they flew in the midst of a cool dry whirlwind. Bursts of green, red, blue, and purple light like an aurora flooded through the darkness. Lilly reached up toward a different light. A glimpse of their school library shelves teased. Then the hole between worlds closed as if being zipped shut.

Eyes opened all around them. Large brown eyes with red pupils formed the walls as they fell. Lilly climbed over Zen to embrace her.

A forceful wind lifted their bodies. Lilly’s glasses flew off her face. Everything became blurry.

They closed their eyes as they clung to each other. The wind at Zen’s back raised them both.

Then Lilly felt something grab her along the waist. She clutched Zen. Fingers broke from shoulders and then slid over the sleeve of Zen’s blouse.

“Don’t let go!” Zen cried.

An eye with a bright red pupil shifted back and forth under big fleshy purple lids. Oily black lashes curled when it finally blinked. Large purple hands with clawed nails flew from long loop arms. The girls were grabbed, then pried apart.

“Noooo!” Lilly screamed as she watched a tearful Zen pulled away from her into a kaleidoscope of colors.

A harsh wave of wind shot upward, then another pushed her down. Lilly landed flat on her back. A soft neon yellow bean bag caught her fall. She heard Zen cry, which meant she hadn’t landed too far. She sat up as her aching head throbbed. Her left eye felt swollen. It wouldn’t open. Yet her remaining eye saw keenly.

That wasn’t right. She was nearly blind without glasses! As she pulled her head back, she noticed a golden glow against her palm. The glow came from her defective eye! What was happening here?

Lilly jumped up and surveyed the landscape. The floor was a patchwork of firm carpet that undulated into hilly terrain. Nearby were high shelves stocked with colorful patchwork books.

Sitting atop the nearest shelf was the imp, much bigger than before, nearly twice her size. It kicked its legs. The shelf was high and there was nothing nearby to throw at it.

Lilly waved a clenched fist at it, “Hey! What are you and what is this place? Where’s Zen?”

It pointed a scrapy claw against a name tag, “Me! I’m Grabby. You can call me boss. This is transition space. It’s a space between my world and yours. It’s very convenient because I can suppress all that excess mana you humans come with. I can make you into something useful. More valuable. More saleable! In fact, you don’t need to worry about your friend. Because you’re already becoming a vacuum cleaner!”

The imp circled its hand and pointed at her, “And no going home. I’ve cultivated this space so that what happens here is irreversible!”

Lilly felt an energy strike her chest. It grew warm, then cold. She clutched her shirt. An outward pressure heralded something firm, smooth, oval, growing from the center of her sternum. Her index finger pulled her bow apart. Then she tugged her shirt open until she saw the shining ruby imbedded there.

“What’s happening to me!”

The imp danced atop the shelf while rubbing its palms together, “Fear not. Fear not! It’ll be over soon. Your curse will be my boon. Ha ha ha ha ha! You humans are always a laugh riot. I truly love this part. I do. I do!”

Lilly narrowed her remaining eye as she looked up at the creature. A burst of mana made her straight black hair float as if she dove underwater. Strands of hair broke from scalp. They floated around her body. The hairs became various strange shapes before they sucked into the gem on her chest. Lilly took a step forward.

The hills shook.

“Where’s Zen!”

The eyelid of the imp broke into a sweat, “Ahhhhhh! What’s with you!? You should be crying or begging or running you dumb human!”

The imp swung a hand. Even though it was far away, Lilly felt a slap across the mouth. Her lips sealed. Then she didn’t have lips, or teeth, or a tongue. Her fingers pushed against her cheeks as she breathed through flared nostrils.

“Anymore questions!? Ahahahahahaha!”

The eyeball creature fell atop the shelf in hysterics.

She didn’t have time to deal with it. Zen was nearby. They had to escape this place together and get back home. She ran to where she heard Zen fall. But her right arm felt heavy. It hung down at her side. It turned red. It withered as her fingers flattened and stretched. The skin felt like a silk band as it compressed. It was silk! Her right arm was a thick red silk band extending from her shoulder!

The oval gem on her chest beat. Lilly felt her blood pump. Her heart? But it felt like electricity. Static electricity sparked over the patchwork carpet as Lilly skidded next to Zen. She reached.

Zen grabbed her left hand, which was still human. But she recoiled on seeing Lilly’s face. She fell back against the huge orange bean cushion she’d landed on, “Lilly, oh my god! Your face! Your glasses are gone. What’s happening to you! You have a moon for an eye! Where is your mouth!?”

Lilly pointed at Zen’s feet.

Zen looked down to see that her loafers slipped off and her socks burst. Thick white coils spread from the hem of Zen’s dress in place of her legs. They spread outward. The uniform dress strained as they wriggled underneath it. Zen pushed down at her skirt. She managed to stand and slap at the garment to keep the absorbent coils in line.

“What’s happening to us! Lilly, I’m scared! We need to get out of here!”

Lilly nodded.

“I can feel them. It’s awful. But I can move. Your arm is gone! It’s that eye! It’s doing something to us. Maybe if we find a way out, we’ll change back.”

Lilly offered her remaining hand.

Zen accepted, “Let’s go!”

Zen was now flat chested and looking rectangular. She’d always had the better curves. That’s when Lilly realized that her waist now stretched in line with her chest and hips. Her body felt janky, clumsy, and rectangular. Her uniform stretched tightly over squared shoulders. She struggled to keep walking. Her legs felt like blocks of paper; with every step they shortened.

The rows upon rows of books stretched endlessly as the giant eye watched from the ceiling. Lilly craned her slender neck to look up.

Zen looked too, “How do we get out of this place? I feel like a bug in a cage.”

Lilly shook her head. Her hair continued to diminish, ever shorter as it broke into pieces that formed strange shapes. The runes, words, and pictographs floated around her body. The red gem on her chest pulled them in.

Zen tried to stretch her arms to shake her fist at the staring eye, but her fingers cracked and splintered. Her skin hardened. It discolored to a wooden grain. The uniform hung off her shoulders as her frame stretched like taffy. She struggled to control her new form. Strands of mop fabric twirled around each other as Zen reformed a substitute for legs under her skirt.

“Lilly, I think it’s over for us. I hope our true selves still exist in the real world. I hope we’re making up. I don’t want to die. But I don’t want to die with you angry at me. I’m sorry, okay?”

Lilly tried to look back to comfort Zen, but her body wobbled around so slowly. The silk strand on her right side raised to stroke Zen’s thinning shoulder.

The eyeball in the sky vanished. The imp appeared in front of them. He towered over the shelves. They barely reached his knees.

“Oh, you two are rather small, but no worries, you’ll grow to proper size once exposed to the proper mana gravity!”

Zen wobbled toward the big imp, “I know Judo! I won’t let you hurt Lilly! Change us back!”

“Feisty humans! I love it. That means a high mana threshold! Good stuff. You’ll both fetch a premium for sure! I’m sure every tile floor you touch will become crystal clean! It’ll be ages before you break!”

He picked up Zen by her head. Hair rubbed off the creaky wooden surface of what used to be scalp. Gentle wisps of soft brown hair rained like fallen leaves. The imp pinched Zen’s bald head with one hand. His other hand wrapped where her hips used to be. He pulled.

Shoulders popped and the body rounded into a wooden pole. Zen’s uniform fell to the ground. The skirt landed first, followed by the blouse, and then a lacy white bra.

Lilly backed up. What was left of her trembled. All that remained of Zen was a mop. A long featureless wooden handle led to a knot of clean white fabric. Long flowing strands of thick mop string formed the bottom end of the tool.

Zen was dead. There was no way she survived that. Lilly finished her slow waddling turn and hobbled clumsily on stubby paper block legs.

The imp’s eyelid curled upward as he twirled the little mop, “Oh, what’s this. You’re looking rather square under those clothes. Are you becoming a book? Unprecedented! Lucky! Oh my, I wonder what stories you’ll tell! Hopefully you’ll be a do it yourself book with handy household tips and cleaning instructions.”

Lilly moved, not fast, but as fast as she could. Running proved a bit of a stretch. She did stretch too. Her sides extended as she continued to flatten. The oval gem that used to be her heart pulsed. It pushed outside the fabric of her cover.

The imp strolled behind her. He whistled as he watched the change completing itself.

Lilly huffed through her nostrils until they closed. She tripped. She flailed. Suffocation! But no, she wasn’t even breathing, there were no lungs. Her body felt bulky. It felt filled from top to bottom. It felt like she’d become a turtle in an increasingly heavy shell. She desperately clawed at the carpet with her remaining hand.

Her left fingers melded together. The nails turned bright white. They grew like a hoof to surround shimmering oaken flesh. The arm narrowed into a wooden pole before it fell off and rolled against a shelf.

Chin pushed into the carpet as she struggled to force her cover forward. Her slender neck extended with shriveling muscles that bulged in effort. A nearly featureless paper face pounded its chin against the carpet. Flecks of abraded paper broke away as she forced her binding to drag over the carpet.

Finally, she could fight no more. The moon of her left eye glowed in protests. The bald paper head sucked within the pages of the book. A golden glowing crescent moon appeared on the front cover. It glowed against the carpet. The spine bulged with a pocket for a wand.

The imp laughed as it picked up the tiny wand, “Ahahahahaha! You’re absolutely hilarious! I love it!” he eyed the wand carefully, “Wait a minute? A spell book! Gah! No way! I’ll be executed if anyone finds out! That’s way more than I bargained for. But I can’t take you back. And if I leave you here, you’ll absorb way too much mana! Fidglesticks! What am I going to do? GaaaAAAH! I guess no one has to find out if I lock you away tight. At least I got a useful mop.”

The imp checked to make sure their forms had finished coalescing. His claw sliced a hole in the fabric of dimensions. On the other side, rows of books lined neatly on high wooden shelves.

Grabby made sure to zip the opening shut behind him after jumping inside.