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TF (snake, inanimate)

MONDAY

Harry was whistling a jaunty tune as he turned into his street. As he approached his house, the tune faltered a little before stopping altogether.

It wasn’t that he wasn’t looking forward to seeing his wife Joan. They’d been married for 20 years and he was still in love as much as the day they’d married. They’d never had kids but that was okay. They had their hobbies.

Harry liked model trains. And Joan … well …

Joan was into transformations.

She’d met a woman who was really, really into transformation potions, and she’d caught the bug. Joan had gone from ordering transformation potions online, to becoming part of the community that made their own.

So Harry was looking forward to seeing his wife. He just didn’t know what she’d be.

Oh, of course some of the changes were very nice. The night Joan had split herself into three drifted into his mind and put a big smile on his face. Oh, the things they’d done together …

Harry put his key in the lock and pushed open the door. “Joan?” he called. “I’m home.”

“I’m in the kitchen, honey.”

Harry walked in and saw Joan behind the table.

“Hey, baby! How was your day? Mine was …” He faltered as Joan turned and moved towards him.

She wasn’t walking.

“Hi, Harry! You’ll never guess what I did today!” she grinned. “Or, what I became today!”

“You’re a snake,” Harry said flatly.

“Uh-huh,” Joan grinned. “Well, half a snake.”

Joan slithered towards her husband. From her waist up, she was her usual self, wearing a long-sleeved blouse and big heavy bangles. From the waist down, she was …

“What the heck kind of snake are you?” Harry asked.

“Boa constrictor,” Joan said with a smile. “It’s an incredible feeling! My body feels so powerful. Just using my muscles to move around is so delightful. And I can coil myself! Here, watch.”

“Okay …”

“Want to see my scales?” Joan lifted her blouse up, exposing where her snake body began to blend into her pink flesh, just below her navel.

“Beautiful. Er, don’t take this the wrong way, honey, but don’t boas … crush people?”

“Oh, Harry,” Joan said affectionately. “Don’t worry about that. I could totally crush you. But I won’t.”

“Thanks.”

“Besides, boas only do that when they’re hungry.”

“And you’re not hungry?”

“Well, I wouldn’t say that.”

Worry returned to Harry’s face.

“I was thinking we could order some pizza tonight? That wood fired pizza place that’s just opened is so good — remember, we went there with Margot and Jerry last week?”

“Oh yeah, that place is great. So, er, how long will you be part-snake?”

“Only about another half an hour. So if we order now, I’ll have legs again when the pizzas get here.”

“Fine, I’ll phone.”

“Thanks, honey. Oh, this snake potion is amazing! I’m so glad Grace sent me the recipe. Hey, did you know, if I make it a bit stronger, I can turn all of my body into a boa! Just a human head on top of my snake body!”

“Wonderful,” Harry said as he went off to call for dinner.

He idly wondered how his wife could go to the toilet as a snake.

TUESDAY

When Harry let himself into the house, all was quiet. That, he knew, meant his wife was probably an inanimate object.

“Joan?” he called. No answer. That didn’t mean she wasn’t here. For some reason, being an inanimate object made Joan sleepy, and it wasn’t unusual for her to take a nap.

He cast an eye over the living room. No, no new knickknacks or clocks there.

Into the kitchen …

Ah! Someone had had visitors. There were three mugs sitting on the table with the remains of coffee in them, and in the middle of the table, on a plate, stood a rather lovely chocolate cake.

Quite delicious looking, in fact. And well, it had been a long time since lunch. And Harry supposed Joan was upstairs taking a nap. One little piece couldn’t hurt.

Harry got a knife out of the drawer, and a little plate.

It never occurred to him that the cake was whole.

And then the cake screamed.

“Jesus!” Harry leapt a few feet backwards, the knife clattering to the floor. He peered over the top of his glasses. “Joan … is that you???”

“Sorry, honey.” The chocolate cake had grown eyes and a mouth on top of its surface. “Margot and Cheryl were over earlier for coffee, and Cheryl was telling me about her new cake recipe, and how blissful and relaxing it was to be a cake, and how easy a potion it was. So I thought I’d try it when they left, and she was right, it was really relaxing, in fact so relaxing I fell asleep. And then I woke up and saw you with a knife and, uh, I guess I panicked.”

“Oh.” Harry picked up the knife. “Well, no harm done, honey.”

There was a moment of silence before Joan said, as casually as possible, “So, you want a slice?”

Harry was horrified. “What? You mean … eat you? Baby, I couldn’t possibly …”

“Oh, Harry, I wish you would. You can’t believe how much I want you to cut me into slices and send me sliding down your throat.”

“Really?”

“Really. You know what happens when you change into something — part of you wants what the object wants.”

“Oh, right. When you were a chair you wanted to be sat on …”

“And when you’re a cake, you want to be eaten.” The cake grinned. “Besides, I’m surprisingly light and moist.”

“And it won’t hurt you?”

“Nope. When you ingest me, I’ll just turn back into me. So if you eat me, I’ll return to being human faster.”

“Well … I did only have a sandwich at lunch …”

As it turned out, Joan was right. She was surprisingly light and moist.

Harry had two slices.

WEDNESDAY

Harry hadn’t even got the key out when he saw the sign stuck under the front door’s knocker. It read simply: “IN THE GARAGE.”

Really? What was in the garage? Joan, he assumed. Still, an instruction was an instruction. So he made his way down the side of the house. The garage door was unlocked, so he went in, and …

Well.

They had only one car but space for two, and taking up the second space was a motorcycle.

No, not just a motorcycle. A Vincent Black Shadow. A Series C. In Harry’s humble opinion, the most beautiful motorcycle that had ever existed.

He walked carefully around it, admiring its engine, its wheels, its, well, everything. It was gorgeous.

He wanted to put his leg over it so, so badly.

“Well?” said a voice. Joan’s voice. “Like what you see?”

“Absolutely,” Harry said dreamily, before looking around to see where Joan was. Oh, wait, of course …

The lamp at the front of the motorcycle had two eyes and a mouth.

“How do I look?” the motorcycle said.

“You are wonderful,” Harry said admiringly, patting the lamp. “So very, very lovely.”

The motorcycle laughed. “Better be careful, Harry, I might get jealous.”

“Of course you’re beautiful in human form too, baby,” he said hastily. “But honey, I’m really impressed! How did you do this?”

“Well, I’ve been working on becoming machines for a while now,” Joan said. “And I wanted to try something quite complex, but I couldn’t think what. Then I saw that book of motorcycles of yours on your bedside table, and I thought I’d try one of those.”

“But the Black Shadow? How did you pick that?”

“Easy, it was the most-thumbed spread. When I picked up that book, it fell open naturally to that page. So, let’s ride!”

“Really? But I don’t have a helmet.”

“Oh, Harry, of course I made myself a helmet too. It’s hanging on the pillion. Plus, I’ll be a motorcycle for another six hours or so, I have a full tank of petrol, and I’m itching to hit the road. So what do you say?”

Harry laughed. “Oh Joan, I never suspected you wanted to be a biker chick.”

“The best sort of biker chick — one that’s an actual bike!”

“Please, Joan, don’t refer to a Vincent Black Shadow as ‘a bike’. It’s a motorcycle.”

“Got it.”

Joan squealed with pleasure when Harry turned her on.

Harry’s dinner was a hot dog from a roadside stand. He didn’t even get off his ride.

Roaring down the freeway at night took him right back to being a teenager. Only this wasn’t his little Ducati. This was a Vincent.

And his wife, of course.

THURSDAY

This time Harry’s whistling didn’t falter as he strode up his driveway. Yes, he hadn’t gotten much sleep last night. He’d ridden the motorcycle home at about 2am. He was sure he woke up half the neighbours but what the hell. It was worth it.

“Evening, honey!” he called cheerfully as he entered the hall.

“I’m upstairs, dear,” came Joan’s voice. “In the bedroom.”

Ohhh. Was it his imagination or did Joan have that seductive lilt in her voice?

Harry practically leapt up the stairs, entering the bedroom to find his wife in bed, smiling.

He stood at the foot of the bed with a silly grin on his face. “Well. What occasion did this call for?”

“Well, honey, I found being ridden like that last night was a real turn-on,” Joan said. “But of course I was a machine …”

Harry winced at a reference to the Black Shadow as a “machine”.

“ … So there wasn’t much I could do. But now … Oh, and plus … I did something today …”

Joan drew down the bed covers, exposing her body.

Harry blinked, hard.

Where his wife usually had two arms … now she had six.

“Very Kali,” he said.

Joan giggled. “Well, it was either this or four boobs. And as much fun as that sounds, this is probably more useful, no?”

As Harry leaned over the bed, two of Joan’s arms pulled him down for a kiss. Two of her arms began unbuttoning his shirt. Two of them were … doing something else.

“Very useful,” Harry agreed.

Dinner was scrounged up from leftovers in the fridge hours later. Joan did make sandwiches super fast with six arms, though.

FRIDAY

Harry actually fell asleep on the bus home. It turned out he’d got even less sleep on Thursday night than he did on Wednesday. Not that he was complaining, of course. But oh man, he was looking forward to bed.

He let himself in and shuffled into the hall, passing by the living room and heading for …

Wait. What was that?

He retraced his steps and went into the living room. Well, now, what was this?

In the room, set next to his usual chair, was a beautiful big leather armchair. It didn’t look new, no, that wouldn’t do at all. It was one of those leather armchairs that had been worn in, that your ass would practically melt into …

And, well, it had been a long day … a long week …

Only when Harry had dropped with a sigh of pleasure into the shiny black leather did he begin to wonder where it had come from.

Of course.

“Joan, my lovely,” Harry whispered, “this is you, right?”

A soft giggle came from behind him. “Oh, darling, you know me so well. Yes, it’s me.”

And the arms of the chair somehow enfolded him in an embrace.

I’m being cuddled by an armchair, Harry thought. An armchair that’s my wife.

It felt delightful, so warm and loving. And kind of sexy, too … Harry always did have a thing for leather …

He looked up in the mirror and saw Joan’s face somehow imposed on the head of the armchair.

“Hush, darling,” she said soothingly as one of the arms stroked his hand. “I know you must be very tired. Just rest, beautiful …”

And Harry drifted off into one of the best naps of his life.

Well, he missed dinner, but when he woke up several hours later — just in time to regretfully hoist himself out of the chair so Joan could change back — he felt so good he didn’t give a hoot.

SATURDAY

Harry grinned to himself. A lovely lie in, a little genteel weeding in the garden, an hour dozing with the new Harlan Coben in an armchair — not his wife, regretfully, but still … it was pretty much a perfect day.

“Harry, darling?”

He looked up into Joan’s smiling face. In her hands she held two little bottles full of a strange green liquid. He raised an eyebrow quizzically.

“I know my hobby can be a little weird at times, baby, and I love the way you always encourage me, even if it’s disruptive, and, well, I wanted to do something nice for you. So I made these.”

Harry started to protest that she had nothing to make up to him for, but she leaned over and put a finger on his lips before kissing him. “Come upstairs, Harry.”

“Of course, honey,” Harry smiled. “I can’t wait to see what this potion does to you.”

Joan smiled. “Us, Harry. What it does to us.”

*

Harry blew his whistle loud. His wheels spun madly as he accelerated around the train track. “Whoot-whoot!” he yelled. “Here comes the bridge! Look out below!” He laughed as the ground dropped away and he raced over the bridge, suspended high over water. Well, okay, not water, crinkly blue cellophane that he himself had pasted down when he’d built this entire layout.

“Look! I’m going through a tunnel!” Joan screamed from the other side of the track. For a second all was darkness and then she shot through the other side, laughing hysterically. She flashed past a station. Oh God, should she have stopped back there? What the hell, it was way too fun speeding around the toy train track to stop. All the passengers were painted figurines, anyway.

Something went by and she realised it was Harry, on a different track. Oh, this was so good.

She could hear him laughing and something swelled in her heart … well, whatever passed for a heart when you were a train. She loved him so. He was a great partner.

It had been an inspired idea of hers, a way to reward themselves and to combine both their hobbies into one. When she’d explained to Harry that her new potion would turn them into toy trains, his eyes had shone with pleasure.

Joan had once shrunk herself to four inches tall and ridden one of Harry’s trains and she’d thought that was pretty good. Actually being the train, though … that was remarkable.

And they had several hours before they changed back.

She was glad she’d thought to cook something ahead of time.

SUNDAY

On Sunday they rested.

Well, Harry did. While Joan didn’t do any transformations, she did think up some to try for the week ahead. Turning into a curtain, seeing how long she could trick Harry before enveloping him in her for a cuddle … now that was a good idea. Or the next time he watered the lawn, how about being the hose? Water shooting through her while Harry handled her … that sounded rather naughty.

She couldn’t wait to share the recipes with her friends.