“Here,” Miss Chiff said, drawing a large coin the size of an old silver dollar out of Gary’s ear, “we’ll flip for it.”

Miss Chiff Cleans Up After Herself

by Trismegistus Shandy

This story uses, with Morpheus' kind permission, his characters Miss Chiff and Pip. Thanks to Morpheus and epain for commenting on the first draft.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

“It really is you,” Jennifer said. “How... how did this happen?” She gestured at Gary’s unrecognizable body, sitting across from her in her small apartment’s living room. He’d just spent fifteen minutes reeling off shared memories of their time together, things only he and she would know about, and seemed finally to have convinced her.

“Like I started to say,” he said, trying to pitch his voice low and not succeeding, “I was walking in the park this morning, and I saw this glittery thing lying under some bushes. I figured it was a foil wrapper or an aluminum can or something, I’d pick it up and toss it in the next trash can. But it was this... thing.” He pointed to the shiny metal object lying on the coffee table. There were four knobs on its front, each labeled with an unfamiliar symbol. “And as soon as I picked it up, I started to change, until I was like this. Well... not exactly like this, but female. My breasts were bigger at first, and my hair was longer. I tried turning the knobs on it to see if I could get it to change me back, and... well, they change me in various ways but I seem to always stay female.”

“What all have you tried?”

“Well, this knob changes my breasts,” he said, twisting one knob back and forth and making his breasts grow and shrink. He twisted it all the way counterclockwise and became completely flat-chested. “This one adjusts the hips,” twirling the next knob counterclockwise until he looked almost like a boy. “And the next one changes the length of my hair... But I can’t figure out what the last one does, if anything. No obvious change. And none of them do anything to this,” pointing at his crotch.

“We’ve got to do something,” she said. “The wedding’s only a week away!”

Elsewhere, on what seemed to be a mountaintop surrounded by clouds that obscured the lower slopes of the mountain and whatever lay below, what seemed to be a fourteen-year-old girl lay with her head resting against her folded hands.

“I’m bored,” she said. “Pip, entertain me.”

A four-inch-tall woman in black leather with multiple piercings buzzed her dragonfly wings, lifted off, and hovered in front of the girl’s face. Then she flipped her off.

“That doesn’t count as entertainment,” the girl said. “You do it all the time. It gets old. Hmm, maybe if you had little tentacles on your hands instead of fingers, you could make some really creative gestures...”

“No need for that,” Pip said hastily, and backed away. “Why don’t you play another game with some mortals?”

“I need to think of a new game,” the girl said. “Help me come up with something I haven’t already done before.”

“Let’s see. What about if you play a completely deterministic game? Like chess or Go?”

“That would go against my nature,” the girl said, shooting her an annoyed glare. “Try again.”

“Well... you could play another game with a mortal you’ve already played with. You never do that.”

“Oh, that might be fun. Any other suggestions?”

“And... you never change people back after they’ve gotten themselves transformed in one of your games.”

“But that would take all the fun out of it!”

“But you could give them a chance to change back, and watch them get their hopes up. And they’d have a chance — maybe just a slight chance — of winning their old form back; that would make it more interesting for you.”

“I like the way you think. I might knock thirty seconds off your term of indenture for that!”

Pip sighed. Another million good ideas like that...

“All right, let’s check on the people who picked up those ‘alien artifacts’ I scattered around that park yesterday morning. Hmm...”

She sat up and conjured a window hovering in the air; it showed a small boy in the back seat of a social worker’s car, trying desperately to explain that he was really a forty-six-year-old man and that he’d turned into a little boy when he picked up a weird purple cylinder in the park.

“Nah,” the girl said. “Maybe later, but let’s let him stew a while. Who else...?” The window quickly cycled through several men, women and children, and even a squirrel, until it showed two women sitting on a sofa, several inches apart, carefully not touching.

“Aha! That one. Come on, Pip, let’s go.”

The girl stepped through the window, Pip flew after her, and the window vanished. So did the mountaintop, the clouds, and the whole nonce dimension.

“It’s just not going to work,” Gary said, tears in his eyes. “I... I’m not attracted to you like this.”

“And I’ve always been straight too,” Jennifer said. “But come on, if that thing can change you, it can change you back. We’ve just got to figure out how.” She had carefully avoided touching it — she was afraid it might transform her in some way, too.

“I wouldn’t bother,” said a cheery voice. They both turned their heads to look, and saw a girl about fourteen years old standing on the other side of the living room.

“How’d you get in here?” Jennifer asked, jumping up. “The door’s locked...”

“Your fiancé just got turned into a woman, and you’re surprised at someone getting past a locked door?” the girl asked with a raised eyebrow.

“Point,” Jennifer said. “You seem to know something about this thing,” gesturing to the device on the table. “What gives?”

“The device is unimportant,” the girl said, picking it up and fiddling with the knobs for a moment before tossing it over her shoulder. Gary let out an “eep!” as he felt his breasts and hips going back to more typically feminine proportions. His hair was still short, though.

“My name is Chiff,” the girl continued. “You may call me Miss Chiff. My associate here is called Pip, short for —”

“What my boss is trying to say,” a small high-pitched voice interrupted, “is that we’re here to play a game.”

Gary and Jennifer suddenly noticed a tiny woman with green hair and dragonfly wings perched on the table near where the device had been sitting.

“Pip is correct, if a little rude,” Miss Chiff went on, glaring at her ‘associate’. “Do you want to change back to your old self?” she asked Gary.

“Yes! Do you know how I can...?”

“And you,” she said to Jennifer, “are you willing to risk something to help him change back?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Here,” Miss Chiff said, drawing a large coin the size of an old silver dollar out of Gary’s ear, “we’ll flip for it. Heads, I change you back.” The heads side of the coin showed the face of a surprised-looking Gary, his old masculine self. She turned the coin over, showing a long forked tail emerging from above a bare bright-red butt. “Tails, I change Jennifer here into a straight guy. Feet,” (she turned the coin over to reveal a pair of bare, hairy feet with stink lines) “I make you both lesbians. Snowballs,” (the coin turned again, showing a pyramid of snowballs, and a little boy throwing one) “I turn you both into hermaphrodites. Penguins —”

“Wait, wait,” Jennifer said. “How many sides does that coin have?”

“Ninety-seven,” Miss Chiff said promptly. “All of them make sure you’ll be together, though. Or can be together if you want to be.”

“Let’s hear about all the sides and what they do,” Gary said. “And — who are you, and how are you going to change us? How did that machine change me? And —”

“I already told you who I am,” Miss Chiff said. “Anyway...” She rattled off the remaining ninety-two sides of the coin, turning it over in her hand so radidly that they could barely register the images. “Is that clear enough?”

“I... um... maybe,” Gary said. “Most of those sound... well, not ideal, but better than this.”

“Are you sure about this?” Jennifer said. “Some of those sound pretty weird. Even creepy.”

“But even in the worst case we’d be together,” Gary said. “Being like this... I still love you but I can’t stand the idea of kissing you, much less having sex. I want to risk it, if you’re willing.”

“All right, let’s do it.”

Miss Chiff handed the coin to Gary, who tossed it in the air. As it rose, it seemed to simultaneously slow down and speed up; its parabolic rise and fall was so slow that Gary had time to reconsider his decision a dozen times, but its spin was so fast it seemed like a blurry silver sphere. Finally, after watching it drift slowly down from the apex of its arc, Miss Chiff put out a hand in its path and it suddenly plopped the rest of the way onto her palm. She slapped the other hand over it.

“Ready to see?” she asked.

“Go ahead,” said Gary.

She lifted her hand and said: “Oh, spoons! I love this one.”

Gary woke up sitting slumped sideways on the sofa. He realized he was alone — Jennifer wasn’t next to him. He felt different, too, but only slightly; he thought his breasts were maybe half a cup size smaller, and his hair was shoulder-length. Miss Chiff was still standing where she’d been.

“Hey! Where did Jennifer go?”

“She’s with you,” Miss Chiff said. “Come, take a look at yourselves.”

“Yourselves...?” He got up, followed her into the bathroom, and looked in the full-length mirror.

“I look just like Jennifer... I’m in her body now? Where did mine go? Where’s she now?”

“I crammed both of you into that body,” Miss Chiff said. “You both passed out from the shock, but you woke up first. Here, let me wake her up for you.” She beeped Gary’s nose, and suddenly he heard a voice in his head:

Hmm? How’d I get in here? Then he lost control of his body, and felt it turn to face Miss Chiff and say: “Where’s Gary? What did you do to him?”

I’m right here! he said, and her body turned and looked around. In your head! he added, just as Miss Chiff said: “He’s sharing that body with you. Makes things easier, you know, not having to make up another identity for him. Anyway, I’ll leave you two to get reacquainted and figure out how to share it. Either of you can grab control from the other at any time, but I expect you’ll be too polite to do that, won’t you?” She winked, and put out her hand palm-upright; Pip alighted on it, and they vanished.

So... how do we want to do this? Gary asked.

“I don’t know,” Jennifer said. “Maybe we’ll take alternate days? At least once you learn to do my job. Until then, maybe I’ll take days and you can take nights? Here, try taking control again, and I’ll let you know when I want to drive.”

Gary pushed slightly and felt his arms move. “Okay, I’ve got the helm. I’m hungry, what about you?”

Me too. I think we feel all the same things.

Gary nodded. “Makes sense. Okay, let’s see what we’ve got to eat.” He walked into the kitchen.

Miss Chiff sat in a lounge chair on a beach that hadn’t existed a few minutes before and would cease to exist when she no longer needed it. She watched the other players of that morning’s game in the park through a space-window, while Pip hovered at her elbow.

“So... boss? What did the other knob on that machine you gave him do?”

“Hmm? Oh, that one,” Miss Chiff said with a giggle. “Well, if they’d figured that one out, they wouldn’t have needed my help. The other knob changed his sexual orientation. He didn’t notice because he was alone when he experimented with it, and he left it turned all the way to the right — purely straight — when he brought it over to Jennifer’s apartment.”

“So he could have made himself attracted to Jennifer if he’d known, or experimented more? Great. What about her?”

“She’d just have to use it herself, and twiddle with the orientation knob. Then she’d have been attracted to Gary. Of course, they’d have to have figured it out before the device stopped working.”

Pip shook her head. “You’re a real piece of work, you know, boss?”

“Ooh, this one looks like fun,” the boss said, jumping up and through the window. Pip flew after her and the island vanished.

Four of my novels and one short fiction collection are available from Smashwords in ePub format and from Amazon in Kindle format. Smashwords pays its authors better than Amazon.