This story uses the Spells Are Us concept as part of it.
Marianne

Part 1

It was my day off work and I was just drifting around in town, ending up in the big shopping mall for a wander around and a bite to eat. This was a usual occupation for me as I hardly ever had something meaningful to do. I work Tuesday to Saturday and get Sunday and Monday off.

As I did a bit of window shopping, I thought about my life so far, a life I had to live but not the one I would have liked to live. I had the body of a rugby player with, down deep, the mindset of a fashion model.

From looking at the shop windows I could tell you what the latest trends were and what they may be in a few months. I could co-ordinate colours and imagine the right make-up that goes with them. It was all in my mind as I had realised, a long time ago, that I would never pass as anything but a travesty in a frock.

My parents had been in a playful mood when they named me. I am William Wordsworth Williams and had to suffer being called Dot at school after www dot. I had not done well enough to go to university but had been very good at the subjects I did pass, mainly English and Art.

I did, however, have the physique to be taken on in a warehouse, moving electrical goods around. Most of it was done with a forklift but there were times that a bit of brute strength was needed and, for that, I was the go-to guy.

I was coming out of the mall toilets when I noticed a store I had never seen before. It was called S.R.U. and the window display showed some beautifully colourful long dresses that were very attractive. I just had to go and have a closer look.

While I was trying to work out the material, an old guy came to the door and said “They are made of Mythral and are very nice to wear.”

I laughed and said that I could never know that feeling and he then told me to come into the shop as he had something I needed. I went in behind him and took in the craziness of the place. It was almost impossible to categorise the products on display.

He went to the counter and picked up an item that looked like a very small discus, about 50mm across.

“This” he said “is a wish disc. If nothing else it lets you believe that your wish may come true but that is not guaranteed. The only time it does work unerringly is if you wish for something and someone else, nearby, is wishing for the exact opposite. I’m sure that you’ll enjoy trying to make it work for you.”

He put it in my hand and told me that I should rub the top of it while I thought of my wish. I asked how much it would cost me and he told me it was four pounds sixty, which, oddly, was exactly what was in my pocket in small change.

He took my money, “When it does work, it’s the only wish it will grant. If you don’t like your wish it will be too late to change it, your future begins from that point. Go forth and enjoy.”

I left his shop and carried on my wandering, stopping at dress shops, rubbing the disc and wishing that I was able to wear their display items. Of course it never changed anything and I really didn’t expect it to.

It did, however, make me feel better, somehow. I ended up at the food court and bought a hamburger, fries and a large milk shake. As I was eating I saw a couple of girls stop at a nearby table. One was a real babe and the other wasn’t.

They looked like sisters but were total opposites. One was well dressed and properly made-up and was strikingly beautiful. She was, in my mind the ideal woman that I wanted to be. If I could get a photo of her I would have it framed and put on my dresser to pray to before I went to sleep.

The other, while possibly being pretty underneath, was in dirty jeans and tee-shirt, with a pair of what used to be called ‘bovver boots’. She had more piercings than I had ever seen before; at least ten in each ear, one in her nose, a stud over one eye – and that’s only the ones I could see. Her lack of self-esteem must be almost too much to bear.

As an avid watcher of people, especially women, I could tell that the good looking one was in charge for some reason. She took out her phone and held it to a bracelet on the others’ wrist, tapping a couple of keys and then getting up and going to one of the food outlets.

I nibbled at my hamburger and watched as the ‘metal girl’ looked around her, scowling. I put my hand in my pocket and could feel the disc was vibrating to the touch.

The girl saw me and her scowl lessened, she had a very nice smile, only spoilt by the stud in her tongue. She looked totally flat-chested in comparison to her companion.

I rubbed the disc and the thought of a wish came into my head.

I whispered, “I wish I was a woman,” and a feeling of vertigo overcame me. I closed my eyes and waited for it to go away. When I opened them again I was looking at myself, a few tables away, and saw a big grin on my face.

I got up and came over to me, taking the disc out of my pocket and putting it on the table.

The guy that used to be me growled, “Thank you for that, you've brought my wish to life. Keep this, maybe hang it around your neck to remind you of what a good-looking dude you used to be. See you around, Sammy.”

I, that is, he, walked off jauntily while looking at his reflection in the shop windows.

I sat there in shock, not able to believe what had happened. The old guy had said that someone needed to be wishing the opposite and, as I thought a bit more, my previous life as Sammy made me realise that she, that is, me, must have wished she was a man at exactly the right time.

I was not in the body I wanted to be and then realised that, although I had changed bodies, I had taken my old personality with me. This meant that the girl who had been Sammy now had my body and my memories but her old personality.

I thought a bit more and remembered the stuff hidden away in Sammy’s room and knew, without having to wonder about it, that this will be what William will be going for, now that he doesn’t have the constraints of this tracking bracelet.

Losing the drugs, or even the gun, would not worry me but there was the money I had been saving for my breast removal. That thought stopped me in my tracks and I had a bit of a feel around my chest and discovered that there were actual breasts there but held tightly by an elastic bandage.

I was still sitting quietly when Sarah, my twin sister, came back to the table with a tray of food and drinks.

“I got you a healthy option today” she said, and I looked at the vegetarian burger she gave me.

“Thank you, sis” I said and she looked at me strangely. She kept looking while I slowly ate the burger.

“While you are in a good mood I will tell you that while I was putting some of your laundry away this morning I found a bag of money in your drawer. I put it in the safe until you tell me how it came to be there.”

The relief flooded through me, “Sis, you are the best. Thank you!” and stood and went to her to give her a hug.

She looked as if she was going to fight me but then stood up and allowed me to hug her.

When we sat down again she said “OK, when did the aliens take my sister away and replace her with you?”

I laughed, “That’s for them to know and you to find out.”

She then commented that this was the first time in years that she had heard me laugh and that I had gone more than five minutes without a cuss word. She said that she could get used to it and I replied that she better had, as that is what she will have to put up with in future.

When we finished eating she looked at her watch and said that we had a couple of hours before my appointment with the parole officer and that I had better keep this new personality around if I wanted to stay free.

She then asked me what I would like to do and I said that I wanted to visit Ed’s, the tattoo and piercing shop in the mall.

“What!” she exclaimed, “You have nowhere to put another stud unless you get nipple rings?”

I smiled and told her not to worry as all will be revealed when we got there.

We put our rubbish in the bin and walked to Ed’s shop. Inside he welcomed me with open arms and asked what I wanted this time and I said that I wanted everything removed.

Both he and Sarah were slack-jawed and I asked him if he would do it for the pot value of the studs as I had always bought silver or gold. He told Sarah that it would take about an hour so she locked my bracelet into this location and said she would be back, leaving while shaking her head in disbelief.

It took that long to get rid of everything. The ear studs were pretty straight-forward but the nose and tongue ones took a bit more time. The stud above my eyebrow was held in a setting that had been tapped into my bone and took a bit of effort on his part to get out.

He put a couple of small stitches in the hole that was left and then put an Elastoplast over it, saying that it was lucky I had only had it recently as he thought the skin may knit back together.

Then there was the dumbbell in my navel which also needed to be covered as it bled a bit. I got him to leave the two usual places on the earlobes where all girls put normal ear-rings and when he weighed up what he had removed he gave me two sets of normal girl studs to put in them.

“Never thought you would be wearing these” he remarked, just as Sarah came back into the shop.

Part 2

Sarah looked at me, “Now that’s an immediate improvement, I think the parole officer will like that, although she’ll think it's a wind-up.”

I said that Mrs. Butcher can think all she wants as she will not control my life for ever.

Sarah snorted, “That is the first time you have actually said the name correctly. Up to now it’s always been Miss Bitchy.”

We left Ed and walked out into the mall again and sat down on a bench, away from the crowds. Sarah asked me what the big guy had given me in the food court so I pulled the Wish Disc out of my pocket and gave it to her.

I think that she expected to see a baggie so this was a total surprise for her. I told her that it was a wish disc with just the one wish in it that was now used up.

“I find that difficult to believe but if that wish has made you normal again I am happy that he gave it to you.”

She then asked me about the money. I took a deep breath and said that I would tell her the truth if she allowed me a couple of favours.

She asked what the favours were and I said that the first was to use her phone to send a text message which she could read before it was sent. The second was that I wanted to get a new outfit and dump these yukky clothes. She laughed and agreed at once if my story was plausible.

I then explained. “You know that you took me in as a part of my parole because you are straight, well respected in the legal office and had a spare bedroom. When I was delivered to your flat I just had the clothes I had collected when I lived in my bed-sit and a little bit of money.”

“I was charged with drunk and disorderly as well as having a small bag of cocaine about my person and this wasn’t enough to send me away. It was enough to get a suspended sentence as long as I was kept under the control of a responsible person. You, at the time, still had enough feelings for me to take me on and for that I thank you from the bottom of my heart.”

“I apologise for all the nasty things I may have said. I have been a real pain in the arse, I know that, and it stops today. This bracelet can be set for a radius from its logged location and when you went to work in the morning you have always set it to fifty metres.”

“Now the flaw in that is that the logged location is a vertical one and this means that in the tower block I could go from the top of the place to the bottom without moving more than ten metres laterally. I could also go outside and sit on the seat looking over the park without raising the alarm.”

“I was sitting there one day, getting some sun and grumbling about my position when my old dealer came by. He sat next to me and I told him why I was there. He said that he had customers in the tower and that I could do him a favour by being the inside supplier. You have no idea how many in that tower snort coke.”

“He had some baggies and I went back up to the room and got my money. I spent all I had on baggies. He said that he would ring his customers. I told him a price that I would sell for which gave me a good profit. What I could offer that deserved the premium was delivery the same day.”

“All they needed to do was to put their money and a note in the electrical supply cabinet just around the corner from the post boxes and I would put their delivery in an envelope and drop it in their box. No problems, no connections to me.”

“The next day he brought me a packet of envelopes and the flat numbers of his customers. The business started from then and I started collecting money and delivering the baggies on a daily basis. It has been going on for the last two months and I have collected almost enough to have my breasts removed.”

“Now, however, that is never going to happen as I want to keep them and maybe flaunt them a bit. So the money is the result of a crime but I consider it to be just the profits of a profitable business which stops right now.”

“Are there any drugs in the flat?” she asked angrily.

I laughed, “Not now.”

Just then her phone rang and when she answered it she looked at me very strangely. It was the police telling her that someone had reported that the door of her flat had been broken in and that officers had been in. They told her that she may have been burgled but nothing big had been taken.

She said that she would organise a repair of the door and that she would be home around five-thirty as we had an appointment with the parole officer.

When she hung up she frowned, “That was odd, after what you have just said. The copper on the phone was DC Stephens and the only one of that name I know of is in the drug squad.”

She then made another call to a friend who worked in the building trade to get him to take a new front door to the flat and fit it with all new lock and keys. She promised him a dinner tonight at an Italian place not far from the tower as a thank you.

I guessed that she and he had been circling for a while and was happy that I could provide the impetus to get together. She then handed me the phone and said “Write the text.”

I wrote ‘Fi tell grls 2 bware Dot gon mad cld b drugs. A frnd’ When Sarah read it she wanted to know what it meant and I just said that a person Fi knew and trusted had just been overcome by a whole new and dangerous personality and will probably be trying sell her drugs now.

I didn’t mention the gun. I gave her the number to send it to and she sent it, much to my relief.

We just had time for me to buy a cheap set of bra and panties, stripping off the boxers I wore and un-wrapping my glorious breasts. Then it was a new top and proper jeans, and then, finally, the ‘bovver boots’ were replaced by a black pair of boots with a two inch heel.

As we left the mall my previous outfit was left behind in bins, the only thing I kept was my disc.

As we walked to the parole office Sarah hooked her arm in mine, “Thank you, dear sister, for coming back from the brink. If it was a wish I am glad it happened but everything this afternoon has been almost too much to take in.”

Mrs. Butcher was, to say the least, somewhat taken aback as we walked into her office. I could tell that she had expected confrontation as her desk was clear of everything that could be used as a weapon. We said hello and sat down in her visitors chairs.

She looked very hard at me, “OK, if this is a wind-up you've gone to extraordinary lengths. Just where is Sam, the thug in the making, today?”

I replied that he had left the building for good and that what she now saw was what she got. She then looked at Sarah who told her that I was now a reformed character and that she thought it was all for the good.

She then mentioned that we had been broken into and that DC Stephens, from the drug squad, had ‘inspected’ the damage but that we had not gone home yet. Mrs. Butcher picked up her phone and got connected to DC Stephens and he obviously gave her the news that the flat was totally clean but a little knocked around. I expected it would have been by ‘Angry Sam’ in a rugby players body.

Mrs. Butcher asked a few questions about how I had been and Sarah told her a few outright lies in that I had been very good for a week or more and was coming out of my shell.

I just sat there listening to being discussed as 'she' and revelling with feel of the weight on my chest and the void between my legs, made more obvious to me with the tight-fitting jeans. I still felt unclean and was looking forward to a good shower or, better still, a long bath.

Mrs. Butcher then turned her attention to me again, “Sam, OK, Samantha, I have a friend who operates a salon not far from your home. She has asked me if I had a girl who could be taken on as a general helper. I am prepared to take that bracelet off if Sarah can walk you there in the morning and pick you up on the way home in the evening. You will remain under supervision for the last two months of your parole time and I expect you to do whatever is asked of you. Any back-sliding and the bracelet goes straight back on, got it?”

We left the building with me without the bracelet and Sarah with the details of the new job for me. What neither of them realised was that it was a wonderful opportunity for me to put my Dot knowledge to the test in real life.

They considered it could be a chore but I was looking forward to living my dreams.

On the way to the station Sarah asked “How did you know the police wouldn’t find any drugs when you told me earlier that you held stock?”

I thought about fudging but then told her the truth. “Dear sister of mine; I have all the memories of Samantha and you growing up, including all the embarrassing ones we would rather forget. I was shattered by puberty and hated being a girl which led me down the path to where we are now.”

“The big guy who gave me the disc had his own wish and I became the body in which his mind now lives. The Samantha that you grew to dislike left the food court in the body she always wanted and, I’m sure you can now understand, only thought of retrieving her cash and stock to keep on with the business.”

“It was the big guy who broke into the flat and knew, of course, where everything was hidden. I’m sure that my chest of drawers will have had a kicking when he didn’t find the money there as Sam didn’t know it had been removed before the wish took hold.”

“I look like Samantha, I love you as my sister and I am, to all intents and purposes, the Samantha you have known all your life. But the inner Samantha is now in the body of a guy who looks like a rugby player but always had a heart of gold. That’s why we sent that text because a big, muscular Sam will not be a happy person at all.”

“Fiona was one of a group of girls who met with him on Wednesday evenings for a meal and chat. They did so because he; that is me now, was safe to be with despite his looks. I just hope they come out of it untouched.”

Marianne Gregory (C) 2022