Pretender

It didn't look like a Valentine. It looked like a plain piece of pink cardboard until Lacy picked it up in her hands and turned it over looking for an address or some sort of flap to open. Then the thing started to vibrate in her hands like an electric current was going through it. Lacy threw it down and watched in stunned disbelief as the piece of cardboard flopped around on the carpet like a headless chicken and then sprouted two red wings and little red chicken feet. It took a few awkward steps then launched itself into the air and began to flap around her living room.

"Oh my God!" she said.

The flying cardboard stopped in front of her, right at eye level, and began to unfold in a way she didn't understand. She saw the interior of restaurant or nightclub, the size of a dollhouse but complete down to the tiny crystal water goblets on the tables and the minuscule red M's on the burgundy menus, and then the thing folded in on itself again, began to shoot clouds of glitter and steam, and in one startling puff of smoke, a man was standing there, fully human-sized, looking quite pleased with himself and a little amused.

"Oh my God!" Lacy said again. "Who are you?"

"I'm your cupid," he said. "I'm here to bring you your magic Valentine's Day gift!"

"You look like watchamacallit. That chicken guy."

"Colonel Harland Sanders," he said, patting his stomach complacently. "Yes I do. We've found that women are less upset when presented with a non-threatening image, and this one's always worked for me. Besides, I have a thing for chickens. I'm pretty lovable, though, wouldn't you say? You don't feel threatened in the least, do you?"

"No. No, I don't. But what are you doing here?"

The Colonel hooked his cane over his arm and adjusted his pince nez.

"It's magic, sweetie, pure and simple. Valentine's day is one our more magical holidays, you know, and I'm here to give you a very special Valentine's Day gift. Well, more or less."

He reached into his pink coat and brought out a little spiral pad. He leafed through the pages.

"Here we are. Lacy Ferraro. 29 years old. Dental hygienist. No boyfriend, lives alone. Poor self-image." He looked at her over the rims of his glasses. "That's you, right? A little bit of a chicken yourself, wouldn't you say?"

"Well, yes, that's me, but..." She tried to peek over the pad. "I don't know about that chicken part. Who told you that?"

He smiled smugly and put the pad away in his breast pocket.

"Wait a minute, wait a minute!" Lacy tried to assert herself. She didn't want to alarm him though. "What is this? Who are you and how'd you get in here?"

The Colonel cleared his throat and adjusted his pince nez again. He lowered his eyes and very carefully focused his gaze on her, and Lacy had the extraordinary sensation of something passing between them, some kind of information or knowledge, flowing out of him and into her. It was as if he'd suddenly given her an injection of knowledge, and without him so much as saying a word, she suddenly knew this was for real and that she was being given something great and magical.

It was an extraordinary feeling, but it only lasted a moment. And in the next moment she realized with that same kind of certainty that she was standing there wasting time.

She stood there dumbstruck, her mouth agape.

"See?" he asked.

"Oh my!" She looked around in confusion. "Well what should I do? I mean, how does it work? What do I have to do?"

"Well, in your case my dear, it's your self-image, as I've said. Let's talk about what you see when you look in the mirror: a short little girl, insignificant and not very attractive, plain and underdeveloped. Is that about right, would you say? Why don't we start with that? Go look in your mirror."

Lacy opened the door to the hall closet where she had a full-length mirror. There she was, just as she saw herself every day. She was much as he'd described, although he hadn't even mentioned her frumpy clothes.

"Now, why don't you imagine how you'd like to look and see what happens?"

Lacy turned to look at him and was about to ask him what he meant when her eyes caught a flicker of motion in the mirror, and she was suddenly aware of a dizzy sensation in her body. She looked at her reflection and saw that she was suddenly a good six inches taller than she should be.

"Oh my God!"

She looked back at herself in stunned silence. She was aware of all of her shortcomings, but it was her height that always bothered her most of all. She'd always been conscious of having to look up to people and of feeling their eyes on the top of her head. She always seemed to passing beneath their gaze. Now as she stood there, she felt her body stretch again.

"Well now don't overdo it, dear," the Colonel said. "At that height you won't be able to wear heels."

Immediately she shrank down a few inches, but she was still eight inches taller than she'd ever been. She looked around her with new perspective. It was wonderful. She felt queenly and regal, even statuesque.

"That's good," the Colonel said. "That looks just about right."

"I don't believe this!" Lacy stared at herself in the mirror. A stretched and astonished Lacy stared back.

"Now what about your face?"

"My face?" Her hands went to her cheeks in alarm. "But I like my face! It's a good face!"

The colonel smiled indulgently. "Yes, it is, Lacy. It's a very nice face, so let's not worry about that now. You can always change it later if you like. Now, your hair. How about this?"

The Colonel pointed his cane at the mirror, and at once her lank, mousy hair was replaced by an absurdly rich cataract of golden blonde curls, tumbling around her face and spilling over her shoulders.

"Oh no! No!" she moaned. "No, that's too much! I look like a country and western singer!"

The Colonel made a sour face. He evidently wasn't used to being second-guessed.

"Well the, how about this?"

The blonde curls were replaced with a cascade of flaming red hair, so healthy and vibrant that it seemed to have a life of its own, like it might leap from her scalp and start climbing the drapes.

"No, I don't think so. I mean, it's very nice, but it's just not me."

"Then you try it."

Lacy turned to the mirror. She was almost afraid to look, but she forced herself to be calm.

Her eyes were her best feature: deep and almost startling blue. She'd always wanted raven black hair to set them off, but the dyes she'd tried made her look like she'd put shoe polish on her head.

Now, however, as she watched in the mirror the red disappeared to be replaced by glossy black tresses that curled around and caressed her face like a crown of willful and sensual ivy. It was just what she'd always prayed for.

She realized, though, that it made her bottled tan look a bit sickly and orange, but before she could stop to think about it her complexion lightened then darkened, as if someone were twirling the color controls on a TV. Finally it stopped and settled into a just pale enough fresh-scrubbed transparency, glowing with health. It made her eyes glow like sapphires.

"Oh. Oh my!"

She bent forward and looked in the mirror. Even that little scaly patch under her nose that she always got in the winter was gone. Her complexion was flawless.

Lacy grew suddenly dizzy. She put a hand to her head but it wasn't her hand. Instead of the old familiar stubby fingers with the nails bitten down to the quick, she possessed the long, graceful hands of a ballerina, the nails of a hand model, smooth and elegant.

"I don't believe it!" she gasped. "I think I'm going to be ill!"

"Oh tut, tut," he said. "You feel perfectly wonderful and you know it. Now come on, the fun's just about to begin. Mind if I have a seat? It's time we worked on the body. I always enjoy this part."

The colonel dragged a chair over and sat down on the edge, his hands draped over the head of his cane.

"Clothes off," he said, and Lacy shrieked as her clothes just disappeared. Her shoes, socks, underwear, everything was just gone, and at the same time she saw them reappear in a neatly folded pile on the sofa across the way. She stood there naked.

She quickly covered herself and her new skin blushed a furious red. She couldn't help but notice though that her pubic hair matched her head. The colonel seemed to notice too.

"Yes, they're connected," he said. "We don't do things half-way. Now let's drop this modesty business and get going. You've got to arrange your body: boobies and so forth and so on."

Despite her alarm, she couldn't wait to try this out. She looked in the mirror and imagined herself with the legs she'd always wanted: long, slim, lightly muscled and wicked as scissor blades, and there they were, attached to her body. She could feel them proudly lifting her bottom like Atlas hoisting the world, and she could feel the wonderful strength they contained in their smooth, sinuous muscle.

She pirouetted in the mirror and regarded her backside, and as she watched she saw her buttocks grow rounder, tighter, and higher. She felt the subtle nudge as her spine moved forward to keep her balanced as her buttocks grew like two cantaloupe melons ripening under time-lapse photography.

She put her hands on her ass and squeezed.

"Oh dear Lord in heaven! I've got a beautiful ass! I do! It's the sexiest ass I've ever seen!"

She couldn't repress the surge of pride she felt now. She was a beautiful woman, and she blinked back the tears of joy and considered herself critically in the mirror.

Now, about her boobs...

The colonel twirled his cane between his hands and his eyes twinkled. This was his favorite part. You could tell a lot about a woman by the kind of tits she chose.

Lacy threw her shoulders back and stared at her chest as it ballooned forth, her breasts filling with the inexorable slowness of a helium balloon. They went from pert to proud, then from imposing to huge, and then back down again. Lacy realized that it wasn't just the size, but the way they were carried on her frame too, and for a while she experimented with moving them higher and lower, together and apart. Her breasts moved on her chest like an automatic seat in an automobile: higher, then towards one another, then lower. The nipples rose and fell. Lacy watched with the impassive face of a gourmet, of someone who didn't quite know what she wanted, but was sure she'd know it when she saw it.

She finally found a size and a location she liked, and turned to check her profile. Yes: nice, oblique tops, full and heavy on the bottoms, no discernible sag, and just the right amount of natural cleavage.

She wasn't done yet, though, and her nipples began to expand and contract on her breasts like eyes dilating in the light before she found a size that pleased her, and then they wandered around on her breasts until she had them just so. A tweak to make them a bit longer, a bit darker, and then she reached out her long, elegant fingers and touched them.

She turned and looked at the colonel, her eyes brimming with happiness.

"Lovely," he said. "But you're sure you're satisfied? You have things just the way you want them? I want you to be as perfect as you can possibly be in your eyes."

Lacy turned back to the mirror and regarded herself. Maybe her neck was a tad too long? Her hips a bit underdeveloped? She pulled her waist in a bit, gave herself some subtle rolls of muscle under her stomach and firmed up her upper arms. Should she show a little more collarbone? Maybe not. She looked down at her knees and worked on them for a while, making them smooth but not too smooth.

She put her hand between her legs and wondered whether she should even fool with that, but decided not to mess. As far as she knew, that worked perfectly. She did trim her pubes into a tidy little strip though, and fooled with her toes and toenails for a while as the colonel waited patiently. She got her belly button placed just how she wanted it: a mysterious little dent in the smooth feminine abdomen. With her neatly trimmed pubic hair, it made a little upside-down exclamation point.

Finally she stood up and looked at herself in the mirror. Now that she was beautiful there seemed to be all these little imperfections she noticed, but she realized that she could stand here and fool with herself all night long and never get everything right, so she gave her teeth a final whitening and darkened her eye lashes, brought her cheekbones up just a little bit, and gave herself a wonderfully kissable lower lip. Then she turned to him and spread her arms, inviting his inspection.

He nodded his approval.

"Can I try it out?" she asked.

"By all means."

Lacy turned and walked from the mirror. Her long legs ate up the floor and her height gave her a new perspective on everything. She felt her hips sway naturally as she walked with the smooth liquid glide of German-made ball bearings. Her breasts swung lightly with each step, like fruit ripe enough to fall from a tree, and their unaccustomed weight made her throw her shoulders back so that her nipples stood our high and proud. She felt a slight film of lubrication between her legs, and she realized with a start that she was so now so sexy that she even aroused herself. She was perfect.

"Very nice," he said. "You're satisfied?"

"I am, I am!" She lost her pose and clasped her hands together between her breasts as if the very air in the room were precious. "I'm beautiful! I'm beautiful! I'm overjoyed!"

She turned back to the mirror and looked at herself again.

"Once you step away from the mirror now, that's it. You're stuck with it."

"Stuck with it?"

She turned back and looked at herself in the mirror. For a moment she wondered: was this a mistake? Would she regret losing her old body, her old mousy and invisible self?

She looked at her mane of sinfully rich, shiny black hair, her high erect breasts and long, devastating legs: real mantraps. She turned around and looked at the saucy thrust of that world-class ass. Would she miss being talked down to and ignored? Would she grow to hate men staring at her with their mouths open? Conversation stopping when she walked into a room?

"I love it!" she said. "I just love it!"

She laughed, but seeing no response from him she grew suddenly cautious.

"How long will I stay like this?" she asked. "Is there a catch? There's some catch, isn't there?"

The Colonel stood up and looked at his pocket watch. "Well, I wouldn't call it a catch, really. More like an operating condition." He closed his watch and put it in his pocket. "Out there in the city, there's a man waiting for you, a man who's also been given a magical valentine, not identical to yours, but something similar. You have to find him and make him fall in love with you."

"Find him? How do I find him? Will you help me?"

"Oh, the finding probably won't be very hard. Our clients have a way of finding each other all right. But if you don't find him, or if you two don't fall in love, I can't guarantee what will happen to this new you. You may lose her overnight, or you may stay like this the rest of your life. There's just no telling."

"Well is there something I can do? I mean, does it depend on the purity of my heart or something?"

The colonel smiled. "Purity of your heart? Oh my, that's a good one! You humans! Gracious no! But don't even worry about it. Right now we've got to get you dressed to go out. Let's go, sister. Time's a wastin'"

Lacy showered as quickly as she could, though the temptation to play with herself was very strong. There were all sorts of new things she had to learn, and things she had to watch out for, such as the feel of the washcloth on her super-sensitive nipples, or what to do with all the tons of lather her new, thick hair produced.

The Colonel hustled her along, though, and as she sat at her makeup table doing her face, he walked into her closet and started pulling out clothes, anything she could think of, as fast as she could think of it, all geared to her new body and complete all the way down to the designer labels where applicable.

Lacey was at a loss. She had all this makeup she'd collected over the years, and suddenly all of it looked fabulous on her and she didn't know what to do. Even her perfume smelled better on her than it had before.

She finished her face and turned around to inspect the pile of clothes on the bed as she brushed out her thick black hair.

She was tempted to wear slacks to show off her ass and her long legs, and the pants she tried on fit her like second skin. But it was Valentine's Day, and she knew she needed something more romantic. She found a black crepe dress with tiny red flowers that brought out the blue in her eyes. The Colonel fetched her underwear to her specifications, underwear that she'd always dreamed of wearing, mere whispery things: rumors of underwear. She fastened a garter belt around her slim waist and then sat down and for the first time in her life indulged in the terribly erotic pleasure of unrolling nylon stockings over her hard and curvy legs, pointing her toes and admiring her lean musculature.

She was terrible when it came to her shoes, and the poor pink Colonel kept on carrying out boxes of Jimmy Choo and Manalo Blahnik till her bedroom looked like the back room at Footlocker. She finally chose a wicked pair of slingbacks with three-inch heels. Of course, they matched her dress perfectly.

The Colonel looked at his watch ostentatiously, reminding her to hurry, and it was a good thing he did too, because Lacy had a strong urge to engage in a prolonged session of self-love. Her new body intoxicated her. It was full of surprises and exquisitely sensitive, and she excited herself shamefully just from the mere act of dressing. At last she understood all those jokes about women taking forever to get ready.

It was only when the Colonel said, "He's waiting," that she could tear herself away from herself enough to think of a man's touch on her skin, and when she did, it inflamed her. It had been months since she'd had a lover, if you could even call him that, and the thought a man's hands on her ass, his mouth on her breasts, his fingers reaching between her legs hit her with an almost physical force, so that she gave a little whimper just from imagining it.

She wanted all that, but more than the sensation itself she wanted to see the look in his eyes when he gazed at her, the expression on his face when she stretched herself out naked on his bed, his look of helpless surrender when he entered her. She'd heard about those looks. She knew they existed. She wanted to see them for herself.

She quickly threw on a coat the Colonel held for her and took the bag he held out for her (it matched her shoes too, of course), and then she stopped.

"Wait a minute! Where am I going? I don't know where he is!"

"Remember the scene you saw when the card opened? He's there."

"But where's that? I've never been in any restaurants! I don't know one from another."

Then she remembered the little red M's she'd seen on the menus.

"The Mercedes Room!" she exclaimed. "That's where he is, isn't it?"

The colonel smiled and bowed.

"But you're coming with, aren't you? I can't go in there alone!"

"Never fear, sweetie. Just take your magic Valentine with you."

So saying, the colonel took a step back and Lacy watched dumbfounded as he suddenly became flat, then folded in half, and in half again, and so on until he accordioned up on himself into a little square of paper no bigger than a business card. She stooped and picked him up and dropped him into her bag.

"Are you in there? Are you all right?"

"Perfectly fine. Now let's get going!"

There were advantages to being beautiful, Lacy realized. Whereas before she would have to stand in front of a cab and wave her arms to get the driver's attention, now she only had to raise one elegant hand and two cabs screeched to a stop in front of her, the cabbies even jumping out and opening their doors for her, vying for her attention. She chose the one who seemed more of a gentleman, and he was graciousness itself, speeding her effortlessly through the city, showing off for her, and all Lacy had to do was smile at his jokes. It was terribly gratifying. When she got out at the Board of Trade building and tipped him, he thanked her for being such a wonderful fare, positively embarrassing her.