Boy Sorceress Pt. 01

One of the girls left in the clearing started walking from corpse to corpse and touching them. I watched her in utter confusion. There had been no one like her in the clearing before. She was a petite, but well endowed Asian chick. Her long, silky hair fell down her back like a waterfall made of jet. Her face was so young and cute, with full, pouty lips that muttered strange syllables as she crouched over each of the corpses. I realized she had stood in the place of the fat, plain woman that had started the solo chanting. She was also dressed in the same clothes the woman had been wearing, but she looked nothing like that middle-aged white woman. The clothes seemed loose on her frame, except in the chest area. They were stretched tight over her melons.

What the fuck was going on? I was just about to try and put together some theory when the Asian girl straightened up and gestured with her hand. All the thirteen corpses stood up as one. I was struck completely dumb by the sight. The cute Asian giggled and gestured and the corpses arranged themselves into six pairs which then knelt and held their arms together. Four of the five remaining cultists calmly walked over to the line of corpses and used their outstretched limbs as seats. The Asian chick took a seat at the head of the column. As soon as they all settled into the improvised chairs, the Asian chick asked the werewolf something.

I was still too stunned to hear anything. The werewolf just shook his hairy, lupine face and the Asian shrugged. She twirled her fingers and five pairs of corpses stood up smoothly and carried off their murderers as if they were royalty. I watched them march down the gentle trail I had climbed.

My shock subsided just enough for a small part of my mind to realize that this was a very bad thing. That was the route I had planned on using to get down the mountain.

The three remaining corpses reacted to the Asian chick snapping her fingers and picked up all the backpacks of their murderers and marched after the rest of them. Another howl from the wolf snapped my eyes back to the clearing, where he was kneeling and watching me. I was too scared to flinch. He howled at me. Then he howled at me again. His howls were so long, so mournful, so hungry, so maddening. I was completely paralyzed by them. It was all I could do to keep my hoodie from falling off my shoulders. The fear had somehow managed to physically shrink me inside my clothes.

I kept staring back at the wolf, wondering what it was waiting for. Why didn't it kill me like the poor thirteen reanimated corpses? Why was it just sitting there, staring up at me and howling like a...well, like a wolf at the moon? I managed to turn my head and shrugged the hood of my hoodie out of the way. The moon was above the eastern horizon. You could see it just above the tree I was perched on and the werewolf was most likely staring and howling at it. I sighed with relief. I was safe.

It's kind of hard to see exactly where a wolf is looking, particularly at night, with the shifting flames of a dying bonfire playing tricks on your eyes.

At length, the werewolf stopped with the stupid howling. I was just starting to reboot my brain to try and think of something to do, when the werewolf began sniffing. I peered at him cautiously. He sniffed the air, then sniffed the ground. Then he would stand stock still and seem to be listening intently for something. Then another round of sniffing the dirt and the air. I was just staring at him, wondering what the fuck he was up to, when it hit me. He was sniffing me out!

The werewolf must have gained a wolf's sense of smell with the transformation. He must have sensed my smell on top of the other smells. I told myself that wasn't true, I told myself he couldn't possibly be able to smell me, but he was sniffing his way closer to the promontory and my tree.

My palms were sweating and my throat went as dry as a sandpit. I stared at the monster coming ever closer to me. I panicked. When the werewolf let out a particularly bloodthirsty version of his howl, I started. My loose clothes let me slip inside them and I was losing my place on my perch. I reached out to grab the other branches for stability, but my arms were suddenly too short, just like in a nightmare. The sleeves were bunched up over them.

I tried to grab the branch I was sitting on as I slipped off it, but my arms didn't have the strength to do it. I fell. Instincts born of a decade of training to take a hit with minimal damage made my body loosen up and fall down feet-first. I crumpled into a heap of loose, tangled clothes and rolled out of the fall by reflex. The fall should have destroyed my knee, or sprained my ankles, or done anything at all to my body, but it didn't. I didn't even feel dazed by it. I just felt light and flexible.

I ended up flat on my back, staring up at the nightmare creature standing over me. The werewolf roared again and I realized I was about to be eaten. This was my death, this crazy, human-sacrificing cultist that had turned himself into a werewolf, somehow. He reached down towards me and stopped. He sniffed at me, seemingly confused by something.

I screamed as loud as I could.

In hindsight, there was no logical reason for screaming. We were alone on a mountain after dark and the only people likely to hear me were the werewolf's accomplices. Since I had just witnessed a mass human sacrifice, accompanied by some crazy transformations, my higher faculties were still in shock.

As I screamed and the werewolf bared his fangs, I noted that my screams were really high-pitched. I wished they were so high pitched and loud they would make the wolf's ears bleed, like those whistles that only dogs can hear. My screams cut out, despite my lungs still pushing air out of my mouth. I tried to scream louder, but my voice was gone, just like in a nightmare.

The werewolf growled in pain and squinted. He covered his ears with his front paws and stepped away from me. I rolled in my loose clothing and tried to run away, looking over my shoulder. The werewolf gave chase as soon as I stopped with my imaginary screaming. In one bound, he was at my back. My sweatpants tripped me up and I fell, just as the werewolf's fangs snapped in the air above me.

That was pretty much the last observation I had made that night. My entire awareness boiled down to a tiny point.Live. The only thing that mattered was survival. My actions were dominated by pure instinct.

I screamed, wishing for the wolf to back off again. My scream was inaudible again and the werewolf recoiled, growling with agony and covering his ears with his paws. I kept screaming, not caring why it worked, or why I couldn't hear it. I scrambled away from the werewolf, stopping my screaming only for the briefest of instants needed to draw in a new breath. The werewolf reluctantly stepped away from me with each bout of screaming. Then he shifted into a naked man.

The scrawny man glared at me and I realized my scream no longer had any effect on him. I had crawled into a pile of ripped clothing by then and my hand fell atop something cold and metal. It was a gun, still in its holster. I fumbled with it, trying to get the gun out. The man strode over towards me, murder plain in his eyes. I yanked the gun out of the holster and lifted it at the naked man. I squeezed the trigger and the gun fired.

Looking back on it, I was damn lucky. I don't know if it was one of those guns that had the safety built into the trigger, or if it had simply been left with the safety on. Either way, my first shot went miles wide.

The man lunged at me and my second shot couldn't miss. He fell just short of me and rolled away, grunting in pain as his hands clutched at his stomach. I scrambled to my feet to run away, but the man turned into a werewolf again. His skin broke out in wild clumps of fur and his face elongated as his mouth filled with wickedly sharp fangs. I stood there watching tiny, deformed pieces of metal slide out of the wound above his navel until it closed up and was covered with thick fur.

The werewolf growled in fury and I screamed again, only I wished my inaudible screams were even louder than before. The werewolf cowered again, letting out agonized yelps. I took a few shots at the immobile werewolf, but the bullets seemed to just slide off his fur, doing him no harm, particularly when compared to my screams. I retreated blindly, screaming between very short gasps for air, and shooting at the werewolf until the gun ran out of bullets.

I tripped on my pant leg again and fell. This time, the ground wasn't there to catch me. I fell into the void. As I flipped over, I realized I had fallen off the edge of the clearing and was about to die. The only thing going through my mind was the desire to live. I wished I wasn't falling. I wished gravity didn't work on me. I was feeling lighter already and something else happened. My descent slowed enough to allow me to land softly between the tall trees. My backpack had fallen right next to me.

I don't think I remembered my car keys and phone were in it at the time. I think my hand just reached out to touch something familiar. My legs bent automatically and I wound up picking it up.

Before I could even begin to marvel at my survival, the werewolf roared above me. My blood froze inside my veins again. I could hear some awful, scratching noises and I ran for it. The noises were getting closer and I kept running as fast as my loose clothes and flapping backpack would allow me. The underbrush was thick and it kept trying to trip me up and slow me down. It was hemming me in, sending me on a particular course and I followed it as fast as I could. The werewolf roared again and my heart nearly exploded with fear. I could hear the underbrush being ripped apart right behind me. I had barely made it thirty feet from where I had landed.

The edge of the cliff showed up in front of me and I jumped, without even thinking about it. I fell and wished I could get gravity to spare me again. It did. My backpack slid off my back as my fall slowed. A short while later, I landed softly next to it. This time, there was no underbrush to tug at my legs. I was on one of the steeper trails. I immediately made to run down the mountain and fell on the first step. My sweatpants and boxer shorts had fallen to my ankles. I pulled them up and cinched them tight at the waist with the sweatpants' drawstring. I picked up my backpack and slung it on my back. It felt big and heavy.

The werewolf howled above me again. He sounded very far away, but I ran all the same. I needed to get off the mountain. Nothing else mattered. I tugged my sleeves and pant legs back into place, but I kept running. I shrugged my hoodie back into place with every other step, but I kept running. My feet seemed to be clattering inside my hiking boots, but I kept running. Pains from the front of my chest kept trying to distract me, but I kept running. My first rational thought since falling out of the tree was that my knee might give out at any moment, but I kept running.

The downhill distance vanished in seemingly no time and I was in one of the parking lots at the base of the mountain. I laughed maniacally as I saw my Interceptor. I swung my backpack around to the front and fumbled in its bouncing pockets until I pulled my keys out. I unlocked the Interceptor and jumped in, locking the door behind me. The seat seemed too big for my frame, but I couldn't give a shit about that crap. I tossed my backpack into the passenger seat and started the engine. It roared and thrummed its delightful melody.

I felt so safe inside my stunt car that I actually shrieked out some shit about how I was the road warrior and that I was going to turn the werewolf into roadkill if he ever came near me again, that sort of thing. It's amazing what some aluminium lettering on your death-proof car and a steel skull topping your gear stick will do to you, especially when you've just had a near-brush with death.

My delightful rant was cut short by the fact that the pedals were too far away. I frowned at the idea that someone had gotten in here and messed with my car, but the mountain loomed over my windscreen, illuminated by the full moon, and I needed to get away from it. The Interceptor was thrumming along nicely, it even sounded way sexier than ever, and I pulled my seat forward. My hands seemed small on the padded steering wheel, but I grabbed the skull-topped gear stick and peeled out of the parking lot. The Interceptor roared down the road towards Riverside and I felt safe. I had the might of machined metal and exploding fuel on my side. My hand worked the stick, my feet stomped the pedals and those crazy fucking cultists could just go fuck themselves.

As the distance to Riverside dwindled down, I cooled off enough to realize I had to call 911. I eased off the throttle and downshifted. When I came upon a straight stretch of road, I pulled on my backpack and managed to extricate the phone from it. I held it up to my eyes and growled. The phone had been broken in the falls I had taken off the mountainside.

Shit. It was only then that I remembered its battery had been empty anyway.

I just had to drive to my apartment and I could make the call from there. With a plan in mind, I gunned the mighty Interceptor again and was in Riverside in the blink of an eye. I should have stopped at the first place I saw and made the call from there, but rushing home in a blind panic eventually turned out to be the best move.

I parked in front of my apartment building with a screech of rubber on tarmac. I locked the Interceptor and dashed up the external landing to my door. The place had a landline, I just never used it. I thanked my luck for being so stupidly depressed of late, cause I hadn't gotten around to canceling it. It took me several tries to unlock the door with my fumbling fingers.

The first thing I did was turn on the lights. The second thing I did was freeze. Ashley Williams was in my apartment.

I tried to stammer out a question and watched her mouth work, too. I cocked my head at her in confusion and saw her mirror my movement. A big part of her was missing from my sight, strangely enough.

Then I realized I was looking into the mirror that was opposite my front door.

My hand reached up. Ashley's hand in the mirror reached up, too. I wrinkled my nose. Ashley wrinkled her cute, thin nose, too. I opened my mouth as far as it went. Ashley opened her small mouth as far as it went, stretching her shapely lips thin in the process. None of what my eyes were showing me made any sense. I shook my head and saw golden strands out of the corners of my vision.

I gasped, my voice sounding girly and high-pitched, as I reached up. There was a full head of golden hair cascading down past my shoulders. I could feel it, as well as see it in the mirror. As I turned and posed and held the hair in front of my face, it slowly dawned on me that I was Ashley Williams.

I shut the door and waited to see if I would collapse from all the shocks I had gotten that night. I remained standing for quite some time, just staring at my new self in the mirror and trying to make sense of what had happened. In a way, being a girl sort of explained some of the things that had happened ever since reality had taken a brief break. Ashley was lighter than me by far, she'd survive a fall from the tree unscathed. Her voice was girly, so her screams were high pitched. The car seat was badly adjusted cause Ashley was a foot shorter than me. My clothes didn't fit anymore, cause she was literally half my size. As I looked at the loose clothes slipping off my delicate, feminine form, I realized she was even less than half my size. My knee brace was wrapped around my hiking boot and I realized that my knee hadn't given out during my mad dash down the mountain. The only pain I had experienced had come from my chest.

Having tried it, I wouldn't recommend running in tits.

My mind, usually keen to analyze any problem it came across, now refused to work. All the crazy, reality-defying shit I had seen that night, left me overwhelmed. I had tried to see Ashley naked for a whole year, back in high school. Now that I was able to ogle her naked form to my heart's content, I was too stunned to do it.

I saw the phone in the edge of my vision. I turned my head and looked. It was on a small stand at the end of the front hall. I idly remembered that I had to make some kind of call. Oh, right! 911! I tore myself away from the mirror and stumbled over in my way-too-big hiking boots. If they hadn't been laced all the way up above my ankle, I would have lost them running.

I stood by the phone and hesitated. What would I tell the cops?

"Hello, despite my girly voice, I'm actually a guy, a former linebacker, and I'd like to report a mass human sacrifice that happened earlier tonight?"

"Well, ma'am, just tell us where it was and we'll get right on it!"

"See, that's the problem, officer! The corpses then got up and walked away. And this one guy turned into a werewolf and chased me down the mountain, but he didn't catch me cause I could fly."

"The corpses walked away, you say? You're actually a man, you say? A werewolf, you say? Flew down the mountain, you say? Please stay on the line! We're sending some men in white coats to come pick you up."

And then it hit me.

I was crazy.

None of that shit happened on the mountain. There was no sacrifice, no murder. No werewolves, no Kilrathi, no Magneto, no Human Torch. No corpses got up to walk away, no fat chicks turned into sexy Asians and I wasn't Ashley Williams. I had gone nuts and hallucinated it all. There had been no interruptions to reality's regularly scheduled service. I was just a loony.

I laughed loudly with relief. My laugh slowly turned hysterical and I put a dainty hand over my small mouth to try and shut myself up. Yes, I could feel the flower in my brain, but that was just further proof that I was indeed nuts. Flowers don't bloom inside people's brains. Everybody knows that.

My laughter turned into tears and I cried myself to sleep that night.

Don't say that it was a very girly thing to do. That's too easy. Also, I'd like to see you do better after having the kind of night I had!

I woke up the next morning, unsure what was real and what was just a nightmare. The golden hair covering my eyes was the first thing I saw and I took it as a bad sign. The brain flower was another bad sign. I got up and opened the closet. There was a mirror on the inside of one of the doors. I was Ashley. My golden hair was somewhat disheveled and my Kevin-sized clothes were terribly dirty and rumpled and they hung loose on my petite frame. I looked like a little girl trying on her daddy's clothes.

Do little girls do that? Never mind.

I took off the dirty clothes and realized I'd have to change the sheets, too. I had slept in muddy clothes. I sighed. At least I had kicked off my hiking boots at the foot of the bed last night.

Another look in the full-length mirror reminded me that I could now see Ashley naked. The horrible implications of the night before being either real, or the result of my diseased brain took a back seat to the beauty before my eyes. Her eyes were big and brown, but looked to be a shade lighter and warmer than mine. Her skin was flawless from head to toe. Her round face with diminutive features made her look underage and would probably continue to do so until she got crow's feet.

Her slender shoulders led to her round tits, sitting high on her chest. Her areoles were a dark shade of brown and slowly grew erect as I stared at them. They crinkled and bunched up from the outside in. At the center, the nipple itself stood out like a pencil eraser. My hands reached slowly up and touched the erect nipples. They were sensitive, very sensitive, and my fingers felt almost painful. I gently skimmed the areoles with just the tips of my index fingers and the sensations turned nice. It was the kind of tickle that threatened to make one's bladder give in, but it also made my heart race.