Wererock

Rita looked at Cynthia, "Good luck today." She frowned. "I don't know why I came over this morning. I guess it was to tell you I'm proud of you and to say I'm glad you're away from Derek."

Cynthia flashed me a weak smile. "Thanks. Can you give Amy and me a second, please?"

Rita nodded, "yes, of course. You two love birds take all the time you need."

Cynthia led me to the master bedroom, taking her necklace off as she went. She clutched the stone like a junkie holding a crack pipe and whatever change she made, I could see her face become softer. It had been like she was Sisyphus carrying that heavy load and she'd finally been able to set that heavy rock aside. I liked the irony of using one rock to cast aside another. "Your turn."

I knew what she meant. I removed the earrings and used the stone to make myself Amy the normal not Amy the ditzy, nymphomania slut. I kept Cynthia's orgasm control game in place but took away everything Rita had done. I kept the memories, not to relieve them but to learn from them. There's wisdom in learning from ones' mistakes.

"I want to do something to Rita. Something bad."

I tried to talk her out of it, and I wish I tried harder.

"We can undo it. I want her to know how it feels." Her eyes grew damp. Her mascara started to run. That was something else that only women knew. I would learn all of those as the years progressed. I told her that revenge wouldn't take away what had happened. "I know. I have to live with what I did, I need her to as well. I won't be able to be her friend again until I feel we're even."

She wouldn't be dissuaded. I can't begin to understand the abject shame she felt selling her mouth for a dollar, or the most sacred place she held for three. I could only imagine how it felt to tell some slimy prick that you were a whore and not only that but a cheap one where a blowjob cost less than a fountain coke. Maybe she did need her revenge. I knew we could undo it; what could it hurt?

"Not for long, okay?"

Her question was sincere; I loved her for that. Maybe I should have pushed the issue but you can't predict the future can you? You can only make plans and choices with what you know and what you can anticipate and you always assume there will be a future. Sometimes there isn't. "Okay."

She gave me a hug. It was huge and warm and nice. I hugged her back.

Cynthia put on her necklace; I donned the earrings. Better safe than sorry as the old saying goes.

Back in the kitchen, Cynthia took Rita's hand with the stone clutched between them while I searched Rita's purse for her phone. I deleted the damning pictures and contacts while Cynthia made a change in Rita. I didn't know what, but I could see a frown cross Rita's lips as her eyes drifted shut. It took about thirty seconds for Cynthia to program Rita, thirty seconds we can never get back no matter how much we want to. Cynthia won't remember what she did, but I do. I do.

"I've got to get to work," Rita said a moment later. She looked more or less normal.

"Us too," Cynthia said, giving Rita a hug. At that moment, I thought that maybe they could be friends again.

"See you this weekend?"

Cynthia beamed, "you bet."

Rita left and ten minutes later Cynthia and I were out the door. We rode to work together with Cynthia doing the driving. I sat buckled up on the passenger seat. "What did you do to her?"

"The same thing she did to me. That's all. It'll wipe the slate clean."

"When?"

She let out a little sigh. "Every weekend. Saturday and Sunday, she'll dress in the sluttiest clothes she can find and go work the same street corner I did. She'll sell her body with the same price list I had."

"What about her husband?"

"She'll make some excuse; I told her to be convincing." She took her eyes off the road for just a moment to give me a wan smile. "I won't let it go on for long and if it becomes an issue, I'll make sure they both forget. I need this. I didn't lie; we'll see her this weekend. We'll make sure she's safe."

I felt better hearing that.

The week was relatively normal. We kept wearing silver and settled into our new routine. Cynthia ran my business better than I did. She was more people oriented that I'd ever been as a man and as such her compassion and empathy helped her deal with her employees better and garner more new business than I had imagined. Cynthia brought in two new clients that second week of me being her secretary with meetings scheduled for a half-dozen more.

I fetched her coffee; she seemed to take great delight in making me get it for her. Wednesday, she brought a new nametag for my desk with the name Amy written in perfectly formed lettering and the title Executive Assistant penned underneath my name. "Don't want you to forget your place, do we Amy?"

"No, mistress," I said.

She beamed. "You know, I think it would be kinda fun if you did feel a little emasculated at your job. Can you do that for me? Make yourself ashamed of what you do, knowing you're stuck here?"

If it were a game she wanted to play, I could play it. I took off my earrings as she fetched the stone. A moment later I felt a bit defeated, wondering if I'd ever be anything but a secretary. I felt, not shame, not really, just defeated. It was like I'd dreamed my whole life of going to the stars only to find myself working some desk job for NASA and seeing everyone around me doing so much more with their lives than I ever could. I felt resigned. I think that's the best word to describe how I felt. I put my earrings back on.

Saturday night came and Cynthia and I parked the car on the street corner a block from where Cynthia had worked the week before. We waited for Rita to arrive, both of us nervous for slightly different reasons. Margarite came to the corner wearing ridiculously tall, bright pink heels and a skin tight pink dress that revealed far more than it covered. She had this miserable look on her crimson face. She moved in jerky, unnatural motions. She knew what she was doing was wrong and she was trying to fight it, but the stone would win. The Wererock would always win.

We sat there, watching Rita get in one car after another. During it all Cynthia was frowning. I don't think she was getting out of watching her friend what she'd hoped. Was that a good thing or bad? I hoped it was good. I hoped that by watching Rita shame herself that she'd end this misery sooner than she had planned.

Hope is a bitch.

Rita got into her ninth car and as it drove away Cynthia, her lips trembling, put the car in gear. "I can't watch anymore." She hit the gas.

I heard a sound that sounded like bats shrieking. I saw a huge, bright light.

Then the world went dark.

Chapter 16

Stuck

A beeping sound woke me. My head hurt; my side hurt. A bright light hurt my eyes. I looked around at the hospital room. What had happened? I remembered watching Rita and then I remembered Cynthia speeding away. Cynthia, where was Cynthia? "Hello?"

The room was empty. I tried to sit up, but that hurt, too. My left arm was in a cast; bandages were taped to both my legs. I could see some small, uncovered scratched and one ugly bruise on my left thigh. My mouth was dry and it tasted like paste. "Hello?" I said again. Was that louder? It sounded louder. I looked around for a call button and found it wrapped around the bars of my hospital bed. I pushed the deep red button.

A nurse came in. She was short and stout and her hair was mostly black with just a few snippets of gray. She smiled at me, "Good afternoon. How are you feeling?"

"Cynthia," the name stung my throat.

"She's in ICU. I'm sorry, but I can't say more than that. Are you two related?"

"Fiancé." It hurt to talk more than a word or two. My throat felt raw.

"You were intubated," the nurse explained. A whiteboard pinned to the wall opposite my bed told me her name was Katie. "Do you know what that means?"

I nodded. That didn't hurt as much as speaking.

"I'll have a doctor check in on you soon." She looked at the machines hooked to the wires that were hooked to me. She checked a bright blue morphine pump and made a small adjustment. A moment later I was asleep again.

"How are you feeling? I'm doctor Anderson. What's your name?"

I gave him my name. He wrote that on my chart while Katie updated the whiteboard opposite the bed.

"Do you know where you are?"

How long had I slept? The room was still as bright with the same fluorescent lighting filling the room with its unending glare. There wasn't a window in the room so I couldn't look outside. "Hospital," I finally answered. I asked my one-word question about Cynthia again.

"Your fiancé, correct?"

I nodded. Nonverbal communication seemed wisest when given the opportunity.

"She's in surgery. I'll let you know how that goes if she comes out."

It's funny, if you listen you can hear so much. If she comes out. If. That was bad. "What happened?"

He explained the accident. "A truck ran a red light and crashed into your car. You're lucky to be alive. Both of you are." He explained the accident and my injuries. We'd been in the hospital for two days and while I could go home the next morning, Cynthia was having her third surgery to repair her internal injuries, they weren't confident she'd ever walk again. The underlying message in their tones made me believe they doubted she would even live.

I lay there, the overhead lights off, praying for Cynthia. I could fix her if I had the stone. Look what it did to me. They didn't know my name which means they didn't have my purse or my wallet. I'd been Jane Doe until I told them my name. Whatever had happened to Cynthia and I had been bad enough to yank us I free without worrying about anything as mundane as identification. If I could find the car, I could recover her purse and then I could fix her. I had to fix her. I fell asleep with that thought in my head.

"She's recovering," Doctor Anderson told me the next morning. "She'll live. It won't be easy for her. Her injuries were extensive."

"Can I see her?"

He shook his head. "Not yet. Not for a day or two."

So, it was still bad. That's okay, I needed to find the Wererock. It could fix her. It had to.

Just past noon, wearing some green hospital scrubs, I was wheeled out of the hospital where an Uber driver took me home. An hour later, freshly showered and dressed in a simple jean skirt and white blouse, I knew more about the accident and exactly where my car had been towed. With single-minded purpose I drove Cynthia's car to the junkyard that held the remains of my once beautiful vehicle. The car was totaled; just looking at the wreckage brought home Doctor Anderson's proclamation that we were lucky to be alive. All the windows were shattered, the driver's side door had been pushed in, crumpled and torn. The accident had nearly folded the car in half like a Chinese fortune cookie. Broken glass and torn metal left angry scars in the leather seats.

I dug through the debris, looking at all the blood. It had been bad. I found my purse in the back seat. Cynthia's was lodged between the bent passenger side door and the ripped seat next to it. Inside her purse was the stone. I clutched it with the ferocity of a drowning swimmer grasping a lifeguard. I shut my eyes, and mended my cuts and scrapes. I felt instantly better.

With both our purses draped over my right shoulder and the stone trapped in one hand, I drove back to the hospital. I sat in a waiting room for nine hours before they let me see Cynthia. My heart broke when I saw her. She was lying on her back, a tube shoved down her throat. More wires were running from beneath her hospital gown to several monitors and scary looking machines. Her face was broken and bruised. Her left arm was sitting in a cast and bent at an awkward angle that didn't look normal. She had a bandage wrapped around her head that covered half her face. The truck had hit us on her side; Cynthia had taken the brunt of the impact and only the airbag had saved her life.

Alone, with tears in my eyes, I picked up her hand. I held the stone between us. I closed my eyes and pictured Cynthia as she was, with her perfect body and beautiful face. I took away the accident and the broken bones. I mended the kidneys that had been damaged and as expertly repaired as a surgeon could do. I thought of the shame Rita had made her endure and I took those memories away. I made her whole and pure, thinking of nothing but giving Cynthia her life back.

I watched the bruises on the unbandaged part of her face heal. I watched the pain etched in her face fade away, leaving nothing but a pristine gentleness that left me feeling relieved. I felt the stone trapped between our palms grow impossibly hot. A flash of light from between our palms forced me to look at the stone. It was no longer blue. It was cold and grey and inert.

I picked up the stone and imagined my breasts getting bigger. Nothing happened. I imagined my cock returning and nothing happened.

The Werestone was dead. It had used up everything it had to repair what had been broken.

Cynthia opened her eyes though I could see only one of them. With the tube down her throat, she couldn't speak but that one eye asked the question I knew she was asking, "What happened?"

"We were in an accident. It's okay. It's going to be okay."

Epilogue

"You're looking pretty," Cynthia said. I was standing in the bedroom, looking through my overstuffed closet. I didn't have a thing to wear. How was that possible? I guess that was something else that only women understood.

"Thanks." My makeup was perfect, my hair, longer now, was styled with a slight wave. I had it pulled together and draped over one shoulder.

"How's the arm?"

I flexed my fingers. "Better. Did I tell you we got the insurance settlement?"

Cynthia smiled, "you told me." She gave me a kiss. She was wearing a gorgeous white gown, cut low, revealing an ample amount of cleavage. The dress seemed to sparkle in the light. I was standing at my closet wearing a pair of blue panties and a half-bra with lace cups supporting my otherwise bare breasts. I was looking for something to wear to our engagement party but nothing seemed to match the beautiful dress that Cynthia had chosen to wear.

"What about this one?" I asked. It was the little black dress I'd worn when I'd given my first blowjob. Cynthia doesn't remember that night, or the days that came afterwards. The doctors chalked her amnesia up to the accident, telling us that her brain had been swollen and when she'd healed, something they called a miracle, she had been left with a few small gaps in her memory that she found frustrating, but nothing more. If that was all she suffered she was blessed. I knew it wasn't amnesia that had taken those memories. I had. I'd have to live with that.

"It's a little slutty." Cynthia replied. "We should go clubbing wearing something like that."

That idea frightened me. I finally settled on a red dress that came to mid-thigh. It had simple straps going over the shoulder that fastened at my neck. If left the tops of my breasts exposed and most of my back free. I'd have to lose the bra, an idea which Cynthia helped me accomplish, copping a feel as she did.

I brushed her hands away, reconsidered, and pulled them back in place. I was horny, damned horny. Cynthia's game was still going and it had been over a month since I'd had an orgasm. The Wererock didn't have any power now, but the changes it had made before I'd depleted it were still going strong. I still had my breasts and my vagina, and I still called Cynthia "mistress" when we were alone. I still felt trapped in my dead-end job. That gift came from Cynthia, back when it had been fun. Mostly I felt guilty. The guilt would never go away.

I looked at my half of the Wererock, sitting on my finger. After the Wererock had become spent, I'd taken it to a gem cutter and had him cut the rock in half and then shape those two halves into shiny, polished stones. I took those matching rocks to a jeweler and had them make our identical engagement rings on a bed of silver. Cynthia had accepted my proposal, smiling at the small group of restaurant patrons who seemed delighted by my taking a knee and asking her to marry me. We were applauded after Cynthia said yes.

The engagement party was at our office. I was still the secretary and Cynthia was still the boss. Most of our employees showed up as well as the bulk of our friends. Rita wasn't there. Rita was in prison, serving sixty days for prostitution. That was something else I'd have to live with. When I'd used the stone to save Cynthia, I didn't know it would use up the rest of its power. I didn't even know there was a limit to what the Wererock could do. I saved Cynthia and the stone burned out. I couldn't change Rita now, no matter how much I wanted to do so. She was trapped with the compulsion to dress in slutty clothing and sell her body on the corner every weekend, exactly as Cynthia had sent into motion. Cynthia didn't remember doing this; I took that from her too.

She'd seen Rita only once since getting out of the hospital. They both wound up crying, Rita from shame, and not understanding why she felt this overwhelming need to be a whore. Cynthia cried for her friend, promising to help her all she could. Sadly, there wasn't anything she could do.

Rita's husband was in even worse shape. There's an old saying that power corrupts. Rita had taken the stone home and had played with it, using her husband as her Guinea pig. When Rita was arrested, they'd found her husband crawling on the floor wearing nothing but a towel pinned to his waist like a make-shift diaper. The towel was filled with shit. He couldn't walk and the only word he could utter was "mama." Whatever she'd done to him would never be undone. He's a ward of the state now. I have to live with that, too.

Had I known that the stone would use the full extent of its power to heal Cynthia I would have visited Rita and her husband first. But I didn't know. I didn't know. That thought gnaws at me. I'll learn to cope with that knowledge, or it will drive me mad. Only time will tell. I'll forever be stuck with the memories of what we'd done and what I wished I could undo. I couldn't fix Rita or her husband. I prayed he didn't know what he used to be. That would be a blessing, the not knowing. I wish I didn't.

I remembered shipping the Wererock to myself, trapping myself with my breasts so long ago. Back then it had been fun when the threat of being stuck was exciting. Now, I was truly stuck. I'd never be Adam again. Hell, I barely remembered the name Adam. I was Amy now, and always would be. I would always have tits and a pussy between my legs. I'd always call Cynthia mistress when we were alone and no matter how many times I reasoned with myself that it wasn't true, my job would continue to emasculate me. There wasn't anything I could do about any of it.

At least I had Cynthia. I love her more than I love myself. Even trapped as I was in this new, alien form, I was happy with my her by my side.

Which is good. I'm stuck with her, too.

I once thought the Wererock chose me, that there was something special I needed to do with it, or because of it. I still feel that way. Cynthia is going to run for public office. She has grown into herself, thanks to that rock, or me, or a combination of both. With what happened to Rita, she has become an advocate for women and a damned good one. Yes, I'm proud of her, and maybe my feelings for my fiancé are painting her abilities in a softer, rosier light, but I must believe I found the rock for a reason. That it chose me. Not for what it did to me, or the problems it caused, but so that I could save Cynthia from dying. I did that. The stone did that. Why else would it have been brought into my life if not to save Cynthia? God or the Universe needed her for something, and I saved her for that. Everything it had done. Everything it could be had been for Cynthia. She was to become something; the Wererock let her live.