Terrible Tragic Story

by Gregg

Jay woke up and realized immediately that there were several things wrong with this picture. Just to start:

a) his last memory had been walking home from an anime showing.

b) he was in a chair near the dressing rooms of some women's boutique.

c) he was pretty sure that the malevolent glowing eyes from ceiling level were at least slightly confused.

"Hahaha," a woman's voice chuckled, though with a slightly unsure sound to the laugh. "Now we've got you! You'll pay for knocking those dresses down and saying 'the staff will pick them up, after all, that's what they pay them for' - yes, you'll pay." Again the woman's voice went into mocking laughter.

Jay cleared his throat. "Uhm, excuse me, but would it be too much to ask if you mentioned exactly what you're talking about?"

There was a brief moment of silence, then those glowing eyes narrowed. "Ah, trying to play dumb, I see. Remember last week when you were here with your girlfriend?"

"Never been here before. Don't have a girlfriend."

The malevolent glowing eyes shut off as if a switch had been thrown. The woman's voice continued, however. "ANGELIQUE!"

"I'm sorry, Mistress Hazel, but they look pretty similar!" This voice sounded as if it were from a much younger and less confident girl.

"Oy!" The woman's voice said that as if all the weight of the world were on her shoulders.

"And I'm sure he's just as bad, after all, he's a guy."

Jay cleared his throat again. "Excuse me, but do you mind terribly if I leave while you two argue this out?" Being around crazy people who had access to drug darts and holographic projectors (?) was not something he wanted to contemplate.

"No, you can't leave! I've got this evening's entertainment mapped out, and I'm not going to let my apprentice's incompetence spoil things!" The woman's tone was full of nastiness.

"Well, if you want some entertainment, I'll just drop by a few videocassettes of a wonderful little series I was just watching. Let me go on home and fetch them." Jay nodded as if this were the most reasonable thing in the world.

"Uhm, mistress," came the young voice again. "Isn't he supposed to be raging at us and requiring a demonstration of magic, where you respond by inflicting the first transformation upon him?"

Jay frowned. Either they were really nuts, the hologram had been a display of magic, or he was in a nightmare. Didn't make enough internal sense to be a nightmare, and that young girl's voice was just plain annoying. That left a strong possibility that he was dealing with two psychotics who thought they were evil sorceresses.

"I am NOT psychotic!" The older woman's voice sounded quite vexed.

Jay concluded they were probably good guessers, though living in a haunted house once had been sufficiently paradigm-stretching that he was willing to concede the possibility that these were evil sorceresses. Or one evil witch and a somewhat ditzy apprentice.

"You've got that right," mumbled the older woman's voice.

"Okay." Jay concluded that nightmare or evil witches, treating this seriously would probably be best. "What sort of 'entertainment' did you have in mind? My singing voice is hardly what you'd consider star quality."

"No, you are now to experience the Curse Of Gendermorphic Clothing!" The little girl's voice broke off into what was supposed to be mad laughter. "Are you scared yet?"

Jay sighed and shook his head, then started counting off points on his fingers. "Waitaminute. First off, I'm not the guy you wanted, so what's the point of some revenge? Second, you're mad about someone accidently knocking clothes down when you say you've got the power level to rearrange matter down to the genetic level? Third, I don't see the correlation between the punishment and the crime. Why turn a guy into a girl because he's lazy or maybe was having a bad day or something? I know if I'm having a migraine, I'd apologize to the store clerk but probably wouldn't physically be able to pick up or straighten up clothing. How do you know that the guy you wanted didn't have a reason for it besides being some lazy slob?"

"Oh, shut up," came Hazel's voice again. "I'm an evil witch. THAT'S my motivation."

"An evil witch who runs a store named the Q-T Boutique?"

"AHA!" Angelique verbally pounced on the opening. "And how do you know the name of the store if you've never been here before?"

Jay pointed at a nearby sign with the "Q-T Boutique" logo proclaiming a "half off sale."

"Oh," Angelique sounded disappointed. She was interrupted a moment later by a meaty thwack. "HEY!"

"I swear they just don't make witches like they used to," Hazel's voice had returned to weary.

"MTV generation," suggested Jay helpfully.

"No doubt. Well, on with the show. Every item of clothing in this store bears an enchantment. If it manages to get near you, it will flow onto your body, replacing the appropriate item (if any) and then alter the body part it is covering to a female configuration." Hazel tried to gloat but was obviously not having nearly the fun time she was hoping for. "If you make it outside with anything unaltered, I'll change you back. Fail, and you become our slave!"

"Double what I said about the punishment bearing no relation to the crime," said Jay with a sigh. "And I suppose some 'terrible tragic story' will befall me if I fail to participate in this game?"

"Huh? 'Terrible tragic story'? Oh, a reference to those weird cartoon thingies I saw in your mind during the transport process. Yes, I'll take your IDs, increase your sex drive, turn you into a bimbo and drop you in the nastiest area of town. What do you think about that, Mister Wiseguy?"

"More tasteless than evil. Lacks symmetry."

"Well, you're innocent. This would be a virgin sacrifice, or at least virginity sacrificed, isn't that symmetrical enough?" Hazel was sounding annoyed.

Jay sighed again and stood up so that he could survey the store. It was a fairly sizable boutique, at least as well as he could tell, never having been in one before. More like the size of one floor of an anchor store in a mall than the little places he'd passed by before. "So when does it start?"

"Now," said Hazel's voice and immediately started the contents of a lingerie table heading towards her latest victim.

Said victim ducked, rolled and started running.

"Haha," Anglique laughed. A truly annoying sound. "He's so frightened he's running the wrong way!"

Jay went to the door that led to the backroom, twisted the knob, and discovered it was locked.

"Fool, did you think that I'd leave such an obvious..." Hazel's voice trailed off.

Jay struck three times, two punches and a kick. Then he passed through the now open doorway.

"Uhm, Mistress Hazel? He's not supposed to do that , is he?"

"All right," the witch Hazel's voice was subdued. "Maybe he's one of those rare males that isn't completely incompetent. But that trick won't work twice!"

Jay looked around the receiving area. Dirty, tools and boxes scattered everywhere, water cooler, timeclock, records desk, and a mannequin in the doorway behind him now. The big rolling door was locked, a standard combination lock. The only other unblocked door was a firedoor. Jay threw a few unopened boxes on the mannequin before it could slide any closer, then considered his options.

"See, all men are... what the blazes are you doing?"

Filling the cup with water, Jay smirked and threw it at the fuse box, shielding his eyes at the same time. Water hitting the open fuse box had the usual effect. Fat sparks, a small fire, and the power being immediately cut.

Having memorized the position of the firedoor, now unlocked due to the power being cut, Jay was outside in a flash.

"NOT SO FAST!" The glowing eyes reappeared, this time in a wall of flame that cut off further egress. "This is not how you play the game!"

Jay smiled, swung over the railing into the trailer pit, then sprinted past the fiery walkway out into the parking lot behind the building. "Well, goodbye, arrivederci, hasta banana, hope our paths don't cross again!"

"NOT SO FAST!" Hazel threw out a paralysis spell that tripped the fleeing boy up by freezing his legs. Momentum slammed him into the asphalt. "Damn you! I had to expend even more power to stop the fire or I would have had water damage to my stock! You aren't getting away that easy!"

"But he got away," said Angelique's puzzled voice.

"Dear. We're EVIL, remember?" Hazel's comment was punctuated by another slap.

"Oh yeah! Teehee."

"Still, when I scanned you during the transport, I got a clear image of what you consider an ideal girlfriend. Some meek little Japanese domestic named Kasumi, wasn't it? Well, I'll just turn you INTO your ideal girl."

Both witches engaged in maniacal villain laughter (mainly at the thought that someone ELSE could do all the menial grunt work that was beneath their station) while the redhaired girl with a petite figure picked herself up off the ground and started murmurring in a quiet voice.

"Yes, go ahead, plead for mercy! Pray to your God to come save you! It won't help!" Hazel continued to chuckle.

"Darkness beyond twilight,
Crimson beyond blood that flows,
Buried in the stream of time,
That's where your power grows."

"That's odd," the witch Hazel broke off her gloating to remark. "That isn't the pathetic little housewife I saw in your mind earlier. She actually had a figure..."

"I pledge myself to conquer,
those who before me stand,
with the gift of power,
in my unworthy hand."

Angelique sounded puzzled. "Is she grovelling? And why did that guy's ideal girl have such tiny breasts?"

Reddish brown eyes swept the area, and "Jay" focused on an area where time and space seemed to distort slightly.

"Let the fools who stand before me,
be destroyed by the power you and I possess!"

"Huh?" Hazel and Angelique sounded baffled. "What kind of plea for mercy is that?"

"DRAGON SLAVE!" The little redhaired girl threw her hands forward. The energy bolt twisted in a manner similar to a drillbit as it left the formerly male hands of the witches' victim.

The magical equivelant of a tactical nuke drilled into the subspace pocket and exploded.

Blowing on her fingers as if they were a smoking pistol, Jay (Lina Inverse) smirked at the two steaming corpses. "What, you wouldn't think that my 'ideal girlfriend' would be different when I'm being attacked by evil witches? Get real."

Terrible Tragic Story copyright 2001 by Gregg.