This story contains sexual content not suitable to minors. This content focuses around erotic transformation and some sex.
"Look, I just sat through your tattoo with you, Jenna. Going to a curio shop is the last thing I want to do. I just want to get back to my hotel room and make some edits to that press release." Violet was visibly annoyed. Jenna had made her go to this redneck vacation town for "a release," but everything had been awful. At the bar, she was hit on by some of the worst country rubes. The amusement park turned out to be an exercise in reliving the worst part of high school, idiotic teenagers being loud, obnoxious, and incapable of controlling their youthful lust. Then, she had to put up with Jenna's desire for a tattoo. "We could do that in Chicago," Violet had said. She didn't think that it was particularly more adventurous to do it in Missouri.
"Oh, come on. I'll buy you a shrunken head or something," Jenna jested. She wanted Violet to live a little, though in hindsight, maybe central Missouri wasn't the best place to get away for a commodity trading company lobbyist.
"Fine, then we go back to the hotel."
Bells on the door jangled as the door awkwardly swung open, the sloppily rigged spring mechanism making it slap back to shut with a thwap. A black man and his swooning white girlfriend were finalizing a purchase with the proprietor, and Jenna caught Violet's brief nose flair, knowing that Violet was always bothered by interracial couples. Jenna was going to have to pick on her for that later. The shop itself was a mess, as all curio shops are supposed to be. A mummified cowboy stood grinning in a glass case near the door, freaking out both ladies when they saw it—though they quickly adjusted. Several automatic fortune tellers were lined up like slot machines near the counter, and a confusing assortment of baubles, trinkets, ratty "period" clothing, and strange items filled the shelves, racks, and tables that haphazardly filled the floor.
Violet politely wandered the store, occasionally looking at an item just to keep herself occupied, while Jenna seemed to take great interest in many odd items. Violet was examining an odd box decorated with images of sensually clad female demons—or at least Violet guessed they were demons, since they had horns, tails, and so on—when she was startled by Jenna's shout. "Violet! Check it out! They have sex toys!" Violet dropped the box with a clank, as she jumped at the noise. Then, she was simultaneously embarrassed at two separate things: she had just dropped and possibly damaged store merchandise, and her friend had just yelled at her about a private matter in the middle of a store. Actually, Violet should have expected that. Jenna always liked to embarrass her. One time, they were at a fair in Chicago when Jenna unexpectedly yelled, "Don't touch my penis!" at the top of her lungs. The crowd scattered at the disturbance, and Violet and a grinning Jenna were left standing in the clear, angry parents and bemused youngsters staring at them. Jenna had a good laugh about it later.
"Jenna!" Violet half shouted, half whispered. The few other customers were clearly entertained by the situation, since they were the sort of people who go into curiosity shops. "Don't say that out loud." Violet picked up the box, but as she stood, she was facing the owner of the shop, a large man who, despite evidence to the contrary, didn't look like the stealthy type. His stature and his demeanor were creepy to Violet, and she barely choked back a scream.
"You will buy the puzzle box," he said.
"What? I just dropped it, and I don't think it's broken."
"It has a crack."
"No it..." Violet saw a hairline crack along the side of the box, and then she scanned her surroundings, realizing that it was a curio shop where half of the items were bound to be damaged or worn in one way or another. "Oh. Well, I didn't mean to."
"I didn't say you did. It will be thirty-five dollars." He clearly didn't lack confidence. A couple of decades of intimidating unruly teenagers had clearly given him some skills in this endeavor.
"Fine," she said. "I'll pay you when we go."
"Okay," he said as he turned to go back to his post behind the register.
Jenna gave Violet a look of sympathy as she joined her. "Come on. Let's go look at some dildos." The sympathy was somewhat limited to cruelty perpetrated by people other than Jenna herself, of course. She couldn't resist keeping Violet's face bright red. Violet followed her, still a bit shaken by the owner.
They looked at the toys, many of which looked like they had been used and only rinsed. Several vibrators looked like pieces from a museum on Nineteenth Century psychiatry. One had rubber belts on the outside that connected the filthy electric motor to the vibrating device. Cheap packages of silly "fetish clothing" from the Eighties were still on sale for their original price of $5.99. Given the disappointment, the two elected to pay for the strange box and return to their hotel.
Jenna went to the poolside for a tan, while Violet worked on her press release. At dinner, Jenna decided to press Violet about her reaction to the black and white couple leaving the store. "Why were you upset about the girl with her black boyfriend?" she asked.
"I wasn't," Violet replied.
"I saw you flair your nostrils. It's what you do when you are upset by something."
"I flared them, because the store smelled funny."
"No, you didn't. I remember that you were always trying come up with reasons to break up with Jason." Jason was Jenna's boyfriend for a time and is black. Jenna, incidentally, is white.
"He was an asshole," Violet said.
"Actually, he was sweet. I was just disappointed that his dick wasn't as big as advertised." Jenna was a bit of a size queen.
"As advertised?" Violet asked.
"You know. They say that the brothers are hung like mules."
"The brothers? Whatever. I'm not a racist."
"I didn't say you were, but you always seem uneasy about interracial couples."
"Fine. I don't think it's quite right, the races mixing like that. I wouldn't discriminate on the job about it, but I don't think they should marry." Violet felt like she couldn't quite get the words out right, like she was sounding more bigoted than she was. Jenna clearly picked up on this.
"You've never thought this through, have you?"
"I guess not. It just doesn't seem right to me. I mean, I want to marry a white man and have white children like all of my foremothers." She looked like she was trying to figure out how to make a speech of it; as a lobbyist, it was sort of her job.
"I don't know that that matters. There were only two things different about Jason. His skin and features were a bit different, and his hair products smelled funny. I don't think it made a difference," she said.
"Yeah, well, you dated a girl once, too," Violet said disapprovingly.
"It was kind of fun. I mean, don't knock it till you try it, but I don't think I'll do it again." Jenna had a nostalgic smile on her face, and Violet had a look of disgust on hers. She also gave her an inaudible prod to go on. "What? Women are crazy. I couldn't date one for too long. Besides, I'm a size queen and all that."
Violet sighed. "Well, anyway, I'm not racist. I just want to date a good man of my own race, culture, and creed."
"I thought that Southern Baptists were non-creedal."
"I suppose we are, but it sounded good."
"Right."
The trip home was uneventful. Violet took the elevator up to her condo overlooking Lake Michigan and began unpacking. She really didn't buy many things in Missouri, since the whole culture of the area she went to wasn't her thing. Dirty clothes went into her hamper; toiletries went back to the bathroom; shoes went into the closet. She pulled out the box. She didn't know why she packed it carefully with the clothes, as she would do with glassware or ceramics. Well, it was ceramic, she supposed, but it was rather odd. The material was jet black, and a bas-relief detailed a battle... no, an orgy! A naked woman with hooves, a pointed tail, and horns apparently was presiding over the festivities. She stood on what looked like a helmet, which was odd, because that would infer that she was tiny, like a fairy. She was clearly happy about the scene before her.
Then, Violet noticed something really odd. The hairline crack that she saw on it in the curio shop was missing. She prodded it and twisted it, trying to see if maybe the box needed to be torqued to show that jagged fracture, but it remained pristine. Further examination revealed odd runes and a series of sliding parts, but there was no rhyme or reason to them, so far as Violet could deduce. Deciding that she shouldn't be too curious about the strange thing, she set it on her coffee table and went to the kitchen for some water. That's when she heard it. A sort of crash emanated from her living room, and she darted back in to see what was amiss.
Amid sulfur-scented smoke, on top of her coffee table, the box sat, and atop that, a small woman, appearing as she was on the bas-relief of the box, sat, cross-legged. Once Violet walked in, the tiny woman, who must have been about nine inches tall, looked at her. Violet was stunned, frozen in space, not knowing what to do. She couldn't believe her eyes, as nothing in her life prepared her for meeting a being who was clearly physically impossible. She began to shake with fear: fear of this creature (who knows what it could do!), fear of the unknown, and fear of a world that turned out to be something besides what she thought. The little woman clearly didn't feel the same way.
"I'm Hamamelis. Who the fuck are you?" she said in a breathy alto voice, her hands resting on her ample hips in a sassy sort of way.
