Bottled

October 30, March 1996

Jen handed him the cardboard tray filled with foil wrapped packages.

“These are for Miss Garabond in number six. She’s a bit hard of hearing, so you’ll need to knock loudly. A bit of an odd one too. Loves to tell stories.”

Colin furrowed his brow. “Why do I always get the weirdos Jen? I mean…”

Jen clicked her tongue. “She’s not a weirdo Colin, she’s a lonely old lady. She just wants somebody to talk to, so do her a favor and listen. It won’t kill you.”

“I thought we were just here to drop off meals, not play nursemaid?”

Jen closed her eyes, remained silent for a second, then opened them again, fixing him with an agonizing stare. “You wanted to do this Colin. You begged me to let you help in fact. I don’t think you really want to be here at all.”

Of course he didn’t, but he desperately needed some volunteer work on his submission. He knew that most companies expected to see something like that on a prospective intern’s resume. Sure, he had adequate grades, but that was all.

Truth to tell, he’d messed up. He could have been the best in his year, but he’d let himself get distracted. Too many hours spent playing video games, confident he could make the work up later. Too much time browsing women’s underwear catalogs. It wouldn’t have been a big problem if he hadn’t got sick. At least he felt better now. Only after a week in hospital and another two recovering in bed. His body still ached, and he couldn’t sleep properly. One way and another he’d lost too much time, and he’d have to struggle to get a decent pass. That would be the best he could hope for now.

There were other reasons he was here though. Originally, he’d put his name down for the soup kitchen, but Elaine was there. He couldn’t face her after she’d turned him down. All he’d done was ask her for drinks, but he wasn’t good at talking to girls. She’d mocked him and called him names. It couldn’t have been more demoralizing.

Case in point, he had no idea what to say to Jen. There was no chance he’d develop a crush on her though. He could feel her judging him at five-hundred meters. Her stare could make him shiver. No. Jen was not his type. Quiet and sweet was more his speed, and Jen was fierce and scary.

He could still feel it now, that stare of hers. He juggled the box into a better position, the heat of the meal containers soaking through to his arms and was becoming uncomfortable.

“Sorry Jen. I want to help, really. I guess I’m just a bit shy.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Now take that to Miss Garamond. I’ll do the rest.” She nodded to the back of the van where three other meals remained – the last of the day – at least the retirement village meant they didn’t have to drive far to finish off the run.

*

“Here you are Miss Garamond,” Colin said, opening up the foil container of steaming beef stew and spooning it out onto the plate with the potatoes and vegetables.

“Thank you, young lady,” the old lady said. She smiled. Her teeth were surprisingly even and white, though that was probably because they were false.

“I’m a boy,” Colin said, tense.

“I’m sorry. My eyesight isn’t what it used to be.”

He placed the hot plate on a tray on the table in front of her. 

“My name is Colin, Miss Garamond,” he said, reinforcing the point.

“Of course. Please sit Colin.” She gestured to the chair on the opposite side of the small kitchen table. 

He settled himself down. “I can’t stay long. I really should get back and help Jen. She’s doing more than her fair share I’m afraid.”

He wasn’t sure why he’d followed her instruction to sit in the first place. He just wanted to leave.

“Well. I’m old enough to not be afraid of being rude. I’m sure Jen has sense enough to know what is her fair share, and what isn’t, so she won’t mind. I’m pretty sure she asked you to take your time, didn’t she?”

“How do you know?”

“I may be old, but I’m no dummy.”

For a few seconds she forked stew into her mouth and slowly chewed on it. No joke she wasn’t afraid of being rude. She’d probably called him ‘young lady’ on purpose, just because he had long hair. Old people were always asking when he was going to get a haircut.

Colin sat in silence, glancing around the tiny kitchen of the retirement bungalow. It was an odd mix of old and new. The plates were once-fancy patterned porcelain, the glaze now crazed, and the rich painted patterns faded with age. In contrast, the table couldn’t be more than a year or two old, with its bright yellow plastic veneer over plywood, that showed around the edges.

He picked at the nails of one hand with the fingers of the other, unsure where to look, afraid to meet the watery, grey-eyed gaze of the old woman.

“You’re a good boy Colin, but you need my help,” she said.

“What?” He wasn’t even sure he’d heard her right. What could she mean? What was she talking about? “I’m sorry?”

“Young man, you have a lot of talents, but you’ll never amount to anything. Do you know why?”

He felt a sudden rush of rage inside, like bile rising in his throat. He swallowed it down. Bitter. “What do you mean? Why are you saying this? You don’t know me. You didn’t even know I was a boy.”

“Oh, I know how to read people. That talent never left me. I can read you plain enough. Too well perhaps? Easily distracted, and too cautious by far. It’s a shame really. A crying shame. Not much luck with the girls I’ll warrant?”

Colin could feel the blood draining from his face. Of course she was just guessing. Cold reading. Maybe the old bat had been a fortune teller once?

“I see I’m right. Well never mind. I have something that can help you, and it would be a shame … a real honest to God shame … to see talents like yours go to waste. You could do a lot of good in the world. And… Yes… I think you will… One day. Perhaps not in the way you expect, but life is full of changes and surprises, as you’ll learn eventually.”

He should just walk out, but there was something in the old woman’s voice that had his attention.

“Help me how?”

“Go to that cupboard under the dresser and open it. You’ll find a stack of books. Take the one with the brown leather cover.”

“Sorry…”

It took a few seconds for the words to sink in. He shook his head as if trying to wake up. He could see the dresser. It was one of the old pieces of furniture. He got up and went over to open the low cupboard. He had to kneel to peer into it. As she’d said, there was a pile of books, mostly old cookbooks, some on other topics like home remedies or gardening, the spines all faded with age. The leatherbound one had no writing on the spine. He pulled it out and shut the cupboard.

“Take that with you and study it carefully,” she said.

“What is it for? Some kind of self-help manual? A cookbook?”

She laughed. More of a cackle really. “Exactly. Help. But mayhap not the kind of self-help you have in mind. Effective, nonetheless.”

“That’s a relief. I thought it really might be a cookbook.”

He’d been worried for a moment, the whole encounter starting to feel a little off.

She smiled at him.

“I’d probably better be going. I mean, thanks for the book.”

“One more thing Colin. The book doesn’t say everything. There are some rules you should be careful of. If you ask too much, there are dangers… And never, ever, try to ask the same thing twice.”

Not really paying attention, he tucked the book inside his jacket. He probably wouldn’t read it. What possible use could it be? It would be rude to refuse it though. Or was the old woman right? Was he just a coward?

*

Later on, Jen had asked a lot of questions about how he got on with Miss Garamond, but for some reason he avoided mentioning the book.

Finally back in his dorm-room, he’d put it aside on his desk. He had course material he needed to review.

A few hours later, bored and distracted, he reached for it. It was closed with an old-fashioned brass clasp. On further inspection it wasn’t obvious how to open it, and it took him a minute to find the trick of it. He opened it at random to see a page of diagrams and tiny cramped handwriting that was hard to read.

It wasn’t what he’d been expecting, though he wasn’t sure what he had expected.

He began flipping through the pages, trying to grasp what it might be. A diary? Scientific notes? It seemed like something between the two. Puzzled by the odd instructions, he found himself reading obsessively – slowly decoding the cryptic words.

Hours later he put the book down.

It had to be a joke. A trick? A prank? Nonsensical. There was no way that the process in the book could possibly work. Still… it wouldn’t kill him to try.

*

October 31st, twenty-three years later…

Colin gazed from his office window. 

Will I ever tire of this view?

Probably he wouldn’t. It was a view to envy, across the city and the river. A city that was quieter than usual this year.

His phone beeped, and reflexively, he checked the alert.

He sighed. It was just a reminder of the creditor meeting on Monday. He needed no reminder of that.

For years his company had been performing beyond expectation. Expansion had been rapid in the last few years, and that had required extensive borrowing and outside investment. The recent downturn had hit hard. He could still make a good case for the future, but… If he couldn’t secure deferment on payments, expansion would be strangled, or worse. The company – his passion – would be torn apart by creditors, or vulnerable to buy-out. Failure was unacceptable. He’d already done so much, but he was destined for greatness. So far, he wasn’t even a billionaire.

The crisis was nothing really. He had no doubts he would solve this problem as he had solved so many others. Charisma. Confidence. Determination… and a rock-solid business case… he would win this time, just as before. He’d always been brilliant, and accumulating experience had tempered that brilliance into consistent excellent results. If he wasn’t magazine cover material, he was at least the subject of articles on the inner pages of the financials.

Still, perhaps there was a way he could be better? Perhaps he should confirm some things were as they should be?

It was Sunday afternoon, and the office was all but empty apart from him. Floor after floor, dark and deserted. Or, perhaps a few people would be in, working overtime on troublesome accounts, but few came into the offices at all these days. They had become a needless cost except for the security they afforded.

He turned from the window and crossed to the back of the main office. He opened the richly carved doors to his inner sanctum. Devoid of windows, the lights inside softly faded up of their own accord.

He closed the heavy doors behind him, snapped the lock shut, and crossed the thick carpet of his inner study to the large expressionist painting that adorned the wall.

He didn’t really care for the painting. It reminded him of something he couldn’t put a name to. Perhaps he should have it sold? It was nothing more than corporate investment, after all. An investment and a convenient decorative cover for his safe.

He gripped the side of the frame and pulled. The painting swung aside, revealing the enameled door of the walk-in safe.

Without even thinking about it, he typed the familiar combination into the electronic keypad and a series of heavy clunks indicated that the door was ready to open.

With a gentle tug, he set the heavy safe-door in motion, swinging it open towards him until the gas-struts stopped it.

The lights in the safe were already on.

He stepped inside and appraised the shelves and filing cabinets. Most of the valuable material here was data, in printed or electronic form. A rack held his own private backups. A small cabinet full of tiny drawers held a stash of gold and silver coins. Hundreds of thousands of dollars, but not real money. Sometimes he needed petty cash on hand for difficult situations, but the coins weren’t for that, just a private investment, left over from a time when the sums they represented and the security they’d promised had seemed to mean something.

I don’t care about them now. I might as well get rid of them. They’re just taking up space. They’d be more useful as a liquid asset.

He turned his attention to the wall on the right and the glass-fronted refrigerator. Behind the glass, row, after row of bottles, each full of translucent liquid. Colored motes seemed to dance in them, catching the light so that they seemed to be glowing.

In one bottle, much larger than the others, pink sparkles seemed to swirl and twist like glitter in a lava lamp, though there was no way that could really be happening.

He stepped closer. The top shelf held empty bottles. Perhaps it was time to rid himself of the anxiety and self-doubt the crisis had brought on?

He turned the handle and opened one side of the fridge, reaching for one of the empty bottles. Without the intervening glass, something odd about the biggest bottle caught his eye. Was that a crack? That was impossible. As far as he knew, the bottles weren’t under stress, and the temperature-controlled refrigerator was supposed to ensure that the contents never became … excited. What on earth could lead it to crack?

He could feel the chill in his fingers from the empty bottle. The fridge hadn’t failed. It was obviously working as designed. He looked more carefully. Yes, there was no denying it. There was a tiny crack, about a centimeter long, and running down from the top of the bottle.

It was one of the oldest ones in the fridge. Not the first by any means, but still twenty-years old or more. It had held all this time, and even with the crack, it would probably hold another twenty years. It was the one that had opened the floodgates. Before that one, he’d been more cautious… nervous of using the bottles – afraid of how he might change himself without realizing, without proper understanding of the consequences – but after that one, he’d grown bolder.

Lately though, he’d simply had less need of them.

He closed the fridge and put the empty bottle down on his desk. Taking a seat, he prepared for the ritual.

All he really had to do was focus on the weakness that he wished to remove – solidify the thoughts he wanted to be rid of – and then he could use the prepared bottle to draw them out and into it. After that, it was a simple matter to seal them in with the pre-prepared stopper.

He’d done this now, dozens, if not hundreds of times. He’d bottled away every weakness, every doubt, every hesitation. He could remember doing it. He could sort-of remember how he’d felt when he’d had those thoughts. I wasn’t as if the memory of them was lost – they simply ceased to trouble him – ceased to be of note. He no longer considered those things. It was only by deliberately reviewing the times he’d filled the bottles that they came to mind, and even then in a second-hand way, not with the original intensity.

Perhaps some thoughts were harder to bring to mind than others? He’d genuinely forgotten some of them. Probably the least important… Past weaknesses and mistakes that weren’t even worth consideration. The cracked bottle, what was in that? Something important? He couldn’t put his finger on it, but it would come back to him eventually.

Right now, He needed to focus, to solidify the idea of his current anxiety so he could freeze and remove it. With his mind cleared of distractions, he would be able to face tomorrow’s negotiations with confidence. Inner certainty would be aligned with the more than convincing numbers and the investors would inevitably fall into line.

He’d noticed that the more dominant personality always seemed to win out in these negotiations, even when common-sense suggested it would not. In this case, common-sense was on his side too. It simply was the best course to follow the path he had in mind. His was the way that would almost certainly see all of them increase their wealth. The risk was low. It was only fear and cowardice that was making the investors hesitant now. The crisis wouldn’t last much longer, and even if it continued for a while, he was already positioned to profit from that too.

Yes!

He could feel the doubts beginning to crystallize. They seemed to take the form of a tiny wisp of silver smoke as they were drawn out of his head and down into the bottle. The unwanted thoughts seemed to curl contentedly into their new home as he put the seal in place.

He gave a long sigh of relief. He should have done this a year ago. This crisis had been nagging at him all this time – stealing valuable mind-space that could have been devoted to devising ways to profit from it – and now… he could see exactly how to profit.

He opened up his computer and started rewriting his arguments for Monday. This new approach would be far better than before. It was likely they would want to increase their investments further once they’d heard his pitch. Extensions on repayment certainly wouldn’t be a problem. It felt good to be free of doubts and worries again.

*

Hours had passed. It would be dark outside now. He should have gone home hours ago.

The bottle was still sitting on his desk. He’d finished the updates while the ideas were fresh in his mind and had forgotten to put it in the refrigerator right away. It didn’t really matter. The unwanted thoughts still slept quietly at the bottom of the bottle.

He walked over to the glass doors and opened the fridge, placing the fresh bottle in an empty space on the lower shelves.

“Tink!” The sound of cracking glass. But he hadn’t touched anything.

He glanced down, to see that the crack in the biggest bottle had spread.

“Tink!” The cracks spread again.

A tiny wisp of smoke began to seep from the bottle. It didn’t drift normally, or dissipate, instead, it moved unnaturally, like something searching for him – like a snake bobbing its head from side to side, judging the distance to its prey.

He slammed the fridge door closed and as it slammed shut, the bottle made a shattering sound, like something sharp, scraping and falling in on itself.

The pink smoke poured through a gap in the door-seal and flowed straight towards him. The fridge wasn’t intended to be airtight. Perhaps it should have been, but it was too late for that now.

He staggered back, trying to fend it off with his hands. Clutching at the smoke was useless. It simply flowed through his gasp and back into his head.

Dizzy, he felt as if he might fall. Sinking to his knees before he collapsed into something hard and sharp, he gritted his teeth. He pressed his hands to his head, trying to somehow relieve the pain.

A wave of nausea hit, and the room lurched sideways.

The pain flowed down his spine, filling his body with a pure agony that erased any possibility of action. He couldn’t muster the will to do anything but lie still and endure.

His chest seemed to bubble and warp as if his flesh and bone had become boiling water. The weird sensation of distortion spread downwards. It was if he was inflating, bursting, inflating again. He couldn’t breathe. His vision darkened.

*

When he awoke the pain was gone. He got onto his hands and knees, about to stand, but his body felt strange. Really strange. A heavy weight shifted beneath his chest, and as it moved, strange erotic sensations flowed through him.

Still on all fours, he looked at his hands. They were wrong somehow; the fingers were longer and thinner.

Shifting into a kneeling position he looked down to find the cause of the odd sensations in his chest. There was a massive swelling there, pushing out the shirt so that the buttons were about to pop. Grasping at it, he found the unmistakable form of two large feminine breasts – far more than he could heft with his hands. His fingers brushing the nipples sent a shudder down his spine, raising a heat in his crotch. They were real, and they were definitely part of him.

Like the shirt, his pants were stretched tight on him in place, loose in others. His hips and copious behind were almost big enough to make the stitching of his pants split, while the waist hung loose.

He grabbed the edge of the desk and pulled himself to his feet.

The room seemed bigger than it had before, or he was smaller. It seemed he had shrunk considerably, and it was only this overall reduction in size that had saved his clothes from bursting.

With a growing sense of dread, he reached for the gap where his thighs met his body. Through his pants he could feel the heat of a small soft bulge that certainly wasn’t anything like his cock and balls.

Disbelieving, but faced with no other possible explanation, he spoke the words aloud.

“I’ve turned into a woman. I don’t believe it.”

It had to be the broken bottle. But how? How could a thought – a mere idea – transform him physically?

Removing the doubts – the qualities he’d feared or despised, or that had simply held him back – had never changed his body before. Why had it changed now?

The obvious conclusion was that he had bottled away too much for far too long, but that wasn’t really an explanation. The book, and the old woman that had gifted it to him had never hinted at anything like this. Or had they? There was no science here – no logic – to grasp. It had never really made sense, and now… it simply made even less.

He’d meddled with something dangerous, and it had been useful, but he’d pushed his luck too far. Could he fix this? He would need to read the book again, something he hadn’t done in years.

Was he alone in having this experience? Or were there other copies of the book? Others who had profited, then gone too far?

Perhaps he had his priorities wrong? Maybe this was an opportunity?

What do I look like?

Once the idea was there, he needed to see himself. Why wasn’t there a mirror in the safe? He twisted to catch his image reflected in the glass of the refrigerator doors. Unclear and ghostly as it was, he could still see an attractive short woman with long blonde hair. Her chest was enormous. He didn’t know anything about cup-sizes, but it was porn actress huge. Her hips and bottom were just as extreme. Even through the oversized, ill-fitting men's clothes, she was obviously extremely curvaceous. Her face was pretty, her expression sly but feminine. Her eyes were large, nose small, with bee-stung lips and a delicate chin, all framed by a mass of hair.

The image wasn’t remotely recognizable as him. Or was it? He studied more carefully. It could perhaps be a sister, or a daughter of his. If he’d ever had a daughter, which of course he did not. He was single, his life devoted to the company. He’d never had time to marry or be a father. Probably for the best, given this little incident?

He… he was a she now … apparently. It seemed impossible, but the magic in the book had seemed unbelievable too. Her body … it was a bit on the extreme side, but certainly ticked some boxes. He… she… was more than a little slutty, but she could have done worse.

She sighed.

That’s what you get for messing with magic. Maybe this is how I wanted to be? It feels… Yeah. It feels good.

This single mishap had taken away his company, his life’s work, his wealth, his sterile empty mansion.

She couldn’t bring herself to care. It was a relief more than anything. Why on earth had she been wasting her life pursuing something so empty? So meaningless? So boring? Maybe there’d been a time when it had been fun, but it had become nothing more than a habit, and a bad one at that.

What was wealth without purpose? What use were possessions with no time to enjoy them?

She could always try and use the magic somehow. Maybe she could draw out the troublesome femininity and bottle it away?

No.

Apart from the half-remembered warnings from the old woman about trying to repeat the same magic twice, there was the date today. Halloween. If things went anything like one of those stories about magic – and this was exactly like something from one of those stories – she’d end up trapping herself in a bottle. There’d probably be a genie costume and some mind-control turning her into a submissive slave for whoever found it, probably some horny janitor with bad breath and a love for maid costumes.

There was no way she was going to put the whimsy of the magic to the test on a night like this. In fact, now that her true feelings were free, she didn’t see any need to mess with it ever again.

Things had probably turned out for the best.

It would be near to impossible to convince anyone that she was Colin Ballantine, but what was the point anyway? His company and his vast wealth were a deadweight. Why waste her time pretending to be him?

She opened the drawers holding the gold and silver coins and transferred them to a pair of empty briefcases.

She locked the safe and then the office behind her, and took the elevator down.

The world was waiting.

Finally, her life could begin.