Mary opened the trunk of her car to find the four grocery bags full of cheese she had bought. She hadn't stopped to think about it before now, but buying so much cheese definitely seemed abnormal. A corner of her mind, however, was going wild over the prospect of the feast before her eyes.
She hefted two of the bags and entered the kitchen. When she put them down on the counter, she felt a slight pain at the bottom of her spine. She felt it again in the garage as she bent over to pick up the remaining two bags in the trunk.
She had to place them on the floor of the garage in order to close the trunk, and that brought even more pain. It felt concentrated just below the waist of her pants. Mary finally decided to examine the problem, feeling her rear end with both hands. She felt them rub against a lump that she knew wasn't supposed to be there.
Quickly undoing the zipper, she pulled her pants down a bit and the pain subsided. Her hands explored behind her once more, finding a fleshy organ which was emerging from her back. She screamed. Her head craned around to get a look at whatever it was, and she discovered it to be a tail. It was pinkish in color, ringed with slight depressions every couple of inches. Slowly, it grew in length as she held it in her hands. It was about two inches around, tapering toward its tip.
"This is really it," Mary said to herself. "I'm going to be a mouse." Even saying it out loud and seeing her tail grow so long that she could pull its tip around to the front, she still had trouble believing it was happening.
As she stared, she saw another sign of her transformation. The backs of her hands were growing small white hairs. The fur spread up her arm toward her elbow. She dropped her tail, feeling the sensation of it slapping the concrete floor. Her nails turned pink and grew out, thickening and sharpening. Her forearms had become completely covered by white fur, and the skin on her palms was much thicker than before.
She snapped out of the awe of her transformation, realizing that she shouldn't spend all of it in her garage. Mary pulled her pants all the way off and draped them over her shoulder. She bent over to pick up the grocery bags and bring them into the kitchen. As she walked, she started to feel disoriented. She ceiling looked like it was getting higher. She continued toward the door, lifting a foot to climb the first of three steps that would lead her up through the doorway. She thought she had lifted it to the correct height, but the top of her foot hooked on the underside of the step and Mary went hurtling forward, banging her knees on the steps and landing on her bags of cheese. Wheels and wedges flew everywhere, and the seat of her pants flapped over her face.
She laid there, dazed. After a moment she regained her senses and picked herself up. She saw the mess of cheese on the floor and looked inside the crumpled bags. Most of the cheese inside had been flattened. Some were oozing out of their plastic wrappers. Mary took up the bags and carefully climbed the steps.
She immediately realized they seemed much taller than before. She approached the counter and her suspicions were confirmed. It, too, was taller. Mary put down the tattered bags and returned to the garage. Her feet felt very loose inside her shoes and she easily kicked them off. The notion of shrinking came to her as no huge surprise, considering what else was happening to her. Her ears were beginning to feel funny as well.
After she had picked up the cheese which had scattered across the floor, she was about to dump them in the garbage when something made her stop. She suddenly found herself wondering why she was throwing such a treasure away. Did a few specks of dust and dirt really matter? "Of course it matters," Mary rationalized. However, she couldn't get her arms to throw her load into the basket. More and more her stomach was craving the luscious cheese, and more and more the prospect of a little dirt seemed like an acceptable compromise.
Before she knew it, Mary was chowing down on everything. The dirty cheese, the clean cheese and everything in between. She scarfed the expensive food down as if she hadn't eaten in a year. As she did so, she noticed she had to change her chewing method. As her front teeth enlarged, she began nibbling the cheese into small bites before it even entered her mouth. She accidentally stabbed an occasional wedge with her claws, tearing it apart.
When she finally felt full, only a bag's worth of cheese remained. She let out a large burp, then squeaked out a giggle at her gluttony. As she patted her gorged belly, she felt the white fur that had grown there. It had grown everywhere while she was eating, and she was just beginning to take stock in her new changes. She leaned back in her chair, her tail swishing behind her happily while her large round ears flicked idly.