Now you didn't really believe good ol' Uncle Jack could perform magic, even though he lived on the outskirts of a town that looked like it could've easily held the Salem witch trials. But he was your mom's brother, and he didn't seem like the bad sort, so you figured you'd humor the old man and play along. A little make-believe never hurt anyone, and if it helped you get along for the summer, so be it.
Although you were kinda miffed you were dumped at Uncle Jack's for the summer. You had a lot of plans back home, if only your overprotective parents didn't think they couldn't leave you alone in the house for three months. It's not like you were the party sort, you were plenty responsible and studious and you never got into trouble, so why couldn't they just let you be? All you would do is read books and play video games and watch TV anyway. Instead you were stuck out in the middle of nowhere living over a trick-or-treater's wet dream.
You sighed to yourself as you sidled down the aisles. At least the costumes seemed high-quality, plenty realistic. Maybe it was because Uncle Jack was so into this stuff, so he only stocked the best. You weren't certain how much demand there was for this kind of thing out here though, maybe there was a tourist attraction nearby--even though you never did find any information on anything of interest.
You didn't really want to dress up in something ridiculous, especially on the off chance Uncle Jack was playing a prank for purposes of getting a picture of you looking like a total dork. But still, if you refused, he might get offended, so you had to pick something. Might as well go for something relatively safe. So when you saw the headbands in one of the mini-booths, you picked up the one with black cat ears and put it on.
Something felt weird. Almost like your ears popped like on an airplane. You reached up to stick a finger in your ear and wiggle it, but your finger hit nothing but the smooth side of your scalp and your hair: no ear, no lobe, nothing. But you could still hear, since you could hear the bird outside the window and Uncle Jack puttering around doing something. You reached up to feel the other side of your head, and sure enough, there was no ear there either.
In a state of dull confusion, you looked in the small mirror at the top of the mini-booth and, as you suspected, no ears on the side of your head, only the cat ears sticking out from your hair near the crown of your head. While you stared in disbelief, something dropped on the floor on the other side of the shop, and one of the cat ears turned / to hear it more clearly. Wait, what happened to the headband? Now there was only...
"Holy crap!" you gasped as you backed up, tripping over your feet and landing on your butt.
"Maria, you okay over there?" Uncle Jack called out as he rushed to the aisle you were in.
"What...what is this? Hypnosis? Is there some...drug? Am I tripping?" you babbled as your hands gingerly poked the cat ears sticking of you your head, and you felt your fingers through the ears.
"Hey, it's okay, you're fine," Uncle Jack says as he knelt down next to you and grasped your shoulder. "I told you, it's magic, nothing to worry about."
Your brain felt like it short-circuited. Nothing to worry about? You have become a cat-eared freak and there's nothing to worry about? How were you going to explain this when you go back home?
"Am I stuck like this forever?!" you blurted out your train of thought.
"Of course not, none of my display costumes are defective," Uncle Jack replied definitively, as though you were asking whether a car on a sales lot were a lemon. "All you have to do is say the release spell, and it goes back to being a costume."
"---Well?? What is the spell?" you snapped after waiting in suspense.
"Oh, just say: 'cat's out of the bag' for that one," Uncle Jack said evenly as you felt sure you were losing your mind.
"Cat's out of the bag," you said, feeling like a fool, and wondering if you were being punked. However, sure enough, as soon as you said the phrase, and tugged on a cat ear, the headband reappeared and the whole thing popped off your head like nothing happened. Now that you looked closely, the tag you assumed to be care instructions actually had the phrase "cat's out of the bag" written on it.
"Well, now you know how they work," Uncle Jack chortled to you proudly, oblivious to the fact that you looked like you had taken a mental vacation. "Feel free to try any of the ones out here, just give me a review of each one when you're done, and it'll be great advertising when you go into town."
"I--I'm not really into parading around town dressed up as..." you trailed off. Was it really dressing up as something else when you actually became something else?
"Oh don't worry, they all come with obliviousness charms, everyone will just think you've been that way forever," Uncle Jack waved you off, but you are still too dumbfounded to make sense of his words.
After a relatively uneventful dinner with Uncle Jack nattering on about magic and you mindlessly nodding away, you finally went to bed, only to toss and turn. Even after all the lights were out and you were sure Uncle Jack had gone to sleep, you just couldn't drop off. Finally, you got out of bed, snuck across the living room, down the stairs, and into the store. You had a small flashlight, and that combined with the moonlight coming from the windows gave you a decent if somewhat eerie view of the costumes. Lost in thought you wandered up one aisle and down another. As you reached the back of the store, you saw something you didn't notice earlier: a doorway covered by a dark curtain. Curiosity got the better of you, and you decided to take a peek.
Inside the room were several tall glass cases, and each appeared to have costumes that were much more intricate, complete, and impressive than even the ones in the store. You felt yourself drawn to one in particular, and before you realized it, you were standing in front of the case. Inside that case was a costume that looked like it would belong to...