You swore as you tried turning the key one more time, but your car just absolutely would not start. The battery was completely dead. That would be enough to ruin a normal day, but today was Sunday, you'd really desperately needed some groceries, and for some reason you'd decided to risk hitting the Shop Central rather than order takeout or something, figuring you'd have plenty of time to get in and out before Bruce was at all likely to be getting the munchies. But here it was, 4 PM, and your car would not start, and naturally there was nobody to get a jump from. They'd all cleared out in case Bruce showed up.
See, every Sunday, Bruce changes somebody.
Nobody really knew where he got this power from. He seemed as confused about it as anyone else but... it happened. Seemed like it happened even when he didn't have any ideas for that week, just as some sort of weird subconcious thing, and those were the freakiest ones. It had all started... somewhere close to three years ago now? Previously he'd been a normal, pretty boring guy, but now Bruce Caldwell just suddenly had the ability, once every Sunday, to change somebody. Sometimes it was just physical changes. Everyone was pretty sure the first member of his harem was his wife to begin with, and he'd just made her super hot, at first. Bruce made a lot of women super hot... or at least he made a lot of super hot women. A few had definitely been men prior, and there's a rumor at least one had been a woodpecker or something that had really annoyed him one morning when he was feeling weirdly horny or something. Seemed like Bruce didn't ever get regular horny anymore for that matter, just weirdly. Lot of kinks with that guy. Probably inevitable considering.
He didn't just change people's bodies though. Around when people started to, you know, notice, he'd kind of started invested in security. Turned a bunch of people into like, elite bodyguards and snipers and such. Turned this little girl Tammy Hosenfeffer into this giant dragon. Last time the government came after him he turned one of them into this like... high tech defense grid thing, kept anyone from trying to hit him with a bomb or a drone strike or whatever, which as someone living in the same town, you appreciated a bit. People of course were always telling you to move, but it was a nice quiet neighborhood mostly. You just had to make sure Bruce never saw you. At least not on a Sunday. Honestly he was still a pretty nice guy the rest of the time. Sure there was the armed guard force everywhere, but you couldn't really blame him. And the girls on each arm, that was maybe a bit much. His cars. The fancy suits. You kinda hoped he'd just bought the fancy suits like a regular person, but the car, that was originally his mother-in-law. They'd never gotten along, and the thing where his wife, at least people were pretty sure it was his wife, only had physical changes at first, well, that hadn't lasted.
Point was, when Bruce changed someone it wasn't even necessarily into a person, or even an animal. It was kind of a sky's the limit thing. At first he wasn't all that creative about it, and the earliest real weird ones, those were probably accidents. Those weeks he didn't actually want to use his power, and it just sorta happened anyway. He'd usually fix those the next week, but there'd been this 200 foot tall tree for a while, this freaky vortex in the middle of a road. One of his neighbors once turned into like this baffling rainbow laser thing and shot off into the sky when he'd called it an early night. Weird dream or something.
The word eventually got out enough that everyone knew just to stay the hell away on Sundays, and these days usually he'd just reconfigure his harem or his security team... there was actually a lot of overlap lately. But you never knew. He had days where he was bored. Worse he had days where he had no ideas, that lead to accidents. The other thing that lead to accidents was being in the path of his weekly routine. Bruce liked getting out on Sundays. If nothing else people paid him the most respect then.
Oh that was it. Right there, pulling into the parking lot. That incredibly distinct sexy red sportscar he always drove. Pulling right into the parking lot. You were stuck now. There was no way he didn't know you were there. He was necessarily paranoid about security, there'd be snipers along his whole route today, maybe that dragon flying around somewhere. Someone would have seen you leaving... and not leaving. Yup, he was walking over. What was the plan? Get out and say hi, all neighborly? Duck down and hope he walked past? Explain your car trouble, hope for some sympathy? Hell, there was a chance he'd give you a jump even.
But who were you kidding. It was Bruce, it was Sunday, and he was almost certainly going to change you.