Laptop now safely in hand you cross the hallway from Benji’s room to your own – its a fairly typical teenage boys room, blue painted walls, single bed on the left as you walk in, desk in front of the medium sized window directly ahead, with dresser and closet on the right. The major difference between your room and Benji’s (apart from colors, and not being a toxic waste dump) is the obvious difference in interests – while he has posters of superheroes and sports stars, you have bands and movies. Where he has sports equipment and trophies, you have bits of tech and books.
To an outsider it might seem you're a nerd and he’s a jock – but in truth neither of you are that extreme in your interests, you each just fall to slightly different sides of the spectrum. Where he skateboards with his friends or plays little league, you’d mostly rather go to the movies or play video games - but then you used to play little league, and he likes video games as much as any other boy his age.
As you re-enter your room and pass the pile of clothing you discarded earlier to shower, to avoid any comparisons with Benji’s mess you decide to kick it lightly to the corner of the room – into the ‘neat’ pile of dirty clothing already there. That's when you notice the shoes you’re wearing, and that you are wearing them now – no longer hanging off the tips of your feet, but your entire foot, including the heel is now snugly inside the shoe.
You stop wide eyed and stare. Then you experimentally move your foot around – lifting your lower leg behind you and kicking the tip into the carpet, able to feel the bump in your toes. Its a tight fit, you cant wiggle your toes and you’d probably have to pull hard to get them off – but even a few minutes ago it would have been impossible for your entire foot to fit in the shoe, forget it happening without significant pain.
The sneakers you were wearing earlier today were size 10’s, and while they fit okay you were probably close to outgrowing them - Benji was probably only about a size 5, significantly smaller. As you're staring down at your feet in bewilderment you squint at the hair on your legs, or more accurately the lack of it. Where normally you had a decent dusting of dark brown hair covering your calves, now the skin showing below where your shorts stop at the knee was almost hairless. Only a small smattering of lighter hair around the ankles was left.
“What the hell?” you exclaim as you reach down to brush your now smooth calf. Your brows furrow and you think back to the shower you just had, that everything had definitely been normal then. ‘Did I use nair instead of bodywash?!’ you ponder as you stroke at the skin.
While this is going on, while you are focused with the bottom half of your body and the strange changes, you cant help but feel your stomach flip. Its a weird feeling, not immediate and forceful like you are about to puke, more like the unease of sea sickness you felt when you went fishing with your grandpa that time. But it’s this uncomfortable feeling that prompts you to walk over to the bed to sit down – but its obvious as you do that the shoes feel looser than a minute ago. Not enough that they would fall off, but you could probably slip them off now, if you tried - more like they were the right size for your feet.
You cant help but think how weird this is as you sit on the bed, your ass hitting the plump mattress a moment sooner than you expected and your eyes darting around the room trying to come up with a credible explanation. And then they lock on to the small rumpled packaging on the floor next to your discarded backpack.
“Oooooh” you remark in a low tone, looking from the transparent packaging down to the shoes on your now apparently shrunken feet. Closing your eyes you consider the situation, ‘They couldn’t actually be magic socks, could they’ you rationalise internally as you bring one leg up and cross it over your knee, chunky shoe hanging in the air - allowing you to more easily examine the borrowed shoe and your changed leg.
“But then, if, then ... what's” you stutter through thoughts out loud and then your voice trails off – you hadn't actually read the label of the socks when you bought them, only bothered to see they looked reasonably comfortable and weren't expensive. The whole magic thing seemed more like a kitschy marketing attempt, with its comic sans font and dated logo of a magicians tall hat. But seeing as magic was apparently real, and that it was used for socks ‘I should probably find out what the hell is happening to me’ you thought.
Leaning over you swipe at the packaging to grab it – failing on the first two attempts before having to scoot further across the bed in order to reach it. It’s with this failure of reach you notice your arms – now also with less hair, and slightly more tanned skin.
Holding the packaging, you discard the plastic behind you on to the bed and look closely at the cardboard that held the socks together. Fairly plan, only really imprinted with the company logo, and apparent instructions on the back in small block text.
Magic Socks – one size fits all. For personal use only. Do not wash with bleach.
‘For personal use? As opposed to wearing them at the same time as someone else?’ you mockingly think as you read through the top of the label. Moving down to the smaller ‘terms and conditions’ styled text, you find what you consider actually useful information.
Directions for use: place shoes previously worn by the individual you wish to transform in to on feet whilst wearing Magic Socks. Transformation can take up to ten minutes to complete, please ensure shoes remain worn for the duration to complete transformation. If mental changes are desired, please continue wearing Magic Socks with shoes for up to an additional hour, or until desired effect is achieved.
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Individual users must wait between one and four hours after use of Magic Socks before additional transformations.
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Where user does not wish to adopt the form of another specific individual, please place new unworn shoes on feet whilst wearing Magic Socks to achieve a transformation into the ‘model user’ of the shoes.
PTO
Having read the label, and now with a better understanding what the socks were doing, “Oh” is the only thing you could bring yourself to utter as you place your now obviously smaller hand on the shoe in your lap.
“I’m … becoming Benji”.