The front door was standing wide open, and a black woman in a short skirt, fishnet top, and stripper heels was leaning over the coffee table, something clutched in her hand, chanting what sounded like nonsense syllables.
Becky was the first to scream. The woman just continued chanting, louder over the screams and yells of the girls, until she turned to face them, holding in one hand the gem -- removed from the stick-and-twine figure -- which appeared to be glowing slightly with an inner light.
She spat, “I wish you would all be quiet until I tell you you can talk again.”
The sounds the girls were making immediately ceased. They realized they’d gone completely mute and just looked, terrified, as this woman who looked like a hooker -- she wasn’t even wearing anything under her fishnet top -- eyed them.
”I see one of you was cursed just like I was,” she said, nodding toward Robin, who was in the back of the group and therefore highest up on the stairs. “Actually, since this looks like an all-girl party, maybe not just like I was. I wish I was back to being a guy, with the body I’ve always wanted.”
The girls would have gasped if they’d been able to emit sounds. They watched as the woman’s body morphed, growing taller, breasts reducing, arms and legs swelling into well-defined muscles, long hair retracting into the scalp, makeup disappearing from her face. The skirt became a pair of basketball shorts, fishnet top turned into a tank top shirt, shoes changing into some version of Air Jordans.
The handsome, shaved-headed black man who now stood in the living room flexed his new muscles briefly, then felt the front of his shorts with an open palm. “Oh, my God,” he said in a deep voice. “I guess this is about as good as I could have imagined.”
Noticing the girls with quizzical expressions on their faces, he said, “All right, why don’t you ladies come sit down here and we’ll have a chat? I know you can’t talk, but please don’t try to text anyone, okay?”
He moved to shut the front door as the girls reluctantly, slowly, shuffled down the stairs and into the living room. He almost stumbled, and muttered something about not being used to walking in flat shoes for a change.