Toon Jooce: Now in Cow!

A couple try out a cow-themed toon transformation drink pulled off the shelves for being a little too potent. Explicit.

The can of Toon Jooce looked exactly like it had in the commercials: flat, bounded by an outline, and subtly unsteady, like some cosmic animator had rotoscoped itinto Andrew’s hand. He could feel its roundness but the only visual cues distinguishing it from a cardboard cutout were the soft-shaded shadows beneath his fingers. The black-and-white cow-print pattern on the label didn’t even move if he turned the can from side to side.

Miranda stood at the foot of the bed, a smile on her lips and an eager gleam behind her glasses. She lifted her eyebrows expectantly when he looked back up at her. “Well?” she asked.

“Weren’t these like, pulled off the shelves?” he asked.

Of course he’d been interested when Toon Jooce came out, billed as the first commercially-available toon transformation drinkable. The inherent volatility of toon matter made it difficult to provide the kind of safe, reversible changes most consumer-grade transformation triggers offered. It had only been on the market for two weeks before a few high-profile cases of unintentional permanence had forced the manufacturer to recall the entire stock.

Miranda just shrugged. “The gas station I bought it from must not have heard the news. But I know you’ve got a thing for cow girls…” She plucked the can from Andrew’s hand and held it between two of her fingers. “So when I saw this on the shelf, it made me think of you.”

It was hard for Andrew to say no to the idea of fooling around with a bouncy cartoon cow-girl version of his girlfriend, but the knot of anxiety deep in his belly made it almost as hard to say yes. “That’s super cool of you, it’s just…you know people have gotten stuck using that stuff, right?”

Miranda sat down on the side of the bed and wrapped an arm around his back to reassure him. “I saw those stories too—it only happened because they got too into it. As long as I keep cool and don’t lose my head, I’ll be fine.” She leaned against him and lowered her voice to a playfully conspiratorial whisper. “Besides, I’m not doing this just for you.”

“Okay, okay. I’ll make sure you don’t get too crazy, all right?”

Miranda smiled. “Deal.” Taking the can with her, she hopped off the bed and found a spot on the floor with plenty of open space on all sides. “Got your lasso ready, cowboy?”

Andrew shared a mutual snicker with her as he scooted up to the edge of the bed. He had some idea of what to expect thanks to videos online, but had never seen it this up close and personal.

With a dramatic gesture, Miranda popped open the tab on the Toon Jooce. A few black-and-white toon bubbles fizzled up into the air and poped. Under her breath she counted down, “Three, two, one,” then lifted the can to her lips and tipped her head back in one smooth motion, drinking it all down in several big gulps.

After she swallowed, there was a moment of silence, heavy with expectation. Miranda gave the can a thoughtful look. “Hmm,” she mused, “pretty good, actually. Kinda like caramel cream, but more cream—mmmrrp!” Mid-sentence, a deep burp rumbled its way up her throat. She covered her mouth to stifle the sound, but only succeeded in redirecting the pressure. With an exaggerated thwump like the sound of a foley artist punching a big soft pillow, her chest surged outward so quickly that it split the front of her shirt clean open. Taut, tawny-yellow cartoon muscle thrust itself outward in two jutting swells, shoving her nipples, now thick and glossy green, down and to either side. Despite their jiggling roundness, they were decidedly no longer breasts. They were pecs.

The Barmaid and the Barbarian

In the middle of her shift, a barmaid turns into a handsome wolf barbarian. Oh no! Explicit.

Rosemary never spilled a drop of ale if she could help it. She knew the tables of The Red Hart so well she could weave between them with her eyes closed, and had a hand so steady that she could have been an archer or a craftsman, if either had been acceptable jobs for a young woman. So the full flagon she had upended over the wolf-kin’s head was entirely on purpose.

“Oh, I’m sorry, milord,” she said, to make it clear she wasn’t sorry at all.

She tugged a gray cloth from her belt and tossed it over the wolf’s snout, then turned sharply and walked away, leaving him to mop the ale out of his dripping fur and braided beard.

She heard the other wolves cackling and growling in delight: “Haw, that maid’s got steel between her legs!” “More steel than Wulfric’s got, that’s sure.” “You bend over and lift your tail like that for all the humans, or just the pretty ones?”

Rosemary’s cheeks were tinged pink. In the back of her mind, she wondered if she might have been mistaken, whether she really had felt those claws digging into her chest, trying to sneak a handful while she was bent over the table. She knew enough not to listen to that voice, though.

As she stepped behind the bar, she set down the flagon rather loudly and said, “Molly.”

The other barmaid lifted her cheek from her hand and turned to look at her with a curious but blank expression, as if she had no clue what Rosemary might want with her.

“Stop making doe eyes at the beast-kin,” Rosemary said. “There’s other tables to serve.”

Molly sighed. “Isn’t it exciting though? A whole pack of barbarians, right here in our tavern.”

“If by barbarians you mean Northerners and by exciting you mean a lot of work, then yes,” Rosemary said. She fetched a couple of mugs from behind the counter, and set them pointedly next to Molly’s arm. “The table by the fireplace has been asking about their mead.”

The mugs clinked together as Molly picked them up, then leaned in close and lowered her voice. “What if one of them wants to take me back to his room and fuck me like an animal? And then he carries me off to his longhouse to dress me in furs and make me his bride...”

Rosemary said, “Well, until that happens you’re still on your shift, so get to it.”

The Mansion

Four horror-style stories from a haunted-style mansion: "The Portrait," "The Trophy," "The Conservatory," and "The Stables." General.

1 – The Portrait

At the front of the hall hung a portrait painted in oils: a woman in a gown and corset, with dark lips and darker hair. Its eyes didn't follow the viewer so much as pierce through them. Though its mouth curled down into the slightest scowl, the light and shadow across its cheeks made it seem, if you caught it in the corner of your eyes, as though it was smiling.

Paintings lined the hall, but it was the portrait that Jason's flashlight lingered on. He stuffed a fist into the pocket of his puffy jacket and hunched his shoulders to fend off a shiver. Did it count as creepy? It was working on him, but he'd have to convince the rest of his friends if he wanted to win their contest. Setting his flashlight down on a nearby table, he dragged his phone out of his jeans pocket.

While he framed the portrait in his phone's camera, his fingers grew cold. He clenched his hand into a fist, then blew on his knuckles, then patted his cheeks, but they remained cold and oddly pale. Hurry up and get the shot, he told himself.

With a ruby-nailed finger, he tapped the screen, then lowered it to peer at the finished picture. The zipper on the front of his jacket twitched before sliding downward, slowly baring the front of his shirt.

No good. The picture had come out blurry. Jason took a few steps forward. His sleeves thinned out while he rubbed his hands together to warm them up—slender fingers, slim wrists, goose- bumps along his soft skin. He swept a lock of darkening hair behind his ear, out of the way of a red teardrop earring.

The portrait's hands, folded in its lap, now looked large and plain in comparison, and its ears were conspicuously unadorned.

Lifting his phone again, he held it as still as possible. His pursed lips were overtaken by red lipstick. The collar of his shirt stretched lower across his chest and his copper-red hair tickled his slender shoulders. He tipped his head back, held his breath, and snapped another picture. This time, the shot was clearer, but the photo itself seemed wrong. Instead of eerie scornful beauty, there was a confused, almost shocked look in the portrait's eyes.

Going Up

For two office workers, an elevator ride becomes a growing, swelling, sloshing experience as they're turned into a big goofy toon wolf and gator. Mature.

On one side of the elevator stood Andrew. On his way back from a late lunch, he hadn't expected to run into anyone he knew. Okay, 'knew' was a bit of a stretch, since he didn't even know her name, but he knew she worked in Legal up on the fifty-second floor, that he was intimidated by how good she looked in a pantsuit, and that he wouldn't be able to say a word to her without stumbling over his own tongue.

On the other side of the elevator was Breana. She'd just gotten out of a meeting with one of their clients. She couldn't help feeling a little jealous of Andrew, who didn't have to haul out a stuffy suit jacket or wear heels every time he had to meet someone new. She didn't know his name either, but she recognized him from the couple of times she'd been down to Finance on the forty-third floor. They'd never had the chance to talk before.

"So," she said, breaking the silence as they waited for the doors to close. "You like Dopey Ditties?"

Andrew was caught completely off guard. "Um, what?"

"You have a, uh, B.B. Wolf mug on your desk." Great idea, she thought, kicking off a conversation with old cartoons. Not weird at all. "I always liked Al A. Gator."

"Oh. He's pretty cool," Andrew said, for lack of anything better to say.

The doors swung shut on the lobby and, mercifully giving Breana an excuse to go quiet again, the elevator chimed, "Going up."

The two of them were about to get know each other real well.

Shifting

A new werewolf and her boyfriend are ready for her first change. They weren't expecting her to change into a male werewolf, though. Explicit.

June sat on the floor of the living room in nothing but her underwear, with all the furniture pushed up against the walls. Sean hovered nearby, reading over Your First Full Moon, the pamphlet from the doctor's office, for what had to be the fiftieth time.

While the bite had healed weeks ago, today she'd woken up with two strings of red marks curled around her left wrist. Cortisone cream only helped so much, so she'd put on a long-sleeved shirt and tried her best not to scratch, but they'd itched all day long. Now that the mark was bare, it was hard to keep her fingers off of it. Every so often, it twinged beneath her skin like a flexing muscle.

"You sure you don't want anything else to eat?" Sean asked, looking up from the pamphlet.

They'd read the whole thing together: sitting on their bed, her arm freshly bandaged and tucked against her chest, her cheek against his fur, leaning on him like a big, Sean-shaped comfort pillow. The cuddling was one of the upsides of having a collie for a boyfriend.

June leaned back on the floor. "At this point, I'm less worried about going hunting and more worried about throwing up on the carpet." Then she added, "I'm full, but thanks." All day she'd had more bark and more bite in her than usual. She wasn't sure how much of that was anxiety and frustration, and how much was the feral feeling stirring beneath her skin.

The Party

Five short stories filled with Halloween-y costume transformation. Mature.

The setting sun lit the tops of the trees like Halloween lights against the purple sky. The old house poked its third story up above the leaves, looking down at the town below, where trick-or-treating was in full swing. The weather had relented just in time, making the evening crisp, but not cold. Cars already lined the narrow road leading up from the highway, parked off the shoulder wherever space could be found.

The path to the house was strung with small lanterns, but Mitch lingered by the side of the road, pacing while trying to look like he wasn't pacing. He picked his head up every time he heard another car rolling by, and occasionally reached back to make sure the duct tape holding his tail on wasn't peeling off. His fox costume was a last-minute affair: a headband with red ears, a costume tail taped to the seat of his pants, and a scribble of black marker on top of his nose, with a few whiskers drawn along his cheeks.

When she saw Mitch, Leah called out, "Hey!" Then she remembered her mask and pushed it up on top of her head. "Hey, Mitch!" she called again, jogging up to meet him.

Leah was dressed as a lion, in a costume that could have come from a stage production: a tawny bodysuit, big furry gloves and boots for paws, a fake mane with rounded ears poking from the top, and a rubber mask, which had been painted over to match the rest of the costume. A wire in her tail kept it curled in the air and made it swing behind her when she walked.

Mitch turned and smiled, relieved to see someone he knew. "Oh, hey!" he said, then nudged his glasses up his nose and took a closer look at Leah. "Where'd you get that? It looks good."

"My parents' attic. I had to kinda sneak it out of their house, but it was pretty dusty, so I don't think they're going to miss it for one night," Leah said, turning sideways to show off the tasseled tail.

"By the way, thanks for inviting me," Mitch said. "If you hadn't, I'd probably just wind up sitting in my dorm all night."

The two of them joked about tearing themselves away from video games until Allison arrived, dressed in a tank top in defiance of the fact that it was almost November, and with her arms folded tight against her chest. She looked from Mitch's bargain-bin fox costume to Leah's full, theatrical lion outfit. With a hesitant frown she asked, "Uh, is...everyone going to be dressed up?"

"There's probably going to be some people not in costume," Leah said. She lifted the lion mask from her forehead and offered it to Allie. "But you can borrow this if you want."

"Thanks," Allie breathed. She slipped the mask on over her face, then ruffled her hair to hide the elastic strap and tugged at the eye holes until they lined up with her eyes. The well-rendered snarl and wrinkled snout went a long way toward making up the fact that it was just a mask. "I don't want to look lame if Tory's going to be here," she said, wrapping her arms around herself again. "Now can we go inside?"

"We're still waiting for Erin and Chris. Let's give them another minute or two," Leah said.

It was hard to miss Chris. As he walked up, he announced himself with a dramatic growl of, "Greetings, puny humans!" He was dressed in a long-sleeved shirt patterned with red scales, a pair of tattered pants he'd used to be everything from a pirate to a peasant, red body paint to cover his hands and legs and face, a small rubber dragon's snout on top of his nose, and a stuffed red tail bouncing against the back of his calves.

Erin showed up just after Chris, wearing a jacket and jeans and canvas trainers. The only thing of hers that was even remotely a costume was the shock of red dye she'd put her hair the week before, and she had insisted that was just because she was tired of purple. "I heard you all the way down the road," she told Chris, giving him a mild glare. He didn't take it personally. Mild glaring was Erin's default state.

"You know this is a costume party, right?" Allie asked Erin.

Chris added, "I've got some horns and extra body paint back in my car. You could make a pretty good devil."

Erin rolled her eyes and sighed through her teeth. "Thanks, but I'm fine. I don't want a costume, I'm just here for the party."

And so the five of them filed up along the path toward the house: Leah in most of a lion costume, Chris already in character as a dragon, Allie wearing Leah's lion mask, Erin resolutely refusing to be anything but herself, and Mitch as a makeshift fox, bringing up the rear and gazing up at the old house rising from among the trees. The night was already settling in, rolling up the last rays of sunlight and drawing the sky darker. The warmth of music and voices rose as they crossed the lawn, eager to join...

 

The Party