His bank app had also changed, and, as soon as a glanced at it, a warm feeling of power swelled within him, reaching his fat cheeks and making them red. He knew the new PIN - like he knew the Turkish novella dubbed into Russian, the vineyard, the two brothers, the cringy scene with the slap - he knew his new bank account contained multiple investment buckets, the main account capped at 10k euro (at least the Italian one) while the other 7 grew every day by a quantity that spanned across multiple salaries.

"Mmh~ Mmh~ Mmah~"

People were looking. He pressed the back of a ringed hand to his mouth.

His hair spilled down dark and honeyed and salon-waved; his face rounded, softened, warmed into something beautiful, mature and sure of itself - slightly drooping - and the smell of his own perfume rose up around him, French, expensive, unmistakably feminine and old.

The woman laughed. "Oh that's not so politically correct, darling!" She winked "Love it!"

The woman turned, seeing her friend waving her over. She slid off her stool and patted his plush forearm on the way past - "you're funny, ma'am" - and was gone.

Will grunted again.

"So, like... liber- uh-" He frowned, "libertarian view now... because government always ask my family for tax..." He closed his eyes "It makes... fucking sense... for me to... think like this... It so... It IS so... It so clea- fuc- fucking witc- D-da..."

The Shop and the Bar

That shop had no business being on that street.

Will felt it like a big, penetrating splinter. He'd jogged this block a hundred times, past the shuttered tabaccheria and the laundromat that smelled of scorched cotton, and he would have sworn on his mother's rosary that there had never been a storefront wedged between them. Still, there it was: manacing... was it mocking him or something?

It had a narrow, wooden door under a hand-painted sign, the letters curled in jagged spirals, and somehow seemed drunk.

*! POTION FUN HOUSE !*

*? Novelties ! Elixirs ! Discretion Assured ?*

Will was twenty-five, damp with sweat from his usual six kilometers along the river, and gloriously without anywhere to be. That was the thing about Will. He had a swimmer's shoulders and a runner's legs, and a theatrical drive that had gotten him out of three bar-fights. One time, he managed to degenerate the whole thing by yelling "punch!" the other angry dudes mimicking him in disbelief. He moved through the world like a man who had never once been told no in a way that stung.

He pushed the door open. A bell, somewhere overhead, gave a wet, disgusting chime.

Inside, the air was thick and warm and smelled of pine and slimy things. Shelves rose to a ceiling he couldn't see, crowded with bottles: bright green vials, tall crystalline flutes, little amber tubes that caught the light and threw it back gold.

Behind the counter, one elbow propped on the wood, chin resting in her palm, stood a woman. Or at least she looked like one.

"Well," her voice was slightly raspy, but still musical. "Look what the river washed up."

She was older: forty, probably, but hit it quite well. Dark hair shot with silver, pinned up loose so pieces fell against her long neck. A dress of deep green and blue, cut by an aggressive tailor. Her gaze was that of a cat staring blindly at a moth.

"Just looking," Will said, and gave her a grin.

The grin did nothing. She only smiled wider through her blank stare.

"Everyone's just looking, love. It doesn't last long; the looking phase."

"Sure." He drifted along the shelves, reading the labels. "Second Wind? Widow's Comfort? The... The Long Afternoon...?*

He frowned: "You sell what, exactly? Kinky homeopathy?"

The widow laughed slowly. "I sell fun, ma dude." She mimicked Will's casual tone. "I sell afternoons, I sell... the smell of that lady last night's out... I stuff that's kept locked in the cellar because your mother told you he was rude..."

Will smiled. "Charming. Very mystical."

Her eyes moved down him, and back up. "You're a virgin."

Will laughed, betraying surprise "That's - wow. That's a hell of a sales pitch."

"Yeah." Her expression remained blank. She came around the counter, her strong smell twisting the air. "With all that gym," she placed her hands on Will's shoulders, she was slightly taller than him, "all that pretty confidence and snark... and you've never once let anyone actually have you?" Her grin widened: "you flirt with glee, and then you... flee. Right? You remind me of that locked house, with the lights always on." She tilted her head. "It's a shame. You'd be very good at it, if you ever stopped being so afraid of wanting things."

"Oh, like I haven't heard that one before." Will's smile progressively looked more uncomfortable. "Never with so many rosy flourishes of the tongue, tho. That's pretty impressive..."

She ignored him, reaching past him to pluck a bottle from the shelf. She pressed it into his hands. It was warm.

"This is Second Wind. Ever seen Fourteen Again?" She took it back before he could answer and produced another, it pink like the inside of a shell. "Or this. Experience. A hundred lovers' worth of knowing."

The pink bottle glowed faintly. Will found his mouth had gone dry.

There was a moment of silence.

"How much?"

She named a number.

Will set the bottle down very carefully.

"So," he said. "Funny story."

"Mmh?"

"You see I just went for a run. In these." He gestured at his shorts, which had exactly one pocket, containing exactly one house key and a wad of lint. "I have - wait, let me check -" He made a show of patting himself down. "Eh, like I thought. Nothing. I have nothing. In fact, I probably have negative money."

For a long while, the woman simply stared him down. Then she laughed - a low, delighted sound.

"Madonna santa." He smile broadened. "You walked into a magic shop broke."

"Well that is my usual mode of walking."

"Ah yes, but you should know it's very dangerous." The broad, teethy smile was as static as ever. "Well then, Will, your options," she continued, "are still not nil."

She turned back to the counter and crouched behind it. "Dealers often enjoy charity, y'know? If it's once in a while." There was a rattling, the clink of glass. "Or maybe I refuse to let you leave with nothing, if only because I want the story. Here."

What she set on the counter had the ugliest design Will had ever placed his eyes upon: it was a squat, little vial of plastic, which definitely looked like it was free. The liquid inside was the lurid tropical blue of a swimming pool on a postcard, or of an umbrella-cocktail. A curling sticker stood slapped across it at an awkward angle, printed in a janky font.

*★ TOURIST FUN TIME ★*

vacation in a bottle

"That," Will said, "is the tackiest thing I have ever seen."

"Well it's free." She slid it across the wood. "Consider it a gift. Just come back after it wears off. I think I'll have some real fun with this one."

He picked it up. It weighed almost nothing.

"What's it do?"

The woman had already turned away, climbing the little rolling ladder to reshelf the pink bottle. She answered without looking down.

"It shows you a good time, love" A pause. "You should relax, btw. You work so hard at not wanting things. Just this once: go somewhere. Be somewhere." She glanced back over her shoulder, and her eyes were very dark, but alive. "Go have some fun."

The bell chimed wetly as he left.

By the time he reached the corner and turned to look, there was only the tabaccheria, and the laundromat. The shop had vanished.

He didn't drink it that night. Or the next.

The vial migrated around his apartment like his other tacky souvenirs: from the kitchen counter to the windowsill to the top of the fridge, always in the corner of his eye. His flatmate found it and asked what it was, and Will said duty-free thing, some woman gave it to me, which explained nothing.

It was a Friday when it happened. Will was very bored.

Three streets over, one of the only things that happened was taking place: a Latin social, tango and salsa on the inside of an old converted cinema on the weekends. Will often liked to go and not dance. He'd lean against the bar with a beer, sweating in his hand as he watched the couples turn, occasionally chatting with some girl about how shit he was at dancing. He'd told himself he was people-watching, and he would go home alone, and that he would call it a chill night. It wasn't a lie, he sometimes liked to be around people without acting; it felt like rest.

He was halfway out the flat when he doubled back, on impulse, and grabbed the vial off the fridge.

Be somewhere, she'd said.

At the social, the music was already thick. Will took his usual place at the bar. He ordered his usual beer. He watched a woman in green teach her partner something with her hips, and he felt, as he always did, the calm, clean ache of a spectator.

He turned the vial over in his fingers.

You work so hard at not wanting things.

"To hell with it," he said, to no one, and cracked the little plastic cap. He drank it in 2 gulps.

It tasted like an unholy piña colada and cheap sunscreen mixture.

He set the empty vial on the bar, and waited.

The music turned over into something slower. A bolero, syrupy, brushed drums and a man shouting about the sea.

Will suddenly felt his belt tightening at his waist.

"Mh..."

The heat behind his sternum spread - first down, then sideways, then up into his throat. It was not unpleasant. It was, in fact, the opposite of unpleasant, and that was the first genuinely alarming thing, because Will found he did not particularly want it to stop.

His shirt felt tight across the chest.

He looked down.

Will grunted. The tightness across his chest was the two points of his nipples hardening against the cotton of his shirt. Each inhale became a small soft event. He pressed the back of his wrist to his mouth.

"Mmn~."

Around the aching points, the flesh began to gather - not to grow yet, not really, just to plump, to soften, the flat hard planes of a swimmer's pectorals losing their edges gradually. He could feel the muscle loosening, becoming lazy, and something else waking up under it: a swelling warmth, a sense of filling, of two small tender weights beginning to hang where before there had been only the architecture of a young man's chest.

"Is this making me fat?"

He got a hand up under his shirt without thinking, the way you press a bruise, and the flesh met his palm - yielding, hot... rounded...

A sound came out of him that he had never made before. It was low and honeyed.

"Mmmh~."

He snatched the hand back and checked that the bartender wasn't looking.

He sighed in relief.

"Shit I think it's worse... Am I? Nah..."

glorp

Will recoiled. His chest wasn't definitely not just swollen anymore.

"I... I have..."

glorp

With a gush of fat, the little tender weights transformed into handfuls, pushing out, up and forward, the skin stretching against Will's plain white shirt, and raising it below his gaze.

"Nah, bro, I cannot fucking belie- Eeeaagh!"

GLORP

Will almost lost his balance: his new breasts swelled dramatically, the new weight forcing him to firmly plant his feet. The two full, soft globes settled against the front of his ribs and bounced as he recoiled, shifting his weight, their heaviness dragging them down into a drooping structure, the drag itself emanating a slow, bright pleasure that curled Will's toes in his sneakers. His nipples had also enlarged: fat, dark and stiff, the fabric across them producing an agonizing ecstasy.

"God fucking damn it." Will grunted. "What kind of freaky shit is that witch into." He placed a hand on his belly. "Oh God, I feel... it's the same thing as before..."

glorp

A strong, wet surge erupted low within Will, as though someone had poured warm honey just under his skin. The runner's flat stomach, the faint proud ladder of abdominal muscle he'd built over years of five a.m. river runs, simply dissolved. It softened and went round. A belly pushed out over the waistband of his shorts - not a hard gut but a soft one: a pillow with folds.

glorp

Fat again spawned, settled and spread, filling him out and rounding him off, turning any hard, angular lines into curves. Will now looked like a big, manly and womanly version of himself. Soft skin, large, fat, sensitive body, masculine features.

"Ah... Mmmmh~ Is this like- Aaah~ A dom-lesbian potion or whatever?"

He gripped the edge of the bar. His hands, he noticed distantly, were changing on the wood: his knuckles became small, the fingers tapering, the backs going smooth and soft and then plumping up, the nails lengthening into neat pale ovals. His forearms, thick with the muscle, also softened and enlarged, the definition melting under a layer of tender padding, until they were the round, large arms of a woman who had never lifted anything heavier than another, smaller woman.

Will's stomach growled loudly.

A wave of dizziness rolled through him.

"A... Mmmmh~ A... fat... lesbian...?"

Will's head buzzed. Something was swelling inside of it, a force that felt foreign. It came up low and warm, like a dull ache, and then a strong wanting.

"F.. Fuck me..." he thought "Definitely not a lesbian... I think I'm horny for that... that lanky boy in the corner..."

Across the floor a kid danced - twenty-two, maybe, dark hair stuck to his forehead, a lean body still working out what it was for, a nervous hopeful smile. Will knew that kid. Will was that kid, every Friday of his life: the one who watched, who never crossed the floor.

"Okay," Will muttered, gripping the bar. "Okay, focus. That's not- I like chicks... I looked at a chick this morning..."

He reached for her - the one at the gym, good deadlift form, nice - and the memory came, but slow, dragged up from somewhere deep, and by the time it surfaced it had been redecorated.

"Ah. The sporty one. All that effort, bless her. So much sweating, for a body you could buy from good family surgeon."

The thought finished itself in a tone that was warm and bored and expensively unimpressed, and it was coming from inside his own head.

Will's eyes widened.

"What the fuck was that about?!"

crack

With a loud crack, Will's shoulders immediately became less broad and his whole body shrunk, bringing his height down considerably. His whole body seemed to collapse into a stout, rounder form.

Will sighed, exasperated. He suddenly felt an intense need to curse. He blurted the first thing on his mind "it's... it's this bad little club," his voice was low and slurred. "Cheap drinks. Cheap music. I... I watch..."

Will grunted.

"I watch theatre show before. They should play that old song that Sasha liked, da?"

He shrunk again.

Shrinking Down

His bank app had also changed, and, as soon as a glanced at it, a warm feeling of power swelled within him, reaching his fat cheeks and making them red. He knew the new PIN - like he knew the Turkish novella dubbed into Russian, the vineyard, the two brothers, the cringy scene with the slap - he knew his new bank account contained multiple investment buckets, the main account capped at 10k euro (at least the Italian one) while the other 7 grew every day by a quantity that spanned across multiple salaries.

Will recoiled.

"What the fuck!? I don't even watch TV!"

He looked down at his phone, grabbing a small, chubby hand. It had changed into the latest iPhone model, and an app stood at easy muscle-memory. It was a trashy Russian reality TV app. Will was terrified of how he knew the PW, and of how he knew he'll have to type it in in full, without a password manager, and it was only a short, dum, russian word.

His bank app had also changed, and, as soon as a glanced at it, a warm feeling of power swelled within him, reaching his fat cheeks and making them red. He knew the new PIN - like he knew the Turkish novella dubbed into Russian, the vineyard, the two brothers, the cringy scene with the slap - he knew his new bank account contained multiple investment buckets, the main account capped at 10k euro (at least the Italian one) while the other 7 grew every day by a quantity that spanned across multiple salaries.

"Oh... oh no..." Will whispered. In his own voice, at least, for now.

"No, no, no."

glorp

His shorts went next. His tight ass quickly filled with 2 explosions. Pouring fat out behind him, the two heavy, generous swells made the seams weep and give out.

"Mmah~"

Will felt a deep obscene shame at the pleasure that the explosion produced, a slow bright drag up his ass and into his short spine. He moaned again, and the woman two stools down glanced over. He felt his large face go hot. Under the heat, he felt the first small, bright thrill at being the kind of thing that got looked at.

His hips let go in a run of deep warm cracks, the narrow pelvis spreading wide, the waist above it nipping in, turning him into a pear. His hand rose on its own and settled on the new flare of hip, palm out, fingers splayed and slightly lifted - limp-wristed, weight-on-one-leg stance of a refined woman, or a gay man. He watched his own hand do it, retiring it on the bar in shame.

glorp

His thighs filled, soft and full and meeting at the top, thick and smooth and warm, and when he shifted they whispered together that same low, muted pleasure that he'd felt before. It was the slow, steady and distant pleasure of a mature body, rolling through him, thick as syrup - a banked coal of arousal that never quite flared and never quite went out.

"Mmn~ Ah... Mmmaa...."

His running shorts climbed and tightened into fine dark linen, wide-legged, rumpled, expensive.

"Damn Maria outdid herslef with this outfit." Will thought, mentioning his servant Maria, who was now probably cleaning his third Milan villa.

His sneakers softened and heeled into gold sandals. His calves fined; his ankles went slim; his feet arched high into the sandals and ached, a real, specific ache along each arch, the ache of a woman who has stood in beautiful shoes at many long boring parties.

"Ohh, my feet," he sighed. It was fond, martyred complaint that Will quickly got used to.

The woman two stools down was still watching him.

"Well fuck."

She squinted, and went back to her spritz.

He nearly laughed with relief. She couldn't see: whatever that witch did, it also somehow acted as a mask. He could say anything.

"Don't mind me," he declared, his voice was melodic and low, "it's these lights, they give me migraine. The little shimmer, before the headache, you know, da?"

Why am I talking like that?

"Ugh, the LEDs, I know. Give me spots too." The woman turned on her stool and looked at Will, glad of the company. "You on holiday?"

He thought for a while. "Yes, I am. Always holiday." He laughed loudly.

"Eh, yeah, I like to travel, too. It's so nice, seeing different places around the world."

Will felt a need to continue the conversation, as if something more social had suddenly awakened within him, directed especially at a complicity among other women.

He searched for a conversational topic. He usually defaulted to politics, especially when among his friends. He liked satire, especially, thinking it made fun material while still being relevant. He particularly thought of a podcast he'd recently started listening to.

"There's these two guys, y'know, they do a bit about the - mmh... about travel, I think..." he started, and then the sentence curdled in his mouth "- about the... eh... everything, mm." He smiled "Ah! Two clever men, always shouting at the ministers!" He suddenly gestured theatrically. "Poor darlings. Such passion for things that will not once touch them."

Damn witch..., he thought. My head, too... I'm... I've turned into, like... a rich tourist-type...

The thought registered as a twitch of his left eye.

"Ha, yes," the woman snorted. "Mine too. Right about everything, that one."

He tried to haul it back - he liked that podcast, he'd started it because it was sharp... he tried reaching for something more routine: the mornings at the park, the cold water, the pull-ups.

"The body, one keeps it, of course," he started, painfully conscious of the missing article. He gritted his teeth. "Pilates. Girl comes Tuesdays. So much work, no? To look like you could lift a thing - when you can just pay a man to lift the thing."

Girl comes Tuesdays, he thought. It's getting worse...

"God, the trainers in this town," the woman groaned, delighted. "Robbery, every one of them."

"Robbery," he agreed, immediately grimacing at the ease with which the thought came. It was as if a parassitic, foreign mind was slowly enveloping his older unconscious, the easy things coming with no drag at all, and his old opinions requiring digging. It thought of the credentials to his phone and his bank. The euro rate... the tailor in Milan who kept late hours for her... the tip he owed to that captain on the Yacht...

It made him complain about money.

He searched for the next words: "it's simple, really," he said, cringing, "Government should be strong and quiet. They leave serious people alone. The rest - pff." he smiled.

The woman laughed. "Oh that's not so politically correct, darling!" She winked "Love it!"

The woman turned, seeing her friend waving her over. She slid off her stool and patted his plush forearm on the way past - "you're funny, ma'am" - and was gone.

Will grunted again.

"So, like... liber- uh-" He frowned, "libertarian view now... because government always ask my family for tax..." He closed his eyes "It makes... fucking sense... for me to... think like this... It so... It IS so... It so clea- fuc- fucking witc- D-da..."

Will shrunk again.

This time, he noticed the room swelling around him. The bar rose to his sternum, his collarbone, his chin. The boy across the floor stretched taller and taller and further away, and Will's long runner's legs folded down under him into something small and soft and low.

"No, blyat- up! put me... back!"

zap

"Mmhh~"

The parasite grew a new pattern: that of being small, the joy of being precious cargo, of looking up at a tall young man. When he tried to shove the comfort off, an ache came for it - that backed-up, held-sneeze pressure, everywhere at once. He gasped and gripped the bar.

It wears off, he screamed, internally. She said it wears off. It's a costume. Costumes come off. Just get through the night. Don't do anything. Stand here and don't do anything, da?

He fully intended to do exactly that.

glorp

Will grabbed his crotch. He'd tried to resist for 20, painful minutes, downing beer after beer, talking to the bartender.

Ok, witch, you won! He thought. Just take it, ok, I- I don't care anymore...

His miniscule penis, which Will somehow managed to hold on to until then, the last of it shrunk again. It retreated, a folding-away, and Will made a sound into the back of his hand he'd be thinking about for years.

"Mmh~ Mmh~ ah!"

Will's penis shrunk once more, loosing all structure and completing its morph into a vagina. Something immediately opened in its place, under his hand, warm and wet. A ripe hollow that clenched around nothing as his knees went to water. Will brought his other hand - small and chubby - to his large breast, an started kneading it, slow and steady.

"Mmh~ Mmh~ Mmmmh~"

People were looking. He pressed the back of a ringed hand to his mouth.

His hair spilled down dark and honeyed and salon-waved; his face rounded, softened, warmed into something beautiful, mature and sure of itself - slightly drooping - and the smell of his own perfume rose up around him, French, expensive, unmistakably feminine and old.

"I think it's done... I..." She thought for a moment "I'm Dasha now."

Dasha squinted. She removed her round hand from her wet pussy, the complex of rings adoring her small wrists clinking their usual tune. Her vision was not what it used to be, but the tailor-made contact lenses certainly helped. She wasn't as loving as she was during her university years, during her old affairs, or her first couple marriages, or her last, or the ones in between, but all those expensive drinks certainly helped. She also thought of all her vacations, such great conversational topics; or all the men that'd opened up to her, most of them so little and insolent and poor. She certainly didn't have as much energy, but not having to work, or study, or do anything really, was an invaluable boost.

She found the tall boy across the floor. Her large tits hardened slightly, in a slow, pulsating trepidation. She crossed to him, and hated it.

"You dance beautiful," she said.

"Oh - I, uh, yes... thankyou ma'am."

"Sit." One ringed finger on his chest, and he sat. "What you drink? No. I choose." She did not look at the bartender. "The Barolo. The good one, not the list."

The bottle came fast. It always did.

"You have been to Como?" She turned the boy's chin with one finger, studying him like a horse. "No. Of course no. Is fine. Everyone there has the same boat, da?" A slow shrug, heavy and tired. "Mine is nicer. Small crew. The good ones, they leave you alone."

The boy laughed. "Damn lady, you're intense."

Will felt it coming. Don't, Will thought. Don't do the thing with the -

Her hand did the thing: slow, down the boy's forearm, and back, and gone just before he wanted it gone.

"I have suite here. On the water." She let it sit. "Terrible view. You come? Hate it with me."

there it is, Will thought.

The boy swallowed. "God that's... I guess I could use a vacation..."

"Da." Dasha stood, and took his hand. "God my feet." She declared. "Not what it used to be."

Somewhere across the city, on a street that had three storefronts on it now instead of two, a bell gave a wet, syrupy chime. An older woman in a plum-colored dress smiled alone. She reached up, and slid a lurid little blue bottle back onto the shelf, ready for the next locked house that came jogging past with the lights on.

Hey y'all. I think this one came out quite nicely, sure was fun to write it.

So.

I guess you should be the judge, this time around. Would you have gone with Dasha on her boat? Certainly sounds like... y'know... an enriching situation. Enabling rich cougars sure is something, let me tell ya. Would you even be able to come back from such an experience, if it becomes your first love story? Would you fall in love with being spoiled? Play your cards right, and you might even get that oligarch job and be set for life... sure isn't something that usually happens to boys, am I right? Working for your spouse.

Anyway, I'm sure Will will manage to turn back, after a couple weeks of sea-faring. Ot two. Sure, the potion does automatically refill, and drinking it all does mean that it will last for at least a whole month.

And yes,

all those bank accounts will eventually start shrinking towards the end, along with Dasha's belly, age and appetite.

Ah, and the captain, the servants, the villas. All will certainly turn back into his frat bros and his family house. And a younger Maria will start complaining more and more until she's Will's Ex again, that's for sure... It will be hard keeping her under control... and I think Will hasn't quite noticed all of this latter stuff... but he will...

I guess he will have to decide then. Especially since the boy will probably be at least somewhat confused. That will certainly be an awkward situation.

See you then, naughty subs.

Peace and love,

WineGodTG.