Huffing and Poofing (Dec 2019)

“Whenever you’re ready,” said Emma, sitting on Evaline’s bed.

“Ehh…” How was Evaline still uneasy?

“You’re not the only shapeshifter in the world. If the fumes were bad, we’d have heard about animals being found dead in piles of clothes. Or towels,” Emma added. That’s what they wore; hers was red, while Evaline’s was white. Ripping through shirts and pants wasn’t as fun as it sounded, she had been told. One would think otherwise by how stuffed Evaline’s dresser was – none of the drawers closed fully.

“Okay, then.”

A white cloud enveloped Evaline, fluffy like cotton. With the smoke came the sound of an exploding pillow. The back of Emma’s throat tickled, like she had swallowed a chip wrong.

The smoke dispersed, then disappeared. Brown skin and brown hair had become brown fur. In place of Evaline the human was Evaline the bear, standing on two legs, rearranging her towel.

“Just drop the towel,” said Emma between coughs. “You know I don’t care.”

Evaline rolled her eyes. “How do you feel?”

“I’m–Hold on.” Emma hacked out the rest of her fit. “I feel normal. Maybe I wasn’t close enough?”

“We’re trying this again?”

Emma smiled. Evaline looked especially cute when her open muzzle showed off those teeth.

“What if–”

“Come on, you just let me try it.”

“Fine.” Another poof, and Evaline was back to a human. Strands of brown fur floated to the floor. “Ready?”

Emma got off the bed. The whole house was bare of carpet; tile and hardwood were easier to get sheddings out of. That didn’t apply to Evaline’s black bedsheets, though, by the amount of fur that clung to Emma’s towel. She nudged close to Evaline. “Ready.”

Evaline poofed again. Emma closed her eyes and inhaled.

Emma’s ears popped. Her towel became tight and ruffled against her skin, which now seemed to be a heavy weight – not one she couldn’t handle, but like she had a backpack’s worth of stuff distributed around her body. Something was attached to the base of her spine, her hands and feet felt humongous, and her face itched. Everything was off about her. She opened her eyes.

The bottom of her vision was filled with brown hair leading to a black blob. That same hair coated her arms and legs. She took a peek down her towel – was its red color that faded before? – and her heart leaped.

She was a bear!

And Evaline was cowering.

“Evaline! Look!” Emma tried to grin, but her lips were dead, so she peeled the edges of her mouth up with her fingers.

Evaline gasped, then rubbed Emma’s arm. “You’re alive!”

“Now you’ve ruined my fur! See, I told you nothing bad would happen.”

“Well…” Evaline chuckled, then stopped. “What if you’re stuck like that now?”

“Honestly, I’d prefer being a bear over a human. I’m cuter, for one thing.” She didn’t like the slight rasp to her voice, though. Evaline’s never changed. She needed to practice sometime.

“I guess I can’t argue with that. Any other things you want to test?”

“So the smoke you create when you transform,” Emma began, flexing her ears. She raised her hand – or paw – to one and traced the circle it made. This was fun. “Er, uh, sorry. So the smoke does things before it disperses, then it doesn’t. It’s like a switch. Does it just go back to wherever it came from right away, or does it work like an actual gas and stick around if we force it to?”

Evaline tapped her foot, claws clicking on the floor, and scratched her chin. Emma did the same. Seeing her face be long was one thing, but feeling it was another. She shouldn’t have this much face to her face.

“How do you want to try this?” Evaline asked. “I don’t know what could filter the air out.”

“I don’t think we’d need to. We’d need a box.”

Evaline walked to the bedroom closet and tore it open. Literally. She stuck her claws into the wood and pulled it to the side. “Both of us could squeeze in there as humans, but we won’t fit as bears. I could go in, fill it with smoke, then quickly swap with you.”

Emma poked one of her new paw pads with a claw. It didn’t sting, but it wasn’t dull either. “Do you have anything to block the bottom with?”

“We could stuff it with the blanket.”

Emma scooped up the blanket on the end of the bed and hauled it over on her forearms. The weight was close to nothing, but she had seen what carelessness with claws had done to Evaline’s old couch not too long ago. Evaline shut herself inside, and Emma clogged the door.

It sounded like stuffed animals were being thrown at the walls over and over. White smoke seeped from the top of the door, then stopped when the edge of a jacket poked out and plugged the way.

Emma lifted the back of her towel and stared at her tail. Precious! It was only a nub, but could she move it? She wiggled her hips, but that wasn’t what she was going for. She concentrated on the tail, trying to twitch whatever muscle was in it, but couldn’t do anything. It was like one of those tricks where you put your hand in a bizarre position and found out you couldn’t move your fingers.

“Are you ready?” asked Evaline. “It’s getting stuffy in here.”

Emma redid her towel and got closer. “Yes. I’m right by the door.”

The noise became quiet. The closet cracked open, and Evaline the human jumped out. Emma took a deep breath, hopped in, and shut the door, just in time before slipping on something she couldn’t see.

“Careful!”

Emma steadied herself. The air was thick with the smell of burnt hair.

Poof.

“Squeak!” Emma fell, as if the floor had gone down a level. Both her feet dangled in a hole. She sensed more to her tail, like it was as long as her arm, and its tip rested against something firm. All that, along with a momentary bout of nausea, gave her the idea she was much smaller than she had been.

She squinted. In the darkness, she could barely make out the outline of a sagging ring circling her. This was a shoe.

A fuzzy weight fell on Emma’s back. It smelled like warm animal. Her towel? Now the closet was completely dark. She tried moving her tail again, and this time it cooperated, brushing along the inside of the shoe. Emma heaved herself over the ledge and rested on what she was sure were the shoelaces.

The door opened, and Evaline lifted Emma’s towel, which was now a deep red again. Fresh air! A white haze hung above until it remembered to go away.

Emma tried pushing herself onto her feet, but her hips protested. Her hands looked like they were covered with pink, fingerless gloves, and her fur was now grayscale. Her tail was also pink and somewhat scaly, like a mouse’s. “Possum?”

Evaline nodded, then picked Emma up in cupped hands. She felt safe.

And excited. “Do you know what this means? The smoke behaves like any old gas. Anyone could be an animal!” She rolled onto her back. “We could sell this!”

“Calm down,” said Evaline, lowering Emma onto the bed. “The last thing I need is a mob outside my house thinking I’m trying to get rid of people.” She went to look for something in the corner of the room. “I could message some of the people I’ve shown my shifting to and ask them what they think. Actually, I know just how we could announce it. Are you free this weekend?”

“I think so.”

“Let’s get you turned back into a human. Or, if you want to come with me to the store in my pocket…”

Evaline insisted her basement was still a basement, but Emma thought ‘den’ was more appropriate. Half of the walls and floor were carved away, leading down into the rocky earth. Some of the tunnels twisted before ending, making an illusion of extending on and on. Two dozen people was enough to crowd anyone’s basement, but in this den, someone could walk around juggling glass and never be hit.

The space also helped with the smell. Body odor and cologne peppered the air, but most of the people were well-kempt.

Balloons floated in the air – not touching the ceiling or floor, but actually floating. Emma had poked one earlier, and it had drifted as if on a rail before air resistance stopped it. Nothing else did that, not without the help of fans or fishing line. She wished she could look away, but those balloons were everywhere. Why was she alright with someone’s body suddenly changing but put off guard by something like this?

“Hey, you’re Evaline’s friend, right?” asked a man whose mouth reeked of alcohol and had as few teeth as buttons on his suit. “Can you ask her when food will be here?”

“It should be any minute now.”

“Thanks.”

Emma nodded and took the opportunity to walk away.

“Uh, what was it again?”

“Pizza,” she replied. “You helped pay for it when you came in.”

“Ah. That’s right.”

Emma wandered closer to the television. Most of the guests didn’t care about sports, so in place of a game, splotches of color from a visualizer grew, floated, and shrank. The music was muted, though.

Evaline the bear, dressed in sweats – wasn’t she overheating? – walked down the stairs and shuffled through the middle of the room. “Everything all good?” she asked a group of three, then went to another group, then down a tunnel.

Emma stared at the closest balloon. What would everyone think? There had to be one or two people here who didn’t fully understand what was going to happen. This could be a mistake. Emma turned in a circle, looking for Evaline. Where did she go? Emma had just seen her.

There she was – in the center of the room.

“Hey everyone,” Evaline roared, drowning then silencing the guests. “I have a very important task for you! You see these balloons?” Evaline waved her paws. “You all need to squeeze the life out of them!”

A woman leaped at the nearest balloon and popped it with her nails. She poofed, and under the veil of smoke, those nails became claws of a panda. She stuck them out and gasped with her black-and-white face.

All around, balloons were clapped, bitten, and stomped upon. People turned into kangaroos, deer, raccoons, cats, and all other sorts of furred creatures. There was a much louder poof, and Emma found herself in the form of a tiger, but still able to stand normally. Even in the dim light, her stripes looked gorgeous, like an artist spent hours painting each one on her orange fur. The two people closest to her had also become humanoid tigers.

It was as if Emma’s ears had always been plugged and only now had ever been clear. Between loud cries of “Wow!” and “How’d you do it?”, the guests unbuttoned, unzipped, and threw off their attire, all save one unfortunate guest who didn’t follow the wear-something-you-don’t-care-about dress code and also happened to grow a pair of shirt-catching antlers.

The wonder was replaced by coughing. Emma covered her nose, fur tickling her nostrils and encouraging her to sneeze. That smell of burnt fur was back, and it was more potent than she thought possible. She dried her nose with her arm, but that didn’t help.

“I’m going to get a fan,” Emma yelled to Evaline, the words purring in her throat. She squeezed her nose shut, then made her way toward the stairs. Enough of her vision was already taken by her muzzle, and now she had her paw in the way too.

Something caught on her pants as she went up. There wasn’t anything on them, but her tail was smothered in a ball. She pulled it over the waistband and continued up.

Emma dared to breathe. The air was better up here, but as the gas made its way through the house, she switched back to mouth breathing. Her tail smacked against walls and chairs as she darted around. There were plenty of ceiling fans, but as they couldn’t exactly be reattached when ripped off, they weren’t much help. No amount of feline strength could move a window into the basement, either.

The doorbell rang. Hopefully the deliverer wouldn’t mind the smell… or that she was part-animal, or whatever scrawl of a signature she would give on the receipt.

Emma opened the door. The cool outside air washed over her fur. Pizza never smelled so good – especially the toppings. Most were meat, with the others for the few vegetarians and any new herbivores who wanted to pretend they really were herbivores. She licked her nose, then shuddered. The tiny hooks on her nose made it want to stick.

The deliveryman put on a scowl, then added a scrunch to his face.

It looked like he had the right number of boxes. “Thank you,” Emma said, taking them from him. Oh right. The tip. “Just a moment.” She turned around to go down the stairs.

Poof.

“Ahh!” That scowl twisted.

The house shook. Downstairs got quiet.

The deliveryman scoured his face with his paws. A golden mane spilled over his uniform, and a tuft of fur brushed the sidewalk behind him. He began tugging on his muzzle.

“Get it off! Get it off; get it off; get it off…”

Emma’s fur stood on end. Her eyes darted, scanning for further danger. No. She had to focus. “You’ll be okay,” she said, coming off as slow and monotone. How was she going to save this? “It wears off…”

The deliveryman tore furiously, ripping ribbons from his shirt and pants. “This can’t be happening; oh, please; this can’t be happening!”

“…eventually.” Emma backed away as Evaline thudded up the stairs and into the room, still a bear.

“Oh my! I can’t imagine what must have happened to you. Here, here, let me get you the tip and help you back to your car.”

The lion stopped flailing and shouting, and was now only hyperventilating. Evaline opened her wallet, and Emma saw her take out several bills. They all ended in zero.

“Don’t worry about your job,” said Evaline. “We won’t call anyone unless you want us to.” She wrapped her arm around his shoulder, and his around hers.

“But, you’re all, animals…”

“I can tell you I’m very much a human. Maybe someone slipped something bad in something you had earlier.”

Emma stared at the open door until she realized she needed to go back downstairs. Everything was fine; everything would be fine. All the guests needed to know was that pizza was here; let them forget they heard anything…

Emma couldn’t find a good position on the couch. Evaline had said it would be more comfortable if she was an animal, but the only form she wanted to take was that of her human self.

The party a few days ago had brought a question: should they really be selling the gas – or even sharing it at all? It was lucrative, but one bad experience despite the transformation being temporary and someone would be questioning their sanity or trust in others for the rest of their life.

A siren sounded in the distance, but Emma couldn’t see anything flashing from the living room window. At least the police hadn’t knocked on their door. Evaline’s money – and whatever else she had said after Emma had gone downstairs to play dumb – must have been enough to prevent escalation.

Evaline the bear had a radio playing in the living room. Emma couldn’t put a name to the genre or what instrument was being played, but it was all over the place. Kind of like her blood pressure. Up and down…

There was a generic high-tech noise. That wasn’t part of the song.

“We interrupt this broadcast to issue a public safety emergency.”

Emma turned up the volume. Evaline’s paws thumped elsewhere in the house.

“Police report that the patrons at the local Apples And All grocery store have allegedly been turned into animals! At two-thirty this afternoon–”

“Evaline!” shouted Emma. Her very skin became a weight. “Come here! Someone transformed the whole grocery store!”

The house shook. “What?” A few seconds later, Evaline ran through the doorway and sat next to Emma, making the couch sink.

“‘–me,’ a customer about to enter the store said. ‘It was like the whole zoo was coming out! Monkeys and gators and dogs trying to stand like people, all yelling or praying or telling me not to go in.’ Unless the situation worsens, all further updates will be sent over our normal news channel…”

“We have to go,” Emma said.

“No kidding.” Evaline went for the door.

Emma grabbed the radio, changed the channel, and followed. They were going be caught, but they needed to go see. They had made this happen.

Evaline took a deep breath and tossed off her clothes. Now Emma wanted to look away. Evaline never did that. Ever.

Evaline poofed. Emma held her breath, looking up at the clouds until the false cloud below dispersed. Evaline was wreathed in black, feathers shining in the sun. She shifted from leg to leg as if her thin talons would collapse. Then, she poofed again. She was still coated in black feathers, but now she fell forward onto another set of talons.

Emma climbed and sat on Evaline’s back.

“Up a little further,” Evaline said clearly despite having a beak. “Otherwise, I can’t stretch my wings.”

“If I go up any further, I’ll be on your neck.”

Evaline sang a tune in acknowledgment. Emma scooted forward.

Evaline ran toward the street. Before she stepped off the curb, her neck lurched, and Emma wrapped her arms around it, radio dangling in her hand. Evaline pushed the ground away, and the ride became smooth as her talons drifted through the air.

Emma managed to smile. “I never knew you flew around!”

“What?”

“When have you been flying?” Emma shouted over the flapping of Evaline’s wings.

“All the time, but usually at night when nobody can see. I didn’t want word of it going around, but…”

“We can stop and–”

“No. Like you said, we need to see what happened.”

Emma clutched harder and looked down. They were only a few feet above the tallest chimneys, but the grid pattern of the streets was clear. There were the same number of houses per block and the same spacing between each tree. Sometimes, a rogue street cut diagonally through the plan, creating chaos.

That’s what Emma had created by pushing Evaline to sell the smoke. It was meant to make life better, more fun. Now it caused problems for everyone else. No more people had to be hurt, though. The street couldn’t be easily torn out, but they could stop their business and pretend they had never done it.

A couple sitting on their porch below pointed up at them. One of them said something to the other, then showed off the back of their phone. They probably got Emma in the picture too. There went that.

The radio grew loud. “We bring you an update on the situation at Apples And All. Witnesses and police say the affected people are turning back to normal, but are encouraged to remain under medical care for any further effects. Police have barricaded all entrances and exits and are conducting a search for any evidence as to what may have caused the incident…”

And now they couldn’t see that, either. She shut off the radio. “We could probably head back, then.” Emma should be at least a bit relieved, but her voice was squeezed.

Evaline began a wide turn. The path they were taking back was a few streets off. Emma tried to pick out Evaline’s house, but there were so many houses with the same color, and she wasn’t used to seeing roofs from above.

“Hey!” Another person on the sidewalk noticed them. “Flier!” The man started waving.

Evaline spiraled down and eventually landed on the sidewalk in front of him. Emma’s insides felt like they should still be moving. She jumped onto the nearby lawn and laid on her back, taking deep breaths.

“I see you’re well-acquainted with the shapeshifter’s gas,” the man said.

“I am,” replied Evaline.

Emma couldn’t keep her vision straight. Any cloud or building she looked at rotated or zipped past, sometimes both.

“Don’t you hate how annoying the gas is? It smells bad, most of it gets wasted, and you must carry so much with you. Let me introduce a solution.” He pulled something out of his pocket. “Drink it, and you get the same effect without all that hassle. I’ve got them for every animal the gas can make you. Lasts longer, too, if you drink the whole thing. It’s yours for fifty dollars.”

“No thanks.”

“But think of–”

Evaline screeched in his face, stretched her wings, and turned around.

“Suit yourself.” He brought the thing to his lips – a vial, as Emma’s eyes slowed down – and downed it. His shroud of smoke was the largest Emma had seen. It stuck around longer, too, before revealing a green, two-legged reptile. He nodded toward Evaline, fangs all too visible, and dragged his tail down the sidewalk.

Evaline towered over Emma. “Are you alright?”

“Yeah.”

“No you’re not. We could walk the rest of the way back, you on my back.”

“But, what about… never mind. I think I can walk, though.”

“If you’re sure…”

On the walk back, a few more people took notice of them, taking pictures of their own, but none approached. Only the peddler had conversed with them, acted like they were more than a show passing by.

Once inside Evaline’s house and fully recovered, Emma hopped on the computer. Shapeshifting gas, she searched, then searched again after seeing she needed to exclude a handful of fiction websites.

The first result was a recipe for transformative bread. The preview snippet talked about needing to infuse the dough with the smoke before baking. It was posted four days ago.

The second result was a guide for making the liquid version they had been offered. It was posted three hours ago.

There was a video of two people playing chess as two rats. An article about how to modify a keyboard to make the keys easier to press with paws. How to braid fur. The account of someone who took a two-hour-long shower as a bearded dragon.

Ways to prank friends.

A calculator for how much gas was needed to transform everyone in a room of a certain size.

How to get revenge on a coworker by turning them into a possum every day until they apologized.

“We need to hide,” said Emma. “We can’t stay here anymore.”

“Why’s that?” Evaline, now a bear, had found another change of clothes. Another siren began.

“The gas is everywhere. Even if we stop selling it, people are going to make their own. We’re going to hear about what happened at the grocery store again and again. How long until shrine pages go up, worshiping us? Letting people know we’re why their bodies change against their will?” Emma got up and powered off the computer.

“I didn’t write the instructions down anywhere. And, if someone does come looking for us, we can just fly away.” The siren got louder and louder. Were they coming down their street?

“But we’ll be too late by then. We’ll just get shot.”

Evaline scratched her face. How was she this calm? “I haven’t tried it for anything worse than a papercut, but I can heal when I shapeshift.”

“But that doesn’t mean it won’t hurt!”

“I’d take being hurt over being dead.”

“What if they have tranquilizer darts? Can you heal that out of your blood?”

The siren stopped, and a few seconds later, there was a knock on the door. Hard, with authority. Emma turned and glanced out the window. It came from an authority.

“The police,” she said. Did she want to run? Freeze?

Evaline poofed back into a human. Her clothes drooped, a few sizes too large. “Sit down. We’ll be fine.”

Emma propped her head up with her hand. Yes, they would be fine. If Evaline could talk her way through the lion at the party, she could through this.

Evaline opened the door. Two policemen stood outside. “Hello,” Evaline said. “What brings you here?”

The taller one started. “Are you Evaline, uh, how do I pronounce your last name–”

“Yes.”

The shorter officer shook his head at his partner, then turned to Evaline. “We’d like to come inside and ask some questions, if that’s alright.”

“Come in.”

Emma scooted to the edge of the couch. The two officers took the other two seats. Emma did as best as she could to keep her mouth still and her eyes away. Were they keeping an eye on her? What would they see in her expression?

“Before today, have you ever heard about or seen someone… ah… suddenly turning into an animal?”

“Yes.”

“How often, would you say?”

“Many times.”

“I see.” The shorter officer repositioned himself. “Do you happen to know anything about a substance that’s been going around that can turn people into animals?”

“That people say comes from an Evaline, I may add,” the taller officer added.

“Yes.”

Emma shifted closer to the edge of the couch.

The shorter officer took out a pocket notebook and wrote something down. “You do understand selling a drug without government approval is a serious crime, correct?” He signaled his partner to get up, then did. “Could you show us how you make this substance?”

“It’s simple,” said Evaline. “I just go like this.” She poofed into a bear. “And then like this.” She poofed back into a human. With the window closed, the air was starting to get a little thick. She shifted again. And again. “I keep doing it,” she said, “over and over, until–”

Poof. Emma’s ears popped, and her vision went white. Her clothes became constrictive, like they were about to tear. Hacking came from the direction of the cops, along with the sound of something actually tearing.

When the smoke went away, Emma glanced to the side. Across her brown muzzle, the policemen were bears in uniform. The taller one’s vest and pants had lengthwise tears in them, and the shorter one’s belt, gun and all, lay detached from his waist.

The taller officer’s eyes went wide, and he stuck his fuzzy arms out, looking them up and down.

The shorter officer touched his nose with a claw. “You know, I’ve had to deal with shapeshifters before, but never would I have thought I would actually change species myself. Or him, apparently.” He shoved his partner. “Hey, are you still in there?”

“Yeah, yeah.” He regained his composure. “I suppose we really can’t do anything since what you’re selling is just a part of your body, though you should really be more careful who gets their hands on it. We’re still looking for whoever released it at the store…” He leaned in closer. “…or, if I were you, I’d go public. You know how many people would kill for the chance to be something else for a while, right?”

Evaline nodded. “Uh, thanks for the advice, sir. Anything else you need to know?”

“Nope.” He picked up his pen, tried to write something with his paw, then set it back down. “Thanks for your time. We’ll be on our way now.” He and his partner got up and opened the door. The shorter officer took a moment to grab his belt.

“You think you’ll be okay driving like that?” Evaline asked.

“Probably.”

They got in the car, waited for about a minute, then drove away.

Emma got up and shut the door. “I thought we’d be in trouble for sure.” She sighed. Sitting through that drained her. “But with what they said about the gas just being something your body makes… Maybe I was wrong. All because someone does something bad with the gas doesn’t mean we did that.” She yawned. “I think I need to lie down after all that.”

“You’re in a good form for that now,” Evaline said. “I could let you stay a bear as long as you need.”

“That sounds lovely.” Emma fell back on the couch. With her weight, it felt like she was sinking. Comfortable. She didn’t want to move. Warm and cozy… No wonder bears could do this for months at a time. “Maybe feed me a bit while I’m asleep, too?”

“Maybe not that.”