Paul's Pillow (SRU)

By Jordan Hoelder 

"Stuck-up bitches!" Paul muttered to himself. His latest overtures toward 
some of the girls at the Mall had just been rejected, as had several before that. 
He'd been hanging out for most of Saturday in one or another corner of the 
Mall and was getting nowhere towards having a date for the evening. 

Of course, what Paul thought were macho pickup lines came across as crass 
and crude to the targets of his leers. His slovenly attire, haphazard shaving 
job, and poor posture were hardly good advertising either. The well-dressed 
young women he tried to strike up a conversation with were unlikely to want 
to be seen with an example of manhood like him. Not that his conversational 
skills would have been impressive, had they deigned to talk to him, either; 
not much besides sports and cars held Paul's interest. 

Paul made up in persistence what he lacked in almost every other category. 
He didn't have a lot of cash from his low-skill job, which left him wandering 
up one corridor and down another, rather than finding something of interest 
in the shops at the Mall. 

His course had taken him to an odd section of the Mall which seemed to be a 
sort of cul-de-sac. Not as well lit as the main walkways, it had no egress to 
the parking lot at its end. Two of the storefronts were boarded over with 
"Coming Soon! A New Mall Attraction" planks, showing that the previous 
tenants hadn't been able to make a go of it in this low-traffic section. A tacky 
women's clothing store, displaying items Paul would have liked to have seen 
on the girls he was interested in, filled one slot, a dusty shop, also for 
women, showed the sign Olga's Corsetiere, and at the dimmest end, a place 
whose wares he couldn't quite make out. 

Out of that last shop, at that moment, walked a couple of extraordinarily 
beautiful women. Paul tried approaching them, but they were too engrossed 
in conversation even to brush him off, ignoring him completely. "Gee, I 
wonder if there might be a couple more like them inside," Paul thought to 
himself, and walked to the end of the corridor. "Spells R Us," he read on the 
slightly faded sign over the door. The window displays were an eclectic mix 
of curios, masks, clothing, paintings, and other odds and ends. Paul peered 
in to see if there were more babes inside, but the darkness beyond the 
windows seemed impenetrable. There was nothing for it but to go in. 

A bell tinkled when he opened and closed the shop door. There seemed to be 
no one inside at all besides himself, so he turned to leave. However, the door 
seemed to have stuck when he closed it. Just as he was about to try using 
both hands to yank it open, he heard someone behind him say, "Good 
afternoon, Paul. I'm glad you decided to come in." 

Paul whirled around at the mention of his name. "Who are you?" he said. 
Paul saw an older man wearing what might have been an academic gown, if 
Paul had been able to recognize such a thing, but Paul only wondered why a 
shopkeeper would wander around in his bathrobe during business hours. 
"How do you know my name? I've never been here before." 

"Oh, I know a lot of things. I know a lot of things about you, in fact." The 
older man smiled. "After all, I am a wizard; it's my business to know things. 
I even know why you are here." 

"A wizard. Yeah, right," Paul said. "I'm supposed to believe in magic? And I 
suppose you sell magic spells at Spells R Us?" 

"Quite so, Paul, even if you thought you were being ironic." The term went 
over Paul's head, of course, but the wizard went right on. "You  came in here 
looking for 'babes,' didn't you?" 

This got Paul's attention. "Yeah. How'd you know that?" 

"I told you. I'm a wizard. Knowing things like that is easy. The hard part is 
doing something about it. You haven't been having much luck today, have 
you?" 

"Well...nah," Paul admitted. There didn't seem much point in lying about his 
prowess, as the...wizard...seemed to know the answers to the questions he 
was asking anyway. 

"So, Paul, what can I sell you today? I'm afraid that I haven't got any 'babes' 
in the store--and I certainly am not in that business anyway." 

"Can you give me some kind of, like, spell or something so I can attract girls 
better?" Paul asked. 

The wizard frowned. "I'm afraid that those things aren't very satisfactory. 
They tend to vary between the extremes of ones that wear off at inconvenient 
moments and ones that produce insane jealousy. The results usually involve 
courts, lawyers, and sometimes morticians. I have given them up as a bad 
job. No, I have a better idea. How would you like to learn how to attract 
women? I can arrange a one-year course of training that will give you a 
positively authentic insider's knowledge on what women want." If only Dr. 
Freud had dropped by my old apothecary shop when I was located in Vienna, 
the wizard mused. 

"One year? You got to be kidding, old man. Who wants to wait a year to get a 
date? What can you do for me tonight?" 

"Tonight? That's pretty short order. I don't think I can help you tonight. But 
maybe tomorrow... All right, then, Paul, tell me about the kind of girl you 
are interested in." 

"Blonde. Built. Hot. Not too bright. Doesn't give her man any back talk. 
You know." 

"Ah, yes, I think I do, indeed. The traditional adolescent male's fantasy 
woman." His vocabulary was losing Paul again, not that it mattered. "You 
want a woman entirely for her appearance, a sex toy, right?" 

"Yeah. I don't care what she talks about with her girl friends, but I know 
what I want to do with her. And if she looks good, I look good." Paul 
sniggered after the last. 

"Anything else special about your ideal woman? Hair length? Body piercing? 
Tattoos? Weight?" 

"Nah. None of that kinky stuff. Nice shoulder-length hair or maybe a bit 
longer. Not too thin; not fat. A cute ass." He paused. "Oh, yeah. I like big 
boobs. The bigger, the better." 

The wizard's eyebrows went up at the last. "Now we're getting somewhere, 
my boy," he smiled. "Suppose I told you that you could have a woman just 
as you have described in your bed tomorrow. Would that be satisfactory?" 
Paul nodded vigorously. "I think I can do something for you now that we 
have the specifics. Stay right there." The wizard ducked through a curtain 
draped over a doorway to the back of the shop and returned a couple of 
minutes later with a medium-sized bed pillow in pink fabric with ribbons and 
lacy adornments. "Just the thing!" he said. "Ten dollars." He began to put it 
into a paper shopping bag. 

"Hey, wait a minute," Paul said. "What's that?" 

"It's a pillow," said the wizard, looking faintly astonished at the question. 

"But what's it for? What do I do with it?" 

"What do you do with a pillow? You sleep with it, of course." 

"But what's that going to do? What good is that? And why should I sleep 
with a frilly pink pillow? You're nuts." Paul turned to leave the shop. 
However, the door was still stuck tight. 

The wizard sighed and said, "I see I shall have to explain in simple terms. If 
you want a woman in your bed, you must use something she would like to 
attract her, right? This pillow will produce the results I have described. Just 
sleep with it tonight. Ten dollars." 

Paul paid the $10 and left the shop, the door having become unstuck as 
mysteriously as it stuck in the first place. Before he reached the main corridor 
of the Mall he decided he'd been had, but when he turned back, the shop had 
a "Closed" sign. Paul was startled to discover that the Mall itself was closing 
up; he didn't think he'd been in the Spells R Us shop that long. There 
certainly was no chance of finding a date at that hour, so he headed for home. 

When Paul got back to his apartment, he kicked off his shoes and popped 
open a can of beer before he discovered the game had been rained out. Before 
he'd even finished the can, he started feeling enormously tired. Had he really 
spent that much time on his feet at the Mall? He stripped and was about to 
crawl into bed when he remembered the pillow. Was there any point to 
actually sleeping with the thing? Well, it sure wouldn't work if he didn't 
sleep with it, he supposed. And that old man had known a lot of strange 
things about him. Maybe he should try to get his $10 worth. He went back to 
the front room and got the shopping bag, took out the pillow, and replaced 
his regular plain white pillow with the pink one. The lace and ribbons felt 
funny on his face, but he soon was asleep anyway. 

* * *

Sunlight streaming through the blinds woke Paul the next morning. It was 
Sunday, with no need to set an alarm clock. The first thing Paul noticed was 
that there was no one else in bed. "Lying, cheating, SOB wizard," Paul 
muttered. The next thing that became apparent was that the pillow was no 
longer the only thing in pink around the room. Rather, the entire room had 
changed to match the pillow. The bed had pink sheets with ribbons and trim, 
while its plain tan blanket had become a comforter with pink bunnies printed 
on it. Pink motifs and frills were everywhere, while the room seemed a lot 
neater. "What the hell?" Paul thought. 

The next thing to claim Paul's attention was internal pressure. "I didn't even 
finish that beer," Paul thought. A moment later, Paul's previous thought of 
"What the hell?" became an emphatic scream from the bathroom of "WHAT 
THE HELL???" in a soprano pitch. After frantically dealing with urgent 
business as best as could be managed for a novice to the new internal 
plumbing arrangements, Paul stormed back into the bedroom. "Wizard!" she 
screamed. "I'm going to get you for this." 

"And do what?" a voice said from behind Paul. Paul whirled around to find 
the wizard standing there, now towering over Paul's mere five-foot height. 
"Have I not kept to my agreement? Was there not a woman as you had 
described in your bed this morning?" 

"Yes, but..." 

"But you didn't expect that you would be that woman, right? Perhaps you 
should pay more attention to what you bargain for, Paul. Or should I say, 
Paula? No, too intellectual a name. From now on," said the wizard, "you are 
Pauline." 

"You tricked me, you SOB." 

"Well, of course. Haven't you ever heard of a magic trick?" said the wizard. 

Pauline started to argue further, but Paul's specification that his ideal woman 
was "not too bright" was catching up with her, and she broke off in 
confusion. Then other aspects of Paul's limited vision of femininity began to 
surface as well. "Hey," she said, looking into Paul's drawers full of boxers 
and jeans, "what am I going to wear?" 

"No problem," said the wizard, making a sweeping gesture, whereupon the 
various drawers and closets filled with clothing and accessories suitable for 
Paul's vision of a Pauline: Fishnet hose, stiletto heels, miniskirts slit to the 
hip, see-through blouses, open-front bras, crotchless panties. Just what Paul 
had wanted his women wearing. 

She looked into her closet. "This stuff will make me look really hot. But 
aren't my boobies awfully small?" She indicated her 34B chest. "How am I 
going to attract enough boys with these itty bitty titties," she whined. "You 
promised I'd be really built," Pauline said, somewhat confusing the terms of 
the deal. 

"Ah, yes, I recall now," the wizard said. "You expressed it as 'bigger is 
better,' I think. Well, don't worry. You are going to get better--which is to 
say, bigger--every day, Pauline. Shall we say a silly little millimeter a day?" 

"Is that enough?" she said. "I don't think a millimeter is very big, is it , 
wizzie?" 

"Oh, I think that will be quite sufficient. I'll just plan to check back on you 
in...five years. Is that OK?" 

Paul had never been an attentive math student, although he might have 
worked it out, but the necessary arithmetic was quite beyond the mental 
abilities of Pauline altogether. She hummed a little tune as she started looking 
through her dresser for the perfect thing to wear to the Mall and find a boy or 
two...or two dozen. 

The wizard was much better at arithmetic and thought to himself as he 
transported back to his shop, "She'll need new outfits about every two to 
three months, or two to three inches. If I work out a deal with the shop down 
the corridor at the Mall and with Olga's Corsetiere, I ought to be able to get a 
decent commission, especially on the custom-made things she'll need in a 
year or so. And maybe a finder's fee from some photographer or magazine. 
Let's see: Five years times 365 days is 1825 days...plus one for leap 
year...that's 1826 millimeters. 1.8 meters times nearly 40 inches in a meter 
comes to about 72 inches. So in five years, her bust measurement will 
be...36 + 72 108 inches." The wizard shook his head. He'd ginned up some 
interesting bimbos in his time, but even he couldn't quite imagine what a girl 
with a one-hundred-eight-inch chest would look like, especially if they were 
nice and firm and protruding as his spell ensured they'd be. "One hundred 
and eight inches--that's nearly a yard in diameter, if she were a cylinder. I'll 
bet she won't even be able to reach her nipples after four years," the wizard 
mused. "Maybe I can sell her a levitation spell for them, if she has trouble 
standing up." Five years was a long time, even for a wizard, but he was 
willing to wait for a spell this good to work out.

Paul's pretty pink pillow wasn't going to be alone in the bedroom much 
longer. Soon enough it would have the company of two more and much 
larger pink pillows every night. The wizard smiled at his perfect metaphor 
and waited for his next customer to drop in.