The Wizard's Wig (SRU)

by Jordan Hoelder 

Mike was a bit puzzled. He was sure there had been a place in the Mall that 
had Hawaiian shave ice. It was well over 100 outside, the Mall's air 
conditioning was losing the struggle, and his part-time job in the cutlery 
shop, while not overwhelmingly physical, still had sweat trickling down his 
back. The proprietor's dress code of suit and long-sleeved white shirt made 
sense in winter, but Mike wondered what customers would be impressed by 
a sweat-stained blue suit while themselves wearing shorts and tank tops. 

Ice cream was definitely too many calories for Mike; burning them would 
heat him up again. He just wanted some of that flavored ice. Preferably 
raspberry. Or maybe half raspberry and half banana. "They couldn't have 
gone out of business," he thought. "Not in the middle of the summer 
season." But every corridor Mike tried was wrong. 

Finally, underneath the double escalator at one end, Mike noticed a 
passageway that he hadn't explored yet. "They can't be down here, can they? 
I'm sure I've been there before, and it was somewhere else." He decided to 
try there anyway. The shops didn't seem to match those in the rest of the 
mall--Chinese herbs, Fern's Incunabula, The Caltrop Shop. "What's an 
incunabula? Incunabulum? Incunabulus? Looks like old books. Why can't 
they just say what they are?" 

Mike found no ice cream and shave ice place anywhere as he reached the end 
of the blind passage and was turning back when a blast of chilled air struck 
him from one side. Turning that way, he saw the closing door of a shop with 
a slightly askew sign which read "Spells R Us." 

"Spells R Us? That's fiction," Mike scoffed to himself. He'd read a few 
stories with that phrase in the title on the Internet, but didn't ever expect to 
see such a shop in reality. "I know," he mused. "Someone must have read 
those stories and borrowed the name. I'll bet that they hear from the Toys R 
Us lawyers pretty soon." 

Mike hadn't seen anyone come out of the shop, and there had been no one in 
the Mall corridor with him, so he wasn't sure why the door had opened. At 
first, he started back towards the main Mall, but glancing through the shop 
front, he saw the improbable: what appeared to be an Arctic wolf trotting 
toward the back of the shop. The cold breeze from the shop's interior was 
just too attractive in Mike's sweaty state, so he grabbed the knob as it was 
about to latch and went in. 

The shop seemed entirely empty--no salesmen, no cashiers, and certainly no 
wolves. The merchandise haphazardly displayed throughout the shop seemed 
to have no particular organization, and it wasn't clear what most of it was for, 
other than interior decoration for someone with retro tastes. Odd bottles 
without labels, antique jewelry, intricately carved boxes, old-fashioned 
pictures in ornate frames, a complete gallimaufry. The place was just as it had 
been described in the various stories Mike had read. As an engineering 
student in his junior year, Mike was too realistic to believe that it was 
anything other than an antique shop with a name someone had appropriated 
from fiction. 

Until a cheery, "Good afternoon, Mike!" came from the back of the shop, 
that is. A moment later, a tall figure, easily topping Mike's 6' 2" frame, 
swept through the curtains behind the counter accompanied by a dense puff 
of smoke. A good part of that height was the conical hat the shopkeeper was 
wearing which seemed to complement the elegant silk dressing gown he also 
affected. Or did it? The smoke made Mike blink, and the man seemed for a 
moment to be wearing a shabby bathrobe and a baseball cap and then, in 
another blink, academic costume, complete with a mortarboard, and a third 
blink revealed an opera cape and top hat. But then his vision cleared, and the 
scene was as he had first perceived it. That gave him a moment to ponder that 
the one constant through the illusion of change of costume was that the 
shopkeeper was wearing an outlandish Three-Stooges-like wig, on top of 
which sat the conical hat, and which had also been barely covered up by the 
baseball cap, the mortarboard, and the tile. Before Mike could muse further 
about that and try to recall if any of the stories had mentioned any such thing, 
the shopkeeper interrupted Mike's thoughts and continued, "I thought at first 
you weren't coming in." 

"You know my name!" exclaimed Mike. 

"Why is that always the first thing they say? Why can't it ever be 'good 
afternoon?'" muttered the proprietor. "Yes, of course I do," he continued. "I 
make it my business to know my customers." 

"So this is really the Spells R Us shop that I've seen so much written about 
on the Internet?" 

"Indeed it is, my boy." 

"But I thought those were just fictional stories. Entertainment." 

"I'm sure they were entertaining. But with a good magic spell, reality tends to 
warp around the changes it makes, and only those involved--or those versed 
in the magical arts--can recall what the world was like beforehand. A few 
others may remember something, but tend to think of it as a false memory, a 
dream, or just an idea; if they have a flair for writing fiction and know where 
to get it published, then some of my exploits end up being mere mass 
entertainment--although I get a bit more amusement than 'mere' out of it. 

"So, now that you've found my shop, what can I sell you? My inventory is a 
little low right now--no genies, no wishing rings, no love potions. And I just 
sold my last nude painting suitable for hanging over a bar." He shook his 
head, sending the locks of the outlandish wig flying in all directions. 

"I'm not really sure I want to buy anything. According to the stories, no one 
gets quite what they bargain for here, with the joke usually on them--and not 
a funny joke, either." 

"Mike, I'm surprised at you. I know why you read those Internet 
newsgroups and mailing lists. I know that you are really pleased to have 
found my shop, even if you don't want to let on. And I know you want to 
buy something here, even if you aren't sure quite what. So let's stop fencing 
over whether you are going to buy one of my little treasures and decide on 
what you are going to acquire." 

Mike was embarrassed. He had been sure that no one knew of the mailing 
lists and newsgroups he subscribed to, and certainly not why he was so 
interested in transgender fantasy fiction. He knew that most of the world 
couldn't tell the difference between transgender individuals and gays, and 
didn't particularly care to learn either. His planned profession of civil 
engineering would put him in touch with a lot of macho individuals in the 
construction trades who would be merciless to someone they thought of as a 
"pansy boy"--if they were willing to deal with him at all. And he didn't want 
the other kind of attention he might receive from some of the architects and 
decorators he'd also have to work with, either. As long as Mike was male, he 
was interested only in women, as some of his girlfriends over the years 
would have truthfully testified. But Mike had known for as long as he could 
remember that somehow, he was not supposed to have been male. As a 
practical man (were engineering students every anything else?), he had 
always believed that there was nothing much he could do about it but go on 
with life; surgery and hormones were just fakery. Now, there was the 
chance, risky though it was, of finally solving his life-long problem. Did he 
dare to bargain with the tricky wizard of Spells R Us?

After a long pause, Mike said, "OK. Maybe we can make a deal. But I'm not 
sure I trust you. Like I said, everyone seems to get tricked when they buy 
something here." 

"Mike, you're being unfair. I think you should read those stories more 
closely. I always caution my customers in the strictest terms to read the 
instructions, obey the restrictions, get back here by closing time, and so on. 
It's their own fault if they don't follow the directions. On the other hand, 
there are a few people who have tried to cheat me or steal from me, and I 
think you'll have to agree that they were asking for it--and got it. I'm sure 
you'll realize that an establishment like this does not want to rely on the 
ordinary criminal justice system for dealing with shoplifters." 

"But in nearly every story, someone doesn't just become female, they get 
turned into brainless bimbos. I don't want that to happen to me, period." 

"OK, Mike. I'll promise you a purely physical transformation. I won't 
meddle with your mind at all--except for some basic programming for your 
new hardware," the wizard chuckled at his engineering metaphor, "for 
makeup, hygiene, and so on. I don't think you'd want to keep your habit of 
heading for the men's room and standing at a urinal--that would be messy 
and embarrassing, wouldn't it?" 

The wizard could see Mike slowly coming around and knew just a little more 
selling was needed. "So, suppose I let you design the entire transformation? 
You can pick exactly what you will look like. I just give you the means, and 
then it's hands-off. How does that sound?" 

Mike said nothing for quite awhile. Then he nodded. "You promise not to 
mess with my mind, except for knowledge of how to be a woman, and I get 
to pick the transformation myself, right? Is there some other catch? Like it's 
not permanent, but I change back some embarrassing place or time?" 

"No catches. You get exactly what you choose." The wizard bent over behind 
the sales counter. "Now where did I put that?" he mumbled. There was a 
small clatter of things being shifted inside a drawer and he straightened up 
again, holding a small object. "This is what you want. $18.95 plus tax, or 
$19.90 even." 

"What is it?" Mike saw what appeared to be an optical instrument with tiny 
pebbles glued on the side in the shape of a Z. 

"It's a Zee-Rocks machine. I'm sure you've heard of them. Makes exact 
copies. Unless the paper jams." The wizard snickered. "Turned a black girl 
white once when it ran out of toner." He laughed louder. 

"How does it work?" Mike asked. 

"Very simple. I told you that you could pick the transformation. What you 
need is a picture of the woman you wish to be transformed into. Place the 
picture underneath your bed when you go to sleep tonight, and put the Zee-
Rocks machine on top of the picture. This end up!" The wizard tapped the 
top. "Unless you want the picture to become one of you instead. Then, while 
you sleep, the machine will focus the picture you have chosen onto your 
body. Presto! When you wake up tomorrow, you will be an exact duplicate 
of the picture. Notice I said 'tonight' and 'tomorrow?' Its charge is good for 
one day only. If you don't use it by then, it will either not work at all or 
produce some unintended results. Remember what I said about people not 
following directions exactly." 

"And that's all? No funny business? No sudden insatiable urges for sex?" 

"Not unless you have them now--you are a male just out of your teens aren't 
you?" The wizard laughed heartily. "No, if you aren't a sex maniac before the 
transformation, you won't be afterward, just as interested in sex as you were 
beforehand. You'll be just as smart as you are now and remember everything 
you do now. 

"Be sure to choose your picture carefully; you only get one try with the Zee-
Rocks machine. Check for moles, tattoos, and appendix scars. If she's got 
'em, then you'll have them. Remember, the machine makes exact copies 
only." 

Mike handed the wizard a twenty, accepted his dime change, and took the 
small box into which the wizard had placed the Zee-Rocks machine. As he 
left the shop, he noticed the wizard removing the bizarre wig and storing it on 
a block on a shelf. "What was that all about?" Mike wondered. Then he 
glanced at his watch and saw that there was just enough time for him to make 
it back to the cutlery shop by the end of his break. 

* * *

Quitting time came ever so slowly for Mike that day. From time to time, he 
glanced at the box from the wizard's shop on the shelf in back where he'd 
stored it while he tended to customers. As 9 pm neared, he began to wonder 
if he'd imagined the whole thing. The box was still there, but perhaps it had 
come from a candy store or some such while he was imagining a dusty store 
full of antiques. 

Eventually, the Mall closed for the day, and after Mike tidied up the stock and 
closed out the cash register, he made his way to the distant corner of the lot 
where employees parked. The oppressive heat of the day had let up some, but 
not enough that his car didn't need to be aired out before driving off, lest the 
air conditioner provide no relief at all. 

Mike picked up a pizza on the way home, knowing that a clean plate would 
not be required if he couldn't find one. "If I were a woman, would I be better 
at housekeeping?" he asked himself. "Probably not," he decided. "The 
wizard said that he wasn't going to mess with things like that. I suppose that 
staying a slob is better than becoming a slut." 

Although Mike was studying civil engineering, his courses in mechanical 
engineering had been useful; he'd devised a couple of improvements in the air 
conditioner the landlord had provided that had his place cooling down in no 
time. Mike stripped down to his underwear, ate half the pizza, drank a couple 
of cans of soda, and put the leftovers into the refrigerator. Then he headed for 
bed. 

He was just about to turn out the lights when he remembered the box in his 
suit pocket, having earlier been totally distracted by routine and hunger. He 
leapt out of bed and took it out. When he unwrapped it, he found the Zee-
Rocks machine, which he was now able to examine at close hand. 

It looked like nothing so much as a field microscope, having a small lens at 
top and a wide base to rest on. He peered through it and saw only a distorted 
image of the rest of his bedroom. "C'mon," he thought. "Is this really going 
to do anything? Or have I been taken of most of today's pay?" 

Then he started thinking about whether he really wanted it to work after all. 
What was the job market like for women in civil engineering? Were they still 
trying to make up for past discrimination or were those just token jobs with 
no possibility for advancement? Maybe he could switch to EE or CS; women 
had a lot better odds there, especially in computing. Maybe he should have 
asked the wizard to do just a little tinkering, and give him some aptitude for 
one of those fields. No, too dangerous to let the wizard meddle, judging by 
the stories he'd read. But if his mind was still his own, he could rely on his 
own drive to succeed, and adding to that some feminine wiles...or maybe a 
lot of feminine wiles.... At last, he took a deep breath and decided to do it, 
telling himself, "Mike, this is your only chance. Get cold feet now and you'll 
be sorry forever." 

But which transformation? He needed a picture to work from. He started 
going through a stack of "gentlemen's" magazines he kept in the bedroom, 
looking for a picture of just the right woman. Most of them were copies of 
_D, DD, and Beyond_, Mike having been a (mostly) normal American male 
with the usual fascination with women's breasts. Mike skipped over some of 
the improbably large women; he wasn't interested in a body with implants. 
Besides, he didn't want to be so big as to be unable to hide things under a 
loose sweatshirt or some such at a work site. If he was going to be a woman 
engineer, he had to keep some practical matters in mind, and construction 
workers were a notoriously randy lot. A fine thing to be sued for distracting 
someone with a hot rivet who couldn't ignore a hot chick. 

Winnowing photos down took a long time. Although he had been tired from 
his long day at the Mall, the frisson of excitement over what he was about to 
do, tinged with just a little fear about the uncertain future if it worked, kept 
him on edge. A couple of times he thought he'd found the ideal choice, but 
careful scrutiny revealed the scars of implant surgery, an almost hidden 
tattoo, or some body piercing. Mike considered those things to be self-
mutiliation and a real turn-off for him. So he kept looking. 

It was well past 2:30 am when he finally decided on the picture. She was 
blonde--and naturally so (unless she bleached her eyebrows and pubic hair), 
measured 34DD, claimed a 22-inch waist (which Mike really liked), had a 
cute round butt, and nice legs. She was only 5'3", which made Mike a bit 
nervous; he'd been tall since his early teens and had enjoyed the natural 
confidence it gave him. But that was the only drawback. The woman in the 
picture also had what Mike thought was an interesting face--not quite the 
conventionally pretty that made so many of the models forgettable once one 
had turned the page, but with some character to it. He looked closely at the 
photos in the layout again, noting that every square millimeter of her was 
visible and looked perfect--no scars, no moles, no tattoos, no navel rings. 
Nothing but the ideal woman. 

His hands shook just a bit as he put the magazine, opened to its centerfold, 
on the floor, set the Zee-Rocks machine on top of it (with the proper end up, 
of course--Mike was careful to remember the wizard's instructions), and slid 
them under his bed, cautious about disturbing or moving anything as he did 
so. Then he flicked off the light and slid between the sheets himself, 
surrendering to complete exhaustion. 

* * *

Mike had neither classes nor work scheduled the next day, so there was no 
alarm for him to sleep through. With his late bedtime, the sun didn't wake 
him until very late in the morning. His first sensation on waking was of 
something in his face. He shook his head to get rid of it, only to have more of 
it tickle him. More awake then, he tried to figure out what was bothering him 
and found he was holding a handful of blonde hair. 

Mike sat bolt upright in bed, fully awake, and threw back the covers. "It 
worked! It actually worked!" she thought, as she looked down at her large, 
round breasts, pubic patch, and shapely legs. She quickly ran her hands over 
her body, feeling her new waistline and spreading hips, then hefting her 
breasts and appreciating their pleasant firmness and mass. "Wait a minute," 
she thought. "Wasn't I wearing a t-shirt and shorts when I turned in last 
night? How come I'm naked this morning? Did I push them off while I was 
asleep? And where did these shoes come from? I certainly wasn't wearing 
blue high-heeled shoes to bed." 

Those questions could wait; using the bathroom could not. Mike found that 
everything came naturally to this new body, just as the wizard had promised, 
including wrapping her hair in a towel after her shower. "Now, what am I 
going to wear?" she thought, as she walked out of the bathroom with only the 
towel on her head. "I guess I could slip into some of my old jeans with the 
legs rolled up and a sweatshirt until I can get a wardrobe together." And she 
started for the dresser. 

The first drawer, however, was empty. So was the second. And the third. 
And the others. And the closet, except for a row of six pairs of identical 
bright blue 5" spike-heeled shoes. "There are no clothes here. What am I 
going to do?" She started to feel somewhat panicky. 

"Well, a cheery good morning to you, Mike. Or should I call you Michelle?" 

"Eeeek!" she shrieked, taken completely by surprise at the voice from behind 
her. Spinning around, she saw the wizard from the shop, and with another 
eeek! tried to cover herself with her hands. 

"Calm down, Michelle. What's your problem?" 

"I think that's obvious," she said. "I'm stark naked and there aren't any 
clothes here and there's a man in my room." 

"You aren't anything I haven't seen a thousand times before. Well, maybe a 
couple of hundred. OK, a few dozen. Never mind that. I still want to know 
why you think you have a problem." 

"Idiot! I told you, I'm starkers. Unclad. Exposed. Raw. Nude. And I can't 
find any clothes here." 

"Well, there are clothes here. You just can't see or touch them. Take that 
towel off your head and try wrapping it around you." She did, and was 
flustered to see it vanish completely. She looked around for it and felt for it 
on the floor. Then the wizard bent down, picked up something invisible, 
shook it a bit, and he was holding the towel, visible again. As a further 
demonstration, he opened one of the seemingly empty dresser drawers and 
took out an invisible (to her) object. He twisted his hands, and, with a 
ripping sound, two pieces of cloth that had once been a t-shirt, but were now 
unwearable, became visible. "See? For you, clothes simply don't exist." 

"You mean that it's not just that I'm naked now? I can't ever wear clothes?" 

"Isn't that what you wanted, Michelle? I don't understand your difficulty." 

"Double idiot! What makes you think I wanted to be naked?" 

"But that's what you selected with the Zee-Rocks machine. Where is it? Still 
under the bed?" The wizard reached under the bed and slid out the magazine 
and the machine on top of it. "Look here. You are now an exact duplicate of 
the woman in the picture. She's entirely nude except for a pair of blue high-
heeled shoes, right?" The wizard waited for Michelle to nod. "Remember 
what I told you? The machine makes exact duplicates. Since the woman in the 
picture was nude, you are nude. Simple as that." 

Michelle sat down heavily on the bed. Despite all her careful stipulations 
beforehand with the wizard, things had gone wrong anyway. He was still 
nattering on, and she'd missed the first few words while feeling sorry for 
herself but then picked up on what he was saying. 

"...not much of a market for nude engineers, so I have taken the liberty of 
arranging employment for you. I'm afraid that the opportunities for naked 
ladies are pretty much limited to the adult entertainment industry--nude 
modeling, videos, dancing, that sort of thing. Too bad you wouldn't let 
me...how did you put it?...'mess with your mind'; I could have given you 
the proper natural instincts and talents for your new line of endeavor. You'll 
just have to work at acquiring them, instead. And I believe that you'll still 
prefer women as sex partners, for the same reason; that's really too bad, as it 
will cut you out of the most lucrative part of the sex business. Still, it's 
exactly what you asked for. So, pack your bags," the wizard winked at her 
and then waved a hand causing a makeup case to appear on the empty 
dresser. "You have an appointment in Las Vegas." 

"No, dammit," she shouted, "it's not what I asked for. You tricked me. You 
cheated me." 

"I most certainly did not," the wizard retorted. I told you three times that the 
Zee-Rocks machine would turn you into exactly what was in the picture. If 
you had picked a photo of a woman wearing clothes, you'd be wearing 
clothes. It's not my fault if you didn't pay attention. I warned you about that, 
too. I even gave you a visual clue to impress it on you even more firmly." 
The wizard shook his head vigorously, making his stringy gray hair fly 
about. 

"His hair," Michelle thought. "But yesterday, he was wearing that silly wig. 
Even when I blinked and his costume changed, he still had that wig on. Was 
that my clue? The wizard's wig? What's special about a wizard's wig?" The 
light dawned. Not "wizard's wig," but "WYSIWYG"--"what you see is what 
you get." 

The metaphoric dawning light was succeeded by a more brilliant flash as the 
wizard gestured and the bedroom vanished, to be replaced by a modeling 
studio. Michelle looked around to see a dozen men with lights and cameras in 
the dark side of the studio, and a brilliantly lit bedroom scene with another 
beautiful nude woman reclining amidst a half-dozen pillows. Michelle found 
it hard to take her eyes off the other woman's body; the wizard had been right 
about her keeping her male preferences in sex partners. "Come over here, 
honey, and let me taste you," the woman said in a sultry southern accent. As 
the wizard went off to collect his substantial finder's fee, Michelle shrugged 
fatalistically and stepped off in her new blue shoes to her new, very blue, 
career.