Wolverine
Jasmine held on to the letter for a while, reading it and rereading it several times over. There was no reference to Leland’s handwriting, but she had no doubt that the eloquently curvaceous script in front of her was a result of the wizard’s hand. How did he find her so quickly? Did he always know where she was? Did he know what she was doing right now? He claimed to be elsewhere, out of town, and while she was inclined to believe him, there lingered the unsettling feeling of being watched. She put the note down on the coffee table and walked towards the door. She opened it and looked outside. There was nothing but hallway and dozens of apartment doors. No sign of an oversized magic man peeking around the corner or through a crack in one of the doors. Of course there wasn’t. Why would there be? If he was really watching her, it was probably through some magic orb that provided him a bird’s-eye view of her apartment, one that penetrated the roof and the many floors above her like an x-ray.
With any illusion of privacy shattered and unrecoverable, she closed the door and stepped back into her apartment. The package was on the couch where she had left it. The yellowed parchment was folded on the coffee table. She brought herself over and read it again. It said the same thing, referring to her as Jared, her human and male self, a version she was unsure still existed or not.
Sitting next to the package made her uneasy. What was in it? A new suit, so the note said, but of what animal was unclear. A different species of skunk? Maybe something else entirely. Just opening the package and pulling it out seemed risky. Having put on the skunk onesie when she was Jared had proved a universe-altering decision. Just coming into contact with another one, let alone putting it on, seemed like a risky decision.
Alas, curiosity got the better of her. She picked the package up and sat it in her lap. It felt heavy, at least a bit more than what the skunk onesie had weighed. She peeled the tape off and pulled open the cardboard flaps. Before her was a flat sheet of dark brown fur, one that seemed to fill the package’s perfectly rectangular shape. Running down the center vertically was a zipper flap. It reminded Jasmine of what she had seen on the skunk onesie. She knew that once she put this one on it would disappear. That was if she put it on. Who knew what kind of animal it would change her into and what world she would find herself in.
Only one way to find out. She pinched the furry suit between just her index and thumb fingers like it was a dirty handkerchief and pulled it from the box. It was much heavier than the skunk onesie, that much was clear once she got most of it out of the box. Holding it with just her pinched fingers proved too difficult, so she had to readjust her grip so that she used all of her paws.
The fur was much denser than what was on her body now. Laying her paw on it revealed that it had multiple layers: a coarse outer coat and an almost impenetrable bottom coat. She ran her fingers through it. At the roots of each dark brown hair was a section of light blonde. Beneath it all the skin was invisible, the fur was so thick. What the hell is it? she asked herself. A grizzly bear? Images of herself as a snarling, hump-backed behemoth came to mind. If that’s what it was, she definitely wasn’t putting it on.
The box was put aside so that she could stand up with it. The rest of it fell out from the box and dangled from her paws like a new dress. The limbs, she saw, were incredibly thick. That tough, protective fur continued throughout the onesie’s design. The only color besides dark brown on the outer layer was a crescent of blonde that went around the collar, above the chest and just below the hood. The feet paws were enormous like baseball mitts. When Jasmine brought the suit to her body and looked down the back she saw a brief but fluffy tail shaped like a club.
And still she didn’t know what animal it was. A ferret maybe? A weasel? An otter? Any other mustelid? Being a skunk kept her guesses in the mustelid family. It was embarrassing not being able to pinpoint what it was exactly. It had to be an animal that lived in the arctic. Fur this thick could keep a blizzard at bay. A mink, maybe? No, the fur wasn’t soft enough. Plus, the body was too stocky. Minks were more streamlined for swimming.
That left one mustelid that she knew of with this kind of fur: a wolverine. The short, stubby beasts with ferocious tempers and jaws that could snap moose femurs. That had to be what this was. The dense coat, stocky frame, and massive paws all pointed that way. Jasmine felt silly for not having realized it sooner. Is that what Leland wanted her to become next? An ankle-mauling claw dog that could give a honey badger a lesson in aggression? Maybe if I put it on it’ll give me retractable claws and a skeleton of adamantium. As awesome as that would be, she doubted that it would turn her into Hugh Jackman.
If that was the case, would it ever be worth putting on? Leland said it was her choice, but something told her that there were consequences if she didn’t. If he could craft suits that altered bodies and the universe, surely he had some way of fucking with her from afar. He was able to find her here in the skunk universe, so it was pretty much certain that he would find her in the wolverine universe if it existed.
Jasmine couldn’t make her mind up, at least not yet. This was something worth sleeping on for at least a night or two. She went to her bedroom and hung the suit up on a hanger in her closet. There it would remain for some time, drawing Jasmine’s thought every time she passed her closet door. A few days came and went with her living life as a skunk. Before long the novelty had worn off, and living in a world of skunks was as natural as living with humans.
It was one night, exactly nine days since the man known as Jared put on a skunk onesie, that Jasmine went to her closet and opened it. The wolverine suit was on the farthest end of the rack, behind the wall where it was darker. She pulled her shirts and jackets aside so that she could retrieve the bulky suit. Pulling the hanger off the rack reminded her just how heavy it was. The zipper went down so she could pull the hanger out. She took some time looking at the suit’s fur patterns. On the back were light brown stripes, sort of like a skunk’s. Hey, maybe she wouldn’t change that much after all.
Jasmine went to the bathroom where she took her clothes off and unzipped the suit the rest of the way. The inside was a white velvet material, so at least it would be pleasant to wear for as long as it wasn’t fusing to her skin like liquid tar. Her feet went into the legs first, filling them out to the paw pads. When she hiked the suit up to her waist she realized how loose it was around her limbs and body. At first she thought that it must have been made for someone much bigger than her, but then she remembered that larger mustelids like badgers and wolverines had loose hides, especially honey badgers.
Her arms went through the sleeves and she covered her shoulders. The hood went over her head, then she paused. All that was left was to pull the zipper up, no doubt the trigger for her transformation. She remembered how terrifying turning into a skunk had been, as it would be for any person. Saying that she knew what to expect this time wasn’t that convincing.
But she was in too deep to stop now. With a deep breath she pulled the zipper up. It slid with a low buzz, clinging each metal tooth together until they had formed a thin but solid pinstripe of shiny steel. Jasmine let go of the zipper tab. Her heart was pounding in her chest. The zipper would vanish at any moment now, and her transformation into a wolverine would begin.
At first nothing happened. The zipper remained intact and the suit continued to hang off her body like a cloak. She held her arms out awkwardly, preparing for fur to fall into the shape of her body like shrink wrap, but it wouldn’t. Frowning, she turned her back to the mirror to see if anything had changed there. There was the bulge of her fluffy skunk tail pressing into the hide and the unused wolverine tail hanging limply just below that. Did he send me a dud?
She turned to face the mirror again. Just like that, the zipper had vanished. “Oh,” she said aloud. Rubbing her paw down her trunk unveiled nothing. Like a game of red light, green light, the zipper wouldn’t move until Jasmine had her eyes off it.
There wasn’t any time to dwell on the mechanics of the suit before she felt it shrinking into her body exactly as the skunk suit had. She saw it fall into the shape of her body, replacing most of her black and white fur with that luscious dark brown. A uniform pressure overtook her skin, causing her to inhale sharply on reflex. The suit was not so tight on her that she couldn’t breathe, but there lingered the threat of it crushing her into oblivion if she did not keep a reserve of air in her lungs.
The hoodie consumed her head, leaving only her excited-looking face exposed. Her ears were flattened beneath it, muffling all sound except for the erratic thump of her heart. A creeping tickle began to move up her wrists. She held them out and saw the sleeves creeping up her paws like a spreading oil spill. The black fur was encroached and absorbed by the suit. It consumed her paw pads and slid up her digits like shadows on a tree in the evening.
Soon her claw tips were cocooned, leaving the hood to spill across her visage and transform it into something more ferocious. Looking in the mirror she saw the ovular cutout around her face shrink into her brow, chin, and cheeks. There was a stab of panic in her heart. Her breath quickened and she kneaded her paws. It wasn’t painful, but seeing the furry material lay claim to her identity like a bacterium colonizing a petri dish was distressing.
Finally the suit covered her nose and mouth. The space between her eyes was the very last piece of her to be consumed. The suit was done spreading, but was nowhere near finished with transforming her. A great buzz flooded her body as the suit penetrated her skin and went to work making her more wolverine-ish. She yelped once her proud skunk tail sank into her back. Jasmine was spared the sight of the tail bones slithering down the space between her back and the suit like a snake. They fell into the limp wolverine tail, filling it with sensation and muscle that she could control.
“Ah!” She leaned forward onto the kitchen sink, catching herself on the rim of it. The transformation had settled into her skeleton. From her spine to her limbs she could feel the bones lengthening and swelling into something much stockier. Though the discomfort was short of painful, she was able to open her eyes and watch her reflection change along with her. The shoulders, once slim and dainty, were coming apart like a pair of sliding doors. It added only a few inches, but was enough to turn Jasmine from a petite woman into a linebacker. The same happened to her hips and thighs. The soft curvature of her waist hardened into a rigid trunk. Most glaring was the shift of her head. When the snout started hardening it was as though a filament of lead was being poured into her skull.
Then came her muscles. They filled out the girth of her skeleton gradually. Jasmine hissed and snarled. She could see the sinews rising into the skin. Beneath her breasts formed a pair of thick, squared pecs. Traps rose from the back of her neck, completing a second set of shoulders. The biceps turned into boulders. Her forearms rivaled the breadth of small tree trunks. The same process swelled her legs and glutes, completing her new status as an athlete. Last to change were her paws. The pads thickened into leathery mattresses that could’ve stopped the swing of a bat, they were so dense. Her claws, already long and powerful, grew even more intimidating, almost like a bear’s. As she held her paws in front of her to watch the transformation she could feel the same process happening to her feet.
And that was the end of it. Like a lightning strike it ended as quickly as it had started. Every feeling of twisting and pulling dissipated, leaving Jasmine in a state of mild shock. She blinked and looked at herself in the mirror. Jasmine the skunk was gone, replaced by Jasmine (if that was still her name) the wolverine. Oddly she kept the overall features of her face. Her eyes were the same color brown. It was difficult to pinpoint given how much had changed, but for some reason she was still able to recognize herself.
On the other hand, everything else was completely different. Jasmine looked like a strongman or a bodybuilder, she had been so filled with muscle. She could see every flex her muscles performed when she moved her arms. Earlier she thought she looked like a linebacker. Looking at herself now it was clear that a lineman was more appropriate. It felt as though the tile floor beneath her would break beneath her immensity. Her neck was like a thigh and her paws were like catcher’s mitts. Everything about her exuded strength and masculinity.
Which is funny, because she was still a female. Atop those gargantuan pecs were a pair of small, but still identifiable breasts. A quick inspection between her thighs confirmed that she was still a woman, though now her parts were hidden beneath a serious layer of brown fluff. Geez, if this is how big the ladies get. How big are the fellas?
Written by TheGreatJaceyGee on 07 July 2023