"Of course," Karyn said out loud to herself. "What am I thinking. That's like wasting a wish on a regular 3 wish type deal on something stupid like asking for a sandwich. There's an easy fix for this. If I want something gone, I don't need to wish for it to be gone. Creating something is hard. But destroying it is easy." She put on a new shirt but nothing for her bottom half, because of course it would get in the way of what she would do next. She went to her garage, swishing her huge tail as she walked. It was a bit of a pity really, it might be fun to keep it, but the problems it would cause were just hard to even begin to imagine. The light in the garage was burned out and there were no windows so she couldn't see anything without opening the garage door. She didn’t really like the idea of overusing the stone for mundane tasks because what if it ran out of power one day? So rather than wish for the light to be replaced, and having no hope of replacing it herself in total darkness, she opened the mechanical garage door with the button on the wall to let in some light from outside. She would just risk the embarrassment of someone seeing her and maybe if it came to it, she would wish for them to lose the memory of what they saw. But what were the odds of that anyway? At any rate, it wasn't totally dark yet, but it was still kind of dark out. Enough light came into the garage to see by. And there they were. The hedge clippers. "Ironically, the hedge clippers are more powerful than the stone, in a way. Since they can do something the stone can't. I can't wish it away because that contradicts an earlier wish, but there's no reason I can't remove it, the painful way. As they say. If you want something done right... do it yourself."
She peeked around outside as well as she could from the back of the garage and it didn't appear anyone was there, though for all she knew they were just around the corner just out of view. Her parents weren't home, her mom was out shopping for something and her dad was working late, and so there was no car in the garage, but there was a workbench with a backing. So she got behind the workbench as well as she could, and held the hedge clippers as high up against her tail as she could. She put its blades around it, and started putting a little pressure around it. It started hurting just from the pressure she had exerted. Oh this was going to hurt.
Gathering her resolve, she forced the two handles together and howled at the most pain she had ever felt in her life. It hurt so bad! It was bleeding, so much! "Wait a minute. Of course. Oh god, why didn't I think of it before, I could have just wished for it to be painless and bloodless!" She looked for something to stop the bleeding and there was nothing. She just ran inside and rushed for the stone. But she knew as desperate as she was to fix this, she had to be careful. She didn't want to do something like just wish for there to not be any pain, because that might go as far as to make her lose her sense of touch for the rest of her life. She got the stone and picked it up.
"I wish," she started, looking back at the trail of blood she had left on the floor, looking at her backside. She still had a bloody nub of a tail. Well she would worry about little details like that when the pain was gone. "I wish, that the injury from cutting my tail off just now would stop bleeding and stop causing pain, and I'm not wishing to stop bleeding or stop feeling any pain forever, just for this injury!... OH GODDAMN IT!" she screamed when her tail grew back, as big and fluffy as before, with no sign of any injury on her. In a way, that was what she had asked for, after all, the bleeding and pain had indeed stopped. "That's not what I meant! Damn it... I wish, I wish, the mess I made with my blood getting all over the floor, would be cleaned up, with no stains or other permanent damage done to anything. Also, I wish that any blood loss I have experienced, I would get back, and I don't mean the soiled blood that's on the floor to go back in my bloodstream, I mean for new blood, because I don't want to be suffering from blood loss or to be poisoned or anything." That part seemed to work at least. At least the mess was taken care of. Another figure of speech came to mind. When at first you don't succeed, try, try again.
She carried the stone back to the garage, her tail swishing low. Her previous amputated tail on the garage floor, trickling blood, she set the stone down on the table and put the hedge clippers up to her newly grown one. "Damn it, I can't let this get to me. Should I wish to not feel pain before or after I do it?" She tried to imagine how it could possibly go wrong either way. She could grab the stone and get rid of the pain and bleeding very quickly at least. With full strength, she pressed closed the clippers and she bit down without crying out this time as her second tail plopped to the ground. She quickly grabbed the stone.
"Ok, once again I wish that the injury from cutting off my tail would stop bleeding and causing pain but only for this injury and this time not by growing a tail back, just, that this injury wouldn't hurt any more, and would stop bleeding. There." She had taken care of it pretty quickly with maybe one ounce of blood spilled this time. Then Karyn looked back at the huge wound at the top of her buttocks. And for that matter, she still had a nub of a tail. It definitely wasn't perfect. "All right. Finally, I wish, this wound would heal... OH YOU MOTHERFUCKER!" she screamed when her tail grew back once again. "You piece of shit you're doing this on purpose!"
20 minutes later:
Karyn now stood over a small pile of severed tails as well as an arm and 2 legs, her new fluffy tail swishing on her backside. How many failures was that now, 7? Or 8? "All right stone. I wish these already magic hedge clippers would painlessly and bloodlessly cut through living flesh when used for that purpose, without leaving any sort of injury or scar behind, and it would just leave new perfect, smooth, good looking skin underneath, with no ugly vestige of anything that was cut off left over in this case a nub of a tail, and without causing any phantom limb syndrome so it won't make me feel like I still have a tail but it will feel as if I never had it, and without causing regeneration powers to take effect, and without summoning any nature spirits or any other supernatural things, and without the hedge clippers becoming sentient and without it getting a mind of its own and without it trying to cut off the user's other body parts or anything else like that, but just for safety, I wish that any cut it makes, any body parts cut off, can be attached and restored just by holding the cut off part to where it belongs, so if for instance I end up losing an arm, I can just put it back on and it will be like it was before getting cut off." She had barely managed to grab the stone with her remaining arm that time and wish for the then animated and malevolent hedge clippers to be unable to move under its own power. But just in case, it was a margin of safety just to make it so that anything it cut off, could be put back on.
Finally, finally, she cut off her tail without further incident, and was back to normal. At least until she saw the full moon and wolfed out again, but she would be ready for that when the time came. She went back inside carrying the stone, and wished for some new clothes. After a few minutes, it hit her there were still some loose ends she needed to take care of, and went back to the garage, and wished the pile of body parts away. One tail ramained without disappearing. Of course. That must have been the original one, she couldn't wish that one away. Oh well. But didn't it look like it had been a much smaller pile than it was before? Oh well. It was over. She wanted to be done with it and not think any further of it. She also took the hedge clippers and the remaining tail with her back into the house and wished for a replacement hedge clippers to leave in its place in the garage without any magical properties. She would put the magic ones and the tail in her closet for now, and bury the tail tomorrow. There was no sense agonizing over any of this any more.
Stanley had just seen something quite amazing. He had been walking down the sidewalk that late afternoon when the garage he was walking past opened. Normally he wouldn't think anything of that. That is, until some high school girl with a huge animal tail and naked from the waist down had walked into the garage. On instinct he rushed to hide off to the side in the bushes. After a few seconds, he snuck across the street so he could watch from a distance, and looked inside the garage. And saw quite a display. The girl cut off the tail. He had assumed it was some sort of costume, but she shrieked in pain, and appeared to be spurting blood, and ran into the house, while the tail twitched briefly on the floor and then lay there dead. Stanley was frozen in morbid interest. About two minutes went by as he internally debated whether he should go across the street and investigate that thing on the floor that was trickling blood, when the girl walked back into the garage, wearing another tail. So he continued watching from a distance. He couldn't make out what she was saying, but he sure saw quite a show over the next 20 minutes. At last, she went back inside, without any tail on her body, but still naked from the waist down. After about 3 minutes more, he worked up the nerve to go across the street. And then he trespassed into the garage. And there was a gruesome pile of body parts, both real and fantasy, or human and nonhuman. He picked up four of the tails, two in each hand, and then heard sounds coming from inside the house, and bolted back outside of the garage and back to his previous hiding place on the other side of the street.
And not a moment too soon, because the girl came back, and said something more, and the pile of severed appendages disappeared except for one tail. But not the four tails Stan was holding. He looked at them in amazement. He had just witnessed something very supernatural. Maybe the tails were magical or something? He continued watching until she closed the garage door this time. He then ran back home holding the 4 tails. But what should he do with them?
