I decided they obviously should be told about the stone. Hell, I had shared it with Karyn for no particular reason at all, and I had just ruined the lives of my mother and sister.
“All right, what’s going on is that grandfather left me a magic wish granting rock, and I think it’s evil.”
“You mean like a genie that twists your words in a terrible way, like you wish you were rich and a ton of gold appears in your stomach and you explode?” Zoe asked.
“Ah ha, I see you’ve seen Leprechaun 2,” I said to my rabbit sister. “Not quite that flagrantly evil I think, or at least I didn’t think so at first.”
“So what did you wish for, that did this to us?”
“I wished for some good luck charms that actually worked, that’s where the rabbit’s foot and the horseshoe and the fuzzy dice came from, Karyn got a maneki neko, and then after I gave them out, all I wished for after that was that my family would wear their charms. Apparently it used that as an excuse to turn mom into a horse because to properly wear a horseshoe one should be a horse. Not very lucky, are they?” You’re both more unlucky than you know yet, I shuddered in thought at my earlier blunders. Why did I have to make the stupid wish right then for both of them! I could have done it when I had time to think, and a rabbit wasn’t making annoying sounds! I had all the time in the world!
“And that’s also why I turned into a rabbit and Mikey turned into a corvette,” Zoe said flatly.
“Yes... WHAT?” I said in delayed reaction.
“You gave him a pair of fuzzy dice Jon. Tell me, if a horseshoe is normally worn by a horse, how are fuzzy dice normally worn? What do people usually do with a pair of plush fuzzy dice on a string?” Zoe said with as much of a smile as a bunny could muster.
I sighed and said, “they hang them from the rear view mirrors of their cars. Where is he?”
“In his room. I was there when it happened. Is that the wish granting rock in your hand?”
“Yes...” I said. “Don’t wish for anything right now, ok?”
“Hmph,” Zoe grumbled as I left the living room and headed for Mikey’s room. She awkwardly hopped after me while my mom clomped along at the back, unsuccessfully trying to step as lightly as possible. As I got near, I heard a ticking sound, like a metronome.
I opened the door to Mikey’s room and there was a big car crushing into the wall, propped up against it in a weird angle. Its left turn signal was flashing, and was making the ticking sound.
“It’s kind of funny, mom, if you think about it,” Zoe said. “You’re a horse, and your son is a car. The next generation mode of transportation that replaced horses. Also, did you know that in Mandarin Chinese, the word for...”
“Zoe! Yes, she already knows that...” I said, wanting to kick my earlier self now for saying the same thing.
“All right,” I said, “I have to be very careful how I w... ask, for him to be changed back.” I almost casually said the w word while carrying this accursed thing!
“Careful about how you wish him back? Why don’t you wish for all 3 of us to be back?! Also, how many wishes do you get with that thing?” Zoe asked in increased agitation.
I had to tell them. “The good news is there seems to be no limit to the number of wishes.”
“What’s the bad news?” Zoe asked in more shaky a voice.
“The bad news is, earlier wishes can’t be reversed or contradicted. Only elaborated on. And apparently that includes being unable to undo or prevent certain things it just decided on arbitrarily. For instance when mom was turning into a horse, I asked it not to change her, and to leave her alone, and it wouldn’t. It would only not completely change her into an animal.” I felt dirty about leaving off the detail about how incompetently I had handled after that. But as selfish as it was of me, I didn’t want their anger to be directed at me at the moment. Deliver the bad news but let it all be the evil stone’s fault for now, it wasn’t too far off at least.
“You mean, I’m going to be a stupid bunny rabbit for the rest of my life??!” Zoe wailed.
“No, actually in your case instead of you being stuck as a rabbit in both body and mind, I was able to get it to not only keep your mind and memories and ability to speak, but get you smarter than you were before. You’re at least not going to be a stupid bunny rabbit for the rest of your life, you’re going to be a very smart bunny rabbit for the rest of your life.”
“Oh and even if that was fine, which it’s NOT, my two fucking eyes are on different sides of my head Jon, this is so fucked up you couldn’t believe it, not having two forward facing eyes and not being able to look in the same direction with both eyes, but even if being in this stupid body was ok, the rest of my life Jon, how long is that, like 4 years?” Zoe cried.
“Oh. Well, I’m sure, we can, do something, about, oh god, I’m not so sure we can! A rabbit’s lifespan is an inherent trait of its biology, so if I can’t change anything else about you, maybe we really can’t, oh, Zoe, I’m so sorry...” now even I was failing to hold back a few tears. It was one thing for them to be trapped with bodies like that, which they could potentially eventually be able to enjoy having, but this was just the worst, this was genuinely awful! Stupid good luck charms! What the fuck about this was good luck?! Everything had gone terribly wrong! This wasn’t good luck! Could I somehow petition the stone to undo wishes under the grounds that it had failed to actually grant earlier wishes in the first place?!
“What if you...” Zoe began. “Well anyway let’s see what we can do for Mikey for now.”
“I think, we should wish for...” I began.
“Jon STOP TALKING RIGHT NOW! I noticed you avoided saying wish before and changed it to other words, it activates by you saying that word doesn’t it?!” Zoe screamed.
“Oh,” I said, setting the stone down in the hallway and backing away from it. “Well. Thanks for that. I’m glad my bunny rabbit sister is a genius. A rabbit’s brain weighs just 7 or 8 grams, did you know that?”
“Is that all? Ugh. How does it even work in my case? How can it even have enough complexity to... Anyway. Is it whoever is touching it?” she asked.
“Yeah,” I said.
She hopped over to it, while I held my breath and barely managed to avoid laughing at the sight.
“I guess we should aim high as a first try,” Zoe said. “You said it didn’t work with us, but who knows, Mikey’s case might be fundamentally different, he isn’t even a conscious living thing.” She put her little front right bunny paw on the stone and said, “I wish Mikey would be restored fully to his human self with his human mind and human memories except for his body to never grow old past the age of 18 or get sick and for him to also like me be smarter than before. Aim very high.”
They all stood still, the only sound echoing through the house, the incessant sound of Mikey’s turn signal. Tick, tick, tick, tick.
“I’m going to go turn that off already,” I said. I managed to awkwardly open the driver’s side front door, not easily done with how the car was propped up against the corner of the room, and turn off Mikey’s left turn signal.
“How quick is it, and does it just, happen?” Zoe asked.
“It would have happened already. The time it would have done it in is long gone. Also the stone gets hot when it grants a wish, and everyone nearby feels compelled to look away while it does whatever it does,” I answered.
Zoe lifted her cute little bunny paw off the stone. “Mom, what do you think, you’ve been very quiet,” Zoe asked her horse mother.
“Nnneeeiiigghhh!!” their mother whinnied.
“Oh,” Zoe said. “Is your mind still in there?”
Her mom nodded.
“I see what you’re saying, it could have done worse. Well still, horses live a lot longer than rabbits,” Zoe remarked. “But I have an idea, I don’t know if it could work or if it could carry the risk of being interpreted in an evil way. Anyway right now let’s see about what can be done for Mikey.”
She put her right forepaw back on the stone. “I wish Mikey’s..., hmm. I wish, Mikey...” she lifted her paw off. “What’s one step lower?”
“What if you wished he was a very talented transformer robot cyborg who could turn into a car and properly wear fuzzy dice like a car, but also take the form of any human he wanted including his former human body so convincingly that he could fool any doctor?” I suggested.
“Ohhhh, that’s pretty clever, I guess maybe you should be making the wish after all. But don’t say anything more.” Zoe put her paw on the stone again. “I wish for what Jon just said, but also that his consciousness and human mind and memories and intelligence would be restored as well, except he would have higher intelligence than before, and that he wouldn’t ever grow old or wear out or get sick but that he could also make his human appearance to be any age he wants.” She waited a moment. “Ahhh!” she shouted as she found herself looking away.
At first nothing happened. And then came Mikey’s modified echoey voice asking “What just happened?” It was his voice but with a metallic sort of echoing side effect, just like the transformers in the ancient cartoons.
“Mikey, concentrate on being your human self,” Zoe said.
“My human self,” he asked.
“Yes concentrate on being your normal self,” Zoe said back.
“Ok,” Mikey said in his weird metallic voice. And then came that iconic transformer transformation sound effect from the cartoon, and havoc in the room, and then there he stood. Looking like normal. “That was weird, whoa...” he said. His voice was still transformery. Then he started coughing, and coughed up… the fuzzy dice. They were inside of him after all. He reached down and picked them up, and then took a step forward toward them and his feet broke through the floor.
“I think he might still weigh like a ton,” I said.
“Yeah,” agreed Zoe. “But he got waaaaaaay luckier than we did.”
“I’m sorry. If I had only done it better...” I said.
“It may not have been possible to do better with us. There was an option for him that wasn’t there for us. I’m a rabbit and mom’s a horse. I don’t see any way to twist that in a way that goes along with properly wearing a rabbit’s foot or a horseshoe the way there was with a machine that is an invention of humans and has a whole lot of freedom with it. A horse is a horse, of course, of course.”
“No way, if a transformer robot can turn not just into a car but a human, there’s no reason it couldn’t turn into other animals besides humans too, so I could have made mom into a transformer robot that could turn into a horse and wear horseshoes and a human and you two would basically just end up with a bunch of cool powers.” I said.
“Yeah, you’re right, you did totally screw us, after all, Jon.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said.
“We’ll see if there’s something we can do,” Zoe said, her eyes narrowing. “What about Karyn? You said you gave her a maneki neko, is there any chance she’s turned into a cat?”
“I don’t think so. I wished my family would wear their items, so she should have been left out of that part. Though I did give her item... the ability to... change her body...” I tried to explain without going into unnecessary details.
“Uh oh,” Zoe said.
I was annoyed, she was misunderstanding. Well let’s clear it up even if it’s a little embarrassing. “Well yes, but I said specifically her breasts, since, well, um... you see, she accidentally, did something earlier, and it was to help her fix that.”
“You used the evil genie stone that we already know is liable to include undue creative liberties in granting wishes, to give her item the ability to change a part of her body, and are just hoping it didn’t also give it the ability to change the rest of her body in a real negative way while it’s at it?”
“Uh oh,” I said.
Meanwhile:
Karyn needed help. She knew this was a big, big problem. She didn’t think about it being a big, big problem, in those exact words. In fact, she had found she wasn’t thinking about it in any words at all. She thought it was kind of fun having lost her ability to think in any language, and was enjoying that too, and couldn’t bring herself to really panic about any of it. After all, she honestly loved her new body. She was a real tiger! This was so much fun!
“Karyn, honey, we’re your parents, you wouldn’t eat us, would you?” her father’s voice trembled, as he hugged around her mother. If Karyn hadn’t changed right in front of them, they’d have never known the tiger was her and they’d have called animal control. But now they had to accept the reality that their daughter had just turned into a tiger.
The family cat however wasn’t afraid at all. He was purring as Karyn was gently licking him. Karyn couldn’t understand why these two humans she clearly identified as part of her household were acting so weird and panicy. She hadn’t shown a shred of aggression toward them. Well not unless they counted it as aggressive when she literally shredded the female’s pants off with a swipe of her claws. But she hadn’t hurt anyone, she was trying to be as gentle as possible and if she hadn’t harmed the family cat, why would they think she would harm them? Well ok she had drawn a little bit of blood from the male. But couldn’t they tell she was just playing?
She pounced on her dad, and he screamed as she licked his face for a few licks before realizing she had licked him a little too roughly with her tiger tongue. Oops, she had drawn a little bit of blood again. But they were totally overreacting! They should just play back with her!
