Acclimatization The contract looked intimidating, but Laura was determined to do anything to hold on to her current newfound youth. If the Gods were this good, then she was sure that they wouldn’t shower this much goodness for naught or for a caprice of their baser selves.
It was thick, and Laura knew that there would be fine print aplenty. She went over it the next several minutes. The devil usually was in the details. It seemed to be a standard contract, and it stated that Laura had partaken of the fates pleasure, and was now beholden to them. She wasn't sure she read it right, so she read it again and again.
There was a lot of detailed stuff about different sorts of things that people wished for, and each person had their own idea of what their fantasy body would be like. Recompense for the use of the unique magic services of Madame Juliette and her sisterhood of J-women, as it were, was a very complex affair. It required a full fleshing out of what had been acquired through their services before discussing the actual terms of the contract.
After leafing through several pages that were written partly in French and partly in English and partly in a smattering of a dozen other languages, some which reminded her of hieroglyphs, Laura threw her hands up in resignation.
“I have absolutely no idea what this contract demands of me,’’ she admitted, slamming the thick volume shut.
She heard porky Julia and beefcake Julianna chuckle in the distance, as though they had expected this. Madame Juliette however was brimming with the milk of human kindness as before, and washed Laura with her compassionate gaze.
“Madame, do not fear,” she said, “Madame Juliette will explain all to you.”
Laura was glad for it. She didn’t have an old lady’s body anymore, but cantankerousness is a humor that one can get addicted to, and sometimes nothing but an abundance of good spirits and plenty of time will get rid of it. In spite of her sudden good fortune, Laura Lioness still retained her own mind, the mind of a woman in her fifties whose general outlook on life was ornery. So her reactions to things were according that sunny disposition as well.
“The payment for our services, madame,” Madame Juliette announced, “is something that will require you to return here time and again. The first part of the payment is that you are required to be part of a larger sisterhood for life.”
Laura gave her a quizzical look. Mysteriouser and mysteriouser, she thought to herself.
“You will help us find other recruits who want help such as you did, madame,” Madame Juliette said. “That is the second part of the recompense.”
Laura nodded. That seemed only fair. The question came unbidden into her head - why had nobody from their sisterhood come to find her? She had to accidentally stumble across an advertisement in the paper for good fortune to smile on her. She didn’t think it proper to voice that question just then.
Madame Juliette cocked her head to one side, and the honey gold bun on the top of her head somehow got unfurled and her hair came tumbling down, as if adding bells and whistles to her next words.
“The final part of the recompense, madame,” she said, not allowing the honey gold waves of hair obscuring half her face to interrupt her flow, “is that you must share with the sisterhood a tenth of whatever carnal delights you enjoy with your newfangled body.”
She was most deadpan in the third announcement, but to Laura it appeared that this carried the most weight. She wasn’t planning on partaking of any carnal delights with porky Julia or should-have-been-a-man Julianna. She gave Madame Juliette an alarmed look.
“Your face speaks volumes, madame,” Madame Juliette said, “but payment is payment, and must be given. Of course if this is a problem, our process here is easily reversible.”
Laura felt her first real displeasure at Madame Juliette just then, but she knew she was backed into a corner. She was well aware that she had just heard a veiled threat, and she also knew that the formidable Madame Juliette was well aware that she wouldn’t part with her newfound youth for gold or for cocks. So she sighed, and nodded her head.
“It shall be as you say, Madame Juliette,” she said. “I love this newfangled body as you call it, and I would like to enjoy it for the rest of earthly tenure should that be possible. If there is a price to be paid, I will pay it.”
Madame Juliette smiled at her, and pointed to twelve different places in the last dozen pages of the contract, as Laura signed her name and wrote her initials according to the requirement, with a funny little pen of Romanian make that the madame had given her, which wrote in purple. When they were done, Madame Juliette gathered up the contract and vanished for a minute, leaving Laura to gather her wild menagerie of thoughts.
There were of course several things about the arrangement, and the whole experience that she had been through, that were very mysterious and caused Laura’s curiosity to wax as the moments passed. However the sheer animal vigor that she now had command of took precedence. She realized that she was committed to a lifelong arrangement. If she sought to terminate it, she would perhaps be returned to her former diseased bag of bones tenement as it would have been based on the time elapsed. She thought with horror that she may terminate the contract a century from that date, and she would collapse into an immediate ruin, much like Dorian Gray.
Madame Juliette’s voice brought her back to a more cheerful task.
“Let us celebrate your arrival in our sisterhood, madame,” she said, smiling and turning on the magic of her dark blue eyes once more, as she gathered up her honey blonde hair on the top of her head and secured a bun again.
Laura nodded. Julia the pig entered carrying a tray that contained four wine glasses and a bottle of wine that said something about the Pyrenees on it, and boasted a two hundred year vintage. That sounded like a very expensive bottle of wine. She didn’t question it though. If her companions were capable of giving her a new body, who knew how old they were.
As expected, the wine was splendid. It was an absolute mind fuck for her tongue and her nose. The wine was both jammy and leathery, and complex according to so many fancies that Laura couldn’t put a finger on what sort of vintage it was. It smelt like fruit, oak and earth in equal proportions. She was given one glass, and felt her pretty new head swim from imbibing. Julianna, Julia and Madame Juliette appeared to enjoy their wine almost as much as they enjoyed seeing her enjoy hers. After they were done, she almost asked for another glass, and then thought the better of it. For all its deliciousness, perhaps she had better allow herself some time and wisdom in getting used to her new body.
Madame Juliette discussed her future life with her. For now she could go, but it was clear that nobody in her old life would recognize her, including the management and staff at her apartment complex. She owned the apartment, so she was advised that she should discreetly sell it off, and move elsewhere, where she could take on a new identity. Laura didn’t want to get into the entire discussion on this. She wasn’t entirely sure she trusted Madame Juliette, in spite of the enormous warmth she radiated when she smiled. Her veiled threat had seen to that. So she decided that she would sit down and think through it by herself before taking any decisions.
As she was being shown out, to her surprise, Madame Juliette planted a very dainty kiss on her lips, as though it was a custom that she must get used to. It lasted some twelve seconds, which was too long for it to be called a peck, and too short for it to be a legitimate French kiss. It did take Laura unawares though, and if the wine had been inadequate to any degree in making her head swim, the kiss more than made up for it.
As she was shown out, she was told that her taxicab guy had been informed that she would take time, and had elected to leave. Madame Juliette had paid him off, so Laura forked over the taxi money to her. A brand new taxicab from some company she didn’t know was awaiting her outside. It was all black and apparently it serviced these parts. The driver was again an older gent who was dressed in a black suit, a beige shirt, and a red tie with yellow and green butterflies on it. He was clean shaven, wore a chauffeur’s hat, had the slightest glint of lust in his gray eyes when he noticed her, and to Laura’s relief he used speech as sparingly as a Trappist monk. Once he took her address from her, she was left alone with her thoughts.
The hour long drive home was pleasant enough, and felt more like an half hour, since Laura was in the highest of spirits. After having been relieved of old age, a person tends to use rose tinted glasses for a while, even if they have just signed away a lot of their independence to a mysterious sisterhood. Laura was no different. Every opportunity she got to feel her own voluptuous body was taken, and every time she could look at herself in her little makeup mirror she did so. She looked out the car window and imagined to herself how she would live her new life. It would be glorious and it would be very, very different. She knew it, and she knew that she could make it happen now that she had blessed youth. Perhaps she would live out her life in this physical form for all eternity. She wondered whether she should have stopped to buy new clothes. Her old lady clothes were too small for her, and her breasts were straining against her petticoat and her green peacock gown, threatening to burst out. Her derriere was similarly offering a spectacularly tight view to whomsoever was lucky enough to glimpse her from behind. She decided against it. Just then she would get home. She could decide on a proper course of action, and splurge on clothes later.
The taxicab dropped her off outside her apartment building, and the old chauffeur’s bill was a steep two hundred dollars. Twice that of her trusted cab company, but she didn’t complain. She had bigger whales to wallop, and besides, her present money was enough to live out the sheltered life of a sickly old lady, but in her new avatar she would going out a lot.
It was nearly four in the afternoon, and the Tristate area weather was somewhat well behaved given that it was spring. She walked into the main entrance of the apartment complex, and the guard who manned the front entrance who was usually absent, a Hispanic guy called Raoul, who usually was one of the few people who wished her in her old lady form, now smiled a nervous smile at her and barked out a formal good afternoon. The poor dear was shyer than a prairie dog around eagles around her, and she realized instantly that in her voluptuous young woman form he didn’t measure up to her according to his own standards. She smiled back, and decided that she would temper her behavior according to how people had treated her in the past. It was going to be a just way of treating people. She would deliberately go out of her way to be nice to those people who were nice to her when she was a cantankerous old lady, and would make sure she was supercilious towards those that treated her like horse droppings back then. She smiled just imagining how delicious that would be.
She entered the foyer. Louis Philippe who usually ignored her now was eying her and trying to catch her eye. As the concierge, new visitors usually spoke to him. She wondered whether she could avoid that and just head upstairs. She started walking towards the elevator, and Louis Phillipe didn’t have the guts to call after her. She was too hot for him to handle, and she could almost hear his sigh of relief as she walked in the opposite direction. She smiled to herself once again, smoothing her jet black hair, as she awaited the elevator. Then she thought she’d toy with Louis Philippe for all the ignoring and all the delays in service requests over the years. She walked right back to the concierge counter, and noticed that LP was checking her out, but he was also very clearly intimidated.
“Pardon me,” she said, trying to make her tone sound absolutely business like, with a hint of bitch, “does Ms. Lioness still stay on the seventeenth floor?”
Louis Philippe’s sallow cheeks trembled, and he appeared to be having heart palpitations on being addressed directly by her.
“Y-y-y-yes m-m-m-ma’am,” he managed. “Shall I call her for you?”
In eager beaver manner he had picked up the receiver and was about to call her empty apartment. She knew by now that LP was shit scared of her, and would do as bid.
“That will not be necessary,” she said, giving him a look that brooked no disobedience. “She’s expecting me. I’ll show myself up. 1701 right?”
LP nodded and stammered something incoherent. She smiled a frosty smile in his direction, and then dismissed him from her attention. As she walked away, she wondered why she felt this good. She didn’t like being a bitch, but some people just asked for it.
The elevator doors opened, and as providence decreed, the Ramsay brothers spilled out. They were caught mid-smirk when they sighted her waiting for them to exit, and their smirks vanished.
Both of them were became the youthful human equivalents of obedient puppies, staring at her in the moment of first sighting, hoping she made eye contact, and wagging their tails. She knew the treatment for them. You ignore me and smirk behind my back as an old lady. Touche. She looked straight on ahead, barely acknowledging them, and walked into the elevator when they were out.
The Italian elevator operator with the baby face was there. His usual curt nod was replaced by a cloyingly sweet smile and a chatty hello that portended towards conversation. Laura gave him a curt nod, and moved immediately into an appreciation of herself in the elevator mirror. Again, Italian boy was good enough, but he didn’t really treat older ladies with the best of manners. She espied him out of the corner of her eye looking at her posterior, and smiled inwardly. He was slightly miffed that he didn’t get his conversation, but he was very turned on by her. She could work that to her advantage later if she wanted.
She exited the elevator on her floor, and sensed the elevator boy stepping out after her, presumably to scan the floor for people who wanted to ride the elevator. It was an exercise he carried out precisely when some beautiful woman stepped out of the elevator. She looked back and he abruptly looked away from her butt, playing it cool but turning slightly crimson nonetheless. She turned back and walked to her apartment.
When she was inside, she sat down on her ancient leather sofa that reminded her of her former self and thought through her plans. She was excited. There was no denying that. She was incredibly turned on, perpetually. There was no denying that. She knew that if she wanted cock or cunt, she could have her pick of the lot. Still, she had developed some insight in her many years and that cautioned her to take things one step at a time. Nothing rowdy or rambunctious just yet.
Her first act at home was to take a long, hot shower, while fully exploring her new body. She had a shower head that could be detached and held in the hand, so that water could be directed according to the user’s creative urge. She felt mildly grimy from the day’s travels, although the mysterious alchemical transformation she had undergone had somehow purged her of a lot of the dirt that had accumulated on her older body. She just had to clear away the debris from the last few hours spent in this youthful new vessel.
She ran warm water through her hair, and jets of water washed her face, and cascaded down her breasts. As an old lady, a hot shower or a hot bath was where her arthritic pains lessened just a tad. As a voluptuous young woman with an excess of vibrant energy within her body, the water both soothed has and sexually excited her. She determined that even though she would be tithing out her carnal passions to the sisterhood, she must have a real stallion of a man before the night was upon her. In the meanwhile, the powerful jets of water would serve as a poor substitute.
She massaged some Herbal Essences shampoo into her hair, and lathered it, and stood in the shower allowing it some time to work its magic, while she kneaded her breasts and trained the shower head on them in umpteen different ways.
She trained the shower head on her inner thighs and titillated herself. She turned the shower jet so that it spewed water only from the outer periphery and adjusted the temperature and the speed to the right degree and trained it on her labia. The result was pure heaven. Then she cranked up the shower head speed and made it one powerful central jet, and trained it at the lips of her cunt, and squealed out loud from how lovely that felt. The jet was scratching the perpetual itch in her loins that her youth had reincarnated in her. Give a girl with a desire-engorged-cunt a decent shower head and you can almost hear the moans if you stand outside the bathroom door.
In any case, after spending plenty of time with the shower jets trained on her sex, Laura returned to the land of the more mundane, and finished up her shower, toweled herself off and slipped into her regular fawn colored bathrobe. She rubbed some sweet almond oil into her damp hair, to give it an additional luster, while she rotated herself one way, then another in front of the mirror. She realized that she could do this for hours. She wondered whether the other members of the sisterhood faced such sudden onslaughts of vanity when they attained their fantasy bodies as well. She sighed. She didn’t have the answer. That didn’t matter though. She looked like a gazillion bucks, and she felt a strong urge to flaunt her curves.
She wanted to show herself off, but not too much. So she decided that the appropriate level of display would happen at the local Starbucks. She dressed in one of her black outfits that she wore to wakes and funerals. There were a couple of reasons for this. She was celebrating the death of her old self. More importantly one of these outfits made her butt look amazing, and they showed off her ample bosom quite decently as well, without making her appear a slut. She sighed. She knew that she would be making a trip to Nieman Marcus very shortly. She needed clothes that would work on her new body.
Right now she looked like a hot young debutante who was figuring out her dress code. That would get a lot of cocks hard in the Starbucks. Laura smiled to herself. She took her apartment keys and stepped out. She realized that her social situation as a hot young woman would be very different. She should probably get herself one of those newfangled contraptions kids called smart phones. She sighed, as she locked her apartment door. When she was growing up, a certain piece of fruit was what kept doctors away. Now it was computer. She wondered whether a certain company would use ice cream as the name of one of their cool new products, so then ice cream would no longer be measured in delicious scoops. Shaking her pretty head of black hair, she took the elevator down.
LP was there, and as soon as he saw her he became tense and sat erect, and started doing something important. She walked across the foyer. He was compelled by her presence to look up and smile. She nodded as curtly as she could as she walked out. She’d have to do something about a new identity and moving to another place soon. Just then she was thinking caffeine.
An army of butterflies somehow took a liking to her new hair, and kept flitting around her, as she walked to the Starbucks. A middle aged Latino couple dressed in identical Hawaiian shirts and khaki shorts passed her. The woman was lost in thought, and avoided her gaze. The man smiled at her. She could clearly see from his eyes the fact that his blood had just started pooling in his balls. She smiled back, although she was smiling on account of her knowledge of his impending erection.
She almost ran into a tall Caribbean man with dreadlocks, who showed her all his teeth as he smiled in apology. He smelled like fungus for some reason. Laura smiled back. Again she saw the look in the eyes. The whites of the eyes and the eyeballs together formed a certain configuration that told her clearly that he was mentally fucking her brains out already. She took a quick look at his pants as she passed him, and saw a huge bulge. His blood traveled fast!
She reached the Starbucks. She was some fifteen steps from the door. People usually don’t wait with the door if you’re ten steps from it. Five steps seems to be the cutoff. Perhaps it is our collectively decreasing attention span that is to blame for our decreased collective patience. Fifteen steps is a lot of time to hold a door open for somebody. A Chinese grad student with a Jan sport backpack held the door for her for fifteen steps, and nodded eagerly at her thank you, beaming. She noticed the same look of lust in his eyes. She smiled and pretended to look at Starbucks shelves, so that she didn’t take the grad student’s place in line. That, and she didn’t want him ogling her butt.
Several gentlemen reading their papers saw the need to change the sheet they were reading as she walked in. They also felt the need to scan the whole coffee shop, surreptitiously including her in their sweeping gazes. It was the oldest coffee shop game in the world. They looked away as she looked at them. Chicken shit, she said mentally.
Sure she was still cantankerous on the inside, but she decided that since she had a second lease of youth, she would use the benefit of her fifty seven years to live her life. She joined the line after the grad student, and waited her turn.
This Starbucks had three regular barristas behind the counter. One of them, Stefan, managed the high volume of customer orders right as they went in. He was closer to five feet than he was to six, and looked like a Daniel Radcliffe with scruff and red hair. He was well behaved with one and all, and usually stuck to pleasantries with everyone, whether they looked like Heidi Klum, or whether they had a face like buffalo droppings. She liked him the best. The second, Gloria, was very moody, and her face constantly had a look of someone who was having the Heimlich maneuver done on them. She handled the counter sometimes, and the drinks sometimes. The third, Marcus, was a tall black man, and he was the definition of tall, dark and handsome. He looked like a young Barack Obama who had swallowed lots of protein powder. He handled the drinks mostly, and very occasionally the counter. He was an asshole though. As an old lady, she knew that he would look at his drink rather than look at her. On the other hand, he would be very chatty with pretty young things in the shop.
She went up to the counter and ordered herself a tall peppermint mocha. In her former body she had trouble digesting more than a few ounces of coffee. Right now though, her body could handle crushed glass. Or at least it felt like it could. Stefan was Stefan, and took her order and was thoroughly professional, and spoke to her while he ran her order through about the weather, much as he did with the Chinese grad student before her, and as he would with the elderly black lady behind her.
This time Gloria the perpetual choker was working on another register, and Marcus the asshole was her barrista. He showed her his pearly whites, and launched into a cheerful, “Hey, how’s it going?”
She smiled and gave him a noncommittal “Great.”
If you say great, but you don’t ask the other person what they’re doing, it is a fair assumption that you don’t want to get into a conversation. If you're also a hot, young woman, then most guys with poop for brains assume that you’re playing hard to get, and that they must force you into a conversation. Marcus was most guys with poop for brains.
“Oh yeah, glad to know that,” he said.
The elderly African American lady came over the service side, to await her drink beside Laura. Laura smiled at her, and she smiled back a sweet, working class mother’s smile. Marcus the asshole looked right through her, while he made Laura’s drink, and tried to work up a conversation with her. In his mind, clearly, after making her coffee, having been charmed by him, she would suck his cock in some shady area behind the Starbucks. In her mind, he was still an asshole, who was still staring through elderly ladies.
She nodded, and looked away. She saw Marcus trying to get her eye from the corner of her eye. She looked back and he gave her a warm smile. She gave him a frosty noncommittal smile, and then struck up a conversation with the lady next to her about her handbag.
Marcus fawned over his handing her her tall peppermint mocha, and he waited at the counter until she took it from his hands, presumably to make physical contact. She cleverly avoided it, and nodded and marched off to take a seat.
Eyes followed her everywhere. She looked to her right and a young Indian guy with caramel skin and neatly combed black hair in a black business suit looked back down at his laptop. She looked back straight ahead, looking at proper seats, and a Middle Eastern guy with black and brown curls and green eyes looked away as though he had been looking at something of great importance in the store, and not at her breasts. She saw a couple of empty seats to her right, right by the fireplace, with a young Japanese girl engaged in some activity on her laptop that had her hot and bothered. She had one silken ponytail, and she gave Laura a quick, polite nod of encouragement, and went back to her presentation or whatever life or death thing her laptop screen had on it.
Laura took the seat next to her. The girl was watching an anime show. She chuckled. At least the girl’s priorities were all right. She liked anime, and it was life or death for her.
Laura sipped her peppermint mocha, and started to think about plans, and what she had been through. Tonight she would try to find a real stallion of a man. Marcus may have qualified, but the fact that his eyes were looking over the counter at her tits didn’t help his case. It was as if he had a penis for each eye, and a penis for his mouth, and a penis, well, for his penis.
The bitter chocolate taste of the mocha made her feel even more alive, and she felt her brand new pussy complaining that it needed action. She looked around, and again several chicken shit men looked away suddenly. Laura sighed. Oh dear, being hot wasn’t enough. You needed an action plan, and you needed to find a man, not a walking, talking penis.
