Still House

by grapehyacinth

Victor smiled at the young woman struggling in his grasp. This one would make a splendid paperweight. He shrank her down, letting her face harden first so she could not scream, and her look of terror would be preserved.

He laughed, still hearing her shrieking in her mind.

Please, help me! You can't leave me this way! she begged as the rest of her body became stone.

“Alas, only I can can hear you...Carrie, I think was your name?” Victor pushed some of his long dark hair from his cheek, and allowed his handsome disguise to disintegrate. Now his true form was evident – he was a monstrosity. After decades of darkness, his body had shaped itself accordingly, and he relished how it horrified his captives.

His new statue shuddered.

“As soon as I create a pedestal for you, I most certainly can leave you this way! You'll be a wonderful work of art, and you'll join hundreds of other lucky ladies here in my home. Nearly every object I own was once a woman.” He placed his new paperweight on a desk and patted the desk's surface. “Well, like Sarina here, they're still women, but their bodies have been upgraded into whatever I fancy at the moment.”

Save me, a voice from the desk flooded both Victor's mind as well as Carrie's.

That's a woman too, Carrie realized in horror.

“Such a lovely desk. Redhead in life, cherry wood as furniture!” He rubbed the desk chair. “And how are you, little lady?”

Fine until you sit on me, it replied.

Evil man! Carrie thought. How can you do this?

Victor sat back in the chair, which groaned. “Because you exist to serve me. And I serve the powers of darkness. My mother died before I was of age to choose sides, so my uncle, Armin the Soulless, showed me the way. He introduced the darkness into my soul.”

And he's proud of this, snickered a table lamp with a vaguely female form.

“There is no power in goodness, no purpose in goodwill. You weaker beings are here for my pleasure.” He walked over to a chaise, the cushion of which was supported by two contorted female statues. As he sat down, the statues began to scream in their minds.

“Ah, my two sisters, being driven mad.” He fingered their nude stone forms. “So perfect.” He lay back. “And Nara, you were such a lovely model. It titillates me that I took that perfect body and flattened it into such a luxurious mattress.”

***

“My dear nephew, you use a woman as your doorknob?”

Victor stared at the imposing wizard who stood in his doorway. “Armin! You honor me! It's been decades!” He ran towards his uncle and clasped his hands.

But Armin was studying his pupil's handiwork. “Very nice. You left her face there – such fear in her eyes! – and transformed the rest of her. So very creative. Was she lovely?”

“She's very lovely. When I grasp her, she always cries.”

Armin turned to him. “You left her alive?”

“Of course. I enjoy hearing them being tortured. Come inside.”

“Them?” Armin asked, looking past him. “Your statues and sculptures are almost as legendary as mine. But I didn't know you kept them alive!” Stamping inside, he ran his hand over a nearby statue's stone lips. “Woman, you may speak.”

The lips reddened and suddenly gasped, “Please help me!”

The wizard waved his hand over her, and the lips solidified once more. “You're helped.”

“Wait!” Victor walked over and gazed at his creation. “Why... you killed her! How dare you interfere with my art! Get out of my house!”

The wizard's eyes blazed. “You dare talk to me that way? You'll apologize and do away with the souls. Trapping them in silly forms is the work of an amateur. It shows weakness – that you cannot kill! Dispense with the spirits! Use their bodies for your needs!”

“I'll do as I please!”

“You're just a man, Victor. What higher being only chooses females? You cater to the physical needs of your male body!” With this, Armin grew into a glowing monster that towered over the younger wizard. “You are not fit to control the darkness! You are woman!”

With a deafening boom, the monster disappeared in a puff of smoke, and Victor was left staring down at his newly-female body.

***

No amount of magic would restore his masculinity, and Victor himself seemed to possess far less power in this form. He sat down on the chair, only to be pushed off. Surprised, he stumbled back.

Get off me, you bitch, it said in his mind, and it seemed that every object in the room was laughing at him. Even the screaming statue-sisters.

Instead of being angry, he glanced around in shock. “How can you laugh at me? Look what I've been reduced to!”

You don't even deserve to be human, said Carrie. Preying on innocent women? Making them whatever you want? You're just like us now!

“No I'm not!”

But the taunts of his victims nagged him through the night. Near dawn, a voice broke into his dreams. “You are weak, my son.”

“Mother, after all these years, you speak with me?”

“Victor, you can change now. Pull away from the dark.”

“My soul is dark, Mother. I pine for the power. Don't play with it.”

***

When Victor went off into the world, men found him highly attractive, and he could not cope with their attentions. After one man touched him in the wrong place, he turned him into a dog. A teen tried to pickpocket him, and Victor transformed the unfortunate boy into a pocket mirror.

Victor picked up the mirror and gazed at the reflection of a beautiful brunette. “I'm pretty,” he admitted sadly. “And I'm weak. I've never felt so vulnerable...”

Something snapped in his mind. “You are good!” His mother's voice echoed through his very being. Her declaration had hit him at his absolute weakest moment, as his realization had already formed a seed of doubt in his mind. Her words shifted the very forces in his soul, driving out the darkness and sucking goodness into its void.

He was male once more, but his long, greasy hair became short and trim. His grizzled face, monster-like after so many decades of evil, smoothed out and blossomed into the youthful visage of a young man. His stooped-over back straightened, and a handsome male stood in his place.

“I need to restore the girls in my house. Then I need to stop Armin,” he decided aloud. He first changed back the dog and mirror to their rightful forms.

And he apologized to them.

***

He walked inside and allowed his voice to echo throughout his house. “I'm changing all of you back.”

The cries of relief flooding his mind were staggering.

“I just have two conditions. First, I ask you all to help me bring down Armin.”

There was a chorus of agreement.

What's the second?

“That you don't all try to kill me when I turn you back.”

***

Victor was overwhelmed by his freed prisoners' outpouring of hope and love. They surrounded him, laughing, crying, and embracing one another. A few remained bitter, and now he understood why. He had never experienced such depth of feeling before.

Carrie touched his cheek in wonder. “He turned you! He gave you feelings.”

“The feelings were meant to cause me pain,” Victor uttered.

“But they can be wonderful too.”

“I see that. Your elation is coming off you in waves. I'd like to experience that myself.”

“You will if you stop that Armin. He's known in the rest of the world as a master sculptor. His statues go for millions. I wonder how many people know that they're dead people.”

“I can and will save them,” Victor vowed.

“With darkness?”

“With any power I can summon up.”

***

“Spirits of the lost, I call you here today to bring down the one who murdered you.”

The women freed from Victor's grasp sat with him in a circle, a candle flickering in the middle. They gasped as shadows began to gather above it.

“I cannot stop Armin myself, for no pupil can overpower his master. That's simply how dark magic works.”

“But you're not evil anymore!” Carrie cried.

“But Armin is,” Carissa, once a table lamp, pointed out sadly.

“Spirits, I welcome you. I imbue you with my own transformative power. This will weaken me further, but it is the only way our plan can commence.”

***

“Victor, I feel your womanly presence. Or shall I call you Victoria?”

Victor walked into Armin's display room, known as the 'Hall of Statues'. Each work was dazzling, but knowing these were once people made his heart ache. “Armin, this must stop,” he murmured.

The elder wizard stepped backward, appalled. “Victor, you've changed back–”

“Yes, thanks in part to you. Now it's your turn.”

Armin laughed. “Hardly. And for that impertinence, you'll join my gallery. Alive, since you enjoy that so!”

As Victor felt his body petrifying he yelled, “BIND!”

Suddenly the room was aflutter with shadows, screeching and tugging at the older wizard. Crying out in rage, Armin began to transform into a monster, but the spirits impeded him. They pulled at his power, engulfing it and draining him.

“You cannot do this!” he howled, swatting at the shadows.

“We can and we will,” one whispered into his ear.

“NOW!” another called.

A silver pool formed under the front door and flowed over to the wizard, surrounding and immobilizing him. “We are Victor's victims. Your evil pushed him to good. Now it's your time to suffer.”

When the wizard could not move, a wave of yellowjackets poured into the room and hovered above him.

“And now you will end,” one said, delivering a sting.

Armin chuckled. “You ridiculous girls turned into bees to sting me to death? Maybe you are better off imprisoned as objects!”

But there was no answer. With every sting, Armin seemed to grow weaker. A whitening of his skin soon proved that he was turning to stone.

“No! You will not make me a statue!” Armin protested, glaring at the entombed Victor across the room.

Join us, Uncle. You'll be a lovely nude, Victor said in the wizard's mind. You'll be a woman, just like I was!

“Never!” But each sting introduced more transformational power into his form. As he solidified, his body took on a pleasing female figure. When his metamorphosis was complete, he began to scream in his mind. You must kill me! Do not leave me prisoner! I'll go mad!

Armin's change unlocked his hold on Victor, and the younger man became flesh and blood once more. He studied the new statue with distaste.

“You're quite right. We can't leave you this way.” Victor pushed the statue over, and it shattered to the floor.

In his mind, he could hear Armin's tiny voice screaming from every shard. “We need to spread him all over the world.” He turned to the women. “Each of you take a piece of him. Spirits, the power I've given you will lead you back to your body. Join with it, and you will revert back to human form so you may live again.”

A cry of joy echoed through the room, and Victor quietly continued. “All of you have the choice to retain these powers, as my apology to you, or you may give them back to me.”

“And what will you do with so much power?” demanded Nara.

“I'm going to rid the world of darkness.”

Not a single woman kept her powers.

***

The spirits were swept across the earth, reuniting with their bodies wherever they had ended up. Many of Victor's previous captives remained with him, intent on helping him in his war on evil.

Armin was scattered far and wide, never to produce another masterpiece again.