Wrong Department, by Megs

Chapter 4
Chapter Four – The Price of Shame

Chapter Description: By Megs

Tina panicked. Already she could feel a slight rumbling in her stomach, and as she tried to pull away this only served to make Kyle more interested. A sudden knock on the door of the stall brought the entire, sordid affair to a halt. Kyle released her and Tina pulled herself away, looking in disgust at herself. How could she have done that?

The stall opened just as Kyle was wiping his mouth. Woolson was standing there, arms crossed and looking about as far from impressed as a man could be. Kyle seemed taken completely aback, and then crossed his own arms defiantly.

"Yeah, whaddya want?" Kyle cockily asked Woolson. The older man was a tad shorter than Kyle, who likely wasn’t fully grown. Tina could tell Woolson was trying to intimidate Kyle the way he did most of his employees. Kyle, however, was having none of it.

"Smooching in a public dressing room is fordbidden in this store," Woolson breathed, obviously angry. "Smooching with a minor even more."

Tina stood behind, not wanting to say anything. She was much, much worse than the kid who had been caught with her finger in the cookie jar at the moment. This was likely how she got fired... and spent the next decade growing up! To her shock, Kyle pulled her close to him, protectively.

"Look, geezer, I don’t care who you are. Unless you were watching what was happening in here, my girlfriend and I were just trying on some clothes. There’s no law about sharing a dressing room, is there?" he jabbed back.

Woolson narrowed his eyes, doing his best Darth Vader impression. Despite Tina’s terror of her boss, being held close to Kyle like this emboldened her. Not enough to speak out, but enough to not go along with what Woolson obviously wanted. Her boldness began to fade as rapidly as it came as she felt her clothes once again grew tighter, while her dress beginning to shift in the front; she was getting older. Older but pregnant. Her hand dropped down to her belly - it felt round and tight already, and it was growing.

"Girlfriend," Woolson retorted, seeming amused. "You’re dating a pregnant sixteen-year-old."

Kyle looked down at her, his eyes drawn as if by magnets to her expanded belly. It was already big enough that Tina knew she would have to get new clothes rapidly; the material was tight over the round belly, and she could feel a baby within. Kyle, for his part, went pale. "Ummm..." he muttered, obviously not sure of how to deal with this latest development. Woolson took Tina by the arm and dragged her away from Kyle; she stumbled with her manager in mute fear.

"You just couldn’t behave for one, single, shift could you Tina?" Woolson grumbled at her. Each step was getting slightly harder as Tina’s belly continued to press outwards, and her sandals started to feel painfully undersized. She could feel her breasts filling with milk, the belly beginning to press her legs apart... this was awful! She was pulled along like a child, through racks of clothing. Tina desperately turned from side to side, looking for some outfit to grab to stop her swelling belly. Her heart had gone from panicked to outright hurting; the day of humiliation was beginning to make her feint.

And feint she did, sinking into blackness. It was a dreamless, dark and horrifying bout of unconsciousness that Tina was dimly aware of. She felt as if she was swimming in the night, stuck under heavy blankets and water. Slowly, the dark gave way to light, and she began to come to herself. Tina came to awareness lying on a coarse material, and feeling a slight chill all about her. She didn’t open her eyes yet – she didn’t want to. With a trembling hand she reached, her hand dragging along the side of whatever she was lying on (she thought it was the couch in the first aid room, the ugly orange couch that should have been put to death in the `70s). With trepidation she put her hand down towards her abdomen; it was soft, and close to her waist. She sighed relief, so tense that the breath came out in a shutter. She wasn’t pregnant. The gears in her mind beginning to churn once more, Tina opened her eyes.

She was, as she had suspected, in the medical room of the store. It was empty, silent except for the faint hum of the flourescents overhead. A small desk sat in one corner, overhead several cupboards full of medical supplies. She sat up, noting that her sandals were lying on the floor next to her, her feet now bare. She was still wearing the plain red dress, but the front had an ugly rent down the middle. If she moved too quickly her belly and panties would be shown to all and sundry. Her body was still small, and Tina guessed that she was still a thirteen years-old.

She rose, feeling a little shaky on her feet. Gingerly she slipped into her sandals, moving over to the desk. A small coffee maker was in the corner, and Tina fancied a cup of joe might get her wits back. As she went about making coffee, her mind examined her situation.

She was thirteen years old. Any clothing in the store she interacted with seemed to change her to suit it.

Woolson knew how it worked, and seemed intent on putting her through these changes in utter indifference to the effect on her life or dignity. She had been, different, a pregnant high schooler girl, when she passed out. Somehow he had reversed this change, so he knew how to control what happened to her.

She was too young to leave. And so she resolved she had but one hope. She had to sneak to her locker, get her own clothes and hope they changed her back to herself. Barring that she would grab whatever adult clothing she could off the shelves and run.

She poured a cup of coffee before the brewer was finished making the pot. It was acrid and awful; store brand coffee after all (and super strong, since the pot wasn’t finished), yet distinctly more than usual on her young taste buds. The dark liquid braced her, and she took a deep breath. It was now or never. Striding over to the door, she opened it up. Or tried to. The door was locked. There was a slot for a key, but no latch. The life drained out of her. She was trapped in here!

Tina stumbled back over to the desk, sitting down on the aging chair. She poured another cup of coffee and glanced at the clock; it was a standard analog clock, reading a quarter passed ten. The store was in the process of closing down right now. If she had been working the later shift, she would be trying to balance her till right now. Trying to suppress frustration, she began to hunt through the drawers. A fleeting hope had seized her that there might be some nurses’ uniform somewhere, but a quick examination found naught but pencils, pens and rock-hard erasers. She sipped at her bland coffee, feeling gradually better as the caffeine settled in to her system. The clock ticked away minutes.

A key in the lock. Tina sat bolt upright, nervous and angry. Woolson opened the door and closed it behind him, turning the key in the lock. He looked her over, and she noticed he had a shopping bag with him; likely replacement clothes, whatever new "position" he wanted her to fill. He approached, leaning against the side of the desk. His first comment surprised her.

"Are you all right?"

Tina blinked, but automatically responded. "Oh, fine," she replied.

Woolson breathed a sigh of relief. "When that boy took advantage of you like that, when he inadvertently bound you with that maternity dress..." Woolson shuddered.

"How did you... undo that damage?" Tina inquired. Was Woolson feeling guilty after all he had done to her? Had this gone farther than he intended?

He reached over and poured himself a cup of coffee. After a sip, he looked down at her. "I suppose I might as well be out with it, Tina. Whether you find this possible to believe or not, I’m a warlock of sorts."

"A warlock?" Tina echoed, incredulously. Despite the series of impossible things that had happened to her all day, the idea that this mousy little man was a practitioner of the dark arts was just a tad too J.K. Rowling for her to accept easily. Woolson, for his part, seemed either indifferent or oblivious to Tina’s reservations.

"I’ve been itching to try out a spell I found recently, and plain and simple Tina you were the best opportunity to try it out upon," he remarked, as if talking about something much more pedestrian. "It, simply put, makes you become the right size and age for whatever clothing you wear for twenty-four hours. It was incredible to observe at first, but the state I found you in the dressing room..."

Woolson shook his head as if trying to cast off the memory. "I brought you in here and undid the latest change; a girl your age being pregnant, it was just revolting!" he muttered, genuinely penitent and concerned.

Tina cleared her throat. "What happens at the end of the spell?"

Woolson smiled. "You stay whatever size you had become," he calmly informed her. Tina’s heart skipped a few beats. He reached into the bag and pulled out some clothes, laying them across Tina’s lap. She looked down at the clothes as if they were irradiated; a pair of overalls, a cute pink t-shirt, a pair of plain white panties and white frilled socks. They were small. The overalls themselves were only as big as her thighs. With a growing sensation of fear, Tina reached down and pulled up the overalls. The tag said "Age 3 to 4".

"No!" she hissed at him. Woolson stood up as Tina grabbed the clothes and tossed them violently away from her. A small smile was on his face, a devious kind of grin that turned her blood to ice. He reached into the bag and pulled out something else. It was a small, white plastic diaper.

"I’m not going to risk you turning tail while I’m not looking. Either you put those on, or I wrestle you to the ground and put this over a leg; it will fit soon after," he threatened.

Tina shrank away from him. All hope of Woolson being respectable vanished in a puff of smoke with the threat. He was enjoying this. She was nothing but a guinea pig for this spell of his. She racked her brain for anything she could think of concerning so-called warlocks that might help her in this situation. All that came to mind was Harry Potter lore and a movie about the son of Satan. She didn’t think Woolson was born of Lucifer, and yelling Protego Horribilis likely wouldn’t help either. She was stuck between a rock and a hard place - or, in this case, a child and a baby.

"I’ll put them on," she sighed, resigning herself to further indignity. "But every other time I’ve tried things on, they didn’t fit at all until a little while passed. These overalls won’t even fit both my legs, much less go over my hips," she protested.

"Ah," countered Woolson. "If you hadn’t noticed, the rate at which the changes happen has been getting faster as the day went on. As you try to pull them on, they’ll start to fit, I promise you."

Tina was crestfallen. Her last hope to avoid this loathsome fate had been dashed. It was true. The braclet that had turned her into a middle schooler had taken effect in less than a minute, and the colorful maternity dress in the change room had not even been worn before it started to take effect. Woolson turned and walked to the door, fiddled with the lock and looked over his shouler.

"I’m going to set the security for the night. When I get back here, you’d better be in those clothes, or it’s the diaper for you!" he threatened.

With her heart in her heels, Tina began to pull off the remains of her red dress. She had a sinking feeling she might not be thirteen years old again for a long, long time.