Disclaimer: Not mine, not making any money. I'm just playing.
Shadow Puppets
Chapter 3
He was awakened in the morning by the sound of his cellphone vibrating its way across the table next to the couch. He reached out without looking to pick it up. It was something he'd done a thousand times before, but this time his fingers fumbled and failed to grasp the phone, knocking it to the floor.
"Shit."
He sat up on the couch, swung his legs over and stood up. Except that his feet unexpectedly didn't touch the floor for the first time in 25 years. He overbalanced and fell, landing on his face with a soft thud.
"Fuck," he muttered into the carpet. "Wake up, asshole."
He rolled to his back and scrubbed a hand across his face. It felt… wrong. Soft. Fuzzy, in fact.
"What the hell?"
He lowered his hand and looked at it carefully. He still had five fingers, but his knuckle joints and fingernails were missing. Instead, his fingers resembled soft, fuzzy, brown sausages.
He looked down at the rest of himself. He had just kicked off his boots and slept in the rest of his clothes, and they looked normal enough.
"I'm dreaming. And if I'm hallucinating because someone spiked my tea last night, I'm gonna hunt him down and terminate him with extreme prejudice."
He pushed himself to his feet and staggered out to the fifth floor bathroom to look in the mirror and find out what the hell was going on.
o0o o0o o0o
Once he was in the bathroom he realized exactly why he had fallen off the couch. The bathroom mirrors hung on the wall above the basins, way out of his reach, and the reason they hung so far out of his reach was because he currently stood a little taller than the top of the toilet tanks. It felt like a scene from Jack and the Beanstalk. Something was so seriously fucked up that he had no idea where to start.
Correction – he would start by getting up there for a look into that mirror. He might be temporarily… something, but he was still ex-special forces. Climbing was no problem.
Second correction – climbing was no problem if your skin wasn't suddenly and unexplainably fuzzy. Trying to climb with fuzzy fingers turned out to be a bitch of the first order.
It took him four attempts before he worked out that he just didn't have the grip to pull himself up by his hands using the basins. Four humiliating attempts that ended with him sitting on his ass on the floor of the bathroom each time.
Finally he gave up and made an undignified scramble up the wall using the waste pipes. It wasn't pretty, but at least it worked.
Balancing carefully with one foot on each basin he looked in one of the mirrors.
And looked.
And looked.
And looked some more, speechless with horror at the sight of the muppet face looking back at him.
o0o o0o o0o
His skin was the same warm coffee colour as it always had been, but it looked fuzzy, like felt. His nose was a large fuzzy triangle in the middle of his face and his mouth was just a slash across it. His hair was still pulled back from his face in its usual fashion, but it looked and felt like black wool.
"A muppet. God help me, I'm a fucking muppet."
While Ranger was still staring into the mirror in mesmerized horror, the main door to the bathroom opened and Tank walked in from the corridor.
He promptly roared with laughter at the sight of Ranger standing on the basins, and opened the door again to yell out into the corridor. "Lester! Get your ass in here. Someone's put a muppet in here that looks like the boss."
As Lester's voice shouted, "Awesome," from somewhere outside, Tank turned back to find Ranger glaring at him with folded arms from his position balanced on the basins. "It's not a fucking muppet, Tank, it's me. Something happened to me."
Lester poked his head round the door. "Where is it? Oh man, how cool is that? That is freaking awesome."
"It just spoke just like the boss. Someone's gotta be operating it."
"Someone with a death wish."
Ranger tried again. "Listen up, you assholes. This is not a puppet. This is me. You have to help me."
They both howled with laughter.
"Excellent!" Lester shouted. "Who's doing it? Come on out, man."
Ranger suppressed his sudden urgent desire to scream and jumped to the next basin to get closer to them. "You two, pay attention or you're both dead and fired, in whichever order I can arrange it. This is me. To prove it: Tank, I know what happened outside Pleasure Treasures the night you hooked up with Lula. We never told anybody. Lester, I know why you were really discharged from the service, not what's on your discharge papers. There are maybe four people in the world that know the truth. Now both of you, if you don't pay attention and give me some fucking help, my silence ends and I will broadcast both those truths to the world. Do you understand?"
The laughter stopped.
"Boss?" Lester asked uncertainly.
"Yes. Now go ahead of me and make sure that we can get to my office without being seen. Get Bobby in there too, and the on-call doctor. I want a medical opinion on this."
"Yes, boss."
o0o o0o o0o
"Unbelievable," the doctor murmured as he applied a stethoscope to Ranger's chest. "There's no heartbeat, but you're clearly alive. Make a fist for me?"
Ranger did so.
"Now take my hand and try to move it."
Ranger seized his outstretched hand and tried to push it toward the floor. He could barely move it.
"You move normally enough but you've clearly lost a lot of strength, although there's still enough there to allow you to move and talk. Open your mouth?"
Ranger complied, although he was getting seriously irritated with being poked and prodded.
"You have a throat, but no breath sounds, so I'm not sure if you have a working alimentary canal or an airway. We should probably check the other end to investigate the possibility of an alimentary canal."
Ranger took two steps back and placed his hands firmly across his pants fastening before anyone could suggest that they should come off. "Enough," he said firmly. "I'll check that myself in private."
The doctor held both hands up, palms facing out. "Whatever. Your skin seems to be a kind of felt material, and underneath it–" he grabbed Ranger's arm, produced a scalpel and made a tiny incision in the felt.
"HEY!" Ranger roared. "How about a fucking warning?"
"–white synthetic stuffing. How are the pain receptors?"
"Working," Ranger replied shortly, glowering at him.
"Hey, did you ever see that episode of Angel where the boss was a puppet? His nose came off." Lester looked at Ranger speculatively.
Ranger fixed him with a stare that was as steely as felt could manage. "Come any closer and I will shoot you."
"Sorry, boss."
"The truth is, I have no idea what's going on. You shouldn't be alive," the doctor said.
"I want to know how your clothes shrank with you," Bobby commented.
"I pissed off Morelli's grandmother this week. Steph claimed that she had the ability to curse people."
"Witchcraft? You've got to be kidding me," Lester interjected.
"Do you have a better explanation?" Ranger indicated his muppet body. "Find her and check it out. And go and check on Steph too. If Grandma Bella is responsible, she's involved too."
Tank, Lester and Bobby exchanged surreptitious glances at each other.
"And I can still see, you assholes, even if my eyes are currently made out of felt. I'm sure you can guess why she's pissed off, now go and make sure that Steph's all right."
"Yes boss," all three muttered.
"I'll be in my office. Tank, find the witch. I want this sorted a.s.a.p., do you hear me?"
Ranger stalked into his office and closed the door. It took him a couple of minutes of pushing to get the door all the way closed.
Tank sat down and started to make calls to trace the woman responsible for the chaos.
The door had been closed for less than a minute when an enraged cry filtered through the door. "My dick! Where's my fucking dick?"
o0o o0o o0o
Lester arrived at Stephanie's apartment building and saw Ranger's car parked next to the dumpster. He went upstairs and knocked at the door to Stephanie's apartment, getting no answer. "Steph?" he called at the door. "You okay?"
When she still didn't come to the door he quickly picked the lock and let himself in, hoping that she was just hiding and not missing. The apartment was silent.
"Steph? Bomber? We called you first and got no answer. We just want to make sure you're okay. Ranger's worried about you."
He walked slowly through the apartment, checking every space. When he got to the bedroom and opened the door, he heard a small rustle in the closet. "Steph?"
"Go away." The voice coming from the closet was muffled, but sounded tearful.
"Come on out, Bomber. I think I know what's happened to you. It's happened to Ranger too."
That got a response. The closet door swung open and Stephanie peered round the door. "Is he okay?"
"Mad as hell and worried about you. Come on, come out. You know me, I'm unshockable."
She emerged slowly from the closet.
"Holy crap! Sorry, Steph, I mean, oh Christ, what do I mean? It's just, well, you look… "
"Shut up, Lester, and tell me you can fix this," Stephanie interrupted shakily.
"We're on it, I swear. Let's get you back to RangeMan and Ranger, and you two can… feel sorry for yourselves, together, okay?"
"No-one can see me like this."
"How about I wrap you in a blanket and carry you out?"
She nodded hesitantly. "Okay. Let me just grab a few things."
She packed a small bag and allowed Lester to wrap a blanket around her and make it into a bundle to hide what he was carrying. He slung the bag over his arm and picked her up, carrying it all downstairs to the SUV.
Halfway down the stairs she hissed from inside the blanket, "Lester! Keep your hands to yourself."
"Sorry," he muttered. "Just curious."
o0o o0o o0o
Ranger was wearing a track in his office carpet when Lester tapped at the door and let himself in. Ranger pounced when he saw him. "Where is she? Is she okay?"
"She's right here, and see for yourself."
Lester unwrapped the blanket and let Stephanie down gently to stand swaying on the carpet.
She was about three feet high, the same size as Ranger, but she was an entirely different shape. Her muppet shape was an exaggerated hourglass, complete with impossibly tiny waist. Her curly hair had been transformed into dark wavy wool that fell halfway down her back and her skin was a soft creamy color. She looked like a soft, fuzzy Jessica Rabbit.
Ranger just stared for a few moments, before finally managing a stuttered, "Babe… "
"Oh my God, it's bad isn't it," she wailed, and her voice was all her own. "I told you we should be scared of Grandma Bella. Now what?"
"I think you're missing the point, Bomber," Lester said from where he had stepped back against the wall. "I mean, yeah, involuntary muppethood bad, no question, but you look really fucka–"
"Out," Ranger said firmly to him, pointing to the door. "I'll deal with this."
When the door had closed again Stephanie had moved from where she had been standing. He looked around his office and found her huddled in a corner of the couch with her arms wrapped around her knees. He scrambled up the treacherously smooth leather of the couch to join her and put an arm around her soft, fuzzy shoulder.
"What Lester was going to say, in his own warped way, was that, as muppets go, you look hot."
"Really?" she sniffed.
"Yeah."
She grimaced. "That's kind of icky. I mean, he's huge, and I'm tiny, and…"
"Yeah well, that's Lester for you."
"And you?"
"Me?"
"What do you think?"
"Do you really have to ask?"
"I'm asking," she said firmly.
It looked like female vanity still applied even when you were three feet high and made of felt. "You look amazing. Beautiful."
"For what it's worth, you look pretty good as a muppet too." She looked down at her chest. "Where'd you suppose they came from? I didn't have them before."
He snorted. "Complaining?"
"Nope, just looking for the silver lining."
"I just hope I can still hold a gun. For some reason I have a burning urge to shoot somebody."
"I told you about Grandma Bella."
"Yeah, you did."
"So how are we going to fix this?"
"The guys are looking for her right now."
o0o o0o o0o
Tank sighed as he put the phone down. "That was the last one."
"Every Morelli in the phone book?" Bobby asked.
"And anyone else I could think of that might be related. Every last one either claimed to have no idea or straight out stonewalled me. They're closing ranks."
He got up and reluctantly walked round to Ranger's office. He had a feeling that Ranger wasn't going to take this well.
He tapped on the door and let himself in to stand in his usual report position in front of Ranger's desk. Ranger was still sitting on the couch under the window, Stephanie tucked in next to him. "Report."
"No luck so far."
"We need to find her, Tank."
"We're trying, boss, but we haven't got the right kind of connections here."
"I'm not interested in excuses. Just find her."
"Yes boss."
o0o o0o o0o
He was standing in front of Ranger's desk again eight hours later, still empty handed.
"What do you mean, no-one's seen her?" Ranger growled at him.
He had climbed up on to his desk, trying and failing to get high enough to stand eye to eye with his second in command. Now he paced the top of the desk furiously, pausing occasionally to look over to where Stephanie was curled up asleep on the couch, her fuzzy, newly enhanced breasts straining at the tank top of the pajamas she had been wearing when the curse hit her.
"I've had three teams combing the Burg looking for her, and I'm telling you, no-one's seen her. It's like she's disappeared into thin air."
With a snarl of frustration, Ranger sprang from the top of the desk to hang by two fistfuls of Tank's tee-shirt and glare up at him.
"Look at her, Tank," he hissed. "She looks like Jessica Rabbit. She's all soft and curvy and fuzzy and gorgeous, and I have no fucking dick! Do you see where I'm going with this, Tank? I may have to hurt people if this isn't sorted out."
"Yes, boss."
Ranger let go of his tee-shirt and slid back to the desk, stalking across it to climb into his chair and sit down.
"Ahh, boss?" Tank asked tentatively.
"What?"
"Have you, well, checked there's somewhere for your dick to go when you get it back?"
Ranger paused for a long moment then started beating his soft, fuzzy head against the desk.
Tank walked out of the office to the sound of puppet weeping. He hoped that Ranger's felt wouldn't stain too badly with all the water. An unkind person seeing him at that moment might have suspected that he was trying not to laugh.