To Help a Monster

Tristan woke with a start, and he sat up much too fast. He fell back onto the pillow again, bringing a hand up to his forehead and groaning. He felt a little less sore than usual, actually, but the headache was new. As he lay there trying to feel better, he slowly realized that the uncomfortable cot he was lying on, and the sheer white walls and ceiling...none of it was even remotely familiar. He had no idea where he was.

Actually—it wasn't unusual for him to not know where he was, or recall how he'd gotten there, but these surroundings were unexpected all the same. He sat up again—slowly this time, and tried to take in the room. Was this in a hospital or something? Maybe...a jail? The cot he was on, and a tiny end table with a glass of water on it, were the only furniture in the room; no monitoring devices or computers or anything like that. Yet there wasn't any sort of window here, not even one with bars. The only exit to the room was a door he could now see past the foot of the bed. He jumped slightly as a small slat built into the door, at about eye level for someone standing right in front of it, suddenly and loudly slid open.

"I see you're up," a woman's voice said from the other side. "You know—when I got an email begging me to look into rumors of a 'giant cat monster' in the woods, I was certain it'd be something utterly mundane...if not a hoax. How're you feeling in there?"

"Not...great," Tristan said slowly. "Did I uh..hurt anyone, this time?"

"Doesn't seem like it. My familiar knocked you with one punch," she said proudly.

"'Familiar'?" he repeated, suddenly sitting very upright. "Are you a witch?!"

"Indeed."

Tristan didn't have a good track record with witches. "Please," he started right away, and said quickly: "I'm already cursed! I'm really sorry, I don't have control over myself when it—"

She interrupted him in a firm but kind tone of voice: "Hey now..take a deep breath, will you? I'm not that sort of witch."

"I—okay." He took a long breath in and out, as instructed. Panicking—really panicking—would have been very bad, he realized almost too late. "Sorry."

"Allow me a proper introduction—though I hope you'll forgive me if it's still through the door. The name's Rillimia. You could say I'm a benevolent witch; lots of people call on me to solve their problems," she explained, her voice carrying a certain level of pride.

"I'm—Tristan," he said. "Uh..I was, cursed, some time ago. For offending someone who turned out to be a witch. I kinda..lost my temper, and so...now, any time I get too angry or just—like—upset..."

"You turn into that monstrous form, yes?"

"Yeah..."

"Well, I had a look at you while you were unconscious. That witch must've been very angry with you, because the curse she put on you doesn't have any conditions for breaking it."

"Uh..what's that, mean?"

"Well, your average curse is 'this will happen to you until'...such as having your pants pockets sprout holes in them that your money falls out through, until you willingly donate a certain quantity to the poor. But yours isn't like that. In plain terms, I'd have to overpower it to remove it, and it's strong enough that it isn't really feasible for me to do so."

"Oh.."

"Don't despair! I came up with a solution anyway," Rillimia said. "Here."

An object was slid through the slat in the door, landing on the floor on Tristan's side with a brief jingling noise. He got up and stepped a little closer to see what it was. "A..collar?" The jingling sound had come from a large bell attached to it.

"An enchanted collar. You see—while that curse is very powerful, it was quite carelessly constructed. Like I said, she must've been very angry. So I decided to work smart instead of working hard. The enchantment on that collar should be able to alter the curse's effects so you won't be danger to those around you anymore."

"I...see.." Tristan knelt and picked up the collar. "What uh..new effects would it have?"

"I can't say precisely—this is quite a complicated interaction of two different people's magic we're speaking of. But I guarantee you that it will not hurt you, and it will keep you from turning into a dangerous monster."

"Did it..need to have a bell?" Tristan asked, tapping it to make it jingle a couple of times.

"But of course it did. I needed to exploit the 'feline' component of your curse."

"What does that even mean?"

"Look, are you the witch in this situation? Or any sort of magic expert whatsoever?"

"No..."

"Then don't expect to understand everything. Just, please make up your mind on whether you want to try my 'cure'. If not, I'll happily seek out someone with more expertise in curses in particular to help you—but you'll have to stay in there where you can't get out and harm anyone in the meantime. Trust me, that would inconvenience both of us."

"No, look, I'll—try anything. I guess I just..put it on?" he said, bringing it up to his neck and starting to wrap it around.

"That's correct."

"Okay..." Tristan kept it loose so he wouldn't choke himself. It was a little awkward to fasten it together, but he eventually managed it. He'd never been the kind of guy who wore anything around his neck, so it was a slightly strange experience in that way—but nothing else obvious seemed to happen. "Did uh..did it work?"

"I can confirm the enchantment is on you," Rillimia said. "But your curse isn't currently active, and there's nothing for the enchantment to do until it is."

"So..we're not sure if it's really safe for me to go out yet, even with this on—right? I mean, this sounds kinda experimental," Tristan said.

"I'm confident my solution works, but it probably would be best to exercise caution in this case. So, yes, it'd be ideal if we could test it out."

After taking another deep breath, Tristan said, "So—you're absolutely sure this room would uh..keep me in here, if the curse does what it always did before..right?"

"Certainly. And my familiar is standing by."

"Heyo~," a deeper voice, also female, chimed in from across the door.

"She's quite capable of knocking you out again if need be."

"Yep!" the new voice agreed.

It was bizarre for the threat of having his lights punched out a second time to be so reassuring, but Tristan's life had been bizarre enough already for this to not warrant a comment. "Okay..."

It wasn't very hard for Tristan to get angry; it never had been, really. The worst part about his curse was that his anger and frustration at the situation it put him in was itself enough to trigger it all over again. Back around when he'd first been cursed, he'd lost something like an entire month to a repeated cycle of coming back to himself only to almost immediately go into a spiral of negative emotion that had him turn into a monster all over again. He'd trained himself in healthier mental habits since then to keep that from happening, but it was distressingly easy to go back to his old ways. All he had to do was think about the day he'd been cursed, all the awful things that had happened that day, and for him to have the rotten luck to run into such an ill-tempered woman with the power to curse him, of all things! His entire life of torment since then, and anyone he'd hurt while he wasn't himself but that monster—it was all her fault! Well, it was at least mostly her fault, and the rest was his. Just picturing her cackling face after she'd inflicted the curse on him ticked him off...!

Tristan shuddered, feeling his heart race and an all-too-familiar ache all over his body. This was how it always felt before he started changing; usually there was an eruption of intense pain afterward, and he would black out maybe halfway into turning into a giant, white-furred cat monster. However, this time was markedly different; the eruption of intense pain didn't come. "A-aagh...!" It was a relatively mild pain he felt hitting his ears as they grew up and out into big, feline-like shapes, and in his lower back as a tail forced its way out from the base of his spine. At the same time, he felt his hair falling down across his eyebrows, then cheeks and the back of his head, and then lightly landing on his shoulders and sliding its way down his back. The locks now threatening to obscure his vision were the same pure, bright white as he knew his monstrous form's fur to be, but the sudden hair growth was not something that usually happened.

He panted slightly in the wake of the pain, looking around. He was still..himself! At least, mostly; he certinaly wasn't in pain anymore, and he hadn't blacked out. "It..did it work!?"

Tristan's question hadn't really been directed at anyone, but the witch behind the door answered anyway: "My enchantment looks to be doing its job, but the magic hasn't stabilized quite yet. Could you try to activate the curse again?"

"Uh..sure, I guess?"

He tried again to work himself up—picturing the face of that witch who'd cursed him. It was..a little harder to feel angry this time, for some reason. Of course, he had been a real jerk to her, regardless of what he'd gone through himself that day. Maybe it was no excuse...but that meant it was his own stupid fault that he'd been cursed! And it was certainly his own fault he couldn't keep control of his emotions ever since then; if he could just keep a lid on it then the curse wouldn't even matter! This source of frustration was enough; his heartbeat picked up again, and a noticeably duller ache hit him.

"Mn—agh...rrrgh...!" A low, growling sound came from Tristan's throat as the ache progressed into a strange pressure. He wriggled in place like he was struggling against invisible ropes, and before his eyes the room began to rise slowly, steadily upward. "Aah—wha..rr~rrgh..!" The next involuntary growl came out in a slightly higher pitch, and its tone audibly rose upward mid-growl. He felt the shirt and pants he'd woken up in sliding and slipping across his skin, and looked down to find that—in addition to the floor rising up closer to him, his frame was visibly thinning and slimming. "Aa~ah, aa~aah..m-mrr~rroowh..?!" His non-growling, human voice came out at a higher pitch than before now too, and cracked strangely mid-utterance; then another involuntary attempt to growl came out instead as a confused, feline meow.

This change finally came to an end after he'd lost no less than a foot and a half of height, and so much size otherwise that his shirt hung awkwardly off of a shoulder, and his pants simply gave up and slid down his legs to land onto the floor. Not that this mattered much for his modesty, as the shirt's hem was now as far down as his upper thighs. "Haff, hff—I, wha~a..?" Tristan said, trying but failing to make his voice not sound like a young boy's. "Why'd I s-shrink?" A terrible thought occurred to him—between his curse's original effects, and the cat-like collar, and what Rillimia had said about "exploiting the feline" something-or-other.

"Is—is—am I turning totally into a cat!?" he said, feeling a panic rise. Maybe he didn't deserve any better, after insisting on keeping himself alive so long despite the clear danger he posed to others. Besides, such a punishment would be his own fault for accepting this strange witch's 'help' after his first experience with one!

"Please calm down; it won't—oh," Rillimia interrupted herself, seemingly because she'd noticed something. It wasn't hard for Tristan to guess what, as his panicked thoughts were more than enough to set his heart racing all over again. Only this time, it didn't cause any aching at all. He thought, as he shuddered from a strange, almost pleasant tingling all across his skin, that at least becoming a cat wouldn't be painful like turning into a monster had...!

"Aa~ah—rr~rrh..!" Tristan felt the urge to roar again, but it came out so pathetically high—almost cute—and soon shifted into another meow. "Mm-rr~rroo~oowh..!" The register of his voice shifted even higher, and the bizarre tingling seemed to settle on something...down between his legs. "Aa~ah, w-whaa..?!" It progressed into a slipping, tugging sensation that made his heart race in an altogether different way from usual; he could feel his cheeks growing hot with a blush, the slim white tail extending out from his back whipping back and forth excitedly, his ears lowering..!

But—but this was wrong, a part of him seemed to say. He was supposed to be big and strong, not small and weak. "R-rr~roorwh..!?" A strangely high, cute attempt to roar came from his lips as he felt it continuing to slip away. And then—"W-waa~aaAAA~AAaaahh...!" No sooner had Tristan's manhood vanished completely than a bizarre, fuzzy feeling emanated from down there.

"MM-Mmmn—mmrr~rrrhh..!" A helpless purring came from the new girl's lips as the realization settled into her mind that what she was feeling was, undeniably, a woman's sort of pleasure. At the same time, she could feel certain parts of her shrunken body gently bouncing their way back outward: Her hips puffed themselves out wider, pulling the tops of her legs apart; her thighs grew thicker as if in reply, shifting her legs from slender to shapely; and her bottom pushed out bigger too.

"Aah, aa~aah..!" Her voice remained at a high, cute soprano tone as she also felt her chest starting to push itself forward, a tiny pair of breasts moving across the material of her shirt as they grew. The budding bosom proved unusually sensitive, drawing more fuzzy feelings from down between her legs and causing her to purr once again. "Aah—mm—mmr~rrrrhh..!" The slightly-foreign part of her mind that thought this was all wrong seemed to grow weaker and weaker, enjoying these pleasant sensations just as much as the rest of her. But, as one final act of rebellion just as her chest bounced out into a full, womanly pair of globes, she opened her mouth and tried one last time to roar.

She lifted her hands up, trying to retract their deadly claws but only succeeding in growing some slightly longer, more feminine nails. And the roar that came out was a high, soft, adorable "R-roo~oowrrh..!"

Tristan slowly dropped her arms back to her sides, panting. "Hff..hff..I-I..uh..?" She was fully aware, now, of the animalistic part of her mind that the curse had locked away from the rest of it. She could remember every night from the perspective of the giant cat-beast, hunting and attacking people to quell her rage. To her relief, these new memories revealed that she'd never actually killed any people—just some animals. But she was also keenly aware that she had been completely and totally, irrevocably, tamed—and was a mere harmless housecat now. And yet—this realization only made her...happy? She'd never really wanted to hurt anyone in the first place, after all!

"I-is it over?" she asked simply as these realizations washed through her.

"It would appear so," Rillimia said. "The reaction between my magic and hers has stabilized. And thus...the good news is that you won't turn into that monster anymore. The bad news is that the curse's nature has shifted from one that changes you, to one that keeps you the same. So your form is now locked to...that one."

"I..see..um.." Tristan looked down at herself, brushing a hand down along her side and trying to get used to how small and soft she was, the curves that hand felt. "It's..still way better than before. Y-you can let me out now, right?" she asked, turning her head up to look at the door again. "A-and maybe, d'you have a mirror somewhere?"

"Yes, and..certainly." The catgirl's ears twitched as she heard the sound of some locks being disengaged, and then the door opened to give her a first look at her saviors.

At first, she thought both of them looked so tall! But then she realized that it was her who was really short. "Hello there." The witch herself—who'd just disengaged the lock—was an average-height redhead in almost stereotypical witch garb; with her was a tall, curvy, brown-haired woman in shorts and a t-shirt. However, the first thing Tristan picked up on about the latter was that she was clearly part wolf!

"Yo," the tall, deep-voiced woman waved.

Tristan recoiled slightly. "Eep!" She then gathered herself, trying to stand up straight but feeling her ears fold back in fear anyway. "Um—sorry. You're just, um, really big? And..I-I think I'm kinda very part cat now, soo.."

"Awwh, it's fine," she said with a sharp-toothed grin. "If anything, that was kinda cute~."

"Uhmm..." Tristan felt her face flush at the compliment; this mixed with her feeling even more fear from seeing those fangs to produce a very confused sort of emotion. She just tried to push past all that and move the conversation forward. "So! A-a mirror?"

"In a bathroom, down that hall and to the right," the witch said, gesturing which way she meant. "Perhaps we could find you some clothes as well."

The catgirl's blush refused to cool off as she worked to step over the pants still pooled around her ankles. "Y-yeah, I'd appreciate that."

---

Another story involving Rillimia! Actually, I wrote most of this before getting the idea for the previous one, but they've been published in in-universe chronlogical order.