Bippity Boppity Boo

I am a piglet in my daughter’s eyes. No, wait: a cow now. Moo. Bippity boppity boo, she chants again, and I contort, and the metamorphosis continues. To a goat. A fish (Nemo. I have to be Nemo.). A frog from Muldonia. Muno and Foofa and Plex. At the same time? She drives a hard bargain, my daughter. But what can I say. Her magic persuades.

But here are five spells meant to transform you. Eat ‘em up. Me, I’m off to morph some more. Enjoy!

– I swear to God my mouth falls open. I stop chipping the polish off my nails and just stare. I can only think of one word. F-A-T. Fat, fat, fat. In my entire 16 years, I’ve never seen anyone this fat. She has brown hair slicked back into a ponytail, and her face is massive bread dough with two blue eyes sunk deep between layers of shiny skin. There are rolls everywhere—her neck is deeply creased, her forearms are like giant sausages tied off at the wrists, and even her fingers seem about to burst under the pressure of stretching skin. – Paige Riehl in Blood Orange Review

– They took her to someplace on the southern tip of Mexico called Cranberry Paradise and when they returned, they picked me up in a mini-van. They handed me a cupcake with the ashes of my baby in it. – Skyelis Tyler in Sleep. Snort. Fuck.

– Across the cornfields, five hot-air balloons floated against the blue sky. Each balloon had bright reds and yellows that reminded Schooney of playing cowboys and Indians with Dan Dan. Schooney was wishing he had his own balloon when a green one with gold stripes hovered above the house. Dan Dan yelled and waved at the three people standing in the brown basket, his voice swallowed by wind and distance. The people waved back, and Schooney imagined standing in that basket, floating away, watching Dan Dan get smaller while hopping up and down like he was jumping an invisible rope. – Jason Lee Brown in Platte Valley Review

– In anger, Cyril had observed, Brother Malachy responded almost like a thermometer; a band of red, first visible at the base of his neck, would ascend until his forehead turned crimson and a vein throbbed there. When the excitement was more pleasant, Malachy grew pink; his freckles faded, his ears turned rosy, and eventually his face nearly matched his reddish hair. – Lou Mathews in Failbetter

– The Temple was a single laser, humming with occult power, tracing out right angles in neon fuschia against a white wall. As each rectilinear tracing formed, it began to drop down the wall like disks on a tower of Hanoi puzzle, its dimensions growing as they reached the wainscoting. New laser trails appeared at the top to replace the old ones, rippling, cascading down the wall. The finished piece looked like a melting Mayan temple in contours, burning away like the greasy smoke from sacrificial meat. – Jeanne Thornton in Prick of the Spindle