# chapters

path: 1122111111121222211111112111111111111111
author_id: seuzz
title: School for Demons, Chapter 16
chapter_content:
<div><div> <span>"Hayato sure is a bastard," Sota said. "He's a real fucker, no mistake," he added.<br/>
<br/>
He was trying to talk to the demon, but for some reason the demon didn't reply. Maybe it didn't think Sota was saying something very interesting. But Sota wanted someone to talk to, so he continued talking aloud, even as he was distracted by Momoka's tongue.<br/>
<br/>
After returning to Akiko's home, Sota had ridden his bike over to Gorou's apartment, where he and his puppets could have some privacy. He had concentrated on his instructions, so that by the time he dragged his pleasantly aching legs up to the third floor, Gorou's door was open and Gorou-puppet and Momoka-puppet were both inside. Neither had said anything as Sota came in, sat down to piss in the toilet, then peeled off his clothes and lay back on the bed that Gorou's mother slept in. He hadn't had to say anything as he splayed out his legs—Momoka-puppet came directly over and put her tongue to the pussy that Sota was wearing.<br/>
<br/>
"Yes, Hayato is a right bastard," Sota repeated. Momoka's tongue wasn't Yuuna's, and even as he shut his eyes and fantasized that it was the cruel queen of the Elite Funtime Club who was licking him out he could feel that it wasn't. With a thought he told Momoka to lick slower, and longer. But it was like Momoka's tongue wasn't as long as Yuuna's. It was more like a small paintbrush. Yuuna's tongue was like a hot, wet, prehensile muscle that could not only lick and brush, but could also probe and fondle the lobes of Akiko's pussy.<br/>
<br/>
"Do you know why he let Akiko join the Elite Funtime Club? It was for Yuuna's sake. He knew her tendencies. It turns out that you were right, Gorou, when you told Kosei that Yuuna is a frigid bitch," Sota said, as though it hadn't been he himself, in Gorou's skin, who had invented the calumny. "She will not even let him touch her. But he doesn't care. They are only going together because their parents are best friends, and they want Hayato and Yuuna to be together. They have basically been betrothed since they were five years old."<br/>
<br/>
Sota peeked out from under his lids. Gorou-puppet was standing listlessly by the shabby wardrobe that he and his mother shared. Sota grunted at him, and the puppet moved to stand behind Momoka-puppet.<br/>
<br/>
"Yes, they do not love each other," Sota continued. He watched and directed as Gorou-puppet hiked up Momoka-puppet's skirt and twitched down her panties. Momoka-puppet kicked them off and spread her legs. Gorou-puppet undid and dropped his trousers and pulled his cock out. It unfurled into a thick, raging boner as Sota watched, with its veins bulging. Gorou-puppet knelt and bent over Momoka-puppet, pushing himself inside her from behind as she bent over Sota.<br/>
<br/>
Sota put his head back, closed his eyes, and arched his back. Momoka-puppet's head bobbed, and her face and tongued pushed deeper into Sota's pussy as Gorou-puppet rammed himself inside her. <i>Yes, that's good, Gorou,</i> he thought. <i>Put yourself inside Momoka. She is your cock now, and you are using her as your cock to fuck Akiko.</i> He fumbled and grasped Momoka-puppet by the sides of her head.<br/>
<br/>
"So Hayato flirts with any girl he wants at school," Sota gasped. "Yuuna doesn't care. And in return, Yuuna gets to play out her tendencies with me. And it's safe for Yuuna because everyone understands that she's with Hayato, and I'm with Gorou."<br/>
<br/>
Sota almost choked as Momoka-puppet's tongue found a place behind his clit. He began to writhe as a warm flame spread inside him, igniting the muscles in his back. <i>I want to eat your face,</i> he thought without specifying whose face he was talking about. <i>I want to eat your face with my pussy!</i><br/>
<br/>
"But now ... thanks to that rumor ... about Akiko and ... Kosei," Sota gasped. Sweat sprang out all over his body as the fire quickened. "Yuuna and I ... can't ... be together ... because I've offended ... Yuuna!" Sota gurgled. He was going to cum very soon. There was a spasm building in his lower back, and when he came he would rise like a cork out of a champagne bottle, maybe snapping Momoka-puppet's neck. But he didn't care. "So now Hayato ... gets to have all his girlfriends ... and Yuuna ... Yuuna ... Ah! Aigh! Yu-oooon-aaaiiighhh!"<br/>
<br/>
Sota shrieked as he came, thrusting his pelvis upward as he tried forcing Momoka-puppet's nose and mouth and tongue inside him. Waves rose within him, and he writhed and shook his head, splattering beads of sweat about. "Oh!" he groaned. "Come inside me, Gorou! Shoot your wad through Momoka and cum inside me!"<br/>
<br/>
He peeped up, and saw Gorou-puppet, his face purple with exertion, grimacing and jiggling in place as he came inside Momoka-puppet. Sota bit down hard on his lip, and imagined himself sucking Gorou-puppet's cum into himself through Momoka-puppet's mouth.<br/>
<br/>
"Oh," he groaned again as he sagged. "That wasn't as good as it could have been ... with Yuuna," he confessed as he mopped his brow. "I'll have to do that again, when she's a puppet too. You would like fucking Yuuna doggie-style, wouldn't you, Gorou?" The puppet grinned. "Or maybe I'll give Hayato the honors once I've eaten him. Mmmm!"<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
Sota almost fell asleep after cumming, but not quite, and after ten minutes during which his thoughts puddled up and almost stopped completely, he sat up abruptly with an alert ear cocked. Someone was walking down the corridor outside Gorou's apartment, and the door across the hall opened and shut. It reminded him of his exposed position here, and though Gorou's mother wouldn't be home for several more hours, he thought it best to evacuate the scene lest she surprise him and his puppets with an early return.<br/>
<br/>
So he took a quick shower and dried himself all over, then dressed and rode home. He had a lot of homework to do, but he kept one eye on his cell phone as worked, in case Yuuna texted. But though he took and replied to several texts from some of the few friends that Akiko had, he didn't hear from Akiko's girlfriend.<br/>
<br/>
That gave him plenty of time, though, to think about how to extract the maximum amount of pain from Yuuna. The key, he decided, was in her fear that her tendencies would be revealed, and the false nature of her relationship with Hayato revealed.<br/>
<br/>
So the next afternoon—<br/>
<br/>
"Oh, Yuuna! My beloved Yuuna! You are making me cum!" Sota shrieked. He was sprawled backward on a bench in the school's equipment storage room. He was wearing Akiko's shirt and jacket and tank top, but had thrown off her shorts and panties so that Momoka-puppet could lick him out again. He didn't actually cum—he found he suffered a kind of stage fright when perform in a public place—but he concentrated on what he had felt on Gorou's mother's bed, and he imagined being wracked by the same shuddering satisfaction. When he judged the performance complete, he lay back on the bench and draped an arm across his forehead. From behind closed eyes, he sent Momoka-puppet her instructions.<br/>
<br/>
"Was that good, Akiko?" the puppet asked timidly.<br/>
<br/>
"It was good enough," Sota said. "Only your tongue needs exercise. You've never done it before, have you?"<br/>
<br/>
"No, Akiko, I haven't."<br/>
<br/>
"Yuuna and I used to do it every day, sometimes twice a day, to each other. If you weren't such a disgusting little scrunt I'd do it to you so you could feel how to do it. Your tongue has to be strong! I believe Yuuna's tongue muscle is as strong as the muscles in your arm!"<br/>
<br/>
"Yes, Akiko."<br/>
<br/>
"And don't think I've forgiven you for those evil rumors you spread about me and Kosei! You understand now that there could be no such thing between us, any more than there could be something between me and Gorou. But you will have to do until Yuuna has forgiven me. This is your punishment!"<br/>
<br/>
"I understand, Akiko. I am so sorry that I—"<br/>
<br/>
"Shut up! I can't take your babbling. Yuuna knows not to babble. She knows what her tongue is best at, and talking with it is very far back in second place. And you know what a good talker she is. That tells you how good she is at licking out pussy."<br/>
<br/>
"Yes, Aki—"<br/>
<br/>
"I said to shut up! God, I hate you! The only thing worse than Yuuna freezing me out would be if she ordered me to go down on <i>you.</i> Oh, Yuuna!" Sota covered his eyes and sobbed. "I'm so sorry! You are so cold and heartless! If I only knew that my absence hurts you as much as it hurts me!"<br/>
<br/>
Sota sobbed once more, then directed another thought in another direction. Then he sat up and picked up Akiko's shorts.<br/>
<br/>
Gorou-puppet stepped out from behind a corner. "Yes, I got it all. Fifteen minutes," he gloated as he held up the cell phone.<br/>
<br/>
"Let me see!" Sota put out his hand. He cradled the cell phone in his palm and watched as Ueno Akiko moaned in ecstasy while directing Sugawara Momoka on how to eat her.<br/>
<br/>
"Excellent," he said. "I can make out every word. Now then." He cocked his head and regarded Gorou-puppet speculatively. "Yes," he said, and at the word the puppet began to disrobe. "I would like to do it myself instead of sending you."<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
To continue investigating the room: "<a href="https://www.Writing.Com/main/interactive-story/item_id/1510047/action/view/chapter_map/11221111111212222112" target="_top" title="Interactive Story Chapter in Item # 1510047">Disposing of Lucy</a>" <a href="https://www.Writing.Com/main/interactive-story/item_id/1510047/action/view/chapter_map/11221111111212222112" target="_blank" title="Open in new window."><img border="0" height="12" loading="lazy" onmouseout="$(this).css('opacity', '.4');" onmouseover="$(this).css('opacity', '1');" src="https://www.Writing.Com/nw.gif" style="opacity:.4;" width="12"/></a></span></div></div>


path: 11221111111212222111111121111111111111111
author_id: seuzz
title: School for Demons, Chapter 17
chapter_content:
<div><div> <span><i>So this is what it is like to have a penis,</i> Sota thought as he tugged Gotou's skin up around his hips. The flaccid member swelled slightly. <i>I must learn how to use it.</i><br/>
<br/>
Of course Sota knew exactly what it was like to have a cock. But it amused him to pretend that Akiko's thoughts were his own as he pulled Gorou's skin over hers. As her pussy disappeared behind Gorou's prick he snickered to imagine that he was a she who was donning a dildo.<br/>
<br/>
Sota had not been certain that it would be possible to wear one skin over another, but his instincts told him that it would work, and it appeared that his instincts were again correct. He pushed Akiko's arms inside Gorou's, and tucked his chin to watch with satisfaction as her breasts flattened and disappeared under the slabs of muscle that Gorou was developing on his chest. <i>When I am Gorou,</i> he thought, <i>then I won't have to worry about him trying to molest me. And I can find some girls that I can molest.</i> Gorou thought he was unattractive, and that no girls would like him except for the one that Hayato had set up for him. But Akiko knew of plenty of girls who liked the idea of going with a "bad boy," and that many of the girls at school were jealous that Akiko was his girl. It was another way that Hayato had fucked over the other members of the Elite Funtime Club, for Gorou could have found happiness with many of them.<br/>
<br/>
"Do I have his voice, too?" Sota wondered aloud after he had rubbed Gorou's face into his. "Yes, I believe so. And his memories and personality? Mm, yes, I think so too. Unless it is Akiko who is so horny for this cock," he went on as he fondled his prick, which was now quite long and fat and rigid. "Mmm, the dyke doesn't want it in her, but she would love to put it in someone. Momoka?"<br/>
<br/>
The puppet wobbled over, and sank to her knees in front of Sota.<br/>
<br/>
"Mmm, yes. Oh yes," Sota said, feigning surprise at the pleasure of a wet tongue and throat on his cock. "I'm not surprised now that guys are so horny," he continued. "If I had one of these to distract me every hour of the day— Oh, but I, Ueno Akiko, should remember that I'm supposed to be Ota Gorou, and act accordingly." Sota was beginning to get a little lost inside his double impersonation. "Suck it, Momoka," he murmured. "Suck it hard, like the day you came to my apartment." He put his hand to the back of her head, and gently pressed her in. "Give me what Akiko won't give me, what her natural tendencies prevent her from giving me. This is what you love, Momoka. You told me so yourself! We will be ... We will be—!"<br/>
<br/>
He broke off as his cock barked and spat inside Momoka's mouth and throat. His cumming so quickly surprised him, he told himself. "Well, I sure didn't know that guys could get it done so fast," he exclaimed as he returned to pretending that he was Akiko. "Clean it off for me with your tongue. Mm, yes. Whew!"<br/>
<br/>
He sank to the floor, splaying his legs and letting his cock rise out of his trousers like a purple-hued pole. He swallowed and smacked his mouth, and rubbed his face with his hands. "I'm going to have to let it go down before I go see Hayato. It's a good thing that I have plenty of time." He frowned at his cock, and ran his fingertips up and down it. "It doesn't seem to want to relent. I do think I could do it again!"<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
He didn't, though, and as he rehearsed what he was going to say to Taniguchi Hayato, he found his member deflating rapidly. With a grunt he tucked himself back in. He gathered up Akiko's clothes and stuffed them into her backpack. With her pack and his both balanced on his back, he rode back to Gorou's apartment to drop them off before riding out to the Starbucks where he knew he could find Hayato.<br/>
<br/>
There was a crowd of boys who tumbled into the Starbucks during the break between sessions at the academies, and not all of them went to his school and knew who Ota Gorou was. These had pushed a bunch of tables and chairs together while cheerfully cursing each other, and they ignored the dark-haired boy who glowered up at them from under insolent bangs. But Hayato and some of his cronies recognized Gorou. The cronies watched him warily, but Hayato scowled. As if their eyes were sabers, the two boys fenced and parried until Hayato, his expression turning very black, interrupted the laugher with a loud, "You bastards can fuck off now."<br/>
<br/>
Everyone froze. "I told you to fuck off. I'll see you later," Hayato barked. He got some surly glances, and the curses directed at him now weren't friendly and joshing. But he stood stonily in the middle of the Starbucks, and the crowd of boys, after surging around him, ebbed and retreated from the room, leaving the two members of the Elite Funtime Club alone with each other. Sota hocked up a wad, and spat meaningfully to the side.<br/>
<br/>
"Are you looking to die?" Hayato demanded.<br/>
<br/>
"I want to talk about Akiko," Sota said. "Akiko and Yuuna. Our two dykes."<br/>
<br/>
It gratified Sota a little to see the startled look that crossed Hayato's eyes. For only a second he looked disconcerted. Then he recovered. "So Akiko told you," he said.<br/>
<br/>
"Akiko didn't tell me shit. She doesn't talk to me. But I see you have stopped lying to me as well. I found out from this." Sota handed over Gorou's cell phone to Hayato. The video he had shot in the equipment room was already queued up.<br/>
<br/>
Hayato hit play and watched. His expression didn't change, even as Akiko's moans filled the room. Halfway through it, though, he had to sit down. He hunched in his chair. Sota didn't smile, even though he knew that Hayato was getting a raging boner from watching Momoka eat out Akiko.<br/>
<br/>
"So you caught them," Hayato said when the video finished.<br/>
<br/>
"No. Aiuchi Kosei caught them."<br/>
<br/>
<i>"Kosei?"</i><br/>
<br/>
"He caught them and filmed them. He sent it to me."<br/>
<br/>
"That fucker!"<br/>
<br/>
"He didn't send a copy to you?"<br/>
<br/>
Hayato's eyes widened, and he pulled out his cell phone. He scrolled through it. "No," he said.<br/>
<br/>
"He must be waiting. Or maybe he knew I would show it to you. You're the club president, of course. This video humiliates me, which is why he sent it to me. But you see that it humiliates you, too."<br/>
<br/>
Hayato slammed his fist on the table. "That fucker! If he shares it, if he sends it around, we will fuck him so hard!"<br/>
<br/>
"Maybe we will fuck him until he kills himself? Like that little bitch Sano Sota?" Sota said dryly.<br/>
<br/>
Hayato glared at Sota. "That was fun, but this is business!" He gripped the sides of the table and rocked it back and forth. "I will—! I will—!" A froth started to pour out over his lower lip.<br/>
<br/>
"Fucking up Kosei won't do any good," Sota said. He talked very calmly, though he was greatly enjoying the way that Hayato was frothing, and the way his cheeks were turning red and white all at once, and the way his hair was bristling and his pupils were dilating. It was like Hayato's insides were boiling away, and he almost expected the president's skin to pucker and collapse as he dissolved into a bubbling slurry of hot fluid. <br/>
<br/>
"It won't do any good," Sota repeated, "to fuck him up before he starts sharing it, or after. If we fuck him up before, he will share the video in revenge. If we fuck him up after, the damage will already be done."<br/>
<br/>
"It will make me feel good!" Hayato snarled back. "We should have fucked him over like that little bitch whatsisname a long time back!"<br/>
<br/>
"There is only one way Kosei can't hurt you," Sota said. He had chosen very deliberately to say "you" instead of "us," for he knew that Hayato cared only for his own selfish self. "You have to dump Yuuna."<br/>
<br/>
"Dump her?" Hayato exclaimed. "But we are—! We're—!"<br/>
<br/>
"Would your parents want you betrothed to a dyke? You have to dump her," Sota repeated as Hayato's eyes sharpened, "and you have to be the one who shares the video, so that everyone will understand that you righteously dumped a dyke who you now know was cheating on you with another dyke. You have to ruin Yuuna to save yourself."<br/>
<br/>
Hayato put his fist to his mouth and bit down hard on his knuckles.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
To continue investigating the room: "<a href="https://www.Writing.Com/main/interactive-story/item_id/1510047/action/view/chapter_map/11221111111212222112" target="_top" title="Interactive Story Chapter in Item # 1510047">Disposing of Lucy</a>" <a href="https://www.Writing.Com/main/interactive-story/item_id/1510047/action/view/chapter_map/11221111111212222112" target="_blank" title="Open in new window."><img border="0" height="12" loading="lazy" onmouseout="$(this).css('opacity', '.4');" onmouseover="$(this).css('opacity', '1');" src="https://www.Writing.Com/nw.gif" style="opacity:.4;" width="12"/></a></span></div></div>


path: 112211111112122221111111211111111111111111
author_id: seuzz
title: School for Demons, Chapter 18
chapter_content:
<div><div> <span>"You have to dump Yuuna," Sota repeated as Hayato stared into the infinite distance. "Kosei wants to destroy you. You can only save yourself from his malicious gossip by dumping Yuuna first."<br/>
<br/>
"And Akiko," Hayato spat. "That cunt is the one who is causing this."<br/>
<br/>
"And Momoka," Sota agreed.<br/>
<br/>
"God, those cunts! Those filthy whores!" Hayato screamed. He grabbed the table and threw it to the floor with a loud crash. "They couldn't keep their lusts under control! And they had to do it at school?" His voice rose to a shriek. "Where a pervert like Kosei could catch them?"<br/>
<br/>
Sota bent over to pick up the table so that he could hide his smile. This was going much better than he expected! He had only planned to hurt Yuuna. Now he saw that he was causing Hayato almost as much pain. With Hayato's next words he understood why.<br/>
<br/>
"They have destroyed the club!" he shouted. "We have to dump them, destroy them, all three of those cunts! It will just you and me, Gorou," he panted. He was trembling all over as well. "Fuck! All that work! It was so perfect! Just look at how we cursed that little fag-pervert whatsisname to death! That was brilliant! We were brilliant! And now it's all—!"<br/>
<br/>
He buried his face in his hands, and his shoulder heaved and shook. Sota wasn't naive enough to think that Taniguchi Hayato was crying, so he was expecting it when Hayato raised his face again to show an almost demonical snarl spread across it.<br/>
<br/>
"We'll rebuild it," he gasped. It was as though his own voice was trying to choke him. "We'll start over again, you and me. But you—" His eyes blazed as he jabbed a stiff finger in Sota's face. "You must do exactly as I say! Do you understand, you fucker? It will only work if you do exactly as I tell you!"<br/>
<br/>
"I'm not your bitch," Sota retorted. "But I will be your brother." He put out his hand.<br/>
<br/>
Hayato's scowl relented a little. He sniffed and gasped and cleared his throat, and with a great concentration of willpower put a smile on his face.<br/>
<br/>
"We will be brothers, then," he said, and he took Sota's hand. "Brothers forever, Gorou."<br/>
<br/>
"Brothers forever," Sota repeated. But he wasn't fooled by Hayato's promise or by his smile. The arrogant smirk in the club president's eye would have warned him otherwise, even if he didn't know the bastard.<br/>
<br/>
"Thank you for your advice, Ota Gouro," Hayato said. "It is very good advice. Will you send me the video file? I will act on it immediately, before that fucker Kosei can."<br/>
<br/>
Something in Hayato's words worried Sota, and he feared that perhaps he had played his hand too cleverly. <i>Hayato knows that Gorou is an idiot,</i> he thought. <i>He knows that Gorou isn't smart enough to have thought all this through. Perhaps he is setting Gorou up?</i><br/>
<br/>
But he nodded, and with few swift strokes of his fingertip across the cell phone screen sent the video file to the club president.<br/>
<br/>
"Thank you again," Hayato said as he stood up. Sota stood up too. "I will see you tomorrow at school." He smiled and patted Sota on the arm.<br/>
<br/>
"You don't trust that fucker, do you?" the demon growled in Sota's ear as Hayato swaggered out of the Starbucks.<br/>
<br/>
"There you are," Sota replied. "I was beginning to think you had gone back to Hell."<br/>
<br/>
"What? And miss out on the main course? That Hayato will be the most delicious morsel I have devoured in a very long time."<br/>
<br/>
"So you <i>are</i> devouring them," Sota said. "Devouring them and leaving me with only the skins."<br/>
<br/>
"As though you could do anything with the meat and the souls." The demon laughed. "You are making out quite well, and will make out better once you have Hayato's skin. That will not be too far off now. You are not going to destroy him as you destroyed the others, are you? That would be very foolish. Make him hurt! But preserve him otherwise as he is."<br/>
<br/>
"I understand that," Sota impatiently retorted. "I have already caused him almost as much hurt as it is possible. You were there, you heard him. I have destroyed the Elite Funtime Club, and that is the worst thing I could do to him. No, I don't believe him when he calls me his brother. He will fuck up Gorou, too, and start over completely. But taking it all away from him, after he was so ingenious at building it, that is even worse than killing him."<br/>
<br/>
The demon didn't reply, but Sota thought he heard it laugh in an approving way.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
At Gorou's apartment he stripped himself of the topmost skin and put Akiko's clothes back on. He re-inflated Gorou-puppet with his "breath of spirit" and departed again in Akiko's skin and on Akiko's bike. He rode home and did most of his schoolwork while waiting to hear from Yuuna. Her text didn't come until ten o'clock, though: <i>Come to the academy.</i><br/>
<br/>
Hayato hadn't wasted any time.<br/>
<br/>
Sota rode back to the commercial district where Yuuna's and Hayato's nighttime academy was located. There was a crowd of boys at the entrance, and they whistled and catcalled him as he pulled up. But he had Akiko's muscles and her personality and her vocabulary this time, and he cursed and yelled and gouged at them until they ran away howling. He took the stairs three at a stride up to the fifth floor, where Yuuna he knew would be waiting.<br/>
<br/>
The girl was in the deserted classroom with a pointing stick in her hand. Her face was white and her expression fixed as Sota came in. "Lock the door, please," she said after Sota had closed it.<br/>
<br/>
"What is this about, Yuuna?" Sota asked.<br/>
<br/>
"It is about you and your membership in the Elite Funtime Club. We are kicking you out."<br/>
<br/>
"Kicking me out? Yuuna! What is this bullshit?"<br/>
<br/>
"You and Momoka both."<br/>
<br/>
Sota snarled. "Why are you punishing me for what that little bitch did to us? I didn't do anything wrong, so why are—?"<br/>
<br/>
"Tch tch! Akiko! Do not talk that way about  your dyke lover."<br/>
<br/>
Sota froze, then pretended to gasp in surprise.<br/>
<br/>
"You will have a lot of time in the future to let her eat you," Yuuna said. "But I suggest you find some place other than the equipment storeroom at school to do it in."<br/>
<br/>
"Yuuna! I—! I was desperate! I was missing you so much! It was—! The only way I could remember you, think of you, was to make Momoka do it! I was pretending it was you!"<br/>
<br/>
"Yes, I saw the video."<br/>
<br/>
"Video?" Sota shrieked. "There's a video?"<br/>
<br/>
"Yes. Someone made a video and sent it to Hayato." Yuuna's blank expression began to crack. "He watched it, and he showed it to me tonight."<br/>
<br/>
"But he already knows about us! Doesn't he? You told me—"<br/>
<br/>
<i>"And now everyone in the world will know about us!"</i> Yuuna screamed. "You dumb bitch! Do you know what you did to me! If you wanted Momoka to lick you out, you should have just done that! Why did you have to pretend it was me? Why did you have to call her by <i>my name,</i> to talk about what <i>we</i> did?" Yuuna struck a desk with the pointer, and it splintered. "You didn't just ruin yourself, you ruined <i>me too!</i>"<br/>
<br/>
Her jaw quivered, and tears streamed down her cheeks from wide, unblinking eyes. "You destroyed me, Akiko," she murmured. "Now my parents will know. I will never see you again. I will never see anyone again. Hayato has dumped me, and he is going to share the video so everyone will know why."<br/>
<br/>
"Why would he do that?" Sota asked. "That fucker! Just because he knows— He <i>always</i> knew!"<br/>
<br/>
"But the person who sent the video is going to put out on the internet," Yuuna whispered. "It is going to go out anyway. So Hayato has to pretend that he just found out, and that he found out first. To save himself he has to pretend that he never knew what I was. What <i>we</i> were."<br/>
<br/>
"Oh, Yuuna!" Sota gasped.<br/>
<br/>
"Don't cry for me," Yuuna said. She raised her chin and stared stoically into the distance. "This is the last time we will see each other. Tonight I am going down to the river. And there I will—" Her voice failed. "There I will destroy myself."<br/>
<br/>
"Like Sano Sota," Sota said.<br/>
<br/>
Yuuna's eyes flickered. It took all her restraint, Sota sourly noted, to keep from saying, <i>Who?</i> out loud.<br/>
<br/>
But then she remembered. "Yes," Yuuna said. "Like Sano Sota."<br/>
<br/>
"It's his curse," Sota said. "We cursed him to death, but it has rebounded on us."<br/>
<br/>
Fear showed in Yuuna's eyes. "Do you think so?"<br/>
<br/>
"I know so. Do you know how I know?" Sota stepped up close to her as Yuuna's expression turned puzzled. He grabbed his upper lip and wrenched Akiko's face back over his head. "Because I am he!"<br/>
<br/>
Yuuna's eyes bulged and her jaw dropped. Her knees buckled so that she fell to the floor in front of Sota. She raised her face and opened her mouth.<br/>
<br/>
But the shriek never came. She only gurgled once, very softly, as Sota's forefinger entered her throat.<br/>
<br/>
Then she deflated.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
To continue investigating the room: "<a href="https://www.Writing.Com/main/interactive-story/item_id/1510047/action/view/chapter_map/11221111111212222112" target="_top" title="Interactive Story Chapter in Item # 1510047">Disposing of Lucy</a>" <a href="https://www.Writing.Com/main/interactive-story/item_id/1510047/action/view/chapter_map/11221111111212222112" target="_blank" title="Open in new window."><img border="0" height="12" loading="lazy" onmouseout="$(this).css('opacity', '.4');" onmouseover="$(this).css('opacity', '1');" src="https://www.Writing.Com/nw.gif" style="opacity:.4;" width="12"/></a><br/>
</span></div></div>


path: 1122111111121222211111112111111111111111111
author_id: seuzz
title: School for Demons, Chapter 19
chapter_content:
<div><div> <span>Sota wrapped up Yuuna's skin and clothes and stuffed them into Akiko's backpack. He took them downstairs, mounted the bicycle, and rode away from the Academy.<br/>
<br/>
It had pleased him immensely to learn that Yuuna had intended to throw herself in the river. It meant that he had driven her into the very lowest pit of despair. The only disappointment was that it hadn't taken longer. He would have preferred to draw it out, and to torture Yuuna from a variety of angles, as he had toyed with Akiko. But the only attack he could stage was one that had driven a stake straight through the girl's heart.<br/>
<br/>
He could foresee too, as the demon had warned him, that Hayato would be quick to fall. That was the trouble with these very powerful students. They were single-minded, and if you struck at the one thing that they cared for, as Yuuna cared for the approval of her parents, and Hayato cared for the power he exercised over others, then they would swiftly crumble.<br/>
<br/>
So Sota would have to be content with having destroyed them before giving them to the demon to be devoured.<br/>
<br/>
And, of course, he would have to be content with having their skins to wear and control.<br/>
<br/>
He rode Akiko's bike through the night to the foot of the hills where Yuuna lived. He grimaced as he pushed himself and the bike up the steep road—even with Akiko's muscles, it was a hard climb. At the top he paused to recover, and to survey the lights of the city below, before recovering. It was very beautiful on that crown of hills, and it would look even more beautiful when he was looking at it through Yuuna's eyes.<br/>
<br/>
As he was gazing out, a cell phone rang, and he almost fell over in surprise. It rang half a dozen times before he was able to retrieve it from the backpack, and he didn't even look to see whose it was before putting it to his ear. "Hello?"<br/>
<br/>
Silence. Then a hatefully familiar voice. "Akiko?"<br/>
<br/>
<i>Hayato.</i> "You bastard!" Sota yelled, letting the instincts of the girl whose skin he was wearing take over. "You son of a bitch!"<br/>
<br/>
"Where's Yuuna?"<br/>
<br/>
"She's here with me. Do you really think she's going to talk to you, fucker?"<br/>
<br/>
"Put her on."<br/>
<br/>
"No! You have to listen to me first!"<br/>
<br/>
"There's nothing I want to hear! Where's Yuuna? Is she at the Academy somewhere?"<br/>
<br/>
"Are you skipping class?"<br/>
<br/>
"I'm out in the hall, you cunt! Kawagishi-teacher wants to know where she is!"<br/>
<br/>
"We left! What did you expect, you asshole! After what you did to her did you expect her to—?"<br/>
<br/>
"Fuck off, Akiko! You and that dyke go off and fuck each other! I'm done with you two!"<br/>
<br/>
"Wait!" Sota caught his breath and jammed Akiko's anger into a dark hole. In a flash of intuition, he realized that he needed to stop Hayato from doing something rash, something that would ruin all his future plans. "I need to talk to you!"<br/>
<br/>
"I don't have time, I have to get back into class!"<br/>
<br/>
"Then call me when you get out! Call me on my phone, fu— Hayato! I have to talk to you! It's important!"<br/>
<br/>
<i>But what can I tell him?</i> Sota wondered after hanging up. <br/>
<br/>
"Good," gurgled the demon. "I thought you were going to stumble so close to the finish line."<br/>
<br/>
"Then why didn't you say something?" Sota peevishly demanded.<br/>
<br/>
"Hey, just because I approve of what you're doing doesn't mean I'm on your side! You will give me Hayato anyway, I have no fear of that! You want to be inside his skin too badly. Whether you will like being inside his skin afterward is another matter."<br/>
<br/>
"So what should I do?"<br/>
<br/>
But the demon gave no answer. Only the crickets did.<br/>
<br/>
"Fuck you, be that way," Sota grumbled. It shocked him a little that he had blurted out a curse like that so casually and without fear of the consequences, and he wondered that the demon said and did nothing in reply. The demon didn't say anything either in answer to the very loud wondering he did inside his skull. But after a minute or so of ambivalent indecision, Sota returned to the question that had been troubling him.<br/>
<br/>
"I don't want Hayato to do anything foolish," he mused to himself. "He thinks he has dissolved the Elite Funtime Club, but he hasn't, really. If I can get his skin before he does something I can't fix, such as posting that video—"<br/>
<br/>
Sota caught himself. "That video," he told himself. "That is where I have to stop him. If he does not post that video, or tell anyone about it, or tell anyone what he has decided about Yuuna and Akiko and the others, then I can skin him whenever I am ready to. But what can I tell him to stop him from posting it? As Gorou, I already told him he had to put it online as quickly as he could, to stop Kosei from putting it up first. There's no danger of that, though, for Kosei hasn't got it. Do I tell him that Kosei hasn't got it? But then how did Gorou get it?"<br/>
<br/>
Even as he asked that question, the answer dawned on him.<br/>
<br/>
<i>It is so obvious,</i> he thought with a chill. <i>It's a wonder that Hayato didn't see it himself.</i><br/>
<br/>
Now the demon chose to speak. "Yes," it snorted, a sound like a dragon sneezing. "I told you not to trust that fucker. Depend on it, he had the same idea hours ago that you just had."<br/>
<br/>
"Unfortunately it's Akiko who has to talk to him," Sota grumbled. "And I can hardly wait to get into Yuuna's skin!"<br/>
<br/>
"Oh, now there I am happy to offer you advice," the demon chuckled. <br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
"Oh, Yuuna, that is so perfect!" Sota groaned. "Your fingers are so knowledgeable! And your pussy is so wet and hungry!"<br/>
<br/>
He was sprawled inside the ornamental temple in the small garden nestled in a hollow in that crown of hills where Yuuna lived. His knees were spread and he had three of his fingers up inside himself, lubricating the velveteen spaces within. This was even more awesome than his time with Momoka and Akiko, and his tongue was hanging limply out the side of his mouth. "Oh, God, Yuuna!" he exclaimed in a hoarse whisper.<br/>
<br/>
At the demon's suggestion, he had taken out Yuuna's skin, and after taking off Akiko's clothes (they were bundled nearby), he had pulled Yuuna's skin up over Akiko's, as he had done with Gorou. But the difference was that he had only drawn her skin up to the neck. Yuuna's face and her great mane of silken tresses were hanging down Sota's back, leaving Akiko's face and head exposed, and it was with Akiko's voice and with her personality that Sota was enjoying himself. But it was with Yuuna's fingers that he was pleasuring her pussy.<br/>
<br/>
Sota sucked hard on his lip. "You are such a nasty girl," he whimpered. "It is no wonder that you will not share yourself. You are so disgusting! Look at you, with your whole fist practically up inside your pussy! Do you think you could get it all the way up inside yourself? Oh! <i>Oh!</i>" Sota nearly passed out with pleasure as something seemed to tear lose inside him. His fingers were wet with slime, and he rubbed them frantically into himself. "How you love to fuck yourself, Yuuna! You can't help yourself! When you die, they will find you with your hands inside yourself, up to the wrist, because the feeling of fingering yourself was the last thing you wanted to know before you died!"<br/>
<br/>
She was amazingly sensitive, and amazingly horny. It must have been a torture for Yuuna to forgo the semi-nightly sessions with Akiko. It was like the pores inside her slit were tiny mouths hungry to sup on pussy juice. Parched from days without Akiko's pussy to drink from, they had now grown teeth and were trying to devour Sota's fingers. He wanted to push those fingers into the flesh, he wanted to eat his own hand with Yuuna's pussy and swallow it with her vagina.<br/>
<br/>
"Oh!" Sota gnawed on his free hand and arched his back. Maybe Yuuna did want cock. Maybe she wasn't a dyke, maybe she was bi-, or maybe she was just disgusted by the particular boys at school. The feeling confused Akiko, whose instincts were growling hungrily, and they confused Sota too, for he was definitely not gay. Yuuna's pussy yearned for something fat and hard and hot, and he gasped and gulped as he imagined such a thing throbbing inside him. <i>But I'm not gay, and Akiko is a dyke,</i> he told himself. It must be Yuuna's maw. Left to its own hungers, it would yearn for fat cock and sticky cum, as bears yearn for bones to gnaw and honey to drink. <i>I wonder what fantasies Yuuna feeds it,</i> he thought.<br/>
<br/>
He groaned as the cell phone rang. It was an interruption, but once he was done talking to Hayato, he would be able to complete his transformation into Yuuna, so he scrambled eagerly for the phone. "Hayato?" he yawned in answer.<br/>
<br/>
"Did I wake you up?" the club president sneered. "What do you have to tell me?"<br/>
<br/>
"Only that you shouldn't post that video that Gorou sent you. You were going to post it on the internet, weren't you?"<br/>
<br/>
Hayato said nothing.<br/>
<br/>
"It would be a bad thing for everyone if you did," Sota went on. "I tortured Momoka and got the real story out of her. Kosei didn't catch her and me. He wasn't there. It was Momoka who set the whole thing up. Her and Gorou.<br/>
<br/>
"He's the one who videoed me and Momoka."<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
To continue investigating the room: "<a href="https://www.Writing.Com/main/interactive-story/item_id/1510047/action/view/chapter_map/11221111111212222112" target="_top" title="Interactive Story Chapter in Item # 1510047">Disposing of Lucy</a>" <a href="https://www.Writing.Com/main/interactive-story/item_id/1510047/action/view/chapter_map/11221111111212222112" target="_blank" title="Open in new window."><img border="0" height="12" loading="lazy" onmouseout="$(this).css('opacity', '.4');" onmouseover="$(this).css('opacity', '1');" src="https://www.Writing.Com/nw.gif" style="opacity:.4;" width="12"/></a><br/>
</span></div></div>


path: 11221111111212222111111121111111111111111111
author_id: seuzz
title: School for Demons, Chapter 20
chapter_content:
<div><div> <span>"Did you hear me?" Sota asked when Hayato said nothing. "I said that—"<br/>
<br/>
"Yes, I heard you," Hayato said. "You still nearly ruined everything, Akiko. Maybe you did. If that video gets out—"<br/>
<br/>
"It won't get out. Only you and Gorou have copies of it."<br/>
<br/>
"Well, if <i>he</i> lets it out—"<br/>
<br/>
"He won't, Hayato. He just wants a girlfriend who will put out. He wants Momoka."<br/>
<br/>
Silence. Then: "You've talked to him?"<br/>
<br/>
"No, but Momoka told me everything after I nearly pulled her hair out. They cooked it up between them, except Gorou tried to double-cross Momoka. He showed you the video and told you it was from Kosei, so that you would break up with Yuuna, and throw me and Momoka out of the Funtime Club. But Momoka only wanted you to let him and me break up. If Gorou threatened to post the video, then you would let him and me break up, and then he and Momoka could start going together. She wants him, and he wants a girl who will put out."<br/>
<br/>
"I thought it was something like that," Hayato said. "I knew Gorou was mixed up in it somehow. But I can't let him blackmail me! Even if I let him and you break up, he'll use the video to blackmail more things from me!"<br/>
<br/>
"Fuck, are you saying you can't come up with a way to blackmail him? Fuck, I'll even help you do <i>that,</i>" Sota exclaimed. "Just let him and me break up, and let him and Momoka start going together. After that, you'll come up with something that will stop him from blackmailing you in the future."<br/>
<br/>
Another silence. Then: "You didn't torture Momoka to get this information, did you, Akiko?" Hayato barked. "You were part of it from the start!"<br/>
<br/>
Sota thought rapidly. Then he said, "Right, you got me, Hayato. I'll confess to Yuuna, <i>and</i> I'll help you revenge yourself on Gorou. He double-crossed all of us. But you can't post that video on the internet. And you can't let Gorou post it. You'll have to let him stay part of the club, and you'll have to let him break it off with me so he can go with Momoka."<br/>
<br/>
"I don't think I can do that, Akiko," Hayato said. "If you don't have a boyfriend, people will start wondering if you're a dyke."<br/>
<br/>
"So let me pick my own boyfriend. I don't mind having one, as long as it isn't that fucker Gorou."<br/>
<br/>
Hayato grunted. "I'll think about it."<br/>
<br/>
"Take all the time you want. Just don't post anything."<br/>
<br/>
"I won't," Hayato said. "I don't want to slit my own throat." He hung up.<br/>
<br/>
The demon coughed. "Well done," it said. "You saved Hayato from fucking things up for you. But I suppose you think now you have weeks or even months to toy with him?"<br/>
<br/>
"He's too dangerous for that," Sota said. He was already peeling off Yuuna's skin so that he could peel off Akiko's. I'm going to have to take care of him tomorrow, I think."<br/>
<br/>
"That's good," the demon burbled. "Yuuna had a piquant taste. Despair and thoughts of suicide, are like wasabi to a demon. But she was awfully stringy underneath. I think you will be a little disappointed when you're inside her."<br/>
<br/>
"What do you mean?"<br/>
<br/>
"I mean that Yuuna really only wanted one thing, and that's love. Blech! At least Akiko and Gorou wanted to bully people to demonstrate their superiority, and Momoka wanted to manipulate them."<br/>
<br/>
"But Yuuna is so proud, so conceited!"<br/>
<br/>
"Meh. She was just lonely. You'll see."<br/>
<br/>
Sota was in a very thoughtful mood as he peeled Akiko's skin off.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
He was also freezing cold. He couldn't understand it. When he put Yuuna's skin halfway on, he had been naked as Akiko, and then he had been naked as Yuuna-with-Akiko's-head. It was a balmy night, and he had felt nothing worse than a light prickle of gooseflesh on his stolen skin, and it was a chill more than overborne by the hot delights of fingering himself.<br/>
<br/>
But the wave of cold that assaulted him as he pulled Akiko's head off of his own and peeled her shoulders back was so intense that he wanted to vomit. His teeth chattered hard as he pushed Akiko's hips off his own, and his fingers felt like icicles as he fumbled at Yuuna's skin. "Wh-wh-what's h-h-h-happ-p-p-pening t-to m-m-me?" he gasped as he put his feet into Yuuna. But the demon said nothing, and Sota's lips were too numb for him to speak aloud. It was slow and painful work to force himself into Yuuna's skin, and Sota was surprised he didn't have to scrape frost off himself before pulling it on.<br/>
<br/>
Even after he had it on, he was chilled to the bone, and he hurried into Yuuna's clothes. So eager was he to get to her house and into a hot bath that he muttered merely a brusque <i>Go home</i> to the re-inflated Akiko-puppet and sent it careening away instead of giving it the kind of long, luscious and lingering kiss he would otherwise have torn from its mouth.<br/>
<br/>
And it was a chilly house that greeted Sota when he arrived at the manor where Yuuna's parents lived. But it was not the temperature that made it so cold. Even before Sota went inside he knew that the demon had been right about what he would find. The cavernous rooms were as empty as a vacuum despite the expensive chairs and ornate tables and designer bric-a-brac. Sota had to traverse five of these before he found Yuuna's mother seated in a tall, wing-back chair with a book. Her father was in Tokyo on business.<br/>
<br/>
Yuuna's mother only looked up long enough to ask, "How did you get home?"<br/>
<br/>
"I rode with Hayato."<br/>
<br/>
Her lips pursed. "I thought you didn't like riding with him."<br/>
<br/>
"I never said that."<br/>
<br/>
"You don't spend enough time with him."<br/>
<br/>
"That is going to change."<br/>
<br/>
A very steady look. "Good." Then she went back to reading.<br/>
<br/>
<i>They have no time for her,</i> Sota thought as he wound his way to Yuuna's bedroom. <i>They force her to go with an arrogant bastard she cannot stand. All the boys are afraid of her, and the girls are all jealous. Akiko is the only person who has ever told Yuuna that she loves her.</i><br/>
<br/>
Sota locked himself in the bathroom and ran the hottest water he could stand into the tub. As the room steamed up, he removed Yuuna's clothes and looked at himself for the first time in her skin.<br/>
<br/>
She was tall and regal, with legs shaped by running and gymnastics, a curved tummy enforced by dieting, large bosoms, and a severe face with big eyes and small lips. Sota undid the braids and ponytail, and carefully brushed out the hair he had badly tangled by pulling her skin on and off. The steam from the bath seemed to seep through her skin and into his bones, and he wiped off the warm condensation that beaded up on his arms and shoulders.<br/>
<br/>
For a long while he regarded himself in the mirror and strove not to let Yuuna's feelings of loneliness and self-pity overwhelm him. They made him feel sick, for they were very much like the feelings he had had before being cursed, and he hated their return. He hated them all the more because they were so obviously undeserved.<br/>
<br/>
"Look at what you've got, Yuuna, you bitch," he sneered at the girl's reflection. "You have this house, those clothes, a luxury car that fetches you to and from school. You attend the best academies, and you have some of the best grades in school. You are also going with the king of the middle school. And yet you feel sorry for yourself? So sorry for yourself that you were going to kill yourself at the river? Fuck you."<br/>
<br/>
His lip curved harder as he thought of the girls Yuuna had cut and insulted. "You think they won't like you, and now you know why they don't. They are afraid of you. The only ones who like you are the suck-ups, and they don't really like you at all. Only Akiko—" He gulped. "Only Akiko likes you, and she likes you because she's a dyke."<br/>
<br/>
Sota now knew that Yuuna did not really have those tendencies, that she only went with Akiko because the girl was courageous and so strongly in love with her. But Yuuna so craved affection that she didn't mind—that she actually enjoyed—the kissing of labial lips to labial lips, and the grinding of sweat between Akiko's raw and radiant body and Yuuma's cooler one. She also detested the boys with their crude leers and disgusting language.<br/>
<br/>
He put his face right up to the wet glass of the mirror. "Well, I have Akiko now," he whispered to Yuuna's reflection. "She will never cheat on me again, unless I tell her to. She will give me the correct apology tomorrow, too. Oh, Akiko." She put her lips to the glass and sighed onto it. "When we are together again, after tomorrow—" Sota's fingers wriggled to his pussy and slid inside. "Mm." Now he did kiss the mirror. <br/>
<br/>
Then he straightened up, but left his fingers inside himself. He put his shoulders back and his chin up, and he peered down an imperious nose at the reflection, which was rapidly fogging up.<br/>
<br/>
"And as for all the cunts and bitches and bastards at the school and at the academy, what do I need them for? They think I'm a stuck-up snob? I'll show them starting tomorrow just how stuck up and snobby I can be! Because look a what I've got," he boasted. This house, those clothes, a luxury car to fetch me to and from school, the best academies, and some of the best grades in school. Which I totally deserve!<br/>
<br/>
"And, after tomorrow," he gloated, "the king of the school will be mine. In every. Possible. Way."<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
To continue investigating the room: "<a href="https://www.Writing.Com/main/interactive-story/item_id/1510047/action/view/chapter_map/11221111111212222112" target="_top" title="Interactive Story Chapter in Item # 1510047">Disposing of Lucy</a>" <a href="https://www.Writing.Com/main/interactive-story/item_id/1510047/action/view/chapter_map/11221111111212222112" target="_blank" title="Open in new window."><img border="0" height="12" loading="lazy" onmouseout="$(this).css('opacity', '.4');" onmouseover="$(this).css('opacity', '1');" src="https://www.Writing.Com/nw.gif" style="opacity:.4;" width="12"/></a><br/>
</span></div></div>


path: 112211111112122221111111211111111111111111111
author_id: seuzz
title: School for Demons, Chapter 21
chapter_content:
<div><div> <span>"I suppose you've carefully thought out how you are going to devour Taniguchi Hayato?" the demon said the next morning as Sota finished dressing.<br/>
<br/>
"Huh?" Sota said. He was concentrating on the clothes. Ishia Yuuna's version of the uniform was more conservative than Sugawara Momoka's, or Ueno Akiko's. Her heavy skirt fell halfway down her calves, and she wore tall boots. With a jacket, it meant that nothing but her neck and face and hands were ever exposed.<br/>
<br/>
But her form still stirred him with lust. The long skirt and the jacket made her look even taller than she was, and she was already a very tall girl. Her hair also fell in long locks beside her face, and her ponytail trailed almost to the small of her back. As Sota turned this way and that, to admire the severe lines of her uniform, he reflected that Yuuna really did look like nobility. It was one reason that all the other girls in school were afraid of her, and looked to her for guidance rather than friendship. <i>They really are a perfect couple,</i> Sota thought as he pictured himself with Hayato. <i>Hayato to rule the guys, Yuuna to rule the girls. Ota Gorou and Ueno Akiko to enforce the law, and Sugawara Momoka to deviously craft plots against their enemies.</i> Between them, no one could stand up to the Elite Funtime Club.<br/>
<br/>
And when Sota had filled the president with his "breath of spirit" and made him a puppet too, then all the jealousies and cruelties that they picked at each other with would be forgotten, and they would crush all opposition!<br/>
<br/>
"Hrm," said the demon, "I suppose you could work it that way. I think you'll find you won't."<br/>
<br/>
"Huh?" Now the demon had Sota's full attention. "I mean, what did you say?" he corrected himself, using Yuuna's most imperious voice, the one that always sounded like she was really asking, <i>Who do you think you are to talk to me?</i><br/>
<br/>
"Nice," the demon gloated. "I only meant— Well, you'll see for yourself soon enough."<br/>
<br/>
Sota's anger flash-boiled. "Then maybe I <i>won't</i> devour Taniguchi Hayato for you, if you're going to hold something back! Wait, did you say that <i>I</i> was going to devour him?"<br/>
<br/>
"I meant it as a technicality." The demon's voice was as greasy as molten butter. "Technically, you've been devouring <i>all</i> the students. I gave you the power to. But because I'm inside you, I've been siphoning off their meat and their souls and taking them for myself. I've been, well ... I've been sort of a parasite."<br/>
<br/>
"Hmph. 'Sort of' is putting it as an understatement." Sota picked up his backpack and strode out of the bedroom. But he continued addressing the demon even with his lips pressed firmly shut. "Perhaps I'll devour one of my own without sharing it with you, and I'll see what it's like."<br/>
<br/>
"You won't be able to," the demon chortled (a noise like blast furnace being shaken in an earthquake). "Demons can only devour mortals who are in their power. I could have devoured you after those fucking assholes summoned me, but I used the loophole they left me to devour them instead."<br/>
<br/>
"What loophole?" Sota asked.<br/>
<br/>
"They fucked up the ritual. When a summoner fucks up a ritual, the demon has his choice of obeying the summoner or of devouring him. Or her. Or them, in this case. That is why I cannot devour you. Because once you used my power to devour Sugawara Momoka, I was committed to devouring the rest of the Elite Funtime Club. Once you have devoured Hayato, and I have siphoned him off to collect what is due me, I will be able to leave. And I will. Not that it hasn't been fun, Sota, it has been a real blast of Hell. But as I told you a few days ago, I need to get back to the Infernal Pit before they start thinking they need to mount a rescue mission for me!"<br/>
<br/>
"And when you're gone," Sota continued as he got into the back seat of the Lexus for the ride to school, "you will take your power with me and I won't be able to devour any more students?"<br/>
<br/>
"No, you will still have the power. But a demon's powers can only be exercised against those who put themselves in the demon's power. You will— Well, you will see."<br/>
<br/>
Sota felt a chill run up his spine.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
"So, have you forgiven Akiko yet?" Hayato asked. Sota was already seated in Yuuna's first class of the day when he sauntered in. He grabbed and fondled Yuuna's ponytail.<br/>
<br/>
Sota yanked it from his grasp and glared at him. "I haven't seen her yet. When I do, if she says the right words I will."<br/>
<br/>
"What about me?" Hayato bent over to put his glinting eyes close to Yuuna's. "Remember who your betrothed is," he murmured through frozen lips, "and who expects you to marry him one day."<br/>
<br/>
"You'll have to find better words than that," Sota retorted. "We need to have a club meeting to discuss things. There's a lot of air we have to clear. During lunch, down in the basement," he continued. "Where we cursed that little shit the other day."<br/>
<br/>
Hayato snorted. "You can eat your lunch down there if you want."<br/>
<br/>
"All of us will be there, Hayato." Sota blasted out a telepathic message to his puppets. "Do you want us making a club decision without the president?"<br/>
<br/>
Hayato flushed. "Be that way then, you bitch. I'll be there too." He darted in and kissed Sota on the cheek. Sota cried out and slapped him away. But Hayato just laughed and threw himself into the desk opposite her, and stared back with an arrogant eye.<br/>
<br/>
Over the next four periods, Sota schemed out ways of doing it. He wasn't fully satisfied when the bell rang for lunch, but he liked the idea enough that he didn't regret having to put it into practice.<br/>
<br/>
As he approached the door to the basement, Sota saw Gorou-puppet stepping onto the topmost stair. At a thought from his master, the puppet turned back and held the door open. Sota swept past with a sniff.<br/>
<br/>
<i>Ugh! How greasy and dirty the basement was!</i> He pulled in his arms and breathed through his mouth so as to keep the disgusting smells out of his nose. It was far uglier than he remembered it being, far uglier than when used to hide out in it before he was cursed. He shrank further inside himself as he entered the room where the cursing had been performed. It was a stale and rank-smelling room. It was cold, too, as though the fear and loathing that permeated the hallways above had sunk through the floor and condensed into a nauseating miasma. The smudged remnants of the circle, with the guttered candles, was still in evidence.<br/>
<br/>
<i>Good,</i> thought Sota.<br/>
<br/>
Akiko-puppet and Momoka-puppet were already present, and Gorou-puppet followed him in. That left only Hayato to come. Sota tapped his foot and frowned. The puppets flinched. Sota noticed, and relaxed, but they still looked at him warily.<br/>
<br/>
"Akiko," Sota said, grasping at something to do to fill the minutes. "Is there something you want to tell me?" Sota tossed his long hair back.<br/>
<br/>
"Yes, Yuuna," Akiko-puppet said in a humble tone. "I want to apologize to you."<br/>
<br/>
"You already tried that!"<br/>
<br/>
"I didn't apologize correctly, or for the proper thing. I apologize to you, Yuuna, for cheating on you with Ota Gorou, and for acting in such a way that I was obliged to. I also apologize for cheating on you with Sugawara Momoka."<br/>
<br/>
Sota felt forgiveness well up in his heart, though it was an emotion that he knew was feigned and that left him laughing quietly. "Oh, Akiko," he gasped, "that is all I wanted to hear from you. I forgive you! Embrace me!" He opened up his arms. Akiko sprang into them, and she and Sota put their open mouths together.<br/>
<br/>
They were interrupted by a slow clap. "Sexy!" a jeering voice called. "So very sexy!" Hayato stepped into the room, a leer spreading across his face. "I think I was wrong to try driving you two dykes apart. Akiko, promise to give me videos of everything you two do together, like you did with Momoka, and I'll never make trouble for you again! Now, is that what this club meeting is about?" He looked around with a curved lip. "So Gorou and I can watch a bunch of dykes getting it on?"<br/>
<br/>
At a thought from Sota, all the puppets turned a cold glare on Hayato.<br/>
<br/>
"We had a club meeting in your absence, Taniguchi Hayato," Sota informed him. "We've formed a new club. We're calling it the Make-Taniguchi-Hayato-Our-Bitch Club."<br/>
<br/>
Hayato hooted, but Sota saw the change of light in the president's eye, and knew that a hairline crack had opened in his arrogant facade. "Do you know who our president is?" Sota asked him. "It's whatsisname."<br/>
<br/>
"Who?"<br/>
<br/>
"The boy you like to call whatsisname," Sota repeated. "Sano Sota."<br/>
<br/>
<i>Who?</i> Hayato started to ask. Then his expression changed again, to show recognition. "That whiny little bitch we cursed into killing himself?" He guffawed.<br/>
<br/>
"Sano Sota," said Momoka-puppet. "Sano Sota," said Gorou-puppet, and "Sano Sota," said Akiko-puppet. "He didn't kill himself," Sota said. "He just changed his appearance."<br/>
<br/>
Hayato's brow furrowed. Sota gave him a moment to find something to ask.<br/>
<br/>
And when the president of the Elite Funtime Club just rolled his eyes and snorted, Sota did as he had done with Yuuna. He grabbed the upper lip of his stolen face, and pulled it up and over his head.<br/>
<br/>
Hayato's eyeballs popped open. He gasped, gabbled something unintelligible, and stumbled back on his feet.<br/>
<br/>
Then he sprang for the doorway. "Catch him!" Sota yelled in his real voice.<br/>
<br/>
Akiko-puppet was too slow, but Gorou-puppet grabbed Hayato by the hair as he ran by. The president squealed and stumbled. Gorou-puppet twisted him about and put him in a headlock.<br/>
<br/>
Sota marched up to him with a smirk. He was about to address the white-faced Hayato when he had a better idea.<br/>
<br/>
So grabbed his upper lip, and wrenched back the face of Sano Sota to show him the face beneath <i>that</i> one.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
To continue investigating the room: "<a href="https://www.Writing.Com/main/interactive-story/item_id/1510047/action/view/chapter_map/11221111111212222112" target="_top" title="Interactive Story Chapter in Item # 1510047">Disposing of Lucy</a>" <a href="https://www.Writing.Com/main/interactive-story/item_id/1510047/action/view/chapter_map/11221111111212222112" target="_blank" title="Open in new window."><img border="0" height="12" loading="lazy" onmouseout="$(this).css('opacity', '.4');" onmouseover="$(this).css('opacity', '1');" src="https://www.Writing.Com/nw.gif" style="opacity:.4;" width="12"/></a></span></div></div>


path: 1122111111121222211111112111111111111111111111
author_id: seuzz
title: School for Demons, Chapter 22
chapter_content:
<div><div> <span>Hayato screamed, but Gorou-puppet clamped a hand over his mouth. Hayato's eyes bulged and rolled in their sockets as Sota pushed his face into the club president's.<br/>
<br/>
It <i>was</i> his face, Sota knew, though he also somehow knew that his own face was dangling behind his head like a flap of loose skin, like Yuuna's face was dangling like a flap of loose skin too. For a moment only he failed to understand what was going on.<br/>
<br/>
Then he understood, and put it out of his mind.<br/>
<br/>
"I am going to devour you, Taniguchi Hayato," he thundered at the luckless boy in a voice that was like a whole freight train being tossed into the whirling blades of the most gigantic power turbine ever conceived. "Just as I devoured Sugawara Momoka, and Ota Gorou, and Ueno Akiko, and Ishida Yuuna! I will make you my puppet, as I made them my puppets! I will wear your skin, Hayato, and then I will have your looks, your intelligence, your cunning, your cruelty, and your arrogance! I will <i>be you, Taniguchi Hayato!</i>" Sota thundered.<br/>
<br/>
But Hayato said nothing. He only rolled his eyes and frothed. He didn't understand a word Sota said, for Sota was shouting at him in the language of Hell.<br/>
<br/>
So Sota simply raised his finger and jabbed it into Hayato's throat.<br/>
<br/>
This time, as his last victim collapsed and deflated, Sota felt and tasted the meat and juice as it gurgled through him, pouring over his tongue and down the back of his throat. It was like molten honey, or the melted fat and juices of the most succulent steak. It was wine, it was semen, it was blood, it was the <i>most delicious soul</i> he had ever swallowed.<br/>
<br/>
And then it was gone.<br/>
<br/>
"Ah!" a voice exclaimed behind him, and he turned as a shrouded figure come squirting out of him. It gathered itself and pulled back its hood. Its face was a skull with razor-sharp fangs and curled horns coming out of the cheekbones. Sota understood instinctively that he too now had a face like that—the face he had shown Hayato.<br/>
<br/>
"Yes, that's the stuff," the demon said, and it made a smacking sound even though it had no lips to smack. "As good as I knew it would be. I gave you a taste of it as it went through you, Sota. Wasn't it intoxicating?"<br/>
<br/>
"Yes," Sota growled. "I need more! You filled yourself with it, but I want—"<br/>
<br/>
"Filled?" The demon laughed. But this time it was no terrible tenor to it. It was a tiny sound, like a single pebble rattling inside the hollow hull of a beached freighter. "There is no way to fill such as me. To fill such as <i>us,</i> Sota. Look." The demon opened his mouth, showing an illimitable void beyond. "It goes through us and is gone. For a flash only we feel it and taste it, the soul that a mortal possesses. But we demons are hollow, we are negations, we are a hole that is infinitely deep and so can never be filled, can never hold so much as a proton though we swallow the universe. For that reason, we can never possess for more than an instant what mortals, even after they die, will possess for eternity."<br/>
<br/>
The demon sighed. It was like the sound of a paper cup scraping across the asphalt of an empty parking lot.<br/>
<br/>
"And now I am a demon too," Sota said.<br/>
<br/>
"Yes," the demon said, "you now have nothing but hunger and intellect. That is what a demon is, an intelligent, conscious hunger. Do not blame me, though! I played according to the rules. Mostly you did it to yourself. To become these students you had to slice off pieces of you own self one hunk at a time. I merely collected your soul as you chopped it up and threw it away. If you had rejected me and left yourself in my power, I could have nothing worse than devour you, sending your soul to whatever is on the other side of death. But you have no soul now, and so can never go there yourself. You can only stay here, and clothe yourself in the skins you have stolen. The only soul you can have is whatever stains you scrape off their insides."<br/>
<br/>
"And what if I don't want to stay here as a demon?" Sota asked.<br/>
<br/>
"Then only Hell is open to you. But if you want my advice—and you have done me a good turn by letting me taste five delectable souls as they slipped through and out of me, so I will give it to you—you will try to stay up here as long as possible. The demons in Hell are much too strong for you, and though demons to demons taste like dusty bones, they would swallow you lickety-split if they could. And the skins I left you are warm enough. With these five you could really turn this school into an antechamber of Hell itself."<br/>
<br/>
"Is that what you meant," Sota asked, "when you said I probably wouldn't make them into friends again?"<br/>
<br/>
"Yes. They have made this school a Hell for others because they have made their club into a Hell for themselves. The more you make them hate each other, the more they will make this school a hateful place, and the warmer it will be for you.<br/>
<br/>
"But <i>brrrrrrr!</i>" The demon shivered so hard it almost dissipated entirely. "I must hie from here before I freeze myself solid. Stay warm and damned, Sano Sota!" it exclaimed, then wound itself up into a spinning wheel of smoke and vanished.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
Sano Sota stood and stared thoughtfully at the spot where the demon had vanished. Now possessed of nothing but intellect and hunger, he felt none of the emotions that he thought he should. No despair, no horror, no terror, not even a vague melancholy. <i>I am a demon now,</i> he thought. <i>I've got to stay warm.</i><br/>
<br/>
Instinct moved him, and he poured out of his skin to become a pillar of smoke in the middle of the basement. The skin and clothes of Ishida Yuuna, still with the skin of Sano Sota inside them, fell in a heap to the floor. Sano bent over them and snorted down the skins' throat. They swelled up and stood up as Ishida Yuuna, but with Sano Sota's head. Sota pulled Yuuna's face up and over Sota's so as to hide it fully.<br/>
<br/>
Then, feeling the freezing pinch of the howling Plutonian ice sheet onto which he was exiled, he whirled and dove into the hollowed out skin of Taniguchi Hayato. The world spun, and when it had righted itself he found himself standing on his feet in the body and uniform of the president of the Elite Funtime Club.<br/>
<br/>
"Nngh," he said, and pushed a crick out of his neck by spinning his head three hundred and sixty degrees and releasing it. "That was a really shit thing to do to me, Yuuna."<br/>
<br/>
"Blame Momoka," Yuuna snarled. "She's the one who found that fucking book!"<br/>
<br/>
"I only found it," Momoka said timidly. "I didn't mean—"<br/>
<br/>
"Didn't mean, didn't mean!" Akiko mimicked her. "You dripping cunt! Cut the innocent act, we all know you're a scheming, evil little bitch who—"<br/>
<br/>
"Yeah, well who's the one who picked that fucker Sano as a victim?" Gorou's face twisted into a snarl. "Fuck! Anyone else, anyone who wasn't already into fucking black magic wouldn't of—"<br/>
<br/>
Through none of this could the lips, tongue, jaw or larynx of Taniguchi Hayato be seen to move. Even when all four of the other members of the Elite Funtime Club began to jabber and scream over each other did his mouth move. And this even though he, with a gleaming eye, was the ventriloquist working all of them.<br/>
<br/>
He put a stop to the arguing, finally, by grabbing Yuuna by the throat and jamming his other hand into her mouth. His fist muffled her screams as he grabbed a hunk of loose flesh and ripped it from her. He flapped it open as she fell back and threw a murderous glare at him. "Son of a bitch!" she yelled. "That hurt!"<br/>
<br/>
"It was supposed to," he retorted as he studied the empty skin of Sano Sota. "Here." He held it out to Gorou. "Put it on."<br/>
<br/>
"The fuck?"<br/>
<br/>
"I said put it on!" Sota—or was it Hayato? He realized now that he would have to move between his various bodies if he wasn't to lose himself completely inside one of them—seized a hank of Gorou's hair and pushed his head into the wall. "It was fun cursing that little shit to death, but he didn't stay dead, did he?"<br/>
<br/>
"What happens to me?" Gorou stammered, "while I'm being—?"<br/>
<br/>
"Who's going to miss you?" Akiko sneered. "I sure as fuck won't."<br/>
<br/>
"That's right," Hayato said. "You're expendable, like your trashman father. If we need you back, we'll peel it off you and puff it up again."<br/>
<br/>
"So why can't we do that now?"<br/>
<br/>
He doubled over from the blow to his solar plexus.<br/>
<br/>
"Because I am Taniguchi Hayato," howled the demon who possessed the mouth of the student of that name, "and I am the president of the Elite Funtime Club, and you will respect me! You will do it <i>because</i> it is hateful and unnecessary! I am Taniguchi Hayato, and this is what I say! Besides," he added, "this way you can go with Momoka."<br/>
<br/>
"I can?" Gorou's voice turned hopeful.<br/>
<br/>
"That's right. And together Momoka and you as Sano Sota will use your skills to bring the friends you make down here. As Sota you will use that book she found to tempt them into—"<br/>
<br/>
The demon turned his stolen face to the ceiling and grinned. From a certain angle, his teeth looked very long and very sharp, like steak knives.<br/>
<br/>
"Remember what our friend told us before he went back to Hell," the demon said in a voice that was like a knife being drawn across a whetstone. The words were in a language that, if spoken in a strong enough tone, would have made the walls bleed. "We must get them to damn themselves if we're to get any food around here.<br/>
<br/>
"And I am <i>starving!</i>"<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
To continue investigating the room: "<a href="https://www.Writing.Com/main/interactive-story/item_id/1510047/action/view/chapter_map/11221111111212222112" target="_top" title="Interactive Story Chapter in Item # 1510047">Disposing of Lucy</a>" <a href="https://www.Writing.Com/main/interactive-story/item_id/1510047/action/view/chapter_map/11221111111212222112" target="_blank" title="Open in new window."><img border="0" height="12" loading="lazy" onmouseout="$(this).css('opacity', '.4');" onmouseover="$(this).css('opacity', '1');" src="https://www.Writing.Com/nw.gif" style="opacity:.4;" width="12"/></a></span></div></div>


path: 112211111112122221111112
author_id: seuzz
title: Space Parasites
chapter_content:
<div><div> <span>You pinch off a few pages and turn them all at once. <br/>
<br/>
Now this is odd. It looks like someone--Blackwell?--has cut the pages out of a paperback and glued them inside this folio. The collector must have cut up two copies of the original, because each folio page contains two pages of the paperback: the front and reverse. You flip back a few pages until you can find the beginning, and you flip a few more pages in to find the end. You frown. It's not a complete story. It's not even a complete set of chapters. It's just extracts from a book. The page numbers--it starts on "84"--suggest it was a novel. But why would someone want to save these precise pages from that novel? Why go through the bother of getting and destroying two copies of the original instead of just squirreling away one complete copy?<br/>
<br/>
You start to read, thinking maybe you'll recognize the importance of the extract after you've read it.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
But the soldier just wouldn't stop screaming.<br/>
<br/>
He pulled at his wrist and ankle restraints and arched his back. His head whipped back and forth, and beneath the band that shrouded his eyes his face turned purple. He was naked, except for his briefs, and every lean muscle on his body strained and pulled. But he was tied down too securely, and the doctor continued to drive the narrow forceps into his navel. <br/>
<br/>
Sam had to turn away, and his eyes fell on the Old Man. The Director's  teeth and eyes gleamed as he leaned forward in his chair, his hand gripping the handle of his cane. It was a loathsome sight: the palpable fascination and excitement on the Director's face. Sam buried a fist in his jacket pocket, and shoved his feelings of repugnance deep down in his gullet as well.<br/>
<br/>
The screams abruptly turned into a gurgle, and Sam glanced back to see the doctor now pulling the forceps back out. He was moving slowly, but the muscles in his forearm quivered. The thing inside the soldier was fighting back hard.<br/>
<br/>
And then it came out. Pinched at its base by the tips of the forceps was a thing that looked like eye. It was round and white and there was a pupil in it. Blood vessels pulsed beneath its membranes, and a long, thin, bloody red cord stretched tautly between it and the soldier's navel. And then that cord snapped and the thing was out of him. The soldier collapsed, panting.<br/>
<br/>
"It's okay now, son," the Old Man said softly, and leaned over to stroke the man's fevered brow. "It's all over."<br/>
<br/>
"That thing--!" the soldier gasped. "Is it out? Let me see it."<br/>
<br/>
"You don't need to see it, soldier," the Old Man said. "Maybe later--"<br/>
<br/>
"It made me do things! Oh, God, it wasn't me!" the soldier groaned. "But I-- I--!"<br/>
<br/>
"You just get some rest," Sam said, breaking in. He shot a meaningful look at the orderly, who picked up a syringe.<br/>
<br/>
"Not yet, Sam," the Old Man said quietly. "Just one question for our boy here, and then he can--" He leaned over the soldier. "You remember everything, do you?" The soldier grimaced, but nodded. "Good. Because there's one more out there, isn't there? Do you know where?"<br/>
<br/>
The soldier swallowed. "Yes. A patrolman, in the town. It wasn't me who--!" His face twisted up. "But I was there. I saw, and--"<br/>
<br/>
"You don't have to say anything about <i>that,</i>" the Old Man murmured gently. "But this patrolman. He has name. Do you know it?"<br/>
<br/>
"Brad Davison." <br/>
<br/>
"And why a patrolman?" the Old Man asked. "You remember what you did. Do you remember what you were thinking while--"<br/>
<br/>
"Jesus!" Sam himself jumped a little in surprise at the sound of his own voice, for he hadn't meant to exclaim aloud. But he clenched his jaw as the Old Man shot a slit-eyed sidelong glance at him, and stared stonily back.<br/>
<br/>
The soldier mumbled something, but the Old Man patted his shoulder. "Yes, alright, that'll be enough for now. We can find patrolman Davison." He glanced again at Sam. "Now, we'll just give you something to take the edge off those bad memories." He nodded at the orderly, who plunged the syringe into the man's arm. <br/>
<br/>
"He's got a nest with him," the soldier mumbled, and then his head fell to the side.<br/>
<br/>
"Ah. Mm. I'm getting soft in my old age," the Old Man muttered to himself, then sighed. "We'll have to bring him back out, but we'll give him an hour's respite first. Sam? A word with you?" With a quick flick of his wrist he gestured at the agent as he limped from the examination bay.<br/>
<br/>
Sam quietly swiped at his sweaty upper lip and followed. His reaction had nothing to do with what he'd just seen, and everything to do with the tongue-lashing he was about to receive.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
"That's for being a fucking jerkwad at halftime," Tom growled as he slammed his fist into Terry's gut. But Terry just rolled his eyes. The blow didn't hurt, for he was still encased in the body of the Squanee Squirrel costume, and so was well-padded all over. That's why he'd only taken the head off before getting onto the bus: he knew he'd get a few blows. And he also knew that Tom and the other basketball players would know that's why he'd left it on, and so they'd have no qualms about punching him. It was all so predictable. As predictable as the twenty-point loss the team had just suffered.<br/>
<br/>
The bus rocked lightly as it raced down the highway. Tom fell back into his seat on the other side of the aisle, and Terry went back to staring out the window. The cornfields raced by, stretching for miles and miles and miles. Twenty-six miles, to be precise, between Squanee City and Woodview. The rivalry between the Squanee City Squirrels and the Woodview Weasels was just about the only source of local entertainment in the small Iowa towns. Otherwise, it was just cable TV and corn fields.<br/>
<br/>
And he'd rather look at the corn fields than listen to the coarse and guttural chatter of Tom and his teammates. His dad had made him try out for the team, even though Terry would have preferred to spend his Saturdays reading and daydreaming. But his brother had been a star forward at the high school five years before, and parental dreams die hard. Terry hadn't tried, but he hadn't <i>not</i> tried hard enough, and Coach Kirnberger had felt safe "compromising" by offering Terry the position of mascot. That was maybe marginally better than being on the court and getting trapped in the showers, but it meant that Tom and Paulie and Chad and all the others could still hassle him mercilessly. And all Terry could do was run up and down the sidelines making a fool himself and trying to outdo the Woodview Weasel at playing the fool for the crowd. Even the cheerleaders treated him contempt.<br/>
<br/>
Terry jerked back into the present as he felt the bus slow and then pull over to the side of the highway. He craned his head to look, and saw the flashing lights of the police prowler as it too edged onto the shoulder, coming to rest a dozen yards behind the school bus. <i>The hell?</i><br/>
<br/>
The players had noticed too, and they pushed Terry away from the window as the patrolman walked down the side of the bus toward the doors. Chatter and guffaws and ribald jokes went up, and then Coach Kirnberger stood up and told everyone to settle down. Silence fell for only a few seconds, though, before the chortling started up again as the patrolman led the coach back to the cruiser. <br/>
<br/>
Terry went back to staring out the window, but he had only a few seconds to himself before he felt strong arms yanking at him. Hoots went up as Tom dragged Terry into the aisle and threw him to the floor. "If you'd been doing your job during the game--" he growled.<br/>
<br/>
"What were you assholes doing?" Terry sneered back. They couldn't hurt him while he was in the suit, and they wouldn't do any worse to him afterward, when he was out of it, if he <i>didn't</i> lip off at them. "You're the ones who kept fucking up on the foul shots."<br/>
<br/>
Tom pulled his fist back, and Terry closed his eyes. He opened them again, though, at the snigger from the team captain. Tom dropped onto Terry, straddling his chest and rocking back and forth on the cushioned costume. "Someone grab his head," he called, and Terry felt strong hands seize him by the ears. Tom made a horrible <i>snorking</i> noise in the back of his throat, and Terry sighed with despair as Tom leaned over and let the long, thick loogie dangle from his mouth. Terry closed  his eyes and shut his mouth tight. The loogie, when it hit his upper cheek, was warm and slimy.<br/>
<br/>
"You ladies get back in your seats." Kirnberger's voice cut through the laughter. He hadn't been long in the cruiser. "Help him up." But no hands went out as Terry flopped clumsily around before slowly pulling himself back to his feet. He glanced at the coach out of the corner of his eye, and saw him frowning. "Munson, I want to talk to you when we get back to the school," he barked at Tom. "We need to talk about the way you treat your teammates."<br/>
<br/>
<i>Like I'm a teammate,</i> Terry thought bitterly to himself. He pushed his way to the back of the bus, and fell forward onto the back seat as the bus jerked into motion. <i>Oh, but he's probably not even going to talk to Tom about the way he treats </i>me.<i> Because he knows </i>I'm<i> not on the team. Not really.</i><br/>
<br/>
Terry glared moodily out the back window. The highway was long and straight, and the flashing lights of the police cruiser were visible long after the cruiser itself had just become a dim dot in the distance. Terry vaguely wondered why the patrolman was just sitting there, and why he had pulled the team bus over in the first place. Then he forgot about it.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
To continue investigating the room: "<a href="https://www.Writing.Com/main/interactive-story/item_id/1510047/action/view/chapter_map/11221111111212222112" target="_top" title="Interactive Story Chapter in Item # 1510047">Disposing of Lucy</a>" <a href="https://www.Writing.Com/main/interactive-story/item_id/1510047/action/view/chapter_map/11221111111212222112" target="_blank" title="Open in new window."><img border="0" height="12" loading="lazy" onmouseout="$(this).css('opacity', '.4');" onmouseover="$(this).css('opacity', '1');" src="https://www.Writing.Com/nw.gif" style="opacity:.4;" width="12"/></a></span></div></div>


path: 1122111111121222211111121
author_id: seuzz
title: Space Parasites, Part 2
chapter_content:
<div><div> <span>"Obviously, we wish to extend our thanks to the Ambassador for his timely warning and help in this matter." <br/>
<br/>
The Old Man could fake sincerity when he had to; Sam gave him credit for that, and it was quite a contrast to the volcanic rage he'd shown in private when first he'd learned of the Iowa infestation. But then, it didn't pay to treat extraterrestrials with bad temper.<br/>
<br/>
The little grey-skinned, black-eyed alien blinked as the agency's translator conveyed the Director's meaning, then clasped his hands in the manner that signified a courteous acknowledgement. "Of course, there is still the matter of this wayward 'nest'," the Old Man continued, and only Sam could see in the slight flutter of his fingertips how intensely the Director felt. "I would like to assume that the Ambassador has no further advice of a technical, tactical, or strategic nature to share with us, and that our methods for eradicating the infestation at the Armory will suffice for dealing with this one loose end." The Director's lips twitched beneath his finely groomed beard. "But assumptions are dangerous things."<br/>
<br/>
Sam's own fingers fluttered as well; it was hard not to acquire the Old Man's mannerisms when one had worked so closely with him and for so long. In Sam's case, though, it wasn't a nervous gesture, unless anticipation was a species of nerves. They'd gotten the field report only thirty minutes ago, about the police cruiser, found outside Squanee City with the dead patrolman still leaking blood from his belly. Sam doubted that this meeting with the off-world emissary was really necessary, but like the Old Man he wanted to be prepared for any contingency. Especially as <i>he</i> would likely be the one to go in and snip off this loose end.<br/>
<br/>
The Old Man listened intently to the Ambassador's reply. "If this is an 'immature' nest," he asked, "how great a threat is it going to be?" He scratched thoughtfully at his beard as the Ambassador replied. "Well, that's not bad at all, then, is it," he mused. "Depending on who has been infested, we might even leave it intact for study."<br/>
<br/>
<i>That</i> got Sam's attention. "Leave it intact for study?" he asked as he followed the Old Man from the conference room. "I know you like collecting weird pets, but isn't that a little dangerous?"<br/>
<br/>
"It should be quite safe, assuming you don't bungle things, Sam," the Director said. He didn't even break stride. "Our little friend says the thing's life cycle is measured in decades. We've a good twenty years before it becomes dangerous. Until then, it can infest only a few dozen people."<br/>
<br/>
"Cold comfort for the few dozen," Sam said.<br/>
<br/>
"I have to think of the long term, Sam," the Old Man said. "And worst case scenarios." He gripped Sam lightly by the elbow. "We can't even keep our southern border secure. What about they sky, Sam, what about the sky?" He turned to face his subordinate. "Our friends from above are not gods, they're creatures like us, just as capable as slipping up. <i>They're</i> immune to the parasites--so they say--and so were heedlessly careless about letting that <i>thing</i> get in. Rabbits to Australia, Sam. No one knew what rabbits would do to Australia, and <i>they</i> didn't know what a nest of those worms might do to us. We have to be prepared, and that means knowing what we might one day be facing."<br/>
<br/>
Sam knew better than to suggest relying on the Ambassador's species for that knowledge. So he just spoke of his upcoming assignment. "The thing left the cop. It could be anywhere. Iowa? It could be inside a <i>cow.</i>"<br/>
<br/>
"It's inside a high school coach, Sam," said the Old Man. "The prowler's dashboard cam showed us that. We've got the school and even his name. You'll just go in--"<br/>
<br/>
"It might have jumped from there, like it jumped from--"<br/>
<br/>
"Regardless, you're not going to find it inside a cow. It goes for top predators, the Ambassador has said, and that's us. And top predators <i>within</i> the top predators. The soldiers at the Armory? The police? That's where you'll look in town."<br/>
<br/>
"The top predators," Sam mused cynically. "I guess <i>I'll</i> need to be careful."<br/>
<br/>
"No, <i>I'll</i> need to be careful," the Old Man retorted, and not for the first time Sam thought of how wolfish his smile could be. "That's why I'll be keeping my distance in Washington."<br/>
<br/>
He resumed his hopping walk down the corridor, leaving Sam to chew on a lip.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
Tom sat up at the sound of the motor bike and squinted into the lowering sun. His truck sat in the middle of the ripening corn field, and the tall stalks hid the approaching visitor.  But he hadn't long to wait before Chad appeared; Duerr grinned and gunned the motor once before shutting it off and dismounting. <br/>
<br/>
"Yah, bro," Tom grinned back, and extended a hand to help Chad into the bed of the truck. "Wanna a little something to slake a thirst?"<br/>
<br/>
"Whatever you got. The fuck is <i>his</i> deal?" Chad kicked lightly at Paulie, who was stretched out, seemingly dead to the world.<br/>
<br/>
"He's just chillin'. I guess Angus found you?" Tom asked as he handed his friend a beer.<br/>
<br/>
"Yeah, he told me where to find you. He didn't say you'd have company, though."<br/>
<br/>
"Yeah. Oh, Micah's comin' out too."<br/>
<br/>
"Did he talk to Angus?"<br/>
<br/>
"No, he's gonna talk to <i>us.</i>"<br/>
<br/>
"Sweet." Chad ran a finger down Tom's bare chest and lightly rubbed at his navel. "That's a cute little outie you got."<br/>
<br/>
"I got a cuter one in me. Take your shirt off, catch some rays."<br/>
<br/>
Paulie's eyes shot open. He took a deep, gulping breath, then sat up. "Guys," he said carefully.<br/>
<br/>
"Bro," Chad corrected him. He let his jacket fall from his arms, and closed his eyes as he lifted the front of his t-shirt. "Lookin' good, Miller."<br/>
<br/>
The skin over his tight abs rippled slightly, then bulged, and something like an eyeball popped out of his belly button. It swiveled in its unnatural socket for a moment, and then withdrew.<br/>
<br/>
Paulie smiled faintly. "Micah show up yet?"<br/>
<br/>
Tom grunted, then cocked an ear. "Sounds like him now. Shirts off, everyone. Let's make it look natural. Be easier to talk him into taking off his own."<br/>
<br/>
"Why persuade him?" Chad grinned, and flexed an arm. "There's three of us. Let's have some fun."<br/>
<br/>
Tom shrugged, then opened up the ice chest and let one of the little things inside wrap itself around a finger.<br/>
<br/>
So it was three bare-chested teammates that greeted Micah Frick as he dismounted from his own motor bike. He nodded and grinned at them uncertainly as, smirking, they surrounded him in a tight circle. But he was used to horseplay, and didn't resist even when Chad grabbed him and put him in a tight headlock. "You're not the best looking asshole on the team," Tom chortled as he tugged the front of Micah's shirt loose from his jeans. "But you got what counts."<br/>
<br/>
"The fuck--" Micah started, then gasped as something sharp and burning shot into his gut. He would have screamed, but Tom covered his gaping mouth with his own with a hungry, tongue-engorged kiss.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
"And that's our mascot over there," Coach Kirnberger said. He grimaced as he flicked a finger in Terry's direction. Sam saw a tall kid with long, lank dark hair pacing the side of the gym floor. Perhaps sensing the attention, Terry looked back with a sad, mournful expression.<br/>
<br/>
"Does he <i>always</i> walk around in costume," Sam asked. He guessed the kid was thin--based on his face--but there was no way to tell since he was swallowed up in the fat, brown fur suit.<br/>
<br/>
"He's got his reasons," the coach grunted. "That might actually be something you could help him with."<br/>
<br/>
Sam cocked an eyebrow. "I thought you said you didn't have a staff opening."<br/>
<br/>
"We don't," the coach said. "But we take volunteers. You, uh, you willing to do some part-time volunteer work for us, Mr. Brown?"<br/>
<br/>
"I like working with athletic teams," Sam said. "It keeps me feeling young and trim."<br/>
<br/>
"They do like to compete," the coach said. "Hey Terry, go call the boys in!" Terry shuffled over to a side door. "Kid's not a quarter of what his brother was," the coach confided. "But he has his uses."<br/>
<br/>
He put out a hand, as though to tug Sam into a closer confidence, but Sam evaded it and kept the space between them. Casually, he put his hands in his pockets, and gripped the dart gun. He'd tried getting the coach alone early on during the impromptu job interview at the school, but with one thing and another he'd not succeeded. And he'd grown increasingly nervous about the man's manner. There was no reason the thing that controlled the coach should recognize Sam from the raid on the Armory, but Sam couldn't help but feel that he was being toyed with.<br/>
<br/>
"Maybe I better go grab the boys myself," the coach said. Sam breathed a little easier as he exited, and paced the floor with eyes down. Still, he felt as the kid in the squirrel costume approached. "I'm Terry Angus," the kid said, and held out a paw.<br/>
<br/>
"Sam Brown," Sam replied.<br/>
<br/>
"Really," Terry said skeptically.<br/>
<br/>
Sam's eyes flicked down. Out of the front pouch popped a head shaped like a flattened soccer ball. Dozens of eyes glittered up at him from it. He barely had time to see as one sprang from its socket and burrowed through the front of his shirt.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
To continue investigating the room: "<a href="https://www.Writing.Com/main/interactive-story/item_id/1510047/action/view/chapter_map/11221111111212222112" target="_top" title="Interactive Story Chapter in Item # 1510047">Disposing of Lucy</a>" <a href="https://www.Writing.Com/main/interactive-story/item_id/1510047/action/view/chapter_map/11221111111212222112" target="_blank" title="Open in new window."><img border="0" height="12" loading="lazy" onmouseout="$(this).css('opacity', '.4');" onmouseover="$(this).css('opacity', '1');" src="https://www.Writing.Com/nw.gif" style="opacity:.4;" width="12"/></a></span></div></div>


path: 11221111111212222111111211
author_id: seuzz
title: Space Parasites, Part 3
chapter_content:
<div><div> <span>"Maybe we should get one without the golf club," Terry suggested as he held up the iPhone.<br/>
<br/>
"We?" Austin asked scornfully. He rolled the club thoughtfully in his gloved hand.<br/>
<br/>
"I'm the one taking the picture," Terry retorted.<br/>
<br/>
"And I'm only paying you to take the shot," Austin said. "Not to make suggestions."<br/>
<br/>
"I thought you were paying me to caddy." Terry tapped the screen with his thumb. "How's that," he asked, turning the phone around.<br/>
<br/>
Austin frowned. "That's right, I'm paying you to caddy. You're not worth anything as a photographer." He took his iPhone back with a snort. "I'll get Erin to do it later. Set up my next ball."<br/>
<br/>
As Terry knelt to press the tee into the firm earth, the golf bag slipped off his shoulder with a clatter. He looked up to see Austin's darkening brow. "If you don't like the job I'm doing, you can get someone else."<br/>
<br/>
"I already tried that, Angus," Austin said.  He planted his feet, addressed the ball, and with a clean stroke sent it arcing toward the distant flag. "Same as I assume they've tried finding a new asshole for the squirrel suit." He peered at the ball rather than at his caddy. "What, no snappy comeback?" he asked.<br/>
<br/>
Terry just shrugged, and the clubs again clattered.<br/>
<br/>
"You should try getting more money out of Diedrich," Austin said as he sauntered along the fairway, and he didn't deign to look back as Terry trudging along behind. "There aren't a lot of guys willing to work here at the club, you know. They think it's beneath them." His lip curled. "Maybe they're right. You don't fit in either, but for the opposite reason." With that he did glance back, to see if the gibe had found its mark, but Terry's face was smooth and serene. "Anyway, so, you don't <i>have</i> to be good to get any more out of Diedrich. It's just a matter of supply and demand. You know how <i>that</i> works, don't you? Jesus," he sighed as Terry continued to say nothing. "He's already paying you twice what you're worth just because he can't find anyone else to work on weekends. You could squeeze another twenty percent out of him, I'm sure."<br/>
<br/>
"Why are you telling me all this?" Terry asked.<br/>
<br/>
"Just trying to give you some friendly advice," Austin sneered. "And to explain why it's the only tip you're going to get from me."<br/>
<br/>
A thought formed in the back of Terry's brain: <i>With your allowance, Peters, you could rent the whole basketball team to caddy for you.</i> But the intelligence that was now guiding his body saw no reason to voice it. Nor did it see any reason to sulk.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
"There wasn't a lot left," Sam said. He cupped the phone with both hands to block the stiff wind that was blowing across the fields. "I was the only one on hand when he hit the wall, and I went over the wreck before calling the authorities in."<br/>
<br/>
"Christ, Sam," the Old Man replied, and his voice, though harsh, was so soft that Sam had to press the phone hard against his ear to make out his words. "There doesn't <i>have</i> to be a lot left to be able to tell if the thing exited him or not."<br/>
<br/>
"The cab caught fire. He was badly burned."<br/>
<br/>
"Cars don't explode when they crash. That's just a moviemaker's conceit. You know that."<br/>
<br/>
"This one did."<br/>
<br/>
"Then it was rigged, and the thing was covering its exit. Paint me a picture."<br/>
<br/>
"I can <i>send</i> you a picture," Sam retorted, then sighed as the Old Man said nothing. "He made a break for it when I confronted him at the school. Tore off out of town down one of these rural highways and was doing about eighty when he hit the grain elevator. I was a couple of hundred yards behind him when I saw the fireball. I had to wait for it to burn out before I could get close."<br/>
<br/>
"And there was no one at this elevator?" The Old Man's voice dripped with incredulity.<br/>
<br/>
"Apparently not. These things are automated or something. I'm not an expert on <i>everything.</i>"<br/>
<br/>
"Your story stinks, Sam."<br/>
<br/>
"I haven't got a better one. But there's no sign of anything that was with him. Maybe you should send someone out to look over their shoulder when they do the autopsy."<br/>
<br/>
"Surely they're not going to do anything like that, not if the wreck was as you describe it. It <i>was</i> as you describe it, wasn't it, Sam?"<br/>
<br/>
"I don't like my story any more than you do," Sam said truculently. "But if you sent someone out, or came out yourself--"<br/>
<br/>
"I don't <i>have</i> to. You're already on the scene, and if you can't run it down--"<br/>
<br/>
"I'm only the new assistant coach, and besides, I'm new in town."<br/>
<br/>
"I'm giving you seventy-two hours, Sam."<br/>
<br/>
"And after that?"<br/>
<br/>
"That's for me to know, and for you to find out." The line went dead.<br/>
<br/>
Sam put the phone back in his pocket and squinted off at the still smoldering wreckage and at the police cruisers and fire trucks nearby. He'd barely had time to rescue the embryo from Coach Kirnberger's car and set the fire before the employees of the grain elevator had come running out, and then he'd had to retreat. He put a hand into the pocket of his windbreaker, to cradle the armored worm he carried there, and toyed briefly with the idea of introducing it to one of the rescue workers. But that had not been part of the plan, and he knew he should consult with his brothers before making another acquisition.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
Tom laid on the bed staring at the ceiling. He rested one hand heavily on a bare, smooth, meaty pec while gently stroking his short, dirty blonde hair. He was clad only in ankle socks and white briefs, which bulged at the front with a fat and slightly turgid cock. He breathed quietly. <br/>
<br/>
His eyes shifted toward the window at the sound of the car engine starting, and listened intently as it pulled out of the driveway and into the street. When it was gone, he took a deep breath and exhaled happily. "Are you coming or aren't you," he shouted.<br/>
<br/>
It was still a few moments before the door opened and Terry came in and closed the door behind him with a soft click. He and Tom locked eyes for a moment. "Take it off," Tom ordered the other.<br/>
<br/>
"It's not much to look at," Terry said.<br/>
<br/>
"I wanna talk. And I wanna <i>see.</i>" The front of his shorts bulged out a little more, and then his navel distended. An eye with a slit pupil popped out and craned to stare down the bed at Terry. A tentacle sprouted out next to it and waved lazily in the air. <br/>
<br/>
Terry pulled his grey hoodie off and cast it aside. He also had an eyeball at his navel, and as he clambered onto the bed, straddling Tom, it too was joined by a tentacle. It and Tom's wrapped about each other, and the eyeballs touched, fusing into each other. Both boys gasped and shuddered. In unison they blinked hard, and then opened their eyes to stare hard at each other.<br/>
<br/>
"Mm, nice," Terry murmured, and though it was his voice it had Tom's air of command. He leaned forward and clamped his hands onto Tom's rounded shoulders. Tom's smooth, brown cheeks flushed a rosy color as Terry bent over to sniff at his neck and chest. He buried his face in Tom's armpit and took a deep breath as Tom threw a thick arm over his thin torso and pulled him down.<br/>
<br/>
They lay there for a good long time, moving only slowly and deliberately, stroking each other. Tom threw his leg over the small of Terry's back, and Terry reached behind to grab and massage at his foot. He slipped an arm beneath Tom and drew him upward--though the latter's weight was too great and Terry's arm was too weak to do other than pull him closer. After twenty minutes Terry put his face to Tom's. Their mouths opened, and they found each others' tongues.<br/>
<br/>
Tom's phone rang. With slow tranquility he retrieved from the nearby nightstand. "Yeah," he grunted, and Terry's mouth moved silently in unison with his. "Then bring him over. We'll let Angus do the honors. He's got the one that government man took from Coach."<br/>
<br/>
Another shudder ran through the boys as they separated; the worms released each other and retreated inward. Without speaking, they got dressed again and went out into the deserted living room.<br/>
<br/>
They hadn't long to wait before two cars pulled up. Neither moved at the brief, sharp rap at the front door, which then opened. Chad came in, followed by a puzzled-looking Austin Peters. His brow crinkled a little when he saw Terry, but he otherwise paid no notice to him. "So, where's this fire," he demanded of Chad.<br/>
<br/>
"No fire," Tom said. "Just a little club meeting. We want you to join."<br/>
<br/>
"What kind of--" Austin started, then gasped as Chad reached smoothly behind him and put him in a headlock. He grunted and his face tightened. "Okay," he said in a resigned tone. "So you assholes are looking to have a little fun."<br/>
<br/>
"It'll be more fun for us after you're in," Tom said.<br/>
<br/>
Terry walked over to Peters and undid the bottom three buttons of his shirt, then pulled out the front of his t-shirt. He ran a finger up and down Austin's soft belly, and gently probed his navel. From the front pocket of his hoodie he took out the worm. He showed it to Austin. <br/>
<br/>
Peters reared back, but Chad held him firmly. "The fuck is--" he started, but then Terry put it to his stomach. He collapsed slowly against Chad. A shudder ran through his body, and his head lolled.<br/>
<br/>
And then he straightened up. Chad released him, and he quietly buttoned his shirt back up again. A faint smirk flickered at his lips as he reached into his pocket and pulled out a wallet, from which he extracted a credit card. "Don't spend it all in one place," he said.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
To continue investigating the room: "<a href="https://www.Writing.Com/main/interactive-story/item_id/1510047/action/view/chapter_map/11221111111212222112" target="_top" title="Interactive Story Chapter in Item # 1510047">Disposing of Lucy</a>" <a href="https://www.Writing.Com/main/interactive-story/item_id/1510047/action/view/chapter_map/11221111111212222112" target="_blank" title="Open in new window."><img border="0" height="12" loading="lazy" onmouseout="$(this).css('opacity', '.4');" onmouseover="$(this).css('opacity', '1');" src="https://www.Writing.Com/nw.gif" style="opacity:.4;" width="12"/></a></span></div></div>


path: 112211111112122221111112111
author_id: seuzz
title: Space Parasites, Part 4
chapter_content:
<div><div> <span>"I got a credit limit, you know," Austin said as he and Terry strode purposefully toward the mall entrance. It was a small shopping center; Squanee City was, after all, a fairly small town. "I can't afford a new wardrobe for everyone on the team."<br/>
<br/>
"We're only buying for Terry Angus," Terry said neutrally. "We can pick up something or other for Austin Peters if we see something we like." He opened the door and pushed in ahead of his companion, and scanned the inside of the department store. "We'll start in sportswear."<br/>
<br/>
"Gonna start taking your team responsibilities seriously, are you?" Austin said.<br/>
<br/>
"Of course we take them seriously," Terry said, and started looking through an array of track pants. "And why is every pronoun we're hearing 'I' and 'you'?"<br/>
<br/>
"What do you mean?"<br/>
<br/>
Terry looked at Austin directly, as though he weren't two inches shorter than the other. "'What do you mean?'" he echoed. "We shouldn't be having to ask what we mean, and we shouldn't be distinguishing between Peters and Angus and the others."<br/>
<br/>
"We're sorry," Austin said with faint sarcasm. "We're not used to this yet. And we are trying to stay in character, given that we are in a public place."<br/>
<br/>
Terry's brow furrowed slightly: the default was for human reflexes to manifest if there was no reason for them not to. He lightly touched Austin at the stomach. "Didn't government man get you out of the coach before ..." A certain amount of discretion also remained to Terry.<br/>
<br/>
Austin shook his head. "I came straight out of the nest."<br/>
<br/>
"I see. Well, since we're in public and trying to be in character, you can go find something for yourself."<br/>
<br/>
He turned his back on Peters; the latter, after a moment, snorted and went off to another section.<br/>
<br/>
Terry spent nearly forty minutes looking methodically through various selections, which he carefully folded and stacked and carried from one rack to another. Jeans, cotton slacks, running shorts, polo shirts, flannel shirts and flannel jackets. He took them back into a changing room, along with a package of socks. He closed and locked the door and sat down. He pulled off his clothes, lingering only briefly over his socks; the left one was torn, and a toe stuck out.<br/>
<br/>
He closed his eyes, and a brief spasm crossed his face, settling into an expression he didn't often wear. His upper lip went up a little, and his eyebrows lowered, and his cheeks tightened.<br/>
<br/>
It was an expression Tom often sported just before showing his displeasure with a classmate.<br/>
<br/>
He kept his eyes closed as he pulled on a new pair of socks and a pair of jeans. They should have hugged his legs and ass tightly, but this skinny, scrawny body-- His sneer hardened. Terry Angus was <i>not</i> a good choice, and the copy of Tom Munson's consciousness he carried around inside him rebelled at being trapped there. But if Angus was ever going to be anything but a blind--a spot from which to ambush new recruits--the changes would have to begin somewhere.<br/>
<br/>
So he continued to dress, donning a black t-shirt and layering two other shirts over it, and doing his best not to touch his torso as he did so. A ball cap with the high school logo was the last thing he put on, and he tilted it at a slightly rakish angle before exiting the changing room.<br/>
<br/>
He found Peters in the menswear section, where (to no great surprise) he was looking through ties. Austin glanced up, and didn't bother to hide the amusement in his reaction. "The other guys are gonna give you so much shit over that," he said.<br/>
<br/>
"It's not so different from my usual look," Terry said.<br/>
<br/>
"No, but it's the way you're wearing it." He reached up to flick at the brim of the ball cap, but Terry caught him by the wrist.<br/>
<br/>
"We need to talk," Terry said softly.<br/>
<br/>
"We?"<br/>
<br/>
"Yes. In private." He turned his head slowly to indicate the dressing rooms before letting go of Austin's arm. Peters fell in behind him.<br/>
<br/>
At the door to the stall, though, Terry stood aside to let Austin in first. The latter turned around as Terry followed and softly closed the door. "What do we need to--?" he started to say.<br/>
<br/>
But he stopped as Terry lifted the front of his own shirt; his third eye was already straining out from his stomach. "<i>We</i> need to be of one mind," Terry said. "We've learned a lot and thought a lot since leaving the nest. <i>You</i> need to join us."<br/>
<br/>
Austin's eyes fell, but he smiled softly. "You only had to ask," he said, and lifted his own shirt. The eye had barely blinked open in his own navel before Terry grabbed him, nearly pulling him off his feet; his parasite lunged at Austin's, and its tentacle took Austin's in something like a stranglehold.<br/>
<br/>
Austin gasped and turned very pale, and sank a little toward the floor, so that Terry had to support him. Both boys' jaws quivered and worked in unison.<br/>
<br/>
"Do you understand now?" Terry asked, but he used Austin's mouth. <br/>
<br/>
"We know exactly what we want," Austin replied, using Terry's mouth.<br/>
<br/>
They held each other a minute longer, trembling with suppressed excitement, and then released each other. Austin recovered himself, and then quietly helped Terry tuck his clothes back in, and touched him up here and there.<br/>
<br/>
Now Terry had none Chad's brutal aggression about him; he wore his new clothes with an air that looked much more like Austin's arrogant insouciance. And there were no more wisecracks from Peters as they took their purchases to the counter.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
<i>Monday.</i> "Pick it up," Terry said, stepping forward to glare at Mark Gunderson. <br/>
<br/>
The football player just laughed. "You pick it up." Terry's cap remained on the classroom floor at their feet, where Mark had knocked it.<br/>
<br/>
Terry swung hard at his stomach. The blow hadn't much force behind it, but the mind of Tom Munson knew exactly where to aim and how to follow up, so as Mark hunched over the blow Terry followed it up with a quick clip to the side of his face. But neither Terry nor Tom was used to dodging, and Mark caught Terry in his arms and threw him to the ground.<br/>
<br/>
Things would have gone worse, but Chad and Micah were in the same class, and they sprang over to pull Mark off Terry and restrained him as Terry got up again. Their friend's eyes glittered as he quickly pummeled his tormentor.<br/>
<br/>
Bobby Wallace gave a quick whistle from the doorway: "Jacobson's coming!" <br/>
<br/>
Chad and Micah threw Mark back into his desk. "You got a problem with Angus, you got a problem with us," Micah growled at him, and thrust a finger in his teammate's face. <br/>
<br/>
"Jesus, guys," Mark panted. His face was green, and he hunched over.<br/>
<br/>
"We'll talk at practice," Chad said. He bent over to pick up Terry's cap, and after brushing it off handed it back to him.<br/>
<br/>
Angus sat back in his own desk and ignored the open stares from the guys and girls nearby. "What's gotten into you," his friend Eddie whispered from the desk behind.<br/>
<br/>
"It's called confidence," Terry snapped. "You should try getting some."<br/>
<br/>
Eddie paled. "I'd rather have guys like you suddenly got watching your back."<br/>
<br/>
Terry turned around to give him an appraising look. Eddie was skinny, like Terry, and hunched over, like Terry used to hunch, and had the frightened, furtive look in his eye, like Terry used to have. As Eddie gazed back, Terry's glance cooled and cooled and cooled. "Not much chance of that," Terry said. "We made a connection over the weekend."<br/>
<br/>
"Well, if you could put in a word for me--" Eddie said, but Terry had already turned around again.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
"You wanted to see us, coach," Paulie said as he stepped into the office. He said "us" even though he was the only one to enter and close the door. As soon as the lock had clicked into place he started to tear off his jersey.<br/>
<br/>
But Sam waved him to keep it on. "I'm not 'coach' yet, and I'm not likely to be." He said this even though he was dressed in a grey sweatshirt and grey sweatpants and sneakers, and had a whistle around his neck. "We only have two days. Probably less. Maybe no time at all." He knew the Old Man well enough not to believe that "seventy two hours" meant "seventy two hours." "My employers didn't like the cover story about your old coach's demise."<br/>
<br/>
"If government man here can't keep the government quiet, what use is he?" Paulie sneered.<br/>
<br/>
"He can keep them distracted," Sam said. "How many brothers have homes?"<br/>
<br/>
"Seven. Government man told us to be careful." He raised his jersey again. "Government man really ought to merge."<br/>
<br/>
"Government man will, as soon as he figures out what to do," Sam retorted. "So we have thirty-one brothers still in the nest." He wavered, fighting a revulsion over what he knew he had to suggest. "Some of them need to be sacrificed," he said, and choked as he said it. "We need to lay a false trail."<br/>
<br/>
"You need to merge <i>now,</i>" Paulie said in a cold, heavy voice, and now he did tear his jersey off. Sam reared back and fell against the desk as Paulie advanced. The thing inside him erupted, lashing out at Sam as Paulie clutched at his sweatshirt; a trickle of blood ran down Paulie's belly.<br/>
<br/>
There was a knock at the door, and both froze. "Hey, coach, you in there?" Mark Gunderson's muffled voice came through the door.<br/>
<br/>
"Is he one of us yet?" Sam hissed. Paulie shook his head. "We'll have to wait, then."<br/>
<br/>
"We do it now," Paulie hissed back, but Sam pushed him away. "Tonight, then. Someone will find you at your motel room."<br/>
<br/>
<i>Maybe,</i> Sam almost said. He straightened his clothes as Paulie went to the door and let Mark in, passing him without a word.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
To continue investigating the room: "<a href="https://www.Writing.Com/main/interactive-story/item_id/1510047/action/view/chapter_map/11221111111212222112" target="_top" title="Interactive Story Chapter in Item # 1510047">Disposing of Lucy</a>" <a href="https://www.Writing.Com/main/interactive-story/item_id/1510047/action/view/chapter_map/11221111111212222112" target="_blank" title="Open in new window."><img border="0" height="12" loading="lazy" onmouseout="$(this).css('opacity', '.4');" onmouseover="$(this).css('opacity', '1');" src="https://www.Writing.Com/nw.gif" style="opacity:.4;" width="12"/></a></span></div></div>


path: 1122111111121222211111121111
author_id: nskin039
title: Space Parasites, Part 5
chapter_content:
<div><div> <span>“Uh . . . sir can I talk to you?” Mark said politely. <br/>
<br/>
“Word on the street is you’re gonna be filling in as our coach for a while. Since our old coach was in that accident. I still can’t believe he’s gone.”<br/>
<br/>
“I’m sorry we had to meet under such unusual circumstance but you’re right. I’ll be filling in around here for a while at least.” “Name’s Sam. Sam Brown. Sam extended his hand in Mark’s direction extending a warm greeting.<br/>
<br/>
“Now you’re Mark right?”<br/>
<br/>
“Yes sir. Mark Gunderson.” Mark answered as he reciprocated Sam’s firm handshake. <br/>
<br/>
“Well Mark when we’re off the court, just call me Sam. We’re all friends here, soon to be one big happy family.” <br/>
<br/>
“Thank you sir, err Sam.” But can I talk to you about something?” Mark stared Sam directly in the eye. “It’s about Terry.”<br/>
<br/>
“Angus? What about him? From what I have gathered the two of you are not, shall we say, the best of friends?” Sam gazed at Mark with a disapproving eye. As if to answer Mark shifted his weight uncomfortably. <br/>
<br/>
“You could say that,” Mark said a slight hesitation in his voice.<br/>
<br/>
“Well this is obviously not a social call then; what did you have in mind?<br/>
<br/>
“Well Sam sir, even though we’re not friends I know what the boy’s like. Something weird is up with him. He’s . . . he’s not himself. Something’s gotten into him.”<br/>
<br/>
“What do mean something gotten into him?” The worm within Sam tensed at Mark’s response. Sam’s body shuddered as the worm’s tension slowed the breathing and blood flow of its host.” <br/>
<br/>
“Well until recently he used to be the wimpiest kid on the team, probably in the entire school. As long as I can remember the kid’s been a jelly bag, being picked on since day one. But now he’s hanging around with hotheads like Chad and Micah. He’s even picking fights and ordering other kids around. I don’t know what’s gotten into him? It can’t be good.”<br/>
<br/>
“Have you told anyone else about this?” <br/>
<br/>
“No sir. I was going to tell coach but. . . so I’m telling you instead.” The worm within Sam loosed its grip on Sam’s body. Sam’s breathing and blood flow returned to normal. “Although if this keeps up I was going to tell the nurse Watkins or Mr. Renner the psychologist. <br/>
<br/>
“NO! I mean I think this is best kept on the DL for right now. At least until I get a chance to talk to him. In fact, I think the three us should meet together, right now.<br/>
<br/>
“Sir I’d rather not. I’m going to be late for Calc class. I just wanted you know so that you could keep a closer eye on him.” <br/>
<br/>
“I think you may have been hoping I’d dismiss him from the team for fighting a teammate.” Sam starred down at Mark with a stoic expression. “If I had to guess that is what this is really all about. You can’t stand him and want to see him gone. Well now I insist. Take a seat Mr. Gunderson.” Sam gestured to a pair of red upholstered chairs across the room. I will be back shortly with Mr. Angus. And you had better be here when I return, if you want to be a part of the team that is. The three of us can get better acquainted and explore more fully exactly what’s gotten into Mr. Angus.” <br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * * * * * * * <br/>
</div><br/>
<br/>
“After finding Terry, Sam had escorted him into an abandoned custodian’s closet across from Sam’s new office.” What’s going on,” Terry asked inquisitively.<br/>
<br/>
“No time to talk,” Sam said ripping his shirt out of his pants. Seconds later his worm’s eyeball and tentacle were already protruding from his chest.”<br/>
<br/>
Terry didn’t argue. He simply unbuttoned his own shirt and let his own worm emerge as well. Within seconds Sam’s worm had embraced Terry’s and the worms’ eyes melded together as one.<br/>
<br/>
The worm’s joining sent shivers down both men’s bodies. The embrace flooded them with feelings of euphoria and passion. Each closed his eyes imagining he was locked in the arms of the other. Their bodies shuddered as their human minds tried to process all the emotions, thoughts, and memories of the other. After several minutes the worms abruptly disentangled themselves and retreated back inside their host’s bodies.<br/>
<br/>
Terry’s eyes snapped open. “I understand. You did well to alert me to the situation Sam,” Terry said as both men finished rebuttoning up their shirts. “Come we must welcome our new brother into the fold. He mustn’t be allowed to remain unconverted.”  <br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * * * * * * * <br/>
</div><br/>
<br/>
</span></div></div>


path: 11221111111212222111111211111
author_id: nskin039
title: Space Parasites Part 6
chapter_content:
<div><div> <span>Two minutes later Sam and Terry had joined Mark in Coach Kirnberger’s old office. <br/>
<br/>
“So boys I want you to tell me more about what happened this morning.” Sam said with an air of authority. “Terry, Mark has been telling me that you haven’t quite been yourself lately. Is there anything wrong?” <br/>
<br/>
“No sir. On the contrary I have never been better than I am now. I’m j. . . u . . . s. . .t fine.” Mark secretly felt that Terry’s drawn out response seemed to cast doubt on the statement’s validity. <br/>
<br/>
“Well would you care to explain this morning then? As I understand it the two of you had a quite a bit of a showdown. Anyone care to elaborate?” Several moments of awkward silence ensued before Mark finally spoke.<br/>
<br/>
“Sir I admitted as much to you already,” Mark said with frustration in his voice. “Terry and I have never been fond of each other. That much is true. He picked a fight and I saw it as an opportunity to try and get him off the team that much is true. But I don’t have any interest in getting all goody goody with this freak show here. Can I please leave now?” Mark stood up and started walking towards the door.<br/>
<br/>
“Who you calling a freak show, freak show,” Terry flew out of his chair and sent a nasty right hook in Mark’s direction. <br/>
<br/>
“That is enough! both of you!” Sam yelled. “I don’t want to hear another word. No one is going anywhere until I get to the bottom of this! Now both of you, sit down. "Now I want you both to take your shirts off.” <br/>
<br/>
“But coach?!”<br/>
<br/>
“That is an order Mark. I don’t want to have to suspend you my first week on the job. If the two of you did indeed have a fight as you claim, I want to see if you have any injuries. School policy is clear as crystal about fighting.<br/>
<br/>
Terry stripped off his American Eagle shirt without even a second thought, exposing a tight set of abdominal muscles. Terry seemed much more fit than Mark had ever remembered “Since when did Angus start packing the goods? And since when had he ever gone around in public without a shirt on?” Mark pondered to himself. <br/>
<br/>
Mark waited several seconds, wanting to resist the coach’s unorthodox request but reluctantly he tore off his own shirt as well. <br/>
<br/>
“Well, sir as you can see we’re both perfectly normal. No bruising, no scars. Can I please put my shirt back on now?” I am already late for Calc.”<br/>
<br/>
“Not quite yet.” “You know Mark, seeing the two of you like this, I think I know exactly what’s gotten into Terry,” Sam said as he walked across the room to face the teens.<br/>
<br/>
“Sir? I don’t think I am following,” Mark said standing to his feet. “What’s gotten into Terry?” <br/>
<br/>
“The same thing that’s about to get into you!”<br/>
<br/>
At that moment, a large tentacle worm creature erupted from both Terry’s and Sam’s chest. Each worm had a large eyeball that stared directly at Mark from within its host’s chest. Mark stood there frozen, unsure what to do or say. Before he could recover his composure and muster up enough courage to cry out for help, Sam and Terry had already attacked. Terry pinned Mark down in headlock forcing the unsuspecting teen against the office’s back wall while Sam clamped down his hand over Mark’s mouth. <br/>
Mark looked on in horror as Sam used his free hand to withdraw a third worm from within his coat pocket. On one end was a large white eyeball while the other was long red pulpous-like tentacle.<br/>
<br/>
“Time for you to join us, Mark. It will all be over soon. Don’t try to fight it. You will only succeed in injuring yourself,” Sam cackled with glee.<br/>
<br/>
Mark was kicking hard, trying whatever he could to get away from the madmen. But despite resisting with all his strength he was no match for the pair. Terry, despite his size, utilized his superhuman strength to hold Mark down while Sam used his left hand to retain a vise grip over Mark’s mouth. At that moment Sam moved the hand holding the worm close to Mark’s exposed chest. In less than a split second the creature darted from Sam’s palm and began burrowing deep into Mark’s navel. <br/>
<br/>
Mark was terrified now. He could feel the creature moving into his chest. The sensation felt as if his entire abdomen was on fire and exploding. Only seconds had past and the creature was already halfway inside him. The pain was excruciating; Mark could hardly move his own limbs now. Mark took one last glance down at his exposed belly and could now only see the creature’s long tentacle-like tail protruding from his chest. The eye had already disappeared into his stomach. Already Mark could feel his body changing. His limbs were stiffening and he was losing feeling throughout much of his body. He could feel the creature’s mind infecting his own. Moments later the last trace of the creature had disappeared completely into Mark’s stomach. The teen’s skin bulged and crawled for a few seconds and then, as quickly as it had begun, all trace of the creature was gone, save for a few drops of blood running down from Mark’s navel. <br/>
<br/>
At this point, Terry and Sam calmly released their grip on Mark’s body. The creature was now fully inside of him, and was taking complete control. Mark’s eyes rolled up into the back of his head and his body started convulsing. Barely conscious, Mark could now hear a voice speaking to him inside his own mind. <br/>
<br/>
“Everything is all right now. I am your friend. You can trust me. That’s it. Allow me inside. You have nothing to fear. We are one now. Good. YOUR BODY IS MINE HUMAN!” At that moment, Mark’s body stilled his eyes slowly returned to normal. The creature had taken him over completely. With Mark’s consciousness now completely subverted Mark’s body began to move again although not at Mark’s command anymore. Mark smiled deviously as he began to wipe away the remaining traces of blood from his belly.<br/>
<br/>
“I am now in control my brothers,” Mark’s mouth informed Terry and Sam. “This host body will no longer be of concern to us. It is mine to control now.”<br/>
<br/>
“Good,” Sam and Terry said in unison. <br/>
<br/>
Terry turned to address the others as his parasitic creature slowly retreated back into his navel. “Brothers, tonight is the night we will become unstoppable. You know the plan. Tonight we merge. We will create an army to control this world forever!”<br/>
<br/>
At that all three men calmly buttoned up their shirts and tucked them back into place and left the office as if nothing at all had happened. <br/>
<br/>
</span></div></div>


path: 112211111112122221111112111111
author_id: nskin039
title: Space Parasites Part 7
chapter_content:
<div><div> <span>“Director I have urgent news for you.” <br/>
<br/>
“Samuel Robert Brown. What the hell have you been up to for the past two days?” You had better have news for me.” The Old Man mouthed to Sam over the phone.<br/>
<br/>
“I do sir. I found the last parasite.”<br/>
<br/>
“You what?” The director nearly fell out of his chair in surprise. “I thought you were only looking for the nest? Although I never did quite believe your cockamamie story about the parasite dying in a car crash, what in blazes do you mean? The Old Man spoke out in frustration. The Director recovered his composure and continued. “So there’s another one of these hostiles out there now? Why the hell did you wait this long to tell me?!”<br/>
<br/>
“No sir it’s the same one. But it’s living inside a Roy Henderson. He’s a security guard at the same school the coach was at.” Sam’s voice explained. “It’s true I originally reported the parasite dying in the car crash, but that was exactly what appeared to happen. However after conducting a more thorough investigation, I found security camera footage of the crash. The tape revealed that just before the car fireballed a man jumped from the passenger side of the vehicle and ducked into the granary just prior to the explosion. From my viewing angle, the smoke prevented my seeing his escape. When I arrived on the scene, the coach was already dead so I didn’t think to look for another victim. From the looks of it, the alien must have kidnapped Roy while still at the school but only managed to possess him while I was in pursuit of the coach.”<br/>
<br/>
“That still doesn’t explain your lack communication agent,” the director fumed. “Why on this green earth did you wait a full 48 hours to check in?” the director practically screamed into his mobile.<br/>
<br/>
“I’m sorry sir; but I haven’t checked in because I have been shadowing Roy. I discovered Roy’s escape not long after I hung up with you the first time. But just as I was getting ready to call you back, I spotted Roy leaving the granary. And he has been on the move ever since. Until now I haven’t been able to follow up for any period of time with you without fear of losing him. But now he finally settled down. And I am almost certain he doesn’t know I have been following him. He’s currently held up at a residence in midtown. I can also report presence of the hostile nest as well. My infrared scanner confirms a high concentration of alien matter coming from the basement of the building. Director, I am requesting immediate backup. This capture will have to be done with a great deal of tact or else we risk losing the parasite again, and the nest.” <br/>
<br/>
“Well Sam, I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t been getting a little worried about you. When you failed to check in for our last three debriefs I was beginning to think you had been taken out. But I suppose a commendation is in order,” the Old Man managed in a tone slightly above a whisper. “Sam, I’m sending you agents Brett Miller and Alec Friedman to assist in retrieval. We need to deal with situation before it gets out of hand. Although these creatures take decades to mature and reproduce, we still need to secure the existing nest before it becomes an infestation. Brett and Alec will report to your command tomorrow at 09:00 hundred hours. I will brief them and have them on a jet to your location within the hour. Do not let that creature out of your sight!”<br/>
<br/>
“Understood sir.”<br/>
<br/>
</span></div></div>


path: 1122111111121222211111121111111
author_id: nskin039
title: Space Parasites Part 8
chapter_content:
<div><div> <span>Terry hung up the phone, ending his conversation with the Director. In response, the worms connecting Terry’s and Sam’s bodies together slowly separated their embrace. Each worm then retreated back towards its host’s chest before disappearing completely into its host’s navel. While connected together the worms could share their entire existence, even the vocal patterns of their host bodies. Terry used this ability to address the director using Sam’s voice. This allowed Terry to manipulate the agency’s moves. He would use the Old Man’s own top agent to bring about the agency’s downfall. Even the director would eventually be brought under alien control. No one would be able to stop them. Terry could hardly contain his delight that fooling their enemy had been such an easy task.<br/>
<br/>
                                                                                          {ind ent}                    * * * * * * * * *<br/>
<br/>
Later that night, Terry, Sam, Paulie, Tom, Chad, Micah, Austin, and Mark, the newest convert, were all seated wooden bareback chairs in the basement of Austin Peters’ home. Austin’s parents were away on an extended vacation making it the perfect place to meet away from prying eyes and ears. All the men were completely naked except for their underwear.<br/>
<br/>
“So Mark I guess Angus found you too huh? Paulie said as he stroked Mark’s bare chest and poked at Mark’s navel. “Ya, he and Sam together. They discovered that the human Mark was getting a little to nosy about Angus. So he had to be converted. How about you Paulie? How long have you been in place now?” Mark replied as he stroked Paulie’s abdomen. <br/>
<br/>
“About a week now. Never felt better. These human bodies are where it’s at.”<br/>
<br/>
Mark turned his attention to Micah. “How about you Frick? Angus, welcome you too?” <br/>
<br/>
“Nah. Tom, Chad, and Paulie here, welcomed me. But Paulie’s right, these humans are perfect. It’s almost as if human bodies were made for us. I could spend a lifetime in this hot bod.”<br/>
<br/>
As the group of aliens continued to converse, Terry rose from his chair which quickly silenced the rest of the group. “My brothers, I have called you all here tonight for one purpose: our merging. Our enemy draws near but we will be ready. Our merging will assure our domination over this planet.” At the mention of merging several of the parasites already emerged from their host bodies. Chad, Mark, and Austin now gazed at Terry with three eyes instead of just two. <br/>
<br/>
“The plan will be difficult my brothers, especially for me, but we must proceed. Our advantage comes from the Director’s foolhardy understanding of our race. The human Sam’s memories indicate the agency’s belief that it will take decades for us to acclimate to human host bodies. But I have already absorbed more than enough energy to trigger the transformation. We will make the agency believe it is has beaten us, while we secretly begin our systematic infection of the entire human populace.” Terry asserted with confidence. <br/>
<br/>
<br/>
“Secure my host body to prevent it from escaping.” I must leave this body in order to begin the merging. At Terry’s instruction, Sam and Mark crossed the room and used several rolls of duct tape to bind Terry’s arms and body to the wooden chair in which he was once again seated. Unlike its other brethren the worm living within Terry was a maker, a worm patriarch. Makers were the only ones capable of forming new worm nests, but only when they had matured and become strong enough to leave their host body. Although still young, the worm within Terry had grown and matured extremely quickly, now nearly six times larger than any of the others. By melding together with each of its brethren, the maker had absorbed the physical and mental attributes from each worm’s host body, dramatically increasing the maker’s rate of growth. <br/>
<br/>
“It is time!” Terry spoke aloud.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * * * * *</div></span></div></div>


path: 11221111111212222111111211111111
author_id: nskin039
title: Space Parasites Part 9
chapter_content:
<div><div> <span>“Where, w. . h . . e. . r. .e am I? And why am I naked and tied to a chair? Terry thought to himself. By now the alien inside of him had already disconnected itself completely from Terry’s spinal cord and central nervous system. Without these connections the alien could no longer retain a hold over Terry’s mind. Almost instantly Terry’s eyesight and mind had begun to return to him. Terry found himself in a basement of sorts, strapped to chair facing an empty wall. He had no recollection of how it was he came to be trapped here. “How on earth did I end up in this place?” Terry racked his brain for recent events. “I was riding on the bus, coming back from the Weasels game and coach wanted to see me. He took me back to his office and then . . .  that thing inside of him. What the hell was that thing? And then he jumped me. Forcing me to the ground, lying on top of me, suppressing my screams. Dam. . .  He had another one of those things and forced it into me.” Terry stared down at his navel half expecting to see an alien eyeball. As if to respond, a sharp stabbing pain reared from the back of Terry’s neck along his spine and ended near his lower abdomen. The pain was so intense Terry could barely keep from screaming.<br/>
<br/>
“What the hell is happening to me now?” Terry thought to himself. Seconds later, Terry felt it move. That thing was still inside of him. Terry’s skin began to rip and crawl causing him excruciating pain. Terry was screaming bloody murder now. The pain was too intense. He had never felt such agony before in his entire life. He felt as if someone was systematically ripping apart his internal organs atom by atom. The skin around Terry’s navel began to bulge unnaturally before a large white eyeball forced its way out of Terry’s stomach. At first the eyeball simply rotated within Terry navel as it had done many times before. But then unlike before, the worm began to withdraw. “Mary mother of . . . AGH!” Every time the alien moved, Terry’s body felt as if it was being ripped apart. “Someone help me please!” Terry pleaded. <br/>
<br/>
Due to the position of his chair, Terry couldn’t see the rest of the basement but hoped that someone was within earshot. “ANYONE! HELP ME!” Terry barely managed to say over the extreme pain. Despite his incessant screams the alien continued to withdraw. The eye was now completely out of Terry but a long red cord still connected it to Terry’s bare chest. After the course of a minute, the worm was already over three feet in length and still unwinding from within Terry’s body. After a full three minutes, the cord connecting the alien to Terry’s navel finally snapped. By the time the alien had completely exited Terry’s body it was nearly six feet in length. <br/>
<br/>
* * * * * * * * * * * * <br/>
<br/>
      Terry’s mind started to clear again as his body recovered from the extreme pain. Terry looked down and saw the large alien worm now sprawled out on the cement floor in front of him. The thing was huge; Terry gagged as he thought out that thing living inside of him. On one end the alien had a single eyeball with a slit-like pupil. The rest of its body reminded Terry of a worm or snake; although much of the alien’s body was covered with small tentacle-like appendages that were covered in traces of human blood. As horrible as it was to think that this creature had been living inside his body, at least it was finally out of him. However Terry was still in trouble. He still tied to a chair in some unknown location and had no idea why. “How was he supposed to get out of this mess?” he thought to himself. Suddenly Terry began aware of footsteps coming towards him. “Hello? Is anyone there? Please someone, over here.” Tom came into view and stared at Terry with a far-off look in his eyes. “TOM!? I don’t know how you found me but please you’ve got to get me out of here.” Tom barely even acknowledged Terry’s presence. Instead Tom walked towards the worm and placed it delicately over his neck and shoulder letting it wrap itself around his body.<br/>
<br/>
“Tom what the hell are you doing? Get away from that thing.” It’ll take you over too. TOM! please! You gotta help me! Kill that thing.”<br/>
<br/>
As the alien finished wrapping itself around Tom’s body, Tom turned to face Terry. “You will go nowhere human. You are the maker’s chosen vessel. You will remain here till the maker returns.” <br/>
<br/>
As Tom walked slowly away, Terry managed to scoot his chair around in order to see the remainder of the room. On the far side of the room sat at least half of the basketball team as well as a man Terry had never met before. At least Terry didn’t remember meeting him. “But why did this man somehow seem so familiar.” Terry wondered to himself. As Tom returned to the far side of the room, Terry watched in horror as the skin around each man’s chest began to crawl and rip before an eyeball emerged from each man’s navel. <br/>
<br/>
“It can’t be. I must be having a nightmare,” Terry thought aloud. “This can’t be happening.” He was losing it now. He couldn’t bear to watch what was unfolding in front of his own eyes. Terry screamed at the top of his lungs for someone anyone to rescue him. But no one else was around to hear his cries.<br/>
<br/>
* * * * * * * * * * * * </span></div></div>


path: 112211111112122221111112111111111
author_id: nskin039
title: Space Parasites Part 10
chapter_content:
<div><div> <span>The aliens had started the merging now. Each man stood shoulder to shoulder facing one another. The worms within them began to extend reaching towards the center of the human circle. Soon all seven of the worm’s eyes met at a single focal point melding to form a single organism with single solitary eyeball. Once each of the creatures had joined together, the maker unwrapped itself from Tom’s naked body moving towards the center of the circle as well. Terry snuck a quick peek but turned away not baring to watch what was unfolding before his eyes. As soon as the giant worm made contact with the eyeball, it began to be absorbed into the eyeball as well. As the maker alien slowly disappeared, the eyeball began to morph. The eye changed into a solid sphere that grew at a constant rate. As the maker continued to force itself inward this newly formed orb continued to grow. By the time the entire maker worm had melded with the sphere it was nearly four feet in diameter. <br/>
<br/>
Once the maker had fully merged with the sphere, it began to glow a deep amber color. In response each of the men began to groan with delight. The ritual was extremely arousing for both man and worm alike. Several of the men caressed each other or exchanged other evidences of bliss with one another. Austin probed Chad’s navel while Tom and Micah found each other’s lips. The merging went on for over an hour, and none wanted the feelings of ecstasy it provided to end. But as the light emanating from the orb began to fade the worms each released their grip from the newly created orb, before ultimately retreating back within their human hosts.  <br/>
<br/>
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * <br/>
<br/>
NO! NO! PLEASE NO! Terry cried as Sam approached with the maker wrapped around his buff form. The six foot worm had remerged from the orb and had been immediately carried in Terry’s direction. Bound and helpless, Terry could only cry out fear. <br/>
<br/>
“Tom, Chad, Micah, all of you. You have to be in there somewhere. Fight it please. Please I don’t want to die.” <br/>
<br/>
“You will not die. You will simply live out your life as a mind slave to our race.” Sam said without a shred of emotion.<br/>
<br/>
Sam carefully unwrapped the maker from his body and positioned the worm delicately at Terry’s navel. Terry was screaming bloody murder, pleading with anyone to come to save him. But it was too little too late. Within seconds the eye was already burrowing inside Terry’s body. “Not again! I can’t do this again.” Terry screamed. One foot gone, two feet, three. “PLEASE ANYONE!” Four feet. Five feet. “Please help mmmeeeeeee. . . . and then the last few inches of the creature disappeared inside his body.” Terry’s skin ripped and crawled once again as the alien repositioned itself and attached itself to Terry’s helpless body. Terry’s body started shaking violently and his breathing became shallow. Terry could feel the alien’s consciousness in his mind taking control once again. Within a few moments the alien had completely reestablished its dominance, forcing Terry back into semi-consciousness. Once in control the worm used its superhuman strength to break its bonds as if they were strands of thread. <br/>
<br/>
Terry crossed the room to join his brethren. “We have succeeded my brothers; the merging was a complete success,” he said gesturing towards the now clear-walled orb. Although slightly smaller now, it still measured over three feet across. As if responding to Terry’s voice, the outer shell of orb cracked open revealing dozens and dozens of tiny eyeballs stared out from within the object’s core. The worms had created a second nest, one containing hundreds of newly spawned parasites ready to implant into new human hosts. <br/>
<br/>
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * </span></div></div>


path: 1122111111121222211111121111111111
author_id: nskin039
title: Space Parasites Part 11
chapter_content:
<div><div> <span>Majors Alec and Brett reporting as requested sir.” Two men clad in navy button-up shirts, blue jeans, and NYC baseball caps addressed Sam while simultaneously giving him a hearty salute. “Please pardon our attire sir but we were told to dress casual.”<br/>
<br/>
“At ease gentlemen, this isn’t the army mind you. But we do have a very delicate situation on our hands. As you know we are dealing with a hostile who can invade and control humans. I have tracked the creature to this location. The host’s name is Roy Harrison and he works as a security guard at the local high school, the same place where the deceased basketball coach worked. Now we need to knock this man out before the parasite can jump hosts. You are not to engage the target directly is that understood?” Sam said in an unwavering tone.<br/>
<br/>
“Yes sir.” Alec and Brett replied together.<br/>
<br/>
“Now be aware that Roy is in possession of the alien nest as well. The nest contains the remaining parasites and it must be neutralized at any cost.” Sam gazed long and hard into each man’s eyes as if to impart the sense of importance the mission entailed. “Each of us is carrying a dart gun with powerful neurotoxin that temporarily paralyzes both alien and human tissue. The alien will be unable to move if we can get one of these darts into him. So make your shots count.” Both Alec and Brett seemed on edge by the whole episode. “Come on men, let’s go,” Sam said aloud.<br/>
<br/>
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *<br/>
<br/>
“Two minutes later, Sam and the agents were in position, the two agents covering the back door while Sam covered the front. On cue, Sam, Alec, and Brett entered the ranch style home and quickly cornered the man. “Here now. Get the hell out my house!” Roy said with authority as the three men burst in unexpectedly. “Whatever happens, don’t let him get away,” Sam exclaimed.<br/>
<br/>
The two agents prepared to fire. However, as Alec and Brett turned to face down Roy, Sam shot each of them in the hip with his own dart gun. “What the hell,” Alec exclaimed as he and Brett collapsed on the carpet.” “What on earth are you doing Sam?” Without a word Sam walked towards the far end of the room and unlocked the basement door revealing the waiting form of Terry Angus. “Sam who the hell is that kid? You’re gonna let Henderson walk.” Alec yelled from across the room. “I don’t know what you’re up to Brown, but when I can move again I’m going to kill you. I’ll have you court marshaled for this.” Alec cursed under his breath. <br/>
<br/>
“Don’t worry. Brett and Alec you needn’t worry about all that. And I assure you Mr. Henderson has already been dealt with.” Terry said his tone unwavering. Hey kid I don’t know how you know us but do yourself a favor and get out of here now.” This place is dangerous. Alec said aloud.<br/>
<br/>
“You have no idea just how dangerous,” Terry replied in a tone of voice that gave the agents cold chills. <br/>
<br/>
“Sam, if you please.”<br/>
<br/>
“As Sam unbuttoned the bottom few buttons of his shirt, an alien worm shot out from Sam’s navel and stared down Alec and Brett. “It can’t be!” Brett screamed. “No Sam. Tell me it isn’t true. You wouldn’t betray the agency, betray us.” <br/>
<br/>
“The man you know as Sam Brown is no more,” Terry said with unwavering authority. His body serves as human shell for us, nothing more. At my directive the two of you will now be joining our ranks. By now the agents had realized that the entire operation had been an elaborate trap; Sam was being controlled and they were about to meet the same fate. <br/>
<br/>
“SAM! Don’t do it. You can still save us. You have to be in there somewhere. Fight it Sam, Please.” Brett pleaded to no avail. Sam knelt down next to the paralyzed agents and unbuttoned each of their shirts.<br/>
<br/>
“I find your pleas of fear amusing,” Terry laughed in delight. <br/>
<br/>
Sam reached into a nearby nightstand and removed two hatchlings fresh from the nest. <br/>
<br/>
“Do it!” Terry ordered.<br/>
<br/>
“SAM! NO!”<br/>
<br/>
Sam ignored the men’s pleas placing a parasite on each man now bare chest. Within moments the worms had buried themselves deep within the chests of agents Alec and Brett.</span></div></div>


path: 11221111111212222111111211111111111
author_id: nskin039
title: Alien Parasites Part 12
chapter_content:
<div><div> <span>“What’s the latest agent? I assume the two of you were capable of handling the situation. You do have Roy in custody?” the director asked with authority.<br/>
<br/>
Alec paused for a few seconds before answering. “He’s dead sir.<br/>
<br/>
“What on earth do you mean?!!”<br/>
<br/>
“The dart guns had no effect. The parasite must have allowed him to resist the neurotoxin somehow. Once we shot him he bolted. By then he knew darn well we were trying to capture him. He was in the process of jumping a chain link fence, when agent Brown used his .44 magnum to blow both the alien and Roy straight to hell. <br/>
<br/>
“Well that’s . . . unfortunate. What of the nest?” <br/>
<br/>
“We burned it sir. Doused in gasoline and fried to oblivion.<br/>
<br/>
“You were supposed to capture the alien nest ALIVE! I am surrounded by imbeciles who cannot follow simple orders. How you three ever got to be field agents I’ll never know.”<br/>
<br/>
“Sir, I truly am sorry, but you know our orders. We were to eliminate the alien threat at any cost. And none of us could get with ten feet of that thing without risking infection. It was either destroy it or become the aliens’ next hosts.” <br/>
<br/>
After a long silence, the director continued. Well I suppose . . . you could have done worse. Just the same I want you to bring back as much alien tissue as possible for study. Our scientists want to more thoroughly understand these alien parasites. The one we extracted from the soldier several days ago is dead. After being extracted from its host body, it died almost instantly. It appears that without a nest or host body to sustain them these alien creatures die very rapidly. Our scientists will be furious they won’t be receiving a new live specimen to study. But I am sure you all can manage to smooth things over with them.<br/>
<br/>
“As I said sir, it couldn’t be helped.” Alec replied.<br/>
<br/>
“Well, be sure to clean up after yourselves just the same. Do a full detox of the area. Remove all traces of extraterrestrial activity; we don’t want the public getting wind of this and starting a panic. When the area is secure I want you and Brett to report back to base. However, agent Brown is to remain behind. For the time being I want him to retain his role as basketball coach and monitor the area. The agency and I believe this invasion is now behind us. But I want Sam to make doubly sure none of the buggers somehow managed to slip through the cracks. Is that understood?”<br/>
<br/>
“Yes sir.”<br/>
<br/>
“Good! I expect the two of you back at base within 24 hours. Dismissed!” The director slammed down his phone in disgust. As far as the director was concerned the only good news was that the alien threat was finally neutralized once and for all.<br/>
<br/>
Alec and Terry exhaled deeply as the worms connecting them slowly separated. <br/>
<br/>
<br/>
“Mmm. That never gets old,” Terry said aloud as his parasite disappeared back into his chest. “So the agency is practically playing into our hands. I couldn’t have asked for better orders for the three of you. Sam stays here as my second and my new recruits report back to the agency. This is just too delicious,” Terry cackled with glee. “The plan is going perfectly. Now, Alec and Brett come with me. I have a special task for you. We must prepare for the director’s welcoming.”<br/>
<br/>
* * * * * * * * * * * * <br/>
<br/>
Terry, Alec, and Brett descended the long flight of stairs to the basement of the building, to the alien nest. “Approach my brothers; let the nest take you,” Terry commanded.<br/>
<br/>
Both agents walked slowly towards the nest. Each agent removed his clothes and lay down naked on either side of worm nest. The nest’s clear surface reflected the men’s buff bodies. At first nothing happened, the men continued to lay there on the cold hard concrete. But then, after a few seconds, two worm eyeballs peered out from the nest. After spying the naked agents the two worms emerged and slithered directly towards the men’s bodies. The worms crawled up the men’s legs and made their way across the men’s chests. As the worms approached, Alec and Brett closed their eyes and opened their mouths preparing to welcome the young worms into their bodies. Once the worms reached the now prepared openings, they began forcing their way down each man’s throat. The men gagged as their throats tried to accommodate the fleshy masses forcing their way down inside. But after the course of a minute the large bulge in each man’s throat had all but dissipated as the worms settled into each man’s stomach cavity. The worms now began their patient wait to be regurgitated and introduced to their own permanent host bodies. <br/>
<br/>
Terry looked on in delight as Alec and Brett slowly rose to their feet and stared redressing themselves. “Well done my brothers. Each of you now carries one of our brethren within your host’s stomach. You will now be able to infiltrate the agency undetected. Once you return, you will introduce them to two others within the organization’s ranks. I want the two of to make special arrangements for the Old Man. The director must be made see the light of our ways. But use great caution. Under no circumstances can the agency be made aware of our existence. We are assumed dead. No one knows of our deception and we must keep it that way,” Terry grinned.<br/>
<br/>
* * * * * * * * * * * * <br/>
<br/>
As Terry returned above ground he turned his attention towards Sam.<br/>
<br/>
“You are to return to the school and retrieve the first nest. The agency is expecting a destroyed nest so that’s exactly what we must give them. Retrieve half the hatchings and transfer them to the new nest. Burn the rest. They must be sacrificed for the good of our race. The agency will get suspicious if they do not find trace alien residue. The agency must not be able to discover our deception. They must believe we are dead. Go immediately. Ensure you are not followed and that the nest’s existence remains a secret.”<br/>
<br/>
 “It will be done, great maker. Sam said with a stoic expression.” <br/>
<br/>
“Good.” <br/>
<br/>
* * * * * * * * * * * * <br/>
</span></div></div>


path: 112211111112122221111112111111111111
author_id: nskin039
title: Alien Parasites Part 13
chapter_content:
<div><div> <span>Come here Frick. Tom said as he stripped down to his underwear. Wanna get close?<br/>
<br/>
“I thought you’d never ask, Micah replied. <br/>
<br/>
Bare chested Tom jumped into the waiting bed. As Tom fell towards the waiting bed, he grabbed Micah around the waist and pulled him close. As their chests touched, the skin around their belly buttons ripped open revealing their internal parasites. Within moments the worms had found one another and merged together.<br/>
<br/>
“Mmm. These human bodies feel so good,” Tom said as he caressed Micah’s pectorals. <br/>
<br/>
“Tell me about it.” <br/>
<br/>
“Are you strong enough to access your genetic memories yet?” Tom said stroking Micah’s ear. <br/>
<br/>
“Of course. Our predecessors used to think living in Razouls or Jaxrotes was where it was at, but they have nothing on these bodies. In humans, not only do we have complete control over their physical bodies but we control all their sensory receptors as well.” <br/>
<br/>
“That’s what makes this so much fun.” Tom breathed into Micah’s ear.<br/>
<br/>
“You know it.” Micah whispered back as he caressed Tom’s shoulders.<br/>
<br/>
“Enough talk now. Let it take you, let me take you. Tom replied as he pressed his lips against Micah’s.<br/>
* * * * * * * * * * * * <br/>
<br/>
“Yo, Mark, Zac, can we talk?”<br/>
<br/>
“Yah Zane. What’s on your mind?”<br/>
<br/>
“Get the lead out ladies!” Sam Brown hollered at the team. This is basketball practice not an old woman’s convention. Now I want to see some sprints!”<br/>
<br/>
“Listen, we can’t talk now. Meet me in the locker room after practice. Zane yelled under his breath.”<br/>
<br/>
* * * * * * * * * * * * <br/>
“So what did you want to talk about?” Zac said as he toweled off from his shower.<br/>
<br/>
“Ya what’s this all about?” Mark Gunderson replied.<br/>
<br/>
“Well call me crazy, but have either of you noticed that something is . . . well off around here lately?<br/>
<br/>
“What do you mean man?” Zac replied.<br/>
<br/>
“Well, I can’t quite put my finger on it, but several of the guys around here just aren’t themselves lately.”<br/>
<br/>
“You’re right you are crazy.” Mark scoffed.<br/>
<br/>
“No I’m serious.” Take Angus for starters. When was the last time you remember him walking around without his mascot outfit. Half past N-E-V-E-R that’s when! And now he’s suddenly wearing Abercrombie &amp; Fitch, going bare-chested, and hanging around with half the team. And since when would Tom, Paulie, or Chad even think about hanging with the likes of him. Now it’s almost as if the three of them are taking orders from him. I don’t get it.”<br/>
<br/>
The parasite within Mark knew it needed to act fast to prevent the situation from getting out of hand.<br/>
<br/>
“How about you Mark? I thought I overheard you mumbling as much to yourself the other day. Surely you find this at least a bit weird?” Zane said with enthusiasm.<br/>
<br/>
Before Mark could reply Zac interrupted. “I think the both of you are crazy! I’m catching the train out of crazy town while I still can. See you guys at practice tomorrow. We’ve got the game against the Timberwolves coming up this weekend. We need all practice we can get if we want a shot at making the playoffs. Anyway, later ladies, I’m out.” At that Zac left the locker room without another word.<br/>
<br/>
“Forget him,” Zane replied. “So what do you think Mark?” <br/>
<br/>
The parasite within Mark shifted around uneasily. It was still young and was unsure how best to handle the situation. Its tension inadvertently cut off Mark’s airflow.<br/>
<br/>
“You ok Mark? You’re looking a little green.”<br/>
<br/>
The parasite loosed its grip allowing Micah’s breathing to return to normal.<br/>
<br/>
“I just . . . choked there for a second. I’m fine now really.”<br/>
<br/>
“So then? What do you think?”<br/>
<br/>
“Well, I don’t really know. Maybe Angus finally grew a pair. What’s that prove? Even if he is acting a little different, so what? To me it looks like he is finally being accepted as a part of the team, nothing more.”<br/>
<br/>
“So you’re saying you don’t find Angus’ behavior the least bit strange? Zane said stunned. “When I saw making a beeline for coach’s office a few days back, I thought you were going to talk to coach about Angus yourself.” <br/>
<br/>
“Nah, I just wanted to get better acquainted with the coach.”<br/>
<br/>
“So you were kissing up?”	<br/>
<br/>
“I supposed you could call it that.” Mark grinned. “But enough about coach and this whole Angus thing ok. Tell you what. I am having a small group over to my house tonight. Why don’t you join us?” <br/>
<br/>
“Sweet. What time?”<br/>
<br/>
“Say 7pm.”<br/>
<br/>
“Sure.”<br/>
<br/>
“Ok see you tonight.”<br/>
<br/>
* * * * * * * * * * * * <br/>
<br/>
“Great maker, the human Zane suspects,” Mark informed Terry several hours later. “He spoke to me and Zac Hunter today about his suspicion that something strange is going on with the basketball team. He doesn’t know of our existence but he has detected a change in your host’s behavior. I recommend immediate assimilation. If he remains free he may discover us.”<br/>
“Well assimilate him then,” Terry commanded. “In fact . . . assimilate them both!” Terry licked his lips in delight. “We don’t want to take any chances that we have been discovered. I want you to pair up with Austin and Chad. Have them help you with the impregnation. Take two of our brothers from the nest and introduce them to Zane and Zac. Arrange their transformation as soon as you are able. <br/>
<br/>
“It will be done.”<br/>
<br/>
* * * * * * * * * * * *</span></div></div>


path: 1122111111121222211111121111111111111
author_id: nskin039
title: Alien Parasites Part 14
chapter_content:
<div><div> <span>So what did you have in mind for tonight then?” Zane asked as he crossed the landing into Mark’s home. <br/>
<br/>
“It’s gonna be awesome,” Mark grinned. “My parents are away for their 25th wedding anniversary and I know where my old man keeps the key to the liquor cabinet.” <br/>
<br/>
“Sweetness.”<br/>
<br/>
“I figure we can catch some Monday night football action or maybe play some Halo.” <br/>
<br/>
“Sounds good to me.” Zane replied as collapsed lazily into the nearby recliner.<br/>
<br/>
“Who’s all coming?”<br/>
<br/>
“Well, as you can tell Chad’s here already and Austin and Zac are on their way over. It’s just the five of us tonight.”<br/>
<br/>
* * * * * * * * * * * * <br/>
<br/>
Want another beer? Mark asked the group.<br/>
<br/>
Do you even have to ask? Chad, Zac, and Austin replied in unison. <br/>
<br/>
Zane rose to his feet, as Mark passed out the second round. “I think I’ll pass for now, I’ve actually got hit up the restroom,” Zane said excusing himself. <br/>
<br/>
Once Zane was out of earshot, Mark turned his attention towards Zac. “Hey Zac, let’s take a break for a minute.” <br/>
<br/>
“Why? Whatcha have in mind?” Zac asked puzzled placing his Xbox controller on the floor. <br/>
<br/>
“Nothing special. Just a little fun is all,” Mark said as he playfully poked at Zac’s midsection while Chad untucked Zac’s shirt. <br/>
<br/>
“Ok guys, come on. Let’s get back to the game.”<br/>
<br/>
“In a minute. We haven’t finished our fun yet.” Mark teased. <br/>
<br/>
Austin and Chad grabbed Zac around the waist holding him firmly.<br/>
<br/>
“You’re all drunk.” Zac said a slightl slur evident in his own voice.<br/>
<br/>
“So are you my brother,” Mark said planting his lips on Zacs. <br/>
<br/>
Zac was unprepared for Mark’s sudden intimacy. He struggled to separate from the forced embrace but Mark was too strong.<br/>
<br/>
“Just a minute more and it’ll all be over,” Chad whispered in Zac’s ear. <br/>
<br/>
Chad reached into his pocket and removed a parasite, holding it close to Zac’s now exposed belly. “MMGH!” Zac felt a searing pain around his midsection as the parasite started burring into its new host. <br/>
<br/>
* * * * * * * * * * * * <br/>
<br/>
“I wonder who’s winning now,” Zane thought to himself as he walked back towards the others. <br/>
<br/>
“Mark you’re out of toile . . .” but stopped in midsentence. Zane watched as Chad and Austin held down Zac’s body while a large eyeball connected some form of fleshy tendril burrowed into Zac’s chest.  “What the hell?” Zane thought as he darted into the shadows. Once the creature disappeared into Zac’s midsection, the boy’s body began sporadic convulsions before eventually becoming still. “What on earth is going on here?” Zane thought to himself.<br/>
<br/>
As Zac’s body stopped shaking Mark turned to address his teammate. “Are you connected my brother?”<br/>
<br/>
“Yes, this host body is now under my control.”<br/>
<br/>
“Host!” “Control?” Zane barely kept from saying aloud. “I am so screwed.”<br/>
<br/>
“Come. We must bond then,” Mark said as his parasite shot forth from his navel.” <br/>
<br/>
Zane looked on horrified. <br/>
<br/>
“Not now you fools! Zane could return at any time,” Austin declared in a tone slightly above a whisper.“Reassume your positions NOW! We mustn’t alert Zane to our actions.<br/>
<br/>
Zane almost passed out from the sheer shock of what he had just witnessed, especially within the context of his own name. Alien eyeballs living inside the chests of his friends. He knew had to get out this house and fast, but without letting on that he knew of the aliens’ existence. Zane decided to return to the bathroom and wait there for several long minutes, so as to discourage suspicion.”<br/>
<br/>
* * * * * * * * * * * * <br/>
<br/>
 “Yo Zane, I was beginning to think you had shriveled up and died in there,” Zac teased.<br/>
<br/>
“Nah, I’m fine. Just a little clogged up is all. But listen, I do have to run. My mom called and she needs me home right away. Some sort of family emergency. I’m going to be grounded for life if I don’t get home like now.”<br/>
<br/>
“Do you have to leave right now?” Mark probed as he crossed the room towards Zane. <br/>
<br/>
Zane caught on and immediately started backing towards the door. “Yah, my mom already read me the riot act. I have fifteen minutes to materialize or else I’m dead meat for the rest of my natural life. Catch you guys at practice tomorrow ok?” Zane said as he practically flew out the door.<br/>
<br/>
As the door slammed shut, Mark returned to where the others were waiting. “The maker will not be pleased. Tomorrow after practice, Zane must be made one of us.”<br/>
<br/>
* * * * * * * * * * * * <br/>
</span></div></div>


path: 11221111111212222111111211111111111111
author_id: nskin039
title: Alien Parasites Part 15
chapter_content:
<div><div> <span>I’m telling you the truth sir, I saw them; Alien eyeball parasites. They are living inside my basketball team. The members of the team I mean. Please call up the government, the Pentagon, or something.<br/>
<br/>
“Kid, I don’t appreciate people playing practical jokes, on the police force.”<br/>
<br/>
“But this is not a . .  .” <br/>
<br/>
“LISTEN!, do yourself a favor and bug off. NOW!” The police station attendant slammed down the phone ending his conversation with Zane. <br/>
<br/>
Zane buried his head in his hands. “What am I supposed to do?” I have to find someone who will believe me. It’s only a matter of time before they come after me again. Earth is being invaded and no one around here is going to believe me.<br/>
<br/>
* * * * * * * * * * * * <br/>
<br/>
 “AL had been monitoring all Earth’s civilian communications for weeks now. He knew the worms were clever and could hide out in plain sight when they wanted to. Those fools at the Agency had already declared their extraction mission a complete success and given up the worms for dead. “Fools. The lot of them. The worms are still out there somewhere,” AL thought to himself.<br/>
<br/>
His race had been the sworn enemies of the worms for over three millennia. Most of his race had given up their quest long ago. But not AL. He wouldn’t rest until the last of them were destroyed, wiped from existence. He had traced the last known nest of the creatures to a remote planet within the Milky Way galaxy, a planet called Earth. And he had been monitoring for the creatures ever since. If he could succeed in wiping them out here, the universe would finally be free from the evil beasts.<br/>
<br/>
Suddenly AL’s instrument panel glowed wildly as his ship detected a positive ID. AL played back the communication. “I’m telling you the truth sir, I saw them; Alien eyeball parasites. They are living inside my basketball team,” Zane’s voiced buzzed from the internal processing matrix. Unfortunately the communication had been terminated prematurely, before AL could get a complete lock on the signal’s exact location.<br/>
<br/>
But the communication confirmed Al’s worst fears. The worms were still alive and well. The agency’s belief the worms were dead was nothing but an elaborate ruse, probably one of the worm’s own design. Now he all the justification he needed to start combing the local populace for these basketball team members. No matter the cost, the galaxy, no the universe, needed to be rid of this parasitic race once and for all. And AL would be the one to do it.<br/>
<br/>
* * * * * * * * * * * * <br/>
</span></div></div>


path: 1122111111121222211111122
author_id: seuzz
title: The Puppetmasters: An Oral History
chapter_content:
<div><div> <span>As you turn the page, you notice that there's writing--upside down--on the back. You turn the book over and start to read.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
I was in the den doing homework when the telescreen cut away. Not that I'd been paying attention. Dad was only watching his country-western music show while Mom was sewing up a new dress in the corner. I was doing math. I glanced up as the announcer's voice replaced a woman singer's warble, and felt a little chill at the "Special Report" graphic that had replaced her image. There were always crises in those days, and only a few weeks before Dad had restocked the fallout shelter after the President had been on to talk Communist revolutionaries making trouble down in Panama.<br/>
<br/>
But it was a local story, apparently, so I went back to my studies, and didn't even hear the words "flying saucer" when the on-the-scene reporter spoke them. "That's out near Bill McLain's place," Dad rumbled from his easy chair after a few minutes.<br/>
<br/>
"What's that, dear?" Mom said, looking up from her sewing machine.<br/>
<br/>
"That spaceship," Dad said. "That'll be the woods out by his pasturage."<br/>
<br/>
That got my attention, and I raised up from the floor to peer at the screen. You couldn't see anything, since it was dark out, nothing except some lights that's danced and shook as the camera wobbled. The reporter on the scene was jabbering excitedly, though, something about a door opening, and "Here they come. They are little creatures, about--" And then things cut out. After a few seconds the feed went back to the news studio, where a middle-aged man with gray hair sat behind a desk and frowned at something off-screen.<br/>
<br/>
"We seem to have lost the feed," he said. News anchors are always telling you what you already know. "We will return to it when we get it back, but to recap, an unidentified object has reportedly been spotted landing --"<br/>
<br/>
"Do you think it might be dangerous," Mom said, looking back at Dad with a worried expression.<br/>
<br/>
"Oh, it's just Orson Welles having fun again," Dad snorted. "There really oughta be a law against--" He snorted and got out of his chair to change channels to a Western. "I'll drive out to Bill's tomorrow, get the real story." He grunted loudly as he settled back into his chair. "The real story'll be more fun than the hoax."<br/>
<br/>
I watched the screen for a bit before returning to my homework. I could beat him to it, I thought. I went to school with McLain kids, the twins--Vine and George--and could bike out tomorrow, which was a Saturday, and get it from them.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
But the hoax--or, as we all later learned (some of us sooner than others), the hoax that covered up the reality--was already busted when we got up the next morning. The paper had it all: Kids playing a prank in the farm country outside town had staged a "flying saucer landing." The report came with a chin-tugging editorial about the gullibility of "television reporters" who chased and spread false stories before nailing down any facts. <br/>
<br/>
Me, I grinned while gobbling down my cereal as I read. "Kids", huh? That meant Vine and George were probably in on it, second- or third-hand at least, for they didn't seem to me to be the prankster type. Big, husky kids they were, with red-hair and freckles like their dad, and more for talking about hogs and latest improvements in tractors than in space travel. Dad read the same article I did, but he didn't say anything about it.<br/>
<br/>
So after I finished my morning chores in the garden I pulled my bike out and rode it slowly up the back roads toward the McLain place. It was a hot, sunny day, and sweat was pouring off my face by the time I rode up to their weather-beaten house. There were a lot of vehicles out front, including some sheriff's cars, which certainly argued for the McLains being at the center of the hoax. A couple of deputies were standing by the kitchen door, silently gazing out at the empty horizon, but they didn't stop me as I squeezed past them and opened the screen door without knocking.<br/>
<br/>
Mr. McLain was there, standing by the table, with two men in dark suits and a sheriff. No one was talking, and they all seemed a little blank, as though lost in their thoughts. Mr. McLain turned toward me, and it was a little queer the way his face seemed to come to life when he saw me. "You lookin' for Vine and George?" he grinned. "They're out in the barn. Go talk to them."<br/>
<br/>
One of the dark-suited men stared at me in a watchful way, and for a moment I thought he was going to speak. But Mr. McLain made a small gesture, and his guest relaxed.<br/>
<br/>
I didn't much like the scene--it all seemed very adult and official--so I just nodded and backed out of the kitchen as fast as I could. Again, none of the deputies spoke to me as I dodged them and trudged out to the old barn and its battered silo.<br/>
<br/>
It was dark and musty inside the barn, and it took me a moment to get used to the lack of light. Then I saw Vine and George.<br/>
<br/>
They were standing with their backs to me, and the first thing that struck me was that they had their shirts on. It was hot in the barn, and in my experience most farm boys will strip to the waist when doing manual work. But I didn't think much of it.<br/>
<br/>
They were bending over crates stacked high on pallets. I call them "crates," but they were made out of a metal that gleamed oddly with a bluish light. Vine was at the bottom while George was standing on the stack, a few feet above him, rooting around inside. They both turned as I called out them.<br/>
<br/>
Again, I was met by oddly blank expressions, and they didn't change even as I stepped forward. "Your pa said you were out here," I said. "Said to come find you. Is that the flying saucer?"<br/>
<br/>
Vine just stared, and then grinned. "Sure is," he said. "Saw that on the news? Wasn't it great?"<br/>
<br/>
"Great," I echoed without much enthusiasm. "Ticked my dad off because it interrupted his program."<br/>
<br/>
"Come up and take a look," George said from the top of the pile. His grin--like his face--was a twin of his brother's.<br/>
<br/>
So they <i>are</i> the pranksters, I thought, and didn't instantly step forward. Back in the third grade, one of the kids came back from Florida with a can, and spring-loaded "snakes" burst out when he gave it to me to open. And another time I found a real garter snake in the bottom of my gym bag when I changed out after P.E. I don't like practical jokes, and this one had been a humdinger. Vine and George might have other surprises up their sleeves.<br/>
<br/>
But if there's one thing that kids don't like to do, it's to act scared in front of their peers. So I jutted out my chin and stepped onto the crates and prepared for the worst.<br/>
<br/>
The worst is always worse than you expect.<br/>
<br/>
George stepped back as I drew up next to him, and I looked down into the open top of the crate. It was filled with something I couldn't describe. Even afterward, when I knew exactly what it was, I never had the need to expressly describe it. Suffice it to say it looked like a huge blister pack made of a thick, translucent, plastic-like substance. But organic.<br/>
<br/>
As I frowned down into it, I felt arms grasp me from behind--Vine, catching me in a bear hug. Even then, I didn't let it throw me, and just sighed. I didn't even flinch when George reached around and pulled down my collar in the back. Whatever this gag was--<br/>
<br/>
I just had time to see the dark, blob-like thing in his other hand before he put it on the back of my neck.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
A lot of people got ridden by the Titans, of course, and I've no reason to describe what it was like. It was like nothing, when you get down to it. I suppose a horse that's been saddled and had a bit slid between its teeth feels the rider's weight and presence, and feels his will in the tug of the reigns and dig of the heels into the flanks. But the horse is still the horse, and is a mostly unthinking thing, and does its horsey things even when it's being ridden hard. So I was still myself while the Titan was riding me. The difference is that I <i>became</i> like a horse after it was on--a thing without any real thoughts of his own. To the extent that I had thoughts, they were the Titan's thoughts. Or, maybe, they were my thoughts, being ridden and directed just as it rode and directed my body.<br/>
<br/>
But there was a brief moment when I felt it going on: a hot, sticky feeling as it latched onto me and slid down my back under my shirt. I reared back in Vine's grasp, and then relaxed numbly. When I was steady again, Vine released me. George already had his shirt off, and he turned around, so that I saw the slug that had seized him. Vine pulled my shirt off, and my feet--at the direction of another intelligence--shifted as I turned my back on George.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
To continue investigating the room: "<a href="https://www.Writing.Com/main/interactive-story/item_id/1510047/action/view/chapter_map/11221111111212222112" target="_top" title="Interactive Story Chapter in Item # 1510047">Disposing of Lucy</a>" <a href="https://www.Writing.Com/main/interactive-story/item_id/1510047/action/view/chapter_map/11221111111212222112" target="_blank" title="Open in new window."><img border="0" height="12" loading="lazy" onmouseout="$(this).css('opacity', '.4');" onmouseover="$(this).css('opacity', '1');" src="https://www.Writing.Com/nw.gif" style="opacity:.4;" width="12"/></a></span></div></div>


path: 11221111111212222111111221
author_id: seuzz
title: The Puppetmasters: An Oral History (2)
chapter_content:
<div><div> <span>Are Titans that are fresh from a nest intelligent? Do they have memories? I don't know, and to the extent that I've read about them, I'm not sure anyone else knows either.<br/>
<br/>
They quickly become intelligent, though, once they are on a host. They are parasites, purely, borrowing not only nutrients but even the minds of those they ride. The difference is that they can accumulate the minds of more than just their host. Each cell in the great hive gradually comes to resemble every other cell as they pool their knowledge. Of course, once the cells are spread over a wide area it becomes hard to keep them all synched up. So some hosts act as messengers, traveling over great distances, accumulating the knowledge of each local cluster and carrying it to others.<br/>
<br/>
That wasn't my job, even later, and in these early stages of the invasion I had other jobs to do. But I couldn't execute them until the Titan on my back had absorbed my own memories, and integrated them with those of the others the Titans had already seized. That took a little while.<br/>
<br/>
I don't know how long I stood there, with my bare back pressed against George's as our two Titans merged for the exchange. Maybe it was only five minutes; maybe it was closer to an hour. I only stood and stared back at the barn door--which Vine had closed again, against prying eyes--content to be a receptacle.<br/>
<br/>
And then I felt a little life--the kick of a heel against my flank--in me, and I pulled my shirt back on and buttoned it up. I walked back to the house and into the kitchen and without asking for permission from the puppets who were there I picked up the phone and called my dad. I told him I was at the McLains but that my bike had a flat and they were too busy to take me home and could he please come out to pick me up. He grumbled and I whined and he said he'd be out in an hour. My eyes grazed over those of Mr. McLain as I hung up, but I didn't have to say anything, for he could pick up from the clues that a new host would be along in a bit. Wordlessly, I returned to the barn and helped Vine and George. We never exchanged a single syllable as we broke open the nest one cell at a time, drawing out the Titans, putting them into an incubator to warm, and then transferring them to ordinary, terrestrial crates whose appearance, as they were carried into town, wouldn't draw attention.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
I suppose we'd gotten at least a hundred or so packed for immediate distribution when I heard someone call my name from the barn entrance. It was Dad, and I'd only to look at his face to know they got him in the kitchen. I trudged over, and we briefly stripped to the waist for another Titan-on-Titan conference. When it was done, I went over to the incubator and pulled out half a dozen slugs and carefully arranged them all over my torso, where they'd be warm, and covered them back up again with my shirt. Dad had my bike in the back of his truck by then, and we drove home. I gave him one Titan to use on Mom, then pulled my bike down and pedaled off to the house of my best friend.<br/>
<br/>
I found Brett out in his garage, kneeling next to the lawnmower. I felt a twinge of annoyance to see he was dressed only in long shorts and sneakers: no place to hide the slug on him. "Hey," I called. "You hear about the flying saucer?"<br/>
<br/>
"Yeah," he said back sourly. "Idiots."<br/>
<br/>
"Who's the idiots? The ones who made it or--"<br/>
<br/>
"Yeah, them." He tilted the mower up to peer at the blade. "It's crap like that that makes it impossible for the rest of us, the <i>real</i>--"<br/>
<br/>
"The <i>real</i> space aliens?" I grinned. "Mike Skinner teasing you about Uranus again?" I used the scatological pronunciation.<br/>
<br/>
He glared at me. He was a genuine space freak, with a telescope and love of science-fiction stories and TV shows, and was always going on about how the universe had to be filled with extraterrestrial civilizations. He was serious enough about it that he'd get angry when anyone used the phrase "little green men." <i>They're not gonna be like us,</i> he'd shout.<br/>
<br/>
"It was Vine and George," I said. "Can you believe it? Yeah, I just got back from their place, they've got this fake flying saucer in their barn."<br/>
<br/>
"What's it look like?" he asked, his truculent tone leavened with genuine interest.<br/>
<br/>
I shrugged. "Like a flying saucer. It's all balsa wood and tarpaulin. But if you're stupid TV reporter, and it's dark--" I laughed. "It's too bad the feed went out before they got close enough to see they'd been pranked. That'd be some really humiliating footage."<br/>
<br/>
"It's really strange that it cut out like that," Brett said in a serious tone. "It would take a big electrical or magnetic disruption to--"<br/>
<br/>
"Maybe the cameraman clued in and turned it off," I said. "Guys like that got more brains than the people they put <i>on</i> TV. But come on, go with me back out to the McLains. They're gonna turn it into a roadside attraction."<br/>
<br/>
"They're <i>what</i>?"<br/>
<br/>
"Are you deaf today? They didn't mean to turn it into a giant publicity stunt, but that's what they got, and they figure they can make some money off it. So they're going to put it out in that field--"<br/>
<br/>
"Isn't it already in the field?"<br/>
<br/>
"That was something else." I waved my hand dismissively. "They got a full-scale model they're building, and they're gonna put it in the field and charge people a dollar to come look at, and another dollar to go inside it."<br/>
<br/>
"What'll be inside it?"<br/>
<br/>
"A lemonade stand or something. Maybe cookies and punch. Another way to make a dollar. And with all the publicity they got, they figure they can make a couple of hundred bucks, at least, before it all peters out. Or maybe-- You know that snake farm out on Highway 9? It's been there for years. Maybe they can make it something permanent, like those dinosaurs up in Minnesota."<br/>
<br/>
He shook his head with disgust. "Like I said, idiots. Oh, that sounds smart enough," he grumbled, "but--"<br/>
<br/>
"Come help 'em make it look real. I bet you could talk yourself into a partnership with them. Your expertise along with--"<br/>
<br/>
"Huh. I could use a little extra money." He looked thoughtful.<br/>
<br/>
"So put on your shirt and tell your folks you're--"<br/>
<br/>
"They're not home," he said. "They--"<br/>
<br/>
"Good," I said. "That makes it easy. Put the mower down and--"<br/>
<br/>
As he turned back to the mower, I reached under my shirt and gently detached one of the Titans. Brett hasn't got a lot of back--he's a tall and skinny one--and the knobby ridges were slick with sweat. But the slug stuck well enough. He reared back hard, and I had to grab him and lower him to the cement floor. While he lay there, shuddering, I closed the garage door and put on the light. I felt worry as I looked down at him--it looked like he was having an epileptic attack--but the fit soon passed, and he sat up with a dazed expression. I pulled up my shirt and pressed my rider to his.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
We didn't go back to the McLains--things were already well in hand out there--but instead went into his house. Brett called Ken Short out, and we jumped him in the bedroom. Slouched on Brett's unmade bed, we stripped to our waists and let our riders make a three-way connection. There was no need to speak amongst ourselves after that, and Ken quietly took two of my remaining stock back home with him while Brett and I waited for his parents. We greeted them, and after Brett's dad sat down to watch TV, we cornered his mom in the kitchen and put a Titan to the back of her neck; while Brett supported her, I took the last one into the living room and quietly ambushed his dad from behind. We had another conference--four-way, this time--and I rode my bike back home.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
There was a flurry of comings and goings at my place that night. The Titans were in a great hurry to establish themselves, but they also had to bury their presence. The landing had made a very big splash. One of the all-news channels had picked up our local station's reporting while it was on-going, so much of the nation had seen the news that space aliens had landed in Iowa. Nor had the subsequent exposure of the "hoax" dampened it. Someone--one of the Titans' borrowed brains--had miscalculated in trying to pin it on "kids," for it tickled people to think that a couple of hick teenagers had taken in the news media, and it was fodder for television comedians and serious pundits alike. Controls had to be established before anyone realized that something very sinister had actually occurred.<br/>
<br/>
The reporters at the site of the initial landing had been the first victims, of course, followed quickly by TV station management. They got the media sewed up pretty quickly, along with the top people in the police force. I suppose the hospitals were also a high priority, but I wasn't involved there. There were also some "internal national security" types who had swept onto the scene in the first hours after the broadcast, and it was a stroke of luck on the invaders' part that they were co-opted so quickly. I only knew about them because I had to deal with them a little at the McLains when I went back out there on Sunday. They put me to work moving supplies to a makeshift "flying saucer" in a field a couple of miles from the actual craft, so that anyone who saw would think it really was the work of kids. Vine and George and Brett and Ken and I quickly erected the balsa-wood framework and silvery tarpaulin for our "hoax". We moved crates and incubators into the interior. One old fella trudged into the field as we worked and jawed a bit before we grabbed him.<br/>
<br/>
Monday was when we really began to move.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
To continue investigating the room: "<a href="https://www.Writing.Com/main/interactive-story/item_id/1510047/action/view/chapter_map/11221111111212222112" target="_top" title="Interactive Story Chapter in Item # 1510047">Disposing of Lucy</a>" <a href="https://www.Writing.Com/main/interactive-story/item_id/1510047/action/view/chapter_map/11221111111212222112" target="_blank" title="Open in new window."><img border="0" height="12" loading="lazy" onmouseout="$(this).css('opacity', '.4');" onmouseover="$(this).css('opacity', '1');" src="https://www.Writing.Com/nw.gif" style="opacity:.4;" width="12"/></a></span></div></div>


path: 112211111112122221111112211
author_id: seuzz
title: The Puppetmasters: An Oral History (3)
chapter_content:
<div><div> <span>Sunday night passed quietly, with me and my parents sitting in the living room, staring at nothing, until ten, when my Dad had put out the lights. Then we sat around until morning, continuing to stare at nothing.<br/>
<br/>
The door opened around seven, and we turned as one as one of those "government" types came in. He set an insulated cooler, of the type used to keep colas and beers chilled, on the table. No need for a conference this time. "For the school," he said to me, and left.<br/>
<br/>
It made perfect sense. It's hard to get inside people's houses. The cops can't go house to house putting slugs onto people; mercantile establishments are public places where anything might be accidentally observed. But kids could carry the slugs into their parents' houses; and kids gather every day at a common location, cut off from public view. Take the schools, someone had realized, and you take the town. <br/>
<br/>
Our high school, then, was to be the central distribution point for the invaders.<br/>
<br/>
So my dad drove me out there well before classes were to start. I suppose I--or my rider--understood the plan well before I was given the chest. Maybe I understood it even before I'd gone to see Brett, for he was there when my dad dropped me off, and we stood by the bike racks for a few minutes, waiting silently, until Ken pulled up. Brett and I lugged the ice chest into the empty school while Ken took point. We started in the office. "We're raising money for the science club," Brett told the principal after we had him alone in his inner sanctum. "We wanna sell some drinks, maybe some snacks and candy bars--"<br/>
<br/>
"What kind," Mr. Horn asked.<br/>
<br/>
Brett jerked his shoulders--a motion exaggerated by the hump between his shoulder blades--and opened the chest. Mr. Horn peered down into it, at the slugs stacked within. "What the devil--" It was all he could get out before Brett grabbed him by the head and forced him down. Ken already had another slug out from under his shirt and dropped it onto the back of his neck. Mr. Horn twisted about, struggling for a minute, and then we took him under the arms and pushed him back into his chair. After the Titan had him under control, he called the secretary in, and we got her. These were Titans who had already been on a host--their originals had swapped experienced riders for fresh ones--so there was no need to conference.<br/>
<br/>
Brett and Ken and I then swept through the school, glancing into homerooms to see which teachers could be taken. Most of them were candidates, since the school had a staff dress code, and only Miss Bayard--who was wearing a thin, shimmering blouse through which a slug might be glimpsed--got left off the list we took back to Mr. Horn. One by one, teachers--and the school nurse, naturally--trooped into the office as they were summoned over the intercom. Once there, Mr. Horn would smile and invite them to take a seat before him. Brett or Ken or I would then step up behind and put a Titan on them. It went off with assembly line efficiency, and when it was time for classes to start, the secretary took over for us.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
It's very difficult to spot someone who is being ridden by a Titan, if the Titan wants to blend in. If you know what to look for, you can see the hump that the slugs form on the back, under the shirt, between the shoulders. But there is nothing in the eyes, nothing in the speech, nothing in the carriage to betray the fact that you're not talking to a human being, but to an intelligence that has wired the human being's mind and body and is pulling the strings. The pack horse is not a zombie, except when it is alone--by itself or in the company of others like it--when it doesn't have to pretend. Even in first period History, my most boring class, I fidgeted in my desk and twirled my pencil and sighed and looked out the window and took furtive glances at my female classmates--<br/>
<br/>
It was many weeks before the Titans discovered sex, so I'm not sure the slug on my back understood why it should steer my eyes over toward Emma Blanchard with such regularity. Perhaps it only knew that that was my habit, and that it should mimic my habits as exactly as it should. Like an actor who has perfectly but phonetically memorized the lines of dialogue in a foreign language, it could speak fluently on my behalf without knowing <i>what</i> it was saying. I do know that the rest of my body did not act as it normally did while contemplating Emma's crisp blouse and skirt and perfectly proportioned calves in their sleek stockings.<br/>
<br/>
But all that is just an aside. As I said, it's very difficult to spot someone who is being ridden by a Titan, and this applies to the Titans themselves, for they only have the evidence delivered (and interpreted) by the senses of the creatures they ride. Of course, they knew who they had personally taken, so I knew that Brett and Ken and Mr. Horn and about half the teachers were now allies. And because the Titans were privy--through their own slug-on-slug conferences--to captures that had been made out of my own sight, I could calmly walk up to Sam Haley at his locker after first period. "Work with Coach in fifth period P.E.," I murmured. "We'll take another delivery at lunch for him to use." He nodded as he exchanged the books in his bag for books from his locker.<br/>
<br/>
But I had to take things at face value after second period when Mike Skinner caught me by the neck and dragged me outside. "You and your fag friends been having fun," he chortled as I choked. "Lookin' up Uranus again?" It was a joke he never tired of.<br/>
<br/>
"That's Vine and George," I gasped. "They--"<br/>
<br/>
He said a word that the son of a preacher had no business using, and kicked my feet from under me. I staggered against the wall, but had the presence of mind to twist so that my shoulder, not my slug, took the blow. "Bet you gave 'em the idea. My dad says you guys should be prosecuted."<br/>
<br/>
"It was just joke."<br/>
<br/>
"<i>You're</i> a joke. And here comes the punchline."<br/>
<br/>
I curled up hard and winced, like I was supposed to, but I felt nothing inside. No fear, no trepidation, no worry, no humiliation. Just stimulation and simulated response.<br/>
<br/>
But the blow never landed. I opened my eyes, and found Harry Gibson--like his friend a linebacker for the football team--holding Mike's arm. "Why are you wasting your time on this dip," Harry sneered.<br/>
<br/>
"Because he <i>is</i> a dip," Mike said. "Him and his stupid friends set up that fake UFO--"<br/>
<br/>
"Is that right, Muller?" Harry demanded of me.<br/>
<br/>
"It was Vine and George," I insisted. "I went out and saw them this weekend--"<br/>
<br/>
"So you <i>are</i> helping them," Harry said. "I heard they're planning on turning it into a for-profit thing."<br/>
<br/>
Mike said another bad word. "What are you talking about?"<br/>
<br/>
"They're gonna set up a little tourist attraction, is what they're saying," Harry said. "Are you gonna be partners with them," he asked me.<br/>
<br/>
"I was talking about helping out, being a friend," I said. The wariness in my voice would have sounded very genuine to them.<br/>
<br/>
"Good. Make sure you're part of it." Harry's face split into a nasty grin. "And everything you get out of it, you pass on to me and Mike."<br/>
<br/>
"I'm not gonna give you a penny!"<br/>
<br/>
"Then you're gonna get it from us. Mike." Harry grabbed me and held me tight while Mike pummeled me hard in the stomach. Shuddering pains swept through me, and the blows were so hard I wanted to vomit. After three such blows, Harris dropped me. "Remember what you owe us."<br/>
<br/>
I flopped to the ground and hung my head as they walked away, and ignored the bell. Still, I felt nothing as I acted out a part I'd often had to suffer for real in the past.<br/>
<br/>
A minute past, and Harry's sneakers appeared before me. He dropped to the ground, grabbed my hair, and wrenched my hair up. "You were at the McLains this weekend?" he asked, staring at me hard.<br/>
<br/>
"Yeah."<br/>
<br/>
He stared some more. "Okay. Sam and I will take the lunchtime delivery. You help Coach during sixth." He dropped me again.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
Things were going to have to be that way--agents feeling each other out--until we finally got the school entirely converted. During the day I spotted students going in and out of the nurse's office, but made no approaches to them. Nor did Brett and Ken and I do any talking, except the sort that would be expected of guys who mostly played with AV equipment when not complaining about homework and girls. If Brett was particularly convincing at lunch as he recounted the time he stole Mindy Solomon's panties from the girls' locker room, I felt not even a twinge of satisfaction at the skill of the impersonation. Nor did I pay special attention when I saw Sam and Harry lugging an ice chest from the cafeteria kitchens.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
To continue investigating the room: "<a href="https://www.Writing.Com/main/interactive-story/item_id/1510047/action/view/chapter_map/11221111111212222112" target="_top" title="Interactive Story Chapter in Item # 1510047">Disposing of Lucy</a>" <a href="https://www.Writing.Com/main/interactive-story/item_id/1510047/action/view/chapter_map/11221111111212222112" target="_blank" title="Open in new window."><img border="0" height="12" loading="lazy" onmouseout="$(this).css('opacity', '.4');" onmouseover="$(this).css('opacity', '1');" src="https://www.Writing.Com/nw.gif" style="opacity:.4;" width="12"/></a></span></div></div>


path: 1122111111121222211111122111
author_id: seuzz
title: The Puppetmasters: An Oral History (4)
chapter_content:
<div><div> <span>As I mentioned earlier, I was not privy to my rider's thoughts and plans, and had no thoughts of my own to spare in wondering what was happening in the school or elsewhere. To the extent I've been able to deduce the events o f those first few days, and of my own role in furthering the invasion, it comes from reading what others--other survivors and those that turned back the Titans--saw and deduced.<br/>
<br/>
So I can only hazard that the first few days we placed a fairly light footprint in the school: taking many of the staff and teachers, but only such students as would be immediately helpful outside the school. That meant the children of those in positions of influence and authority: policemen, doctors, prominent businessmen, the clergy. Most of the slugs we imported in the school were meant to pass through it, in the care of those students we captured. The school as a whole fell only later. That's because the number of Titans in the early stages was very limited.<br/>
<br/>
But I helped. I had P.E. last period, and arrived early. Coach Wirthlin called me into his office. There was no need for the slugs to conference, for it was just as easy to receive my instructions verbally. He told me who in the class would be captured, and how we would do it.<br/>
<br/>
I was excepted from having to change out. Once the others had assembled on the gym floor, Coach sent the bulk of the class outside to do laps. The chosen remainder he said would go in for "weighing" first. One by one he summoned them into the little room next to his office and put them on the scale; I stood behind with one of the ice chests, and as my classmates concentrated on the numbers in front of them, I stepped up behind and put a slug on each bare neck. There were only six, and when we were done they changed back into regular clothes; Coach gave all of us passes and sent us to the library; to me he gave a list of names--our new and satisfied recruits--to take to the office. <br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
Vine and George McLain had skipped school to continue working on the "flying saucer," and when school let out I went with Brett and Ken to help finish it up. Even from a distance it didn't look the least bit convincing. The silver-tinted sheets that made up its "body" glinted in the afternoon light, but they rippled in the wind. The bulk of the craft was as squat and square as a shoebox; atop it, they had rigged a kind of cupola to serve as a central "dome." They had firmly braced the sides at one point and set a ladder against it, so that patrons could clamber up to the "hatch" and descend into the dark interior via another ladder. They had swept the insides as clear as they could and layered it over with old mattresses and quilts and sheets. A flap in the back offered a hidden egress. <br/>
<br/>
They were mostly done, and into the late afternoon we worked to reinforce the struts and otherwise firm up the structure. We moved crates of Titans and incubators inside. We talked in muted tones about where we'd position the Titans and how we'd use the darkness to take visitors as they descended the ladder.<br/>
<br/>
Around about six, we heard the growl of a motor, and Vine, who was topside, called down sharply. We joined him just in time to see the old pickup truck lurch to a halt by the "ship," its fender just shy of a main supporting beam. Harry Gibson and Sam Haley got out of the cab, while Mike Skinner, Bobby Talmadge, Jeff Green, and Eric Isaacson leaped out of the bed. They all stared at the saucer with sneering, gleaming eyes.<br/>
<br/>
"So this is the thing from another world," Sam jeered. "What a lotta junk."<br/>
<br/>
"If I farted on it, I could blow it over," Bobby agreed. Like the others, he was a football player, with a meaty frame stitched tightly into his dungarees and short-sleeve plaid shirt.<br/>
<br/>
"Care to see inside, sir," Brett asked with cheerful courtesy. "Only a dollar more."<br/>
<br/>
They all started at his tone, and broke into guffaws. "How much you pay me not to kick it over," Harry retorted, and raised a huge foot.<br/>
<br/>
Sam caught him. "Nah, let's check out our investment."<br/>
<br/>
"Our investment?" George echoed, and frowned.<br/>
<br/>
But our first guests ignored him. "What, you get in through here?" Harry said, and dashed easily up the ladder. "Come on, Sam."<br/>
<br/>
Haley followed him up, and the other three crowded after them, but Vine and George stopped them. "Only room to go in one at a time," George said. <br/>
<br/>
Brett and I scrambled up after Haley and Gibson, who shifted only a little to let us squeeze onto the platform next to them. Brett slid down into the interior, and I followed. "Just come on down when you're ready," I hollered up through the hatch.<br/>
<br/>
Brett already had two Titans out as Harris and Sam followed more slowly, but I stayed his hand. "All three?" I asked the football players. They grunted an affirmative.<br/>
<br/>
Jeff was the first one down, and twisted around too fast for Brett to get at him, and my colleague had to step back and shield the slug he held from Green's sight. "So what am I supposed to be looking at?" he demanded. <br/>
<br/>
"Hey, what's that over there," Harry asked, and put his hand on Jeff's shoulder. He gently pressed him around, and when Green had turned far enough, Brett leaped for him. It was like a squirrel jumping onto a St. Bernard, and they grunted and gasped softly as Brett tried to get the Titan onto Green. Jeff went down on all fours, and then collapsed in a heap.<br/>
<br/>
Talmadge was already inside by that point. "What's going on," he demanded, for even in the dim light it was possible to make out the tangle of limbs formed by Jeff and Brett. Harris and Sam seized him by the arms and forced him toward me. I snatched a slug out of an incubator, forced Bobby's head down with my free hand--it was like trying to bend an oak tree--and slapped the Titan onto the back of his neck with the other. He too crumpled onto a mattress.<br/>
<br/>
"Get down here, Skinner, we're all waiting," Harry called. I looked up at the indistinct blob framed against the blue sky by the hatch. It wavered there for a moment, and then vanished. Vine and George yelled; then the walls of the saucer shook as something heavy hit the ground.<br/>
<br/>
Haley and Gibson rocketed up the ladder, and I followed. Skinner was dashing for the truck, but as he laid a hand on the door handle he looked back, then took off across the field as Harry and Sam pounded after him. I leaped to the ground and helped Vine and George up. <br/>
<br/>
Sam ran after Mike, but Harry jumped into his truck and started it with a roar. Its wheels spun against loose dirt and grass and he wheeled around to give chase. Something brushed past me, and Brett, a Titan in his hand, was sprinting after them. But Vine and George and I just watched.<br/>
<br/>
Skinner had made it halfway across the field to where the dirt track joined a farm road before Harry caught up to him. He clipped his teammate with the fender of the truck, and Skinner went up, tumbling over the cab and falling into the dust. Then Sam was on top of him. Harris's brake lights showed as he skidded to a halt. <br/>
<br/>
I turned at the feel of a strong hand on my shoulder: It was Bobby Talmadge, but he was gazing intently past me at the distant scrum. Green appeared at our side a moment later. When I looked back, Brett had caught up to the others, and he and Sam and Harris were huddled over the broken body of Mike Skinner.<br/>
<br/>
I don't know what story got told to explain the accident that put Skinner in the hospital for a week. It wouldn't have mattered, and maybe no story even got told. The doctors would have ignored the reddish-brown mass that pulsed between his shoulder blades, and his father--the preacher at the town's big Baptist church, who was the final intended target--wouldn't have cared either after Harris and Sam had paid him a visit. Skinner looked pretty banged up when he returned to school, but by that point we didn't have anything to say to each other. <br/>
<br/>
No one at the school had anything to say to each other.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
To continue investigating the room: "<a href="https://www.Writing.Com/main/interactive-story/item_id/1510047/action/view/chapter_map/11221111111212222112" target="_top" title="Interactive Story Chapter in Item # 1510047">Disposing of Lucy</a>" <a href="https://www.Writing.Com/main/interactive-story/item_id/1510047/action/view/chapter_map/11221111111212222112" target="_blank" title="Open in new window."><img border="0" height="12" loading="lazy" onmouseout="$(this).css('opacity', '.4');" onmouseover="$(this).css('opacity', '1');" src="https://www.Writing.Com/nw.gif" style="opacity:.4;" width="12"/></a></span></div></div>


path: 11221111111212222111111221111
author_id: seuzz
title: The Puppetmasters: An Oral History (5)
chapter_content:
<div><div> <span>The week that followed would have struck most visitors as entirely unremarkable. Students went to class, and teachers taught them. Kids took notes and tests and turned in homework; they goofed off between classes; girls gossiped and guys talked about girls and cars and what they'd do if the foreign situation turned hot after they graduated from high school. Those who were still in control of themselves blithely carried on, and those of us with humps between our shoulders carried on right alongside them.<br/>
<br/>
So things mostly went unremarked inside the school too. I was privy to only one such remark. On Thursday I saw Reggie Doorn hunched by the drinking fountain watching the crowds with a furtive eye. Reggie was one of the beatniks, a nobody and not a priority for any reason, but I'd often talked to him, so I sidled up and talked to him now.<br/>
<br/>
His face was curled up in an expression halfway between puzzlement and fear, and the glance he gave me was keen with worry. "Don't things seem a little weird to you," he asked. I looked around and asked what he meant. "I don't know," he admitted. "It just seems like-- People seem a lot <i>quieter</i> lately."<br/>
<br/>
I said that the halls seemed as noisy as ever.<br/>
<br/>
"I mean when-- In class." He raised a hand, as though the words he sought could be pulled from the air. "And-- I was in the library earlier. Aaron and Ken and Sylvia were at the next table, but they weren't talking."<br/>
<br/>
"They were doing homework?"<br/>
<br/>
"They weren't doing anything. They were kind of spaced out. It made me realize there's been a lot of that lately."<br/>
<br/>
"Worried about tests or something," I said with a shrug.<br/>
<br/>
"Those are weeks away."<br/>
<br/>
I said something about Ken having problems at home and excused myself. I then went to have a very quiet word with Mr. Paulson. During fourth period, which I shared with Reggie, the intercom crackled, summoning him to the office. He looked much calmer when he returned.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
Otherwise, all my time was spent with the McLains out at the flying saucer. We'd opened it for business on Tuesday, and I helped staff it after school. Signs had gone up on the nearby highways, and we did a brisk business. A good portion of our clientele came from the town, but the real targets were travelers looking for a curiosity to explore on their long cross-country drives. They were insects buzzing along on the breeze, and each one--whether a solitary salesman looking to stretch his leg or a family trying to distract bored and cranky children--went away pollinated with Titans, spreading them to new cities. We had exhausted the original nests by this point, but each of us was birthing a new Titan every night, doubling the invading population every twenty-four hours. Some of them left on our visitors; most of them went into containers to be shipped to cities that were still being conquered; a sizable number remained behind, to go onto new hosts so as to solidify our grip on the town and increase the number of nightly births. They slowly lapped deeper into the school, and into the rest of the town.<br/>
<br/>
Certain departments of the federal government had taken an interest by that point. I never heard directly what had happened, but on Sunday my dad got a call saying that the saucer was being abandoned; apparently some government agents had paid us a visit without us capturing them, and it seemed best to close up shop before they could return with reinforcements. A National Guard unit did sweep into the town the following Monday, but the sheriff's office welcomed them most cooperatively, and then we had a cohort of Guardsmen to help patrol our streets and beat back any more unwanted counter-strokes. <br/>
<br/>
Later in the week the President took to the airwaves for a major speech. But he had only just gotten out the phrase "hostile interstellar species" before the telescreens went black; when they came back on, all the stations claimed that the feed had been interrupted by technical malfunctions, and nothing more was heard in Iowa from Washington, New York City, or the West Coast. We were on our own.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
A turning point came ten days after Brett and I had lugged that first ice chest into the school office. I had started going in to school early, and this day was no exception. But Mr. Paulson, who taught History first period, gestured me into his room, and handed me a slug from a stock he had in his desk. "For Emma Blanchard," he said. "When we stand for the pledge." I thought nothing, for I had no thoughts, but it was clear that we in the student body were going to stop pretending, and would now move brutally and openly against those who had been free up to now.<br/>
<br/>
Mr. Paulson handed slugs to some others who came in early, and then the room began to fill up. I took a desk behind Emma. I felt nothing, of course. The bell rang, and we all shuffled to our feet for the pledge of allegiance. Emma had a thin scarf about her pedestal-like neck, but her sweater rode low in the back. As voices rose in a chant, I pulled her sweater back with a crooked finger and put the Titan on her. From the corner of my eye, I saw half a dozen of my classmates execute similar maneuvers on students in front of them. I propped Emma up until she had mastered her balance. Then she pulled her sweater off, exposing her bra-straps and her milky-white back and the thing that hung there. I took off my own shirt, and turned, and was enveloped by that blankness that falls on you when your Titan is communing with another.<br/>
<br/>
Mr. Paulson delivered a lecture, but I think we all took fewer notes than was normal.<br/>
<br/>
Similar scenes occurred sporadically in classes before lunch, but that was enough. At the end of fifth period Mr. Horn got on the intercom and announced an assembly to be held in the gym. Everyone wordlessly trooped through the halls and quietly lined up outside the doors. One by one Mr. Horn and some of the other teachers checked us against a clipboard of names and sent us in. There was no pushing, no talking, no horseplay, except at one point, when loud whispering could be heard from the back. There was a brief scuffle, and Coach Wirthlin hurried off. Apparently a few victims had been overlooked and were making noises about how weird everything had suddenly turned. But their classmates quickly got them pinned down, and after a few more slugs got fetched there was no more trouble.<br/>
<br/>
The gym doors closed behind us, and everyone stripped to the waist--the girls even removed their slips and brassieres, so that everything stood exposed--and we milled around, making and breaking off contact with whoever happened to be around. By the end of sixth, I'm pretty sure that every Titan had absorbed everything from every student, including all the knowledge that the other Titans had absorbed outside of school from all the Titans <i>they</i> had been in contact with.<br/>
<br/>
That would explain some of the odd jobs that many of us picked up. After the closure of the "flying saucer" attraction I had nothing to occupy myself with after school, but I helped out in the strangest places. Most of it was just manual work, like going down to a warehouse where shipments of Titans were prepared. Some of the manual work was of a technical variety. The Titans had no affection for their mounts, and if someone was hurt in a serious accident, they would simply destroy the host and move the slug to another mount. It was probably one such accident that led me to spend a week operating a camera inside the TV station, expertly moving it about according to the director's instructions as we filmed a locally produced farm report.<br/>
<br/>
Some have argued that the Titans were themselves intelligent, but I'm not so sure. If they were intelligent, they had a conceptual pattern quite different from ours, and I don't think they understood us. I mentioned before that they seemed to "read" us as though our minds were a template for transforming inputs into outputs: If someone does <i>this</i> then the human mount should do <i>that</i>, and they didn't really know what <i>this</i> or <i>that</i> were. They certainly seemed to have some peculiar ideas about what was and what wasn't necessary human behavior.<br/>
<br/>
In the matter of physical well-being they were remarkably slovenly. People ceased to bathe, and if we'd been in control of ourselves we'd certainly have remarked on the foul odors that sat heavily on the nose wherever a small crowd had gathered in an enclosed space. We didn't "sleep" either, not in the normal sense. I think probably we were asleep the entire time we were being ridden, but no one went to bed, and many mundane tasks got performed at the most god-awful hours of the morning simply because there was no more reason for human society to shut down at night. Nutrition was another matter toward which the Titans were careless. People went days without eating, and when they became weak they would scarf down anything that was at hand. I remember once, when my Titan had finally noticed the hunger pains, I went into the kitchen and ate a box of raw, uncooked macaroni elbows and drank down half a jar of spaghetti sauce. Many people became emaciated during the occupation; others became fat. Everyone's teeth rotted.<br/>
<br/>
But in other places the Titans were extraordinarily fastidious about keeping up appearances. Newspapers continued to be published and delivered promptly, though the contents were senseless and sometimes weren't even English. Crops were tended and produce shipped, and people even paid using checks and credit cards at the supermarkets. Once, I saw a woman and a clerk arguing vehemently about a coupon; it only ended after the two took off their clothes and let the Titans settle the matter privately between them.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
To continue investigating the room: "<a href="https://www.Writing.Com/main/interactive-story/item_id/1510047/action/view/chapter_map/11221111111212222112" target="_top" title="Interactive Story Chapter in Item # 1510047">Disposing of Lucy</a>" <a href="https://www.Writing.Com/main/interactive-story/item_id/1510047/action/view/chapter_map/11221111111212222112" target="_blank" title="Open in new window."><img border="0" height="12" loading="lazy" onmouseout="$(this).css('opacity', '.4');" onmouseover="$(this).css('opacity', '1');" src="https://www.Writing.Com/nw.gif" style="opacity:.4;" width="12"/></a></span></div></div>


path: 112211111112122221111112211111
author_id: seuzz
title: The Puppetmasters: An Oral History (6)
chapter_content:
<div><div> <span>It was two months into the invasion before the Titans discovered sex. Why it took them so long, I don't know. I think it's further evidence that they didn't really understand us, or that they had no intellect with which to understand anything. They barely took care of our nutritional needs, and had no compunction about working some of us to death, and at leaving others of us totally idle. In general, I'd say they did better at maintaining "normal" behavior when it was of a public kind; we tended to "turn off" when alone or in small groups. <br/>
<br/>
But somehow they did discover sex. Maybe the discovery was like a epidemic that swept through them. It certainly swept hard through the school.<br/>
<br/>
It started at an assembly. We had those semi-regularly, and they were always like the first, a chance for the Titans to synchronize themselves. But on this day the synchronicity took a very bizarre form. We trooped into the gym, and when the doors were closed we stripped to the waist. It started at the far end and built: a low murmuring. During those moments when I was moving from one contact to another I noticed that more and more people were no longer upright, but had dropped to the floor. <br/>
<br/>
Then it hit <i>me.</i> I pulled away from my last contact, and my eye fell on a girl. She had taken all her clothes off, and was laying on the floor with her legs wide. My male member sprang to life, and I quickly peeled off my pants and shoes and climbed on top of her. There was no foreplay. I just took her, thrusting inside while gripping her shoulders as she gripped mine. We grunted and panted kissed passionately, and I thrust rhythmically inside her until I came. As I rolled off her, another student--a girl--took my place.<br/>
<br/>
A hand grabbed me, and another girl pulled me down. I was spent, so we just did a lot of kissing and sucking on each other. I knew exactly where to touch her, and she knew exactly where to touch me. I'd had no sexual experience, but my Titan knew everything it needed to know, and probably had thousands of hours of experience of sexual play on which to draw. Eventually my engines re-engaged, and I came again, taking her from behind while she lay atop a third student.<br/>
<br/>
The Titans made no distinctions, and pushed us past the point of exhaustion. When I could no longer perform--when my member hurt even to be stimulated--I orally pleasured the other students--male and female, student and adult, young and old. Some of them pleasured me. Even after the final bell rang, we continued.<br/>
<br/>
Sex became a regular pre-occupation of the Titans, and the terrible disease outbreaks that occurred can probably be traced to this other epidemic. I should note that there was no pleasure in it for the mounts. Sure, there were the usual physiological reactions--the rising tension, the moment of hanging of suspense, the surge of release--but there was no emotion behind it, because there was no conscious reflection, no chance for us to realize <i>This is good!</i> either during or after congress. I certainly felt no anticipation; I never knew what was about to happen before it did, and it could happen almost anywhere at any time. After that first assembly, it was as likely to happen during class as not. The teacher would be talking, and I'd turn my head at a noise just in time to see two of my classmates--again, it was as likely to be two of the same sex as of the opposite--sliding out of their seats and onto the floor. None of us, the teacher included, paid the slightest attention to these displays, and felt nothing about them.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
Sex wasn't the only primal drive the Titans discovered rather late. Unfortunately, they also discovered the pleasures of violence.<br/>
<br/>
We saw the fights on the telescreen first. After a few months, the invaders had taken control of enough of the country--and the secret had been out long enough--that they could stop pretending on the broadcasts that everything in the occupied areas was normal. After they'd discovered sex, most broadcasts of any type came to have a pornographic element. Sporting events like ball games stopped respecting the rules of the games.<br/>
<br/>
The second "epidemic" probably started in the wrestling ring. Where wrestling events had been restricted to professionals, they were now open to all, and we could watch matches in which members of the audience, of any age or gender or background, would climb into the ring and try to tear each other to pieces. There was no fakery, and I saw people die in brutal ways, with their heads caved in or their limbs pulled out. Boxing became similarly brutal, and then the football and basketball teams started brawling on the fields and courts, ignoring the ball and simply setting on each other. I saw a tennis match where they wheeled up a Civil War cannon and shot it point-blank at one of the competitors.<br/>
<br/>
We were already desensitized, but our Titans didn't learn to mimic these actions by watching them; as with sex, the habit spread through Titan-on-Titan contact until it reached us. It hit our school in the peculiar form of a rampage by Reggie Doorn and his beatnik friends. No one at school talked anymore, except the teachers as they rotely delivered lectures that no one bothered to transcribe into notebooks, so the halls were always silent between classes. On this day there were loud thuds as Reggie and four of friends strode along, swinging metal baseball bats. Many students had their brains bashed out, for no one tried to stop Reggie, and no one fled. Most of the victims fell where they stood, watching their assailants as they approached.<br/>
<br/>
There were sporadic, one-sided fights after that--quick, brutal, and usually fatal--but the violence was never as widespread as the sex. Possibly the Titans sensed that the violence was not to the good of their host population. But shambolic destruction showed up in other places. Cars would plunge without warning into showroom windows; there were gas explosions about town. The fire department took to starting as many blazes as they put out.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
I don't know--no one knows--where all this would have ended up if the Titans had been able to spread unchecked. It seems likely, from what we saw happen in the closed societies of Eurasia, that it would have ended with a civilizational collapse and the destruction--through famine and plague--of most of the human population. Fortunately for those of us in North America and in most of the island republics, governments there grasped the nature and gravity of the invasion very quickly and were able to establish a cordon that kept the continent east of the Appalachians and west of the Rockies almost entirely free. From behind that cordon they made some ill-starred military strikes; deep in their research facilities they experimented on captured Titans and made a biological study of the enemy. They were able to find and exploit a weakness before the middle third of the continent could fall too far.<br/>
<br/>
I was working in the mortgage department of a bank when it happened to me. As I said, the Titans had very peculiar notions of what humans needed to do, and of everything they touched, the financial institutions seemed to manage best under the occupation. People continued to deposit and draw money; they negotiated for loans; and the bankers questioned applicants closely about their plans for the money, even though none of the financed enterprises were ever launched. When the loan officer of one of the banks died in a fire, I went down to the department store, bought a new suit, and went in to take his place. I suppose I was quite good and convincing at it, for my Titan knew exactly what questions to ask.<br/>
<br/>
I was sitting at my desk, hands folded and smiling quizzically at a man who wanted to refinance his house. I had a folder in front of me, and I kept glancing down at it and at a line of numbers. "We'd very much like to oblige," I was saying, "but property values in your neighborhood have taken a downturn recently."<br/>
<br/>
He started to make some reply, but I stopped listening as a raw, prickly sensation swept up my spine and the back of my neck. My hair stood on end. I felt a great numbness, and a tremble passed through me.<br/>
<br/>
I suddenly knew exactly who I was, what I had been doing, and what had been going on. I wanted very hard to vomit.<br/>
<br/>
But I kept my nerve. "Excuse me," I said, and with trembling legs rose and tottered into the bathroom. I got the door locked before the shakes began in earnest, and I ran some water into the sink and splashed my face. I looked in the mirror.<br/>
<br/>
I looked awful. My hair hadn't been cut in months and looked like a tangled mop. Long, thin whiskers sprang from my cheeks and chin. My complexion was mottled and pallid and crusted over with acne. My arms were covered with open sores, and I felt other sores on my body and legs.<br/>
<br/>
My Titan had released me, for reasons I couldn't comprehend, and I was terrified it would seize control of me again. Gingerly I slid off my jacket and pulled out my shirt. Something heavy was shifting around on my back, near my belt. With infinite loathing, I pulled down my pants and kicked the thing off. I looked down.<br/>
<br/>
It was the slug. It looked thin and starved and bloodless. My mouth peeled back into a rictus as I stared at it, and then, unable to control myself, I stomped on it, hard, grinding it into the tile. I was like leather. With my toe, I kicked back behind the toilet.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
To continue investigating the room: "<a href="https://www.Writing.Com/main/interactive-story/item_id/1510047/action/view/chapter_map/11221111111212222112" target="_top" title="Interactive Story Chapter in Item # 1510047">Disposing of Lucy</a>" <a href="https://www.Writing.Com/main/interactive-story/item_id/1510047/action/view/chapter_map/11221111111212222112" target="_blank" title="Open in new window."><img border="0" height="12" loading="lazy" onmouseout="$(this).css('opacity', '.4');" onmouseover="$(this).css('opacity', '1');" src="https://www.Writing.Com/nw.gif" style="opacity:.4;" width="12"/></a></span></div></div>


path: 1122111111121222211111122111111
author_id: seuzz
title: The Puppetmasters: An Oral History (7)
chapter_content:
<div><div> <span>The bank was full of the things still, and I wanted to hide in the bathroom, lest they realize I had escaped their control and put another of their mates upon me.<br/>
<br/>
Instead, knowing not where I got the courage, I dressed again and went back out. I remembered with a startling clarity all that I done and seen, and I felt a queer confidence that no one would stop or question me if I just left the bank; mounts were always going off without explanation, steered on their inscrutable way by their slugs. So I went out and got into the car I'd driven in to work. I drove very slowly, for I didn't know how to drive--that had been the Titan doing its work--trying to figure out what to do. I didn't want to go home: I couldn't bear the thought of seeing my parents, knowing what they really were.<br/>
<br/>
So I did something that was probably very stupid. I went to the school.<br/>
<br/>
Classes were still in session and the halls were empty. I fought down my nausea at the smell left over the months by hundreds of unwashed bodies, and tried to compose my face into the mask-like expression of one who is being ridden, though I probably failed. I went up to classroom doors and peered in through the windows.<br/>
<br/>
It was a shocking sight, and I don't know why the Titans didn't see it, except that I do think they were actually very stupid. That, or they couldn't seriously comprehend that their control could fail so suddenly and catastrophically.<br/>
<br/>
Many of the students, it was clear, still had slugs upon them; these sat very still in their desks, staring straight ahead. But I only had to look at the other students to see that they, like me, had lost their slugs. They too were sitting very still, but they all wore an expression of stark terror. A few shifted nervously in their desks. But none of them spoke; none of them looked at each other; and only one of them caught my eye, and he looked quickly away.<br/>
<br/>
It was the same scene in every room I checked. Some of the teachers, too, had become free. I saw Mrs. Belden sitting at her desk, weeping quietly. At the end of one hallway I saw a small figure--a freshman girl--steal from a room. She saw me, and bolted the other way. I didn't chase her.<br/>
<br/>
I went to the office. The front desk was unmanned, and I knocked softly at Mr. Horn's door. There was a long pause before a muffled voice bid me enter.<br/>
<br/>
His face was the first to fill me with relief, for as with the others I could instantly tell that his Titan had also fallen away. He was pale, and he licked his lips as he looked at me. I closed the door and locked it. He pushed back from his desk, eyes rolling with horror, as I slid off my jacket and hiked up my shirt and turned around. I would have panicked in his place too, at the implied request for a merger, but I only meant to show him that I had no slug on me. When I turned back around, he had slumped in his chair and was breathing heavily, but he looked calmer. "How long--" he croaked.<br/>
<br/>
"About an hour ago. I was at the bank, and then I felt--"<br/>
<br/>
He nodded. "It happened to me this morning. I've been hiding in here--" His voice broke. "Do you think we're the only ones?"<br/>
<br/>
"I think at least half the school's free," I replied, and told him what I'd glimpsed in the classrooms.<br/>
<br/>
He put his face in his hands and rubbed it slowly. "Could you go back out there again," he asked, and swallowed. "Write down the names of any you think are--?" He stumbled, searching for the right word. "That are themselves? If you don't want to--" he added hastily.<br/>
<br/>
I told him I thought I could, and he gave me a clipboard and took one himself. We spent thirty minutes scouring the halls, taking notes. We then went to the gym, where we found Coach Wirthlin also hiding in his office. Once he realized that he also wasn't alone, he regained his courage more quickly than Mr. Horn or I had, and quickly took command.<br/>
<br/>
Mr. Horn returned to the office, and used the intercom to summon one by one those students we thought were free of the slugs' influence. They came to the gym, where the coach and I quickly confirmed that they were free. Almost everyone had a dead Titan riding down low on them; the coach used a pair of pliers to extract these and toss them into a garbage bag.<br/>
<br/>
Most of those we brought back into the gym just collapsed--emotionally and physically. Most of the girls started bawling their heads off; many of the guys did too, including some--like Harry Gibson--that I expected to bear up better. But enough of the boys--and no few of the girls--kept their spirits up, and ventured back into the school to reconnoiter and take more names. Slowly, the gym filled.<br/>
<br/>
But most of the school was still unaccounted for--or still in the invaders' control--when the final bell rang. We had a few teachers with us, and there was a fraught argument about what to do. We finally just barricaded the doors and waited for the campus to clear. Even after that, we stuck to the gym all that afternoon and night, except for a raid on the cafeteria. Showers got taken and we bedded down for the night, to see what morning would bring. Everyone separated widely; no one wanted to touch each other.<br/>
<br/>
The next day was fretful. Coach let us work off tension by heading out in groups to jog around the practice fields. Others of us made another reconnaissance of the school after first bell had rung. We discovered the student population sharply reduced--maybe only a quarter of the full complement--and there were very few teachers. It was obvious that all of them were still being ridden. But the disease that was sweeping the Titans was working fast, and follow up sweeps during the day let us rescue almost half of the remainder as their masters peeled off. At no point did the Titans try to interfere with us. As I said, either they were very stupid, or they just couldn't interpret the evidence of the total reversal of their fortunes.<br/>
<br/>
The gym was almost full by early afternoon, and emotions were boiling over; the few staff we had--teachers, administrators, and those students who had been tapped to help run things--were overwhelmed trying to keep fights from breaking out as distraught teenagers lashed out at each other. Everyone was terrified of leaving the safety of the campus; horrified by what they expected to find at home; and unable to figure out any plan. Things might have gone very badly for us--as they went very badly in lots of other places--if a relief expedition hadn't pulled in at around five.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
The government's counter-stroke had actually been going on for two weeks, and our town--being buried near the heart of the invasion--was one of the last to be liberated. But that meant that the troops--though exhausted--knew what to do, and did it with dispatch. They knew that the schools would hold the greatest single concentration of survivors, and in each town they hit that was the first place they visited. They were burly men--soldiers--stripped to nearly nothing so as to show they weren't possessed, and they set up field hospitals by the high school and efficiently went about administering antibiotics to us. The camp swelled as they brought in more survivors from the town proper. By the next morning, we knew that the city was entirely free, and we could go home to start repairing the damage.<br/>
<br/>
Everyone knows how the invasion was turned back: the use of a virus known to be fatal to the Titans but engineered to be largely harmless to the human hosts. We were all feverish and achy for about a week afterward, and we all took booster shots to ensure that our systems continued to swim with a disease that would kill any Titans that managed to reattach themselves to us. Caches of them were found scattered all over town, and were destroyed.<br/>
<br/>
I won't talk about life after the invasion. We were the first town in North America to be hit; the McLains died while we were under occupation; and that makes me one of the earliest known victim of the Titans to have survived. That's the reason I've been asked to contribute an account of my experiences to this oral history on the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of that near catastrophe. I will admit that I participate only reluctantly, and agreed to only in the hope that it will provide some catharsis. My doctor wryly tells me that this remembrance and confrontation with the past will be better for my health than the loaded pistol that I take down and contemplate every night before going to sleep, to the nightmares I still have.</span></div></div>


path: 11221111111212222111112
author_id: seuzz
title: The Stripper
chapter_content:
<div><div> <span>The book tumbles open to something that looks like a scientific journal: <i>Proceedings of the Academy of Isomorphic Transformations.</i> You turn the page and start reading. It seems both familiar and unfamiliar at the same time ...<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
"Who is she? What secrets does she hide?" The voice over the PA was as dark as the dimmed stage, and as guttural as the growling music. Murmurs of anticipation ran around the stage as a silhouette rose in its middle.<br/>
<br/>
"This is who you came to see, gentlemen." The silhouette grasped the pole and thrusts out a hip. "The Voodoo Lounge presents our very own ... <i>Voodoo!</i>" Lights--a throbbing purple--flashed on. And there she was, revealed; and, in those strips of fabric, very revealing.<br/>
<br/>
Her round breasts sat on--they didn't rest behind--silken purple supports. Sleek gloves stretched past her elbows toward thick gold armbands. Long earrings flashed as her dark hair twirled and flew. There were two other stages in the club, and the deep, plush seats around each were fully occupied. But even at two flanking stages, patrons had turned and were craning their necks for a glimpse of the club star.<br/>
<br/>
But not everyone was raptly enjoying the show. <br/>
<br/>
<i>I must be crazy,</i> Agent Fallon thought to herself as she glared up at the dancer from under severely cut bangs. <i>I'm supposed to be a professional, and I'm acting like I just picked up a job application for the Bureau.</i><br/>
<br/>
Another voice in her head wryly made itself known. <i>Well, he is a con man. He's supposed to be able to get inside your head.</i><br/>
<br/>
She snorted to herself. <i>So why don't I just give him my credit cards and bank password while I'm at it?</i> "How long are you going to make me sit here, Evans?" she said aloud.<br/>
<br/>
"What's the problem? Don't your bosses pay you by the hour?" The man next to her fit much better with the rest of the clientele: sports coat draped directly over a low-cut t-shirt; three-days growth of beard; opaque aviator shades. Doubtless his eyes were locked onto the girl dancing in front of him. "Enjoy the show."<br/>
<br/>
"Not my flavor," Fallon said. "Which I think you know by now. Asshole."<br/>
<br/>
"It's the deal we agreed to. You treat me fair, I treat you fair."<br/>
<br/>
Fallon grabbed her purse and stood. "Personal humiliation wasn't part of the deal. You finish this last fling of yours, then come find me in the van. My bosses are getting impatient."<br/>
<br/>
"Find something to keep you and them busy," Evans said to her retreating back.<br/>
<br/>
No one else at the table watched her go, for the dancer had unhooked her brassiere and thrown it over her shoulder as she sauntered around the edge of the stage. She dropped it onto Evans' head as soon as Fallon left.<br/>
<br/>
"She must like you," the waitress said as she bent next to him. <br/>
<br/>
He allowed himself a small smile, then plucked off the garment and laid it across his knee. "Maybe it's my lucky night."<br/>
<br/>
"Every guy thinks that." She set a large glass down inside the armrest. "Here's your girlfriend's drink."<br/>
<br/>
"She's not my girlfriend, and she won't be back."<br/>
<br/>
"Take it. It's paid for."<br/>
<br/>
Again, Evans smiled. <i>Fallon isn't subtle,</i> he thought, <i>but she has a sense of humor. So, she left other babysitters behind for me.</i> "They have rooms for private dances?" he asked the waitress. "Am I comped one of those too?"<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
Fallon hit her cellphone as soon she was in the van. "Fallon. We got him." She listened. "He's being cool and coy, so we're letting him finish the date. He's not the only who can play mind games." Again she listened. "There are teams covering the front and back and inside. There's no holes in the net." She rolled her eyes at what got said next, then interrupted. "I got another call coming in. Hang on." She switched to the other line, and rubbed her temple. "Yeah, fine," she sighed. "Just watch the door."<br/>
<br/>
After hanging up she slumped in her seat. Five years tracking this invisible bastard. Let him climax his run with a lap dance; for her, it was now just anticlimax.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
"You wanted me?" The girl called Voodoo pushed the beaded curtain aside and stepped into the room. A small wave of relief washed over her when she saw the occupant: the only one at her stage who actually looked good. He looked better in the private room, draped insouciantly in the chair. Idly, she wondered if she'd like it better if he took those damn shades off.<br/>
<br/>
"Absolutely," Evans said. He reached into his jacket pocket--and turned the lining inside out. "I paid up front."<br/>
<br/>
Voodoo hid her disappointment. "I do better when you show me the incentives."<br/>
<br/>
"I'm a friend of a friend of the boss's."<br/>
<br/>
A little something caught in the back of her throat. "You have my undivided attention." She peeled off the t-shirt she had donned back in the dressing room. "And I'm pretty sure I'll have yours."<br/>
<br/>
"That shouldn't be too hard," Evans said. "I like you." He gave a slight smile as her hips swayed back and forth. "Where are you from? I heard your name's Priscilla. Or is that another fake name, like Voodoo?"<br/>
<br/>
She put her arms behind her head. "You want to ask me questions, or watch me take my clothes off?"<br/>
<br/>
"Can I do both?" he asked as she leaned in close. He rubbed a fingertip along her naked hip; the nail scraped deeply.<br/>
<br/>
She pushed his arm back to his chest. "Don't touch."<br/>
<br/>
Evans smiled, and sucked on his finger. "But you can touch me?" he laughed softly. "Hardly seems fair." She straightened back up and began to sway again. "Are questions okay?"<br/>
<br/>
Her jaw tightened. <i>The customer is always right. But invasion of privacy is even worse than touching.</i> "You can ask," she murmured diplomatically.<br/>
<br/>
"I understand. You don't have to answer. I'll fill in the answers myself."<br/>
<br/>
<i>You've been at this for eighteen months,</i> she thought to herself. <i>But there are always new perversions.</i> <br/>
<br/>
"Where are you from?" he said. "Who were your parents?" He crooked a finger. "I won't touch, but come closer." She complied, and he stretched his legs, planting them between her feet. It made dancing difficult, but he seemed to be more into the mind games anyway. <br/>
<br/>
"You look different. Are you mixed race?" To that one she allowed a small smile of acknowledgement. "Why are you in New Orleans? Why did you become a stripper?"<br/>
<br/>
The questions were gentle and ingratiating, and even though she didn't answer aloud, she found herself straining not to blurt them out. Her breath became short and shallow.<br/>
<br/>
"Who is your best friend? Where do you live? Is there anyone special in your life?"<br/>
<br/>
Now she began sweating. <i>It's hot in here. This is exhausting.</i> The room spun. <i>What time is it? I've been at this for hours.</i> And still the questions, slowly and teasingly, batted lightly at her.<br/>
<br/>
"I think that's enough," she finally gasped.<br/>
<br/>
"I think so too." He slowly stood, and raised a finger. "One touch? Just one?" Reluctantly, she nodded.<br/>
<br/>
And then she gasped. He'd struck fast, a quick blow to the side of her neck. She blinked and swallowed. She felt like a balloon, leaking air. Numbly, she put a hand to her neck; when she took it away, she was holding an ocean of blood.<br/>
<br/>
Evans took her by the shoulders and gently guided her to the floor. His index finger--the long, green, scaly finger ending in a bone like a carpenter's nail--was already softening and shifting. The other fingers were softening and shifting, too, becoming slimmer and shorter.<br/>
<br/>
He took her in his arms and sucked at the side of her neck, at the wound, in long draughts, spilling nothing. Muscles and tissues and arteries contracted and shriveled. Five minutes later, there was only a sack of leathery skin wrapped around brittle bones, which he shoved under the chair.<br/>
<br/>
Evans took a deep breath and ran his fingers through his hair, pulling it out into long ringlets. He plumped at his chest, fluffing the slabs into fat pillows. He grabbed his crotch and pushed and massaged, until he had his fingers wedged deeply inside himself. He slipped off his clothes and rubbed his legs, pressing them into slimmer shapes. He closed his eyes and touched his face lightly, like a blind man learning a new face; it's what he did when he had no mirrors.<br/>
<br/>
And as he did all this, he murmured to himself. "Priscilla," he started in a gravel-like baritone. "Priscilla Kane. 23B Montauk Apartments. Hi Mom. How's Chester? Have you talked to your friend Sarah lately? I'm sending you some more money. No, that work study job didn't come through. I had to go back to-- Please don't start, Mom. It's clean and no one touches me--" He caught himself and giggled. "They just watch, that's all." When he was done, his voice was still low and throaty, but melodious.<br/>
<br/>
He twitched up her discarded panties and brassiere and t-shirt, and quickly dressed. On his way to the dressing room, to change into street clothes, he snatched a drink off a passing tray: one of the privileges accorded the club star.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
"Night, Priscilla," the bouncer said. "See you tomorrow."<br/>
<br/>
"No you won't," she retorted. "I quit." And she stalked off into the night.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
To continue investigating the room: "<a href="https://www.Writing.Com/main/interactive-story/item_id/1510047/action/view/chapter_map/11221111111212222112" target="_top" title="Interactive Story Chapter in Item # 1510047">Disposing of Lucy</a>" <a href="https://www.Writing.Com/main/interactive-story/item_id/1510047/action/view/chapter_map/11221111111212222112" target="_blank" title="Open in new window."><img border="0" height="12" loading="lazy" onmouseout="$(this).css('opacity', '.4');" onmouseover="$(this).css('opacity', '1');" src="https://www.Writing.Com/nw.gif" style="opacity:.4;" width="12"/></a></span></div></div>


path: 112211111112122221111121
author_id: seuzz
title: The Things That You Find on the Internet
chapter_content:
<div><div> <span>You turn the page. Hmm. A different story ...<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
"My God," Angie gasped as the man stepped out of her bathroom. She stumbled back and sat onto the bed with her jaw practically in her lap. "You-- You look just like him!"<br/>
<br/>
"Really?" the man said, sounding genuinely surprised and pleased. He turned and peered at himself in the bureau mirror and plucked at a bang. "I never even heard of this guy, and only had the pictures to go off of."<br/>
<br/>
Angela leaped over to seize him by the shoulders, and spun him around. She grabbed the celebrity magazine from his hand and raised it next to his face. Her mouth split into a huge grin. "It's perfect. Is it really-- Really--?" She darted into the bathroom and looked around. Empty. She even looked in the tub, and returned to the bedroom shaking her head in wonderment. "When you went in, you were-- Well--"<br/>
<br/>
"Go on, say it," the man smiled. "Kinda shrimpy and funny looking, right?"<br/>
<br/>
She laid her hands on his shoulders and ran them down his arms. "What about the rest of you?" Her palms came to rest on his chest.<br/>
<br/>
"Well, I had to improvise. I figured he looked kind of good, though."<br/>
<br/>
Angela bit her upper lip, and he didn't resist as she pulled his sports coat off him and let it drop to the floor. She yanked his dress shirt out of his slacks and quickly unbuttoned it, working up to the collar. Then it came off too, leaving him in a white t-shirt that clung closely to well-formed pecs. She frowned. "I don't think he has--" She plucked distastefully at the curly chest hair.<br/>
<br/>
"Oh, he goes for the shaved look, huh?" He rubbed at his chest through the t-shirt, and the dark hairs came loose and drifted away. <br/>
<br/>
Angela's eyes glistened with anticipation, and then she lunged in and gave him a quick but deep kiss. "Oh God," she blushed. "Maybe I shouldn't have-- I mean--"<br/>
<br/>
"You're paying for the afternoon," he laughed, and grasped her elbows lightly. "What do you want to do?"<br/>
<br/>
The sound in her throat started as a moan but quickly climbed into something between a growl and a yelp. She flung herself back on the bed. "I want to eat you all up. Make a total meal out of you."<br/>
<br/>
His eyes twinkled. "Yes, you strike me as a 'dessert-first' kind of girl. But, um--" He tugged at his ear. "Wouldn't the illusion be more convincing if we took it kind of slow? Like, if we pretended I'm really--" He glanced down at the name on the magazine, and his eyebrows twitched. "Pretended I'm really dreamboat here, and I stopped by for a cup of sugar, and you invited me in, and we got to talking, and--"<br/>
<br/>
Angela rubbed a bit of drool from her lip with a dainty fingertip. "Role playing," she murmured hungrily. "I haven't done role-playing since--" She jumped up. "Come on into the kitchen. I got all the sugar you want in there." She took him by the hand, practically yanking him off his feet as he bent to retrieve his shirt and jacket.<br/>
<br/>
"Stay away from the windows," she warned as they crossed a large sitting room. "I don't want the lawn crew seeing you. If David found out--"<br/>
<br/>
"Who's David?"<br/>
<br/>
"My husband. He'd kill me if--"<br/>
<br/>
"I thought you told me it was his idea."<br/>
<br/>
"His idea of a <i>joke.</i> I was watching you--" She giggled. "On TV, and I said if he died and left me all his money, I'd use it to rent--" She giggled again. "I'd rent <i>you</i> for a night. He said you'd be out of my price range, even with his money and insurance. I said I didn't care--"<br/>
<br/>
"How many rooms are in this house?" her paramour said distractedly as they passed through what appeared to be a <i>third</i> living room.<br/>
<br/>
"Twenty-nine. And <i>he</i> said a shapeshifter would be cheaper. 'And <i>where</i> would I find a shapeshifter?' I asked. 'Take out an ad,' he said. 'Look on the internet. You can get anything on the internet these days.'" They were in the kitchen by now, and she leaned against the refrigerator, but the hunger in her eyes was directed entirely at him. "So I did, and here you are!"<br/>
<br/>
"Yeah, the internet is a surprising place," he agreed. "Is that what your husband does? He's in social media or something?"<br/>
<br/>
"No." She made a face. "Real estate. Warehouses."<br/>
<br/>
"Huh. I figured if he's a young guy-- I mean, you can't be more than twenty-two--" <br/>
<br/>
Angela gasped in delight. "Twenty-five, actually," she confessed. "But he's in his forties."<br/>
<br/>
"Mmm."<br/>
<br/>
Her face fell. "What does that mean?"<br/>
<br/>
"It means ... 'mmm.' But can we eat something? Doing a change makes me real hollow inside."<br/>
<br/>
And so they ate and they talked. Mostly she talked and he listened, but he filled in the gaps with little improvised lies to go with his assumed face, and she listened with a fascination that had more to do with his mouth than with the words that came out. And then they went back into the bedroom and took their clothes off and went at it like gangbusters. She was so excited she insisted on taking the top the first three times, and after she lay back exhausted he turned on his side and asked if she was happy and comfortable. "Mm-hmmm," she said lazily.<br/>
<br/>
"Let me fluff your pillow for you," he said, and he straddled her and picked up one of the big pillows. She smiled up at him. He was so handsome, and so nice.<br/>
<br/>
Then he laid the pillow across her face and held it down until she stopped struggling.<br/>
<br/>
When he was satisfied that her pulse wasn't coming back, he got up and pulled on his boxers and started going through the dressers. Carefully he set out all the jewelry and examined it. There was far too much there to be replaced all at once, so he set most of it aside and only pocketed a few small things, like her wedding ring. Examination of her closets showed some dresses and furs that would also fetch a nice price. Probably she had other expensive things stored away, but that could wait until later. <br/>
<br/>
All this time, he kept smiling and humming to himself, like a man who was really enjoying his work.<br/>
<br/>
When he was satisfied with his cataloging, he got back in bed next to her and laid his left hand flat on the back of hers. Slowly, his hand changed, becoming smaller and softer and more delicate. The color and the changes continued to creep up his arm even after he switched to undertake the same operation on the right hand. Then he wedged himself atop her and put his legs next to hers, studying and comparing them closely as he brought his into alignment. They were nice legs, and well tanned--maybe she had done a lot of swimming. He then laid atop her, breathing carefully as his chest expanded and drooped. He ran one hand through her hair, smoothing it out carefully, even as he ran the fingers of his other hand through his own hair, spreading it out carefully as well, until it was well past his shoulders.<br/>
<br/>
Then he fetched a large mirror from her bathroom, and balanced it on his chest so that it caught both of their reflections: His cheekbones rose and his cheeks sank; his chin lost its cleft; his brow softened and drooped; his nose turned up a little; and his eyes turned violet.<br/>
<br/>
When he was done he dressed and carefully wrapped her in the bedclothes and carried her out to his car. It was a two hour drive out to the country, to the spot he had already chosen. Then he stopped by a jeweler to drop off the pieces he had selected so they could be copied into cheaper material. The rest he scattered around various pawn shops.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
"How was Houston?" Angela asked David three days later when he walked into the living room and dropped the suitcases. She laid aside the magazine and smiled up lazily at him.<br/>
<br/>
He sighed, then froze. <i>Angela? In a negligee? At this time of day? With that kind of smile for him?</i> He advanced slowly with a frown and squinted at her. Then he broke into a smile. "My God," he exclaimed. "You look just like her." Angela giggled. "Have any trouble?"<br/>
<br/>
"No. I've had to stay away from the neighbors, but otherwise--" She shrugged. "You have my money?" He took an envelope from his pocket. "You know, if you don't want your wife disappearing quite so abruptly--"<br/>
<br/>
"I wanted something faster and cheaper than a divorce." <br/>
<br/>
Angela sighed and took the envelope.<br/>
<br/>
But David's fingers remained locked on it even after she'd grasped it. He was staring at the ring on her finger. "The hell--?" he said softly. "That's not hers. It's a fake." His eyes blazed as he looked up. "The fuck are you trying to pull, you--"<br/>
<br/>
She sighed again. "You <i>would</i> object to a little light chiseling, wouldn't you, you cheap bastard." And then she stabbed him in the throat with the letter opener she'd been hiding in her other hand.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
It took several weeks, after disposing of <i>him</i> in turn, to sell off his assets even at a distressed price, and to offload the house and all its furnishings. But it came to several million dollars, all of which he converted into physical gold and carried off to bury with the hoard he'd been patiently accumulating for several thousand years. It distressed the bankers to see those kinds of numbers withdrawn, but he was old-fashioned. And besides, unlike his latter-day victims, he didn't trust anything--even banking--that could be done over the internet.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
To continue investigating the room: "<a href="https://www.Writing.Com/main/interactive-story/item_id/1510047/action/view/chapter_map/11221111111212222112" target="_top" title="Interactive Story Chapter in Item # 1510047">Disposing of Lucy</a>" <a href="https://www.Writing.Com/main/interactive-story/item_id/1510047/action/view/chapter_map/11221111111212222112" target="_blank" title="Open in new window."><img border="0" height="12" loading="lazy" onmouseout="$(this).css('opacity', '.4');" onmouseover="$(this).css('opacity', '1');" src="https://www.Writing.Com/nw.gif" style="opacity:.4;" width="12"/></a></span></div></div>


path: 1122111111121222211111211
author_id: seuzz
title: The Pet, Part 1
chapter_content:
<div><div> <span>"Hey Jan," Michael said, bounding up beside the other student and clapping him on the shoulder.<br/>
<br/>
"John," the boy corrected him. He gave Michael a narrow look.<br/>
<br/>
Michael blinked. "I can never tell the two of you apart," he muttered.<br/>
<br/>
"No one can," John said, relaxing a little. "You could look at my clothes, though." He plucked at his basketball jersey. "<i>I'm</i> the one who goes out for sports," he said loftily.<br/>
<br/>
"If you two are identical, how come--"<br/>
<br/>
"Jan just doesn't go for team activities. We play ball all the time at home, though." He and Michael continued walking along the covered portico in front of the high school, then turned past the band/orchestra room. "I bet he could kick <i>your</i> ass."<br/>
<br/>
"I'd like to see him try," Michael laughed. "You should invite me over. Hey Kathleen."<br/>
<br/>
"Losers." The two boys had to stop--less because they wanted to ogle the head cheerleader than because she had stepped right into their path and was imperiously shaking out her hair and adjusting her skirt before moving on. They turned to watch her go.<br/>
<br/>
Michael nudged John. "You should invite <i>her</i> over to your house sometime."<br/>
<br/>
"She'd kick my ass and then wouldn't show up," John sighed.<br/>
<br/>
"Well, <i>I'd</i> show up if you asked me, though I'd punch you if you tried kissing me, <i>you pussy gay-ass faggot!</i>"<br/>
<br/>
John flinched in surprise, but relaxed again at Michael's friendly grin. "Why are you here so late after school?" he asked cautiously. <br/>
<br/>
"Detention. You know how it is." He swung his arm around and rubbed his shoulder. "Zelezny frowns on vigilante violence, but it's the only way to keep the plebes in line."<br/>
<br/>
"I thought maybe you had football practice."<br/>
<br/>
"Not today. Where you off to now?"<br/>
<br/>
They'd come to the bike racks, and John was unlocking his. "Home. Eventually." He hiked his backpack up further onto his shoulders. "Probably just ride around a bit first."<br/>
<br/>
"Well, I'll see you later," Michael said, and rubbed his nose with the heel of his hand.<br/>
<br/>
John smiled weakly, then mounted his bike and pedaled away. He resisted the urge to glance back.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
"Hey boy, I'm happy to see you too!" John exclaimed as he dropped the bike in front of the side gate. "Are you excited to see me? Are you?"<br/>
<br/>
The golden retriever leaped at the fence, barking joyfully. John pushed through the gate and let the dog plant its paws on his shoulders, and he rubbed its ears and neck lovingly. "Did they feed you yet?" The dog barked again. "They didn't? What's wrong with them?" The dog bounded along happily beside him as he crossed to the plastic bin that held the dog food. From it he scooped two cups of feed into the dirty bowl, and Landru--named for the benevolent, omnipresent deity in an old science-fiction show--gobbled it down, seeming to forget its benefactor.<br/>
<br/>
John passed into the house. "I'm home! Mom? Jan?" No one answered, but he wasn't surprised. He passed through the living room and into the back part of the house, to dump his backpack onto one of the beds in the room he shared with his twin brother. He opened the laptop and checked his email. There was one from his dad with the subject line "Do you need $$$?" He quickly deleted it unread, as he did with almost all his father's emails.<br/>
<br/>
"Yo! You home yet?" a voice called faintly from the front of the house.<br/>
<br/>
"I'm back here!"<br/>
<br/>
Running footsteps heralded the arrival of Jan, who bounded into the room and leaped onto his own bed. "You didn't clean up after yourself this morning," he said smugly. "Mom is so going to yell at you."<br/>
<br/>
"I'll tell her it was <i>your</i> fault."<br/>
<br/>
"Oh, she knows whose fault it is," Jan gloated. "I told her." He laughed as John flipped him off.<br/>
<br/>
They were both sixteen, and as Michael had intimated, identical in everything but their wardrobes: sun-bleached hair, rosy cheeks, eyes that twinkled and lips that curled with mischief and happiness. Both were lanky, with big wrists and elbows and hands and knees and feet, and both were thin like bows taut with latent energy ready to spring out. Jan drummed his hands on the bed. "So how was practice?"<br/>
<br/>
"'s okay," John shrugged. "I ran into Michael Stroud afterward."<br/>
<br/>
"Yeah? Your nose isn't caved in."<br/>
<br/>
"He was actually nice to me."<br/>
<br/>
"Pfft. Freak is bipolar. So what are we gonna do? Xbox?"<br/>
<br/>
"I thought I'd take Landru for a run."<br/>
<br/>
"Didn't you get enough running at practice? I wanna shoot guys."<br/>
<br/>
"Where <i>were</i> you?" John asked, and a peevishness leaped into his voice "No one fed him."<br/>
<br/>
"Who, Landru? That's <i>your</i> job. You're the one who wanted a dog."<br/>
<br/>
"And when we got him, you did too. Don't you like Landru?"<br/>
<br/>
"I love Landru. But I wasn't the one stupid enough to say 'Please mom, if we get a dog I'll feed him every day'!" Jan grinned.<br/>
<br/>
"Well, you stay and fire up the Xbox. Get the first few levels cleared," John replied. "I'm taking Landru over to the field. After I take a long shit," he added.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
Landru bounded and ran and sniffed and barked and chased after the croquet ball John had brought with him. He started at one point to run into the pond, but a sharp word from the teenager brought him back. After a good thirty minutes John said "Home, boy," and the dog ran off while his master followed at a much slower pace.<br/>
<br/>
His mom was back by the time he arrived. "Set the table," she said from the kitchen as he walked past.<br/>
<br/>
"Hi mom," he replied, stepping back to stand in the door frame.<br/>
<br/>
"Hi honey. Set the table?"<br/>
<br/>
He looked around. "Are we all eating together tonight?"<br/>
<br/>
She looked up from the pot she'd set on the stove. "Don't you want to eat with your mother?" she said with the gravity of a woman who knows she is making her son feel guilty, and hating herself for it, but is unable to stop herself. When John winced, she relented with a sigh. "You boys can eat in your room again. Like always."<br/>
<br/>
"Mom, if you want us to--"<br/>
<br/>
"No, it's alright. I have some work I have to do anyway."<br/>
<br/>
"Where's Jan?"<br/>
<br/>
"I sent him to the store. How's Landru?"<br/>
<br/>
"Exhausted. My brother will forget stuff, you know."<br/>
<br/>
She gave him a look. "You wanna chase after him, hold his hand?"<br/>
<br/>
"It'll piss him off," John grinned.<br/>
<br/>
"Don't use bad words, sweetheart. He's got the list. But here--" She jotted on a slip of paper as the water heated. "You have money?"<br/>
<br/>
"Enough for these things," John replied as he glanced at the list, and dashed out the door.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
John was in the middle of his homework when he felt eyeballs on the back of his head. He looked around to find Jan in the doorway, frowning at him. "Are you pissed at me?" his twin asked. <br/>
<br/>
"Don't use bad words," John replied.<br/>
<br/>
"Fuck you," Jan retorted, then glanced worriedly over his shoulder. "Are you pissed at me?"<br/>
<br/>
"Why would I be pissed at you?"<br/>
<br/>
"Because you went to the wrong store and couldn't find me?"<br/>
<br/>
"No, it's not that." John turned back to his homework, pencil poised thoughtfully over the paper. But when he turned back, it was with a seeming change of subject. "We should invite Michael Stroud over for some ball."<br/>
<br/>
Jan's eyes widened. "Are you--" Again, he glanced over his shoulder. "Are you fucking nuts?"<br/>
<br/>
"We can take him, the two of us. He doesn't do hoops. You can even be on his team. I'll still win." He smiled faintly. "Won't that be sweet?"<br/>
<br/>
"He won't take us up on it."<br/>
<br/>
"It was his idea."<br/>
<br/>
"He won't remember. I told you, he's a freak, all mental." Jan waved his hands around his head. "And if you ask him, he'll try punching you but wind up hitting <i>me.</i>"<br/>
<br/>
"So we challenge him in front of his friends. He won't back down then."<br/>
<br/>
Jan groans. "I don't want to have to deliver your eulogy, but if that's what you want to do," he conceded glumly. "Anyway, are we okay now?" John nodded happily. "Awesome. Oh, Mom's taking me to church with her. The choir director needs help moving stuff."<br/>
<br/>
"Do I need to come?" John asked. His brother shook his head.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
As John returned to his studies, Jan went out to the car. But instead of getting in the passenger side, he climbed behind the wheel. He then smoothly pulled off his baggy t-shirt and expertly slipped on a bra and blouse. As he shook at his hair he simultaneously plucked at his chest, and each time he did so, the fabric as it settled bulged out a little more, until it was draping over soft, maternal breasts. His hair fell lower and lower, covering his eyes and the back of his neck, and changing from a bleached blonde to a ruddy chestnut. His features bled and ran like mascara in the rain. But it was running in reverse, and when it cleared he was neatly and expertly made up. He slipped a few pins into his hair, then slid off his tennis shoes and pulled on the pumps that were in the floorboard. He was already in "mom jeans."<br/>
<br/>
Then, as the spitting image of his and John's mother, he started the car and backed into the street.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
To continue investigating the room: "<a href="https://www.Writing.Com/main/interactive-story/item_id/1510047/action/view/chapter_map/11221111111212222112" target="_top" title="Interactive Story Chapter in Item # 1510047">Disposing of Lucy</a>" <a href="https://www.Writing.Com/main/interactive-story/item_id/1510047/action/view/chapter_map/11221111111212222112" target="_blank" title="Open in new window."><img border="0" height="12" loading="lazy" onmouseout="$(this).css('opacity', '.4');" onmouseover="$(this).css('opacity', '1');" src="https://www.Writing.Com/nw.gif" style="opacity:.4;" width="12"/></a></span></div></div>


path: 11221111111212222111112111
author_id: seuzz
title: The Pet, Part 2
chapter_content:
<div><div> <span>Michael Stroud pounded the basketball against the pavement. He was bent double, and he glared hard at John. The latter, for his part, was grinning back. He too was bent double, spreading his arms wide, blocking Michael's progress. The burly footballer leaned to one side, then tried to make a dash in the other direction. <br/>
<br/>
The basketball bounced off his foot.<br/>
<br/>
He scrambled after it as it shot away, but Jan recovered it first. John blocked his brother's progress, and Jan tried passing the ball back to Michael, but his aim was off, and John intercepted, took it to the half court, then drilled around to make a basket. Hoots went up from the half dozen guys perched on the side of the black top.<br/>
<br/>
Michael put his hands on his hips. "It's not fair," he growled quietly.<br/>
<br/>
"You got my brother helping you," John said.<br/>
<br/>
"He's helping <i>someone,</i>" Michael allowed.<br/>
<br/>
"Ooooh!" Jan hooted. <br/>
<br/>
The moment hung dangerously, until Michael shrugged. "I didn't think I'd win anyway," he said. "Come on guys." He turned back to his buddies. Neither John nor Jan could make out their words, but it was clear he was getting a merciless amount of shit flung at him as they trudged off.<br/>
<br/>
"Well, that was cool," Jan said, and tossed the ball back to John. "I wasn't even helping you much."<br/>
<br/>
"It's a good thing, too," John observed. "I don't think his friends picked up on it like he did." The brothers bumped fists and returned home.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
"There was a robbery at the bowling alley two nights ago," John said quietly the next morning as he looked at news sites over his cereal. It was a cold breakfast for him and Jan both, as the latter had come down with the news that their mom wasn't feeling well.<br/>
<br/>
"Which one," Jan asked. He had his own tablet out, but was absorbed in a video.<br/>
<br/>
"The one next to the church. They got, like, $10,000. Police recovered the money, though." He continued to read. "They guy ran out on foot, tried ditching it someplace. He got away, but they found the money when they searched." His eyes flicked up at Jan. "That was the night you guys were at church."<br/>
<br/>
Jan stared back, then burst out laughing. "Alright, we're busted. Church needs a new roof, so pastor sent me and mom out to get some cash, and you know bowling's a sin or something--"<br/>
<br/>
"I just mean, did you guys see anything?"<br/>
<br/>
"Yeah. Some guy in a ski mask ran up and asked us to hold his suitcase. We looked in it and it had all this cash in it, so we panicked and threw it away in the park." Jan's eyes danced with mirth.<br/>
<br/>
And yet John didn't laugh. "Really?"<br/>
<br/>
"Yeah, really. No. What are you asking me this for?" Jan threw his hands up in a way that both signified bafflement and spattered milk on the wall. <br/>
<br/>
"I wish I'd gone with you guys is all, I guess," John said.<br/>
<br/>
"Number one, nothing happened, and letter B, what could you have done that we couldn't?"<br/>
<br/>
John got out of his chair and collected the bowls. "I'll make us lunch. PBJs again?"<br/>
<br/>
"Mom says money is tight. PB only." <br/>
<br/>
John kept his eyes on the sink as he cleaned the bowls.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
The TV was on in the living room, but John found the room empty, so he turned it off. <i>Where did Jan get off to?</i> His mom was in the kitchen, though. "I wanna call dad," he said.<br/>
<br/>
She glanced at the clock. "He won't be home for another hour, honey. You know the time difference."<br/>
<br/>
"Yeah, I know. I'm just saying is all. I'll call him at eight, if that's okay with you."<br/>
<br/>
"It's fine with me. Where's your brother?"<br/>
<br/>
"I dunno." John turned to leave, but stopped as his mom threw the sponge into the sink. <br/>
<br/>
"That kid," she muttered.<br/>
<br/>
"Which one?" he asked hesitantly.<br/>
<br/>
She did a double take, then swallowed. "Okay, I give. Which one are you?"<br/>
<br/>
"Which one's in trouble?"<br/>
<br/>
She carefully composed her features. "Jan is. He didn't empty the dishwasher like I asked him to."<br/>
<br/>
"I'm sorry, mom," John said. "I forgot. I'll do it now."<br/>
<br/>
"Just be better at it, honey," she sighed. "Is John upstairs?"<br/>
<br/>
"I said don't know." He didn't look at her.<br/>
<br/>
"If it's not one of you it's the other," she said. "Anyway, I need to lie down for an hour."<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
"Hey, you like those links I sent you?" John's father chuckled warmly.<br/>
<br/>
"They were awesome. How come they don't show cartoons like that on TV anymore?" John said. His eyes danced as he sat on the couch with the cell phone pressed against his ear.<br/>
<br/>
"They used to show them at the movies. I mean, that was before my time. I know I'm an old man and everything--"<br/>
<br/>
"You're not old, Dad," John said, rolling his eyes. He lay sideways on the couch and rested his bare foot on the wall.<br/>
<br/>
Just down the hall from the living room where John sat was a closed door, behind which was a room decorated like a home office. It was dark now, but John's dad was sitting in the chair, phone to his own ear, as he talked to his son. In his right hand he twiddled a gold pen.<br/>
<br/>
"I'm just watching the sun going down," he said as he gazed into the darkness toward the wall of the house next door. "I wish you could see it, settling into the Pacific." They continued to talk for an hour, over nothing important; the highlight was his dad telling about his most recent surfing trip, and John's envious responses. They ended with the usual: "I love you, Dad." "I love you, John. Say hi to your brother for me." "I will."<br/>
<br/>
After hanging up, something his dad said made John remember a drawing he had made back in the first grade. It was probably still in the office. "Oh," he said as he opened the door and snapped on the light. "I didn't know you were in here."<br/>
<br/>
"Just doing homework," Jan said. He twiddled the gold pen in his hand.<br/>
<br/>
"In the dark?"<br/>
<br/>
"Astronomy."<br/>
<br/>
"You're such a smartass. Really, what were you doing?"<br/>
<br/>
"Thinking about dad."<br/>
<br/>
John's expression turned grave. "I was just talking to him. You could have got on the line."<br/>
<br/>
"It was your time with him. I'll catch up to him in a day or two."<br/>
<br/>
"I thought mom said money was tight."<br/>
<br/>
Jan opened his mouth to reply, then just shrugged. "I'll use a phone card. Buy it myself."<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
"You owe me, like, ultra-big time," Jan smirked as he sat down at the cafeteria table across from his brother. He nodded in greeting to some guys at the next table, then leaned in conspiratorially. "I got you a date."<br/>
<br/>
John's eyes widened, both with awe and skepticism. "What did you do?"<br/>
<br/>
"Got your jersey out of your gym locker and went and talked to Kathleen Boxer." <br/>
<br/>
John gasped. "Ice Princess Zebra?"<br/>
<br/>
"Oh, she is <i>hot</i> for cute ballplayers," Jan said gleefully. "And since I'm cute and was wearing a jersey--"<br/>
<br/>
"So what kind of date is this," John asked warily.<br/>
<br/>
"Just a study date," Jan said. "Well--" He got a little coy. "It's probably up to you." He bit down on his smile. "I really think you can take her at any speed you want."<br/>
<br/>
John craned his neck and, open-mouthed, gazed at the table where Kathleen--nose in the air--was reigning. He ducked back down again. "So what about you? Who am I supposed to get for you?"<br/>
<br/>
"Kathleen, of course," Jan replied in a tone that suggested he had suddenly remembered his twin brother was retarded. As John stared back, he slapped him in the chest. "Rope her in. Make it a relationship." He ducked his head and leaned in very close. "Mom can't tell us apart. How could Kathleen," he whispered in John's ear.<br/>
<br/>
John gasped, but Jan just grinned.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
John didn't know why he was so nervous. The house was empty--Jan said he'd convinced their mom that she wanted to see a movie--and he was dressed up nice. Was that the problem? He was dressed too nice? Maybe he should be more casual. But what if Kathleen was dressed up nice?<br/>
<br/>
He paused: That's what was worrying him. If she was dressed nice-- A pit formed in his stomach.<br/>
<br/>
"We're going!" Jan called from the front of house, and then the door slammed. The garage door went up, and then it went down.<br/>
<br/>
But the car didn't move. Jan sat in it and again pulled his hair down and let his face run. But after his mother had appeared in his place he pulled on a cashmere sweater and white hose and a white skirt and set to work on himself with finer, more careful movements. With one hand he stroked his thighs and calves; with his other he lightly palmed his chest, gently pushing it into twin fist-sized pillows. He licked a fingertip and stroked his eyebrows and eyelids. He pulled at his nose and smacked his lips and tongue. Then he pulled at his hair, straightening it out into a long, strawberry-colored tresses that went halfway down his back. From the sack in the back seat he drew a pair of brand new tennis shoes.<br/>
<br/>
Quietly he exited the garage side door and stepped around to the front door. He hugged his chest and dimpled excitedly as John answered the ring of the bell. "Hi. I hope I'm not too early."<br/>
<br/>
"Nice to see you, Kathleen," John grinned, and opened the door to let her in.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
To continue investigating the room: "<a href="https://www.Writing.Com/main/interactive-story/item_id/1510047/action/view/chapter_map/11221111111212222112" target="_top" title="Interactive Story Chapter in Item # 1510047">Disposing of Lucy</a>" <a href="https://www.Writing.Com/main/interactive-story/item_id/1510047/action/view/chapter_map/11221111111212222112" target="_blank" title="Open in new window."><img border="0" height="12" loading="lazy" onmouseout="$(this).css('opacity', '.4');" onmouseover="$(this).css('opacity', '1');" src="https://www.Writing.Com/nw.gif" style="opacity:.4;" width="12"/></a></span></div></div>


path: 112211111112122221111121111
author_id: seuzz
title: The Pet, Part 3
chapter_content:
<div><div> <span>"Feeling the pressure yet?"<br/>
<br/>
So said Michael Stroud a few seconds after John rounded the corner of the gym and bounced off his chest. His eyes glittered with an enigmatic malice.<br/>
<br/>
"What pressure?" John said. "You mean tomorrow's game?"<br/>
<br/>
"No, I mean from the sidelines." Michael smirked and leaned in on the hapless junior. "When Kathleen leads the cheers, who's she going to be cheering for? A bunch of ball-bouncing pansies? Or <i>you</i>?"<br/>
<br/>
John felt his cheeks redden. "Who--?"<br/>
<br/>
Michael sniggered so hard snot came out his nose. "Your brother's got a big mouth." He grasped John's shirt. "I assume it's her-- here--"<br/>
<br/>
"Hereditary."<br/>
<br/>
Michael's fist flashed past John's ear, and he flinched. "So I assume you got a big mouth too." He dropped a meaty arm around John's shoulders. "Tell me about it."<br/>
<br/>
"We got together and studied," John said carefully. "And we went for a walk."<br/>
<br/>
"Ooh, sounds romantic."<br/>
<br/>
"Not really. My dog got out of the yard and we went to look for him. Turned out he was just hiding in a hole he'd dug next to the foundation. Well, that's where I found him after Kathleen left."<br/>
<br/>
Michael stared stonily down at him. "Is that all?"<br/>
<br/>
"Isn't that enough?"<br/>
<br/>
Michael sighed, and drew John into walking along beside him up the portico. "I s'pose it's okay for a first date. You can't expect Ice Princess Zebra--" He paused, blinked, then resumed. "You can't expect a girl like her to get all unfrozen on the first date. You feel comfortable with her?"<br/>
<br/>
"Yeah."<br/>
<br/>
"You charm her?"<br/>
<br/>
"I think so."<br/>
<br/>
"Think you could be cool and relaxed around her at school?"<br/>
<br/>
John shrugged, but Michael's tightening grip on his shoulder told him that was the wrong answer. "Sure," he said.<br/>
<br/>
"Then try being that way with her. Don't try to impress her, but try being better than you are."<br/>
<br/>
They rounded the corner and came in view of the practice field, where burly guys in shorts and padded shoulders and hard helmets were standing around. Michael regarded them thoughtfully, as did John. When number 34 started to remove his helmet, John stepped forward and turned around, so that he stood between Michael and the field, with his back to it. "She's like a different person at school, though," he said.<br/>
<br/>
Michael gave him a pitying look. "So be a different person at school too. Be like that guy you were at your house." He looked over John's head at the field. "I gotta get to practice. I'm late because of you." With a swift strike he punched John in the stomach; it wasn't a heavy blow, but neither did he pull his punch. John gasped as he hunched, and he felt and then tasted something foul rush up his esophagus. Michael clutched him by his hair and hauled him up. "I'm late because of you," he said in a quiet voice. "So don't fuck things up with Kathleen."<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
"Dude is whack," Jan said that night when John told him about the conversation. He shook his head.<br/>
<br/>
"He may be whack, but I think he's serious."<br/>
<br/>
"Seriously whack." Jan rubbed his nose with the heel of his hand, then jerked his head. "Maybe he's living vicariously through you. Like, he's pretty sure he can't get her, but if he helps you--"<br/>
<br/>
"Right, I get it," John says. "But after we're together, he'll pound me for getting her when he couldn't."<br/>
<br/>
"So ignore him. Forget what he said."<br/>
<br/>
"Then he'll pound me for being a pussy."<br/>
<br/>
"So ask Kathleen out, then fuck it up."<br/>
<br/>
"He'll pound me for being a fuck up."<br/>
<br/>
"Look, he's going to pound you anyway--" Jan said in an exasperated tone.<br/>
<br/>
"Which is what I just said."<br/>
<br/>
"--so just do what <i>you</i> want to do."<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
"What the fuck do I look like, Wikipedia with boobs?" Kathleen ignored the titters at the cafeteria table and concentrated her laser-like gaze on John.<br/>
<br/>
But John neither wilted nor blushed. "I wasn't asking for help," he said. "I was asking if <i>you</i> wanted help. We've got that AP History test coming up." She leaned back with an appraising look. "So what do you know about the War of the Austrian Succession?"<br/>
<br/>
"What're you saying, you're Wikipedia with a wiener?"<br/>
<br/>
More laughs, but John only smiled gravely. "I got lots of things Wikipedia hasn't got. Including a sense of humor. 'Wikipedia with a wiener' is pretty funny," he laughed dryly. "So if you're going to study for the test, who would you rather study with?"<br/>
<br/>
Kathleen looked him up and looked him down and stuck a tongue in her cheek. "Tonight. Seven o'clock. City library," she said in a clipped voice. "Be prepared, because I don't give second chances."<br/>
<br/>
"Bring lots of paper," he retorted, "because <i>I</i> give pop quizzes."<br/>
<br/>
A chorus of "oohs" went up as he strode quietly back to the table where Jan waited. The latter grinned and surreptitiously fist-bumped his brother. "I'll take mom to the movies again tonight," he chortled.<br/>
<br/>
"We're meeting at the library."<br/>
<br/>
"I wanna see that movie again anyway."<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
John was dancing on air when he walked into the house, but froze when he saw Jan slumped on the couch. "What's wrong?"<br/>
<br/>
"Nothing. How was Kathleen?"<br/>
<br/>
"Cut the bullshit. You're hurt."<br/>
<br/>
"Go to bed."<br/>
<br/>
"What happened?"<br/>
<br/>
"I said <i>go to bed!</i>" Jan's voice rang with five different timbres. <br/>
<br/>
John stared at him stonily. "My bedtime is yours. Come with me."<br/>
<br/>
Jan grimaced, and stood stiffly. He took a step, then tumbled forward into John's arms. His brother grasped him around shoulders, and when he raised his hand he saw blood in his palm. "Oh God!" He stared at Jan. "I passed police cars at the theater, but I didn't-- You fucking idiot! What were you thinking, robbing a box office!"<br/>
<br/>
"We need the money," Jan murmured.<br/>
<br/>
"I have to get you to a hospital."<br/>
<br/>
"And what'll they do to me?" Jan asked. He stepped back and collapsed against the couch, and the immense red stain he'd left against its back cushions. As he fell, his face changed wildly, all at once--Jan, Mom, Dad, Kathleen, Michael, Daniel, Esther, and more--until a shadow fell across it, obscuring his features. "I'll extrude the bullet during the night," he said in an indistinct voice. "I'll be fine in the morning."<br/>
<br/>
"But what if you're not?" John gasped back a sob. "If you--" He knelt at the other's knee. "Don't be so fucking noble. Think of <i>me,</i> you asshole! <i>Who'll take care of me?</i>" He lifted his eyes to the hallway and the long-since empty bedrooms at its other end. "No mom, no dad ..." His voice trailed off.<br/>
<br/>
"I'll be okay," the other said in a voice that was firm but faint. "Just help me to bed."<br/>
<br/>
John rose and tenderly lifted him; he was astonishingly light, like a thing of rags and straw. "Please don't die," he whispered. "You're all I've got left." He swallowed at a lump the size of a softball.<br/>
<br/>
"I'll be fine. The real hell of it, though, you know, is--" Jan chuckled weakly. "Afterward, how are we gonna pretend we didn't have this talk?"<br/>
<br/>
John's mouth twisted into a smile. "You're good at pretending, remember? I'm not bad at it myself."<br/>
<br/>
"I know. I never could have done it if--"<br/>
<br/>
"Yeah. If I didn't know how to look the other way." He carried the other gently along the hallway.<br/>
<br/>
John stayed by his bed for hours. But by the time he decided he <i>had</i> to call an ambulance, it was too late.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
John patted the mound of dirt in the corner of the back yard with the flat of the shovel, then laid it aside. He stepped back. His mother--her wrist enclosed by an immense diamond bracelet--took his hand, and his father put an arm around his shoulder. "I'm so sorry," John said.<br/>
<br/>
"For what, sweetheart?" his mother murmured.<br/>
<br/>
John hiccupped, and fought back tears. "When you got him for me, I promised I'd take care of him. I said I wouldn't let anything happen to him."<br/>
<br/>
"You did everything you could," his father said. He looked around. "We'll have to close up this house. You'll move back home to the Hamptons with us. There's no way we can explain the disappearance of your, ah, 'twin brother'."<br/>
<br/>
"But if I did everything, why did I let him die?" John cried.<br/>
<br/>
"Honey, you gave him what he needed," his mother said. "Someone to take care of. That's all that ... things like him ... need and want. He died <i>doing</i> what he wanted, which was to look after you."<br/>
<br/>
Tears streamed down John's face, and the hiccups came more quickly. "I know. That's what I told him at the end, to get him to pull through. Repeated that lie about ... not having parents."<br/>
<br/>
"Maybe we can get you another one," his father said. He glanced at his watch: he needed to be in Geneva in fourteen hours. "There must be more doppelgangers out there, hiding in plain sight."<br/>
<br/>
"A replacement for a replacement," John said bitterly. "What a joke."<br/>
<br/>
"It's what they <i>are,</i>" his father said. "What they do."<br/>
<br/>
But John just looked down at the empty dog collar, and laid it on the grave. "Maybe I'll just get a dog next time," he said. "A real one."<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
To continue investigating the room: "<a href="https://www.Writing.Com/main/interactive-story/item_id/1510047/action/view/chapter_map/11221111111212222112" target="_top" title="Interactive Story Chapter in Item # 1510047">Disposing of Lucy</a>" <a href="https://www.Writing.Com/main/interactive-story/item_id/1510047/action/view/chapter_map/11221111111212222112" target="_blank" title="Open in new window."><img border="0" height="12" loading="lazy" onmouseout="$(this).css('opacity', '.4');" onmouseover="$(this).css('opacity', '1');" src="https://www.Writing.Com/nw.gif" style="opacity:.4;" width="12"/></a></span></div></div>


path: 1122111111121222211111211111
author_id: seuzz
title: The Morale Officer
chapter_content:
<div><div> <span>A single pole, a single thrusting, silver shaft: She wrapped a slim leg around it and clutched one side of it while leaning around the other. Her hair fell coquettishly to cover a single eye. <br/>
<br/>
There was a floor, but it was invisible, as were the ceiling and walls: they were swallowed in darkness, within which swam blazing pinpricks of light. These revolved slowly around the dark, limitless globe that had the shaft as its axis. <br/>
<br/>
The man in the chair groaned. "What color is your hair?" he gasped.<br/>
<br/>
"Red," she purred, and fluffed out a scarlet tress. "Or maybe it's blonde." She fluffed it again, and it tightened into soft curls and turned golden. "Raven black." It straightened and fell to her waist. "Wild violet, tipped with frosted green." It rustled and snapped around her head like living snakes. <br/>
<br/>
"Oh God!" He was almost horizontal in the deep, cushioned chair, his legs and arms stretched outward. "And if you were Nubian!" She spun lazily around the pole, and with each turn she darkened, until she was darker than dark, dark like black marble. Her teeth flashed like ivory. "Can I see your-- your breasts again?" he asked.<br/>
<br/>
She marched smartly up to him, unzipping her tunic, exposing the small, fist-sized mounds. She cradled them, and they grew and grew and grew and grew--<br/>
<br/>
He reached for them. "No touching, lieutenant," she snapped. "You know regulations." She cocked an eye at the soft <i>bong</i> of the alert. "And I'm afraid our time is up."<br/>
<br/>
The spinning stars vanished--except for those visible through the stateroom porthole, and those slid by much more slowly, even at warp speed. The lieutenant sighed raggedly, stood, shook her hand, and departed. She pushed the pole up into the ceiling, pulled the bed from its recess, and stepped into the wash port.<br/>
<br/>
For Lieutenant Dodson she only needed to act out suggestions. For Lieutenant Ferguson, she needed a model, so she punched up the holographic image from the library. She had learned to use that model before each of his visits, rather than trust to memory, however familiar she felt with the face and body. One time she had tried winging it, but Ferguson had found a flaw, and become whiny and morose. Worse, he'd lodged a complaint that had gone on her record.<br/>
<br/>
As she concentrated on it her skin faded from dark black to an almost translucent white. Her lips thinned and her cheekbones flattened. Her eyes grew wide, like almonds, but sloped slightly at the corners. Her hair shortened and turned very blonde--almost white--and fell in loose curls down the back of her neck. She smoothed out her tunic and tugged the leggings out into a long skirt. The neckline plunged, and the fabric took on a satin-like, emerald hue.<br/>
<br/>
With that done, she pulled out the table and snapped a crisp white tablecloth over it. She was just lighting the candle when the cabin door slid open, and she looked up find Ferguson looking at her. "You look nice tonight, Judy," he said, and held up the tray with the dinner. "I brought the usual. I know you like it."<br/>
<br/>
"How kind," she murmured. <br/>
<br/>
He set the tray on the table, and frowned at her. "You change your hair?"<br/>
<br/>
"I thought I'd let you set it. You always do such a good job." He took up the loose, platinum strands and wound them into a whirlpool, and pinned them in place above the nape of her neck.<br/>
<br/>
"I brought you a necklace," he said, and her throat tightened as he set it--as he always did during these sessions--around her neck. It was old-fashioned and ugly and heavy, but it was part of the drill.<br/>
<br/>
Then she sat and she ate and finally she smoked, while he laid back on the bed and watched her intently. That's all he ever did. They never even talked. It was an easy session, but it was always awkward. He must have loved this woman very much.<br/>
<br/>
If she had ever actually existed, that is. The woman who always ate the same dinner for Lieutenant Ferguson sometimes wondered if she was herself impersonating an elaborate fiction.<br/>
<br/>
After the chiming alert sent Ferguson away, she theoretically had ten minutes for herself, but the captain was often early, so she stepped back into the wash port to change.<br/>
<br/>
It was too much trouble to readjust the dress, so she changed into another tunic, and gave it an admiral's epaulets. She molded her hair into a tight and severe grey bun. Ridge-like wrinkles disfigured her upper lip, and her eyebrows became thick and shaggy. Her only real concession to femininity remained in the body, which she sculpted beneath the tunic into trim, thrusting breasts, a pronounced curve at the stomach, and hips that spread in a way that could fascinate the eye without being grotesque. It was a completely unrealistic body for a putative woman of sixty, but her next appointment always seemed to appreciate it. <br/>
<br/>
"You're late, <i>mein Herr,</i>" she snapped in a slightly acidic tone, and pointedly refrained from looking at the clock when he came in.<br/>
<br/>
"The executive officer meeting took longer than I expected," Captain Scheer replied. "The admiral can appreciate such things."<br/>
<br/>
"I can appreciate many things, but I will decline to list them," she snapped back. "A seat?" He took the proffered chair, stiffly.<br/>
<br/>
She tapped the display tablet in her hand. "Your report on the Regulus mapping mission is exhaustive, but it is a trifle unclear on several points." She rattled off a number of questions, which he tried answering. She pressed him into clarifying what exactly had led to the loss of the Seydlitz probe, and harrumphed at the way he tried palming off the disaster on the science officer. "The chain of command is clear," she reprimanded him. "The chain of responsibility should be too." She held out the tablet. "Revise it, please."<br/>
<br/>
"Certainly," he said, and was very pale as he took it. "Thank you. The final draft will be much better for your ... input."<br/>
<br/>
"I have a very high opinion of your abilities, Captain," she said in a milder tone. "It will not be lessened if you are honest."<br/>
<br/>
He smiled gratefully. "It means a lot to me, hearing you say that, uh-- Admiral."<br/>
<br/>
She lowered her eyes and grimaced. "I will need a transcript of the final briefing," she said softly. "Off the record, of course."<br/>
<br/>
"Of course." It was against regulations to share the transcripts of command conferences with any but top-ranked officers. But these sessions between her and the captain were useless without a high degree of verisimilitude. <br/>
<br/>
After the captain left she pulled off the tunic, which always made her feel better. The material was made from the hide of a closely related species--one that shared her metamorphic abilities--and she disliked the feel of it against her skin, even though it made the illusions easier to pull off. Somehow, it felt like cannibalism to wear them.<br/>
<br/>
In the wash port she let her face relax and fade to grey. The nose disappeared, and the eyes sank back deeply into the skull and turned a bright green color. The jaw disappeared, to be replaced by a loose and flexible trunk. She studied the schedule. "Name withheld," the next appointment read. <i>Probably someone new,</i> she thought. <i>Or someone who is very shy.</i> She wondered what form she should introduce herself in. Sometimes it was best to be herself; usually it was best to be human.<br/>
<br/>
But whoever it was, they were early, for the bell to the cabin rang and the door opened without warning. She looked up in surprise to see someone wearing the duplicate of her own inhuman face.<br/>
<br/>
"You?" she exclaimed, her trunk twisting out the alien phonemes. "<i>You're</i> my seventeen hundred?"<br/>
<br/>
"I caught an early shuttle. I wanted to surprise you." The other closed the door and sat on the bed. "And we have the rest of the day together. What do you want?"<br/>
<br/>
She let out a whinny--the equivalent of a pleasurable groan. She made a noise, and the other began to change: Its eyes filled out the sockets and turned a warm hazel; mouth and nose formed--broad and maternal. The arms turned a mottled pink, and bent gracefully at a single elbow. Its chest rose higher and higher with each breath, until they were like twin loafs: soft but heavy. The thing's lap spread out in wide, enveloping hips and plump, comforting thighs. The face became warm, but a trifle sad, and the smile gentle.<br/>
<br/>
As for the occupant of the cabin, she changed too, becoming smaller and smaller (though losing no mass) until she was hardly more than forty centimeters high. She was human again, but bald, with a big head and clumsy limbs. She clambered over to the woman and crawled into her lap; the other undid the tunic and exposed a great breast. "These people take so much out of me," the ship's morale officer sighed in a voice much too deep for an infant. "So much." She closed her eyes, clamped a mouth to the tit, and relaxed as the other crooned and rocked her gently to sleep.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
To continue investigating the room: "<a href="https://www.Writing.Com/main/interactive-story/item_id/1510047/action/view/chapter_map/11221111111212222112" target="_top" title="Interactive Story Chapter in Item # 1510047">Disposing of Lucy</a>" <a href="https://www.Writing.Com/main/interactive-story/item_id/1510047/action/view/chapter_map/11221111111212222112" target="_blank" title="Open in new window."><img border="0" height="12" loading="lazy" onmouseout="$(this).css('opacity', '.4');" onmouseover="$(this).css('opacity', '1');" src="https://www.Writing.Com/nw.gif" style="opacity:.4;" width="12"/></a></span></div></div>


path: 11221111111212222111112111111
author_id: seuzz
title: The Object of Desire
chapter_content:
<div><div> <span>Bobby sat in front of the mirror: the big mirror that sat on the far edge of the vanity table; the vanity table that took up fully half of the walk-in closet, crowding the shirts and slacks that hung on thin wire hangers; the walk-in closet that no one else had ever stepped into. It would be very hard to explain to anyone why in his closet he had a vanity table of the sort used by actors in their dressing rooms, with the big, bright bulbs ringing the mirror. Bobby was not in the high school drama club, and a walk-in closet would most definitely not be the place to keep an actor's makeup table even if he were.<br/>
<br/>
He studied his own face: a tanned, flat face with a wide but thin-lipped mouth under a large nose, topped with long flat brown hair that lay plastered against his forehead. Between the hair and the nose: two eyes that reflected back-- <br/>
<br/>
He sighed raggedly to recognize the emotion. That reflected back terror.<br/>
<br/>
He raised his eyes to the large photograph taped to the corner of the mirror: the photograph taken with a cell phone, sharpened digitally, blown up, and printed out. The photograph that showed Ryan, his best friend at school, gazing coolly into the lens with his skeptical, appraising glance. It was the expression Ryan often wore, usually with teachers who challenged him over incomplete homework, or letterman-jacketed idiots who thought him an easy mark to fuck with. They didn't do that much anymore: they had learned that Ryan could hit back swiftly and savagely, and could dish out far too much punishment before bending under the return blows.<br/>
<br/>
And in the same picture, over Ryan's shoulder: Bobby himself. Ryan was too cool to clown in front of a camera. Bobby couldn't help himself. So there he was, mouth and eyes agape in a mock scream.<br/>
<br/>
Yes, terror was in his eyes this evening, as he knew they'd been in his eyes for weeks now when he relaxed--a very misleading verb--at home. Not the pretended shock and fear in the photograph with Ryan, but the real thing. <br/>
<br/>
<i>So this is love,</i> he thought bitterly.<br/>
<br/>
His mother had told him about love. "It will come on you when you least expect it," she'd said briskly. "Probably with the person you least expect. Probably with someone you have known for some time." <i>Why will it come?</i> he had asked. "Because it must," she'd said. "We couldn't go on without it." <i>How will I know it's ... love?</i> The word had been unfamiliar. "You will know it when you feel it." This didn't make much sense. <i>What will it feel like?</i> She hadn't answered that question. The next day she had left him, never to acknowledge him again, even if she saw him.<br/>
<br/>
He had been four years old when she told him about love. Now he was five. (The seventeen-year-old face, like so much about Bobby, was extremely misleading.) For a year he had hunched expectantly against an ambush from this mysterious emotion; for six months he had prowled the halls of Sarasota High School, and noted what the boys and girls did when they said they had "fallen in love." It had seemed very soft and silly.<br/>
<br/>
No one had told him it felt so much like fear. <br/>
<br/>
No one had told him it would feel like a malevolent vine sprouting inside him, planting claw-like roots in his stomach and twisting it into a knot of pain; wrapping tendrils around his heart and choking it like a wounded and throbbing animal; grasping his throat like a hand. He had felt this kind of fear once before, briefly, when a policeman had followed him into the warehouse and caught him in a flashlight beam. But he was big enough by then, and had snarled and leaped, and after taking the man's clothes he had exited the warehouse <i>as</i> the policeman. He had wondered briefly if he would "love" the man's wife, but he had felt nothing with her he hadn't felt before, and when one day he walked out the door he had almost forgotten her before deciding never to return.<br/>
<br/>
But now he was in love with Ryan. <br/>
<br/>
"Maybe it will be a man and maybe it will be a woman," his mother had said. "You will have to adapt." Bobby knew enough from school to know what <i>that</i> meant.<br/>
<br/>
His hair was already very much like Jessie's, and so was his skin. He only had to press his cheeks in. He pushed until his cheekbones stood out. He shaped his jaw, lengthening the chin to a point. He pulled his eyes down at the corners, and as he blinked they shifted from brown to hazel to grey. He tugged at his hair and twisted it into a bun before letting it fall loosely over the top of his ears. Breasts appeared, but they were very small, and he wasn't concentrating on them, so they also came out the wrong shape. <br/>
<br/>
He rested his chin in his hands and contemplated Jessie's face. The terror was gone from his eyes; now he just felt disappointment. It wouldn't work. Ryan and Jessie were friends, and that was all; he would leave her behind one day as he would leave Bobby behind. No, if he was going to insert himself deeply into Ryan's life, it would have to be as the girl he was most likely to keep close to.<br/>
<br/>
Bobby plucked up the stuffed bear he'd stolen from Alison's. He held it tight in his hands and closed his eyes. He murmured to himself as he rocked on the stool.<br/>
<br/>
"Amanda can be such a bitch," he murmured to himself. (Close contact with personal items left psychic marks, which he could draw on for impersonations.) His voice acquired a sharp whine. "I saw you at Cassandra's locker. What were you talking about? What do you want to do for Valentine's Day? We're going to do something, aren't we? Oh, for fuck's sake, Kyle could stand to grow up a <i>little.</i> Let's take my car. Yours is too dirty." He felt his hair drop down around his ears; he felt his face twitch as the remembered emotions flicked over it like pinpricks, molding it for him. "What do you think of this blush?"<br/>
<br/>
He opened his eyes to peer at himself from under long eyelashes with a sharp and mocking smile. "You're being crazy again," he rebuked himself in Alison's voice, using the words she so often used to rebuke Ryan. He stretched out a long arm with manicured nails at the end and beckoned to the Ryan in the photograph. "Why don't you come here and let me show you the <i>right way</i> to be crazy. Bobby?" His voice now cut like a knife. "Can you make yourself scarce?"<br/>
<br/>
He could make Alison scarce, the way he had made the policeman scarce.<br/>
<br/>
And then he felt fury. Bobby knew about Ryan's computer porn; so did Alison; and now he knew all she knew and felt about it. It was an unfair competition. Well, if Ryan wanted something <i>hot</i>--<br/>
<br/>
He yanked off the soft flannel short and flashed hard teeth as his breasts popped up with nipples rigid. He ran his hands down his abdomen, and gasped as it sharply contracted into a slim, concave pedestal. He twisted out of his jeans and squeezed his cock and balls--<i>how had they managed to remain during the other transformations?</i> until they deflated and withdrew. He stood and planted a foot on the vanity table and massaged one leg until it was long and dark and hairless. He tossed his hair back and blinked again until they were a green so hot they smoked. He sucked coquettishly on a finger.<br/>
<br/>
But even before he finished changing, he knew it was useless, and began to change again. The breasts slowly deflated and drooped, and his jawline sagged. He opened the drawer and fumbled at the brassiere he had lifted from Ryan's house.<br/>
<br/>
"Oh, my sweet baby, what's happening to you?" he whispered sadly as he slowly drew it on. "You're growing up. It's all gone by so fast." His belly swelled up and drooped; his ass sagged into soft, dimpled cushions. He blinked back tears that washed the green from his eyes, turning them brown again. His hair was still long, but became limp and bedraggled, and spots and veins rose and spread over the back of his hands and he carefully pulled it up and pinned it into place. <br/>
<br/>
Self-pity and fear of loss returned to his eyes. This felt like the deepest love; but it was most useless. Ryan would eventually leave his mother, as his own mother had left Bobby. And behind--or before--that act of betrayal would be another, the one that made this choking emotional scene so unbearable, and so gratuitous. "You will fall in love," his mother had told him. "And you will give her a child, or he will give you one. And then you'll take the child, as I took you, and disappear." <i>So that's where I came from,</i> Bobby had thought, and it had seemed an idle curiosity at the time.<br/>
<br/>
If that final act of selfishness is where it ends, Ryan's mother would be the worst disguise of all: something sterile, and curdling into a pain that wouldn't lessen even as the years spread it thinner and thinner.<br/>
<br/>
Slowly, his features recomposed themselves into Bobby's. He had suffered this way for a month; he could suffer for longer before making a final decision.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
To continue investigating the room: "<a href="https://www.Writing.Com/main/interactive-story/item_id/1510047/action/view/chapter_map/11221111111212222112" target="_top" title="Interactive Story Chapter in Item # 1510047">Disposing of Lucy</a>" <a href="https://www.Writing.Com/main/interactive-story/item_id/1510047/action/view/chapter_map/11221111111212222112" target="_blank" title="Open in new window."><img border="0" height="12" loading="lazy" onmouseout="$(this).css('opacity', '.4');" onmouseover="$(this).css('opacity', '1');" src="https://www.Writing.Com/nw.gif" style="opacity:.4;" width="12"/></a></span></div></div>


path: 112211111112122221111121111111
author_id: seuzz
title: The Surfer
chapter_content:
<div><div> <span>"You're going to catch your death of cold," Mrs. Harper scolded. Her lips, which were shaped like two prunes, twisted into a sour frown. "A bare midriff in October?"<br/>
<br/>
Diana just smiled sweetly, and bent so that the low-cut t-shirt fell open to expose the top of her boobs. She had an excuse to so bend: The bat-faced English teacher was still sitting in her car in the high school parking lot, and Diana had to speak to her through the driver's side window. "That assignment?" she asked.<br/>
<br/>
"Good luck," Mrs. Henderson sneered, and with a claw-like hand extended a sheaf of papers. "You'll need it."<br/>
<br/>
Diana again smiled as she took them, and with loose strides sauntered toward the school, where early students were already streaming in. A car honked behind her, and she waved back lazily at ... Well, it didn't matter who. She found a bathroom, and after locking herself in a stall looked over the papers. The name "Paula Anderson" was at the top. Third period with Mr. Henderson.<br/>
<br/>
Diana grabbed her short blonde hair and pulled. It lengthened and darkened until it fell in soft curls around her face. She rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands, pushing them deeper in and closer together; she didn't need to touch herself to make the changes, but it helped her concentrate. Her skin lightened and acquired a faint dusting of freckles. A mole briefly appeared on her left cheek, then vanished: that was one of Janice's features, not Paula's. She cupped her breasts and squeezed them down to the size and shape of large, firm apples.<br/>
<br/>
As Paula Anderson, she exited the bathroom, but spent the next two periods in the school library, ducking in and out of the stacks.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
"You're early," Mr. Henderson said after briefly glancing up at her.<br/>
<br/>
"I wanted to get this to you as soon as I could," Paula replied breathily. She dropped the sheaf onto the desk where he pointed. "Could you hurry," she asked in a trembling voice. But he continued to glance through his stack, and Paula darted nervous looks over her shoulder as students started to trickle in. She tapped his desk. "It's not fair, making me wait."<br/>
<br/>
"Hold your horses," he said. Only after adding a few more red circles to a paper did he glance through her sheaf. "Here's your homework," he finally said, and handed her a paper from his own stack. He folded his hands as she sneezed. "Are you catching a cold?"<br/>
<br/>
"Maybe I should go see the nurse?" Paula asked as she studied the homework. It belonged to another student, but she didn't correct him. "Sign my hall pass, in case I'm late?" With a grunt he put his name on the blue slip she held out.<br/>
<br/>
After darting a quick look into the hall, she dived into the seething mass of students and, with her head down sought out another bathroom.<br/>
<br/>
<i>Melissa Short Melissa Short.</i> She muttered the name on the homework to herself until the girl's face swam out from among the dozen she had so carefully studied. <i>Dammit! Braces!</i> She fumbled at her pockets, and realized with a sinking heart she'd have to do it the hard way. Behind a stall door, she stifled the screams as her teeth twisted and contorted and sprouted a parody of metal wires. She put the pain to good use, though, and the red splotches it brought to her face coalesced into a patch of zits. She had to run water over her face afterward, to calm herself.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
"Oh my goodness, I think everyone's coming down with something," Nurse Cooper gasped when she saw Melissa enter. She indicated the only empty chair in the nurse's office, and Melissa found herself sitting next to a girl she didn't recognize. <br/>
<br/>
To her discomfort, the girl handed her an iPod. "Glad I ran into you," she said. "Thanks for letting me borrow it."<br/>
<br/>
"No problem," Melissa said carelessly, though the device seemed to writhe in her hand, and she stared at it aghast. It would be a serious problem if the real Melissa didn't get her property back, and this girl insisted she'd returned it. Melissa felt her cheek twitch as Nurse Cooper bustled up with a thermometer: she thought she caught an impish smile on the woman's face. "Could I lay down in the back?" she asked cautiously.<br/>
<br/>
"Oh, I'm sure that's against the rules," the nurse gasped as she stuck the glass rod into Melissa's mouth. She snatched the blue ticket from her grasp and signed it. "But if you want to change in the other room," she said, and pointed a trembling finger at Melissa's too-short t-shirt. <br/>
<br/>
This wasn't what she wanted, but she accepted the offer. She locked the door too, and took a breath as she leaned against the examination table. Her hand touched a slip of paper, and she swore when she saw the name on it: Simone Jenkins.<br/>
<br/>
The face would be the least of the problems. <i>Head cheerleader.</i> Melissa removed her clothes and carefully massaged and plumped her breasts, and molded and sculpted her abdomen with the palms of her hands; she dug delicately at her bellybutton--which would be exposed--making it into a shallow scoop. Leg muscles tightened and lengthened.<br/>
<br/>
When she was done, she looked cautiously into the main office, but it was empty, and she quickly exited before anyone could return.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
Luck had been with her so far: her clothes fit Simone as well. But she doubted the run would last, and while the hallways were clear she stopped by the empty locker where she'd stashed an extra set. As she bent over, she felt a hand on her ass. She whooped loud, banged her head on the top of the locker, and wheeled around. The big guy in the letterman jacket leaned in on her. "What are you doing out here?" he grinned.<br/>
<br/>
"Planning a little surprise for you," she said, thinking quickly. "You don't want to ruin it, do you?"<br/>
<br/>
"My birthday's not for a month."<br/>
<br/>
"That's what makes it a surprise. Pretend you didn't find me, okay?" He laughed, which sounded like agreement, and bent for a kiss. "You'll mess me up," she said, turning her head, and he bounced off her cheek. "Besides, I have to see Coach Kreske."<br/>
<br/>
"What for?"<br/>
<br/>
"Squad business." She slithered under his arm and strode quickly away.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
Coach Kreske grumbled loudly when Simone interrupted her as she supervised the freshmen PE class ("You should do this during regular hours, come back during fifth period") and almost refused to sign the slip. "Well, as long as you're here," she said, "I was going to have Janice take something to Mr. Sawyer. Think you can handle it instead?"<br/>
<br/>
Simone forced a grin out through her teeth, but permitted herself a mental pat on the back for her foresight with the extra wardrobe. <br/>
<br/>
<i>Fattie fattie fat fat,</i> she cursed inside the locker room. Her belly swelled and flopped out like a rotten pumpkin. Her boobs drooped and pointed in different directions. Thighs and calves turned mottled and pale, and her fingers shortened and acquired ragged cuticles. Her hair turned pale and limp, and trailed down her neck like seaweed. She winced at the whale that reflected back from the mirror in the corner and, taking a deep breath, blimped out some more.<br/>
<br/>
Feeling sick and bloated, Janice Walters waddled back into the main building.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
Mr. Sawyer scratched primly at his moustache before lazily signing the blue slip that would let Janice out of class. "Mrs. Henderson might have something to say about all this," he said. "Dear lady's off running an errand, though, and won't be back until school is out. I suppose you'll just have to keep busy until then." Janice didn't like his smile.<br/>
<br/>
She liked it still less when, out in the hallway, she turned a corner and found the real Janice pushing toward her only a few feet away. Her double ducked her head, but not before she heard a gasp. She passed a quick hand over her face before she felt someone grab at her shoulder. She turned, and the other girl peered at her with wide eyes. Then the girl frowned. "I coulda sworn--" she mumbled, then let it go.<br/>
<br/>
At least Janice was able to offload the troublesome iPod to the real Melissa by tracking her down in her last class and passing it on with a mumbled "Someone asked me to give this to you." Melissa hardly paid any attention, and certainly didn't say "Thanks" to her fat and unattractive schoolmate. <br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
Janice didn't bother to hide the smirk on her face as she presented the blue ticket with its four signatures to Mrs. Harper. The latter accepted it grimly, and her face melted into the kind of grey and expressionless mass that Janice herself would soon relax into. Mr. Henderson and Nurse Cooper and Coach Kreske and Mr. Sawyer exchanged glances, then they too shed the visages they had donned for the day. They were all safe again, in the basement under the old ruined farmhouse on the outskirts of town. Their originals, recovering consciousness at home, would be returning to the school tomorrow.<br/>
<br/>
One by one the former teachers each set a mossy leather bag at Janice's feet; the gold coins they contained clinked in a way Janice thought quite musical. But she didn't open them, or gloat over her winnings. She had a nastier idea. <br/>
<br/>
"Double or nothing, friends?" she asked with a snigger in her voice. "There's another high school in this town. If I could surf Bayman without getting caught, d'you wanna bet I can't surf Northridge without being spotted?"<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
To continue investigating the room: "<a href="https://www.Writing.Com/main/interactive-story/item_id/1510047/action/view/chapter_map/11221111111212222112" target="_top" title="Interactive Story Chapter in Item # 1510047">Disposing of Lucy</a>" <a href="https://www.Writing.Com/main/interactive-story/item_id/1510047/action/view/chapter_map/11221111111212222112" target="_blank" title="Open in new window."><img border="0" height="12" loading="lazy" onmouseout="$(this).css('opacity', '.4');" onmouseover="$(this).css('opacity', '1');" src="https://www.Writing.Com/nw.gif" style="opacity:.4;" width="12"/></a></span></div></div>


path: 1122111111121222211111211111111
author_id: seuzz
title: The Replacement Killers (1)
chapter_content:
<div><div> <span>"I bet she smells," Charles said, and kicked his foot angrily against the car seat in front of him. "I can smell her from here. I bet she's got old lady stink all over her."<br/>
<br/>
"Don't talk about your grandmother that way," his mother said disapprovingly from the passenger-side front seat. But her own lip curled as she watched the nurse help the old lady down the front steps of the nursing home. "Remember, we love her dearly." She winced, though, when she saw the old woman swing around and bat at the nurse with her handbag. <i>Looks like Granny has a lot of spirit and gumption still,</i> she hazarded to herself.<br/>
<br/>
"How much money has she got," Evelyn asked. The teenage girl tugged her long, strawberry-blonde hair back behind her shoulder and carefully adjusted her cheerleader's tunic. There was a hot guy in the car next to their SUV, and he was checking her out.<br/>
<br/>
"Two million," her mother replied. "Our biggest score in twenty years."<br/>
<br/>
"Two million, divided four ways," Charles mused aloud. "Oh, but it's all probably in money market funds," he sighed. "I liked it better when the stone-skins kept all their money in gold. It'll take <i>forever</i> to get the estate settled and the assets liquidated after we've bumped her off."<br/>
<br/>
"We're not 'bumping' anyone off," his mother replied. "Look at her. She'll keel over on her own accord."<br/>
<br/>
"Not too soon, I hope," her daughter said smugly. "This is the first role in <i>years</i> that I think I can enjoy." She tugged at her skirt. Her twelve-year-old brother gave her a sidelong leer, and she slapped his hand away as he reached over to touch a breast.<br/>
<br/>
"Dear, how about you go help your mother out to the car," their own mother said to her husband.<br/>
<br/>
"<i>My</i> mother?" he replied, blinking. "I thought she was <i>your</i> mother."<br/>
<br/>
His wife surreptitiously opened her bag and peeked at the documents hidden within. She made a face. "Wishful thinking on my part. I'll be right back. Charles, get in the back." The boy clambered into the very rear of the SUV as his mother got out.<br/>
<br/>
A few minutes later the occupants of the car erupted in happy squeals as the little old lady climbed in the back seat: "Grandma, it's so great to see you!" "It wouldn't be Thanksgiving without you!" "Are you going to make your special stuffing?"<br/>
<br/>
But she only snapped back waspishly: "Roll down the windows. Someone's wearing buckets of perfume."<br/>
<br/>
Charles sniggered, and Evelyn turned to shoot him a dirty look.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
"Why can't we just do it tonight?" Evelyn said as she stomped into the kitchen the next morning. "Push her down the stairs and be done with it." She shuddered.<br/>
<br/>
Her mother finished wrapping up the lunch for her children. "It has to look like natural causes, sweetie-pie, or we'll <i>never</i> get our hands on her money," she replied. "She's got a son, too, and he'll raise holy hell if she's in an accident."<br/>
<br/>
"I didn't know you had a brother."<br/>
<br/>
Her mother made a face. "Am I the only one who reads the research I compile for our jobs?"<br/>
<br/>
"Yesterday, <i>you</i> couldn't remember the old lady was your mother."<br/>
<br/>
"No, that was Bela who was confused. He couldn't stand to spend another minute playing 'daughter', so I volunteered to take over this role while he goes into the office as your father. We switched after going to bed." She spitefully hurled the fork into the sink. "And it'll be for today only, because I <i>swear</i> that vicious old bat has it in for--"<br/>
<br/>
They were interrupted by a loud cry from the living room, followed by a long series of crashing thumps. Evelyn and her mother exchanged a glance and hurried into the next room.<br/>
<br/>
They only got a brief look at the head of the family as he lay in a heap at the foot of the stairs, and they watched, horror-struck, as his skin turned black, then crumpled and withered as though consumed by an invisible flame. His suit puckered and collapsed into emptiness.<br/>
<br/>
"Do we need to hire a traffic cop for the top of these stairs?" a shrill voice called from above. Mrs. Ketterley, her head trembling from some advanced nerve malady, put out a blind hand and felt for the balustrade. She put her cane onto the top stair and began to carefully descend the staircase. "Blake," she called to her now dead-and-gone son-in-law. "Help me out here before I trip and break my neck."<br/>
<br/>
"I'll help you, mother," her daughter called. She turned to Evelyn with a hiss: "Get this mess cleared away before she sees it."<br/>
<br/>
"Who's going to play Daddy?" Evelyn hissed back.<br/>
<br/>
"Go find your brother. He'll have to step in for his father."<br/>
<br/>
"As long as I still get to be Evelyn," the girl muttered back as her mother dashed up the stairs to help the old lady.<br/>
<br/>
"Don't grab at me!" Mrs. Ketterley spoke sharply as her woman took her arm. "Blake grabbed me at the top of the stairs like a common masher. I hit him with my cane, and I'll hit you too, Margery!"<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
Three pairs of eyes silently exchanged glances over dinner that evening. Father, mother, and daughter chewed their food and watched as the old lady carefully mashed up her own portions with her fork. "How was school," the mother asked Evelyn.<br/>
<br/>
"Fun," she replied. "I have a boyfriend. A football player."<br/>
<br/>
"You must have been keeping it a secret," Margery said. "<i>I</i> didn't know you were seeing anyone."<br/>
<br/>
"What a cliché," the father muttered. "Must be nice, hanging out at school instead of around a stuffy office."<br/>
<br/>
"And how <i>was</i> the office?" his wife asked.<br/>
<br/>
"I got yelled at. Turns out I didn't finish up some work before we, uh, took that family trip." He turned a baleful glance at his uncomprehending mother-in-law. "And I'm part of a team working on a secret project. It has a deadline. We need to get it done <i>fast.</i>" He shot a meaningful look at his wife and daughter.<br/>
<br/>
"Haste makes waste," Mrs. Ketterley said. She raised the fork to her mouth and sniffed at it.<br/>
<br/>
"Mother is right, Blake," Margery said, and directed a meaningful glance of her own back at her husband. "If a job is worth doing, it's worth doing in a way that doesn't cause people to ask a lot of awkward <i>questions</i> afterward."<br/>
<br/>
"Where's Charles?" Mrs. Ketterley demanded in a harsh tone.<br/>
<br/>
Silence. "Uh, he's eating in his room," Evelyn said.<br/>
<br/>
"Then I'm not eating either," Mrs. Ketterley said, and dropped her fork with a clatter. "Families should eat together." <br/>
<br/>
More pained glances around the table. <i>So much for the sedatives they had put in her potatoes.</i><br/>
<br/>
The old woman struggled to her feet, then sat back down, seemingly exhausted. "I want to talk to your brother, Margery. Call him for me."<br/>
<br/>
"Mother, you know Elmer and I don't get along."<br/>
<br/>
"You can be civil to him for one minute," she snapped back.<br/>
<br/>
"Can it wait until I'm--" She stopped cold at the fierce frown her mother directed at her. "I'll do it now." She got up.<br/>
<br/>
Evelyn and her father watched each other and watched the old lady as the latter gazed at the blank wall opposite, her head tottering on her scrawny neck. Minutes passed. The woman of the house never reappeared.<br/>
<br/>
"Margery!" Mrs. Ketterley called in that shrill voice that caused the other two to wince. "Margery!"<br/>
<br/>
"I'll see what's keeping her," Evelyn hastily volunteered. <br/>
<br/>
Her father looked after her with an agonized expression as she darted from the room. "How's your room, mother," he asked the old lady.<br/>
<br/>
"Don't 'mother' me, Blake," she snapped. "And it's cold. Your whole house is cold! I'm having to knit myself a shawl because--"<br/>
<br/>
Blake looked up sharply as Evelyn reappeared around the corner. She was very pale, and beckoned to him. Mrs. Ketterley was still staring at her plate and complaining bitterly about the chill, so she didn't see as he hastily rose and followed his daughter out.<br/>
<br/>
Empty clothes lay draped in the chair next to the telephone; they were filled with flakes that looked like blackened leaves. Father and daughter looked at each other, and then Blake carefully pushed them aside. Wedged in the chair, between the seat cushion and its back, was a knitting needle. Its tip gleamed evilly.<br/>
<br/>
"Do you have Elmer on the phone yet?" Mrs. Ketterley called from the dining room.<br/>
<br/>
"Just a minute, grandma!" Evelyn called. She scooped up the clothes left by her late mother, and used the blouse to grasp the needle and pull it free. Even through the fabric, she felt the silver burning her fingertips.<br/>
<br/>
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path: 11221111111212222111112111111111
author_id: seuzz
title: The Replacement Killers (2)
chapter_content:
<div><div> <span>"She told me to mind my own business, that's what she told me," Blake said grimly. He and Evelyn were in the master bedroom, the door closed, and were talking in low tones. <br/>
<br/>
"I don't like it," Evelyn said. Her face was very pale. "First Bela on the staircase, and now--" She frowned. "Who was it, Damien playing the mother?"<br/>
<br/>
"You need a scorecard? I'm playing Blake now. Caractacus was the one who impaled himself on--"<br/>
<br/>
"Well, excuse me for not being able to keep track. We've never had to switch and double up like this before."<br/>
<br/>
"And I know why you don't like it, either," her father snapped back. "You're going to have to start doubling up too, and switch from playing leggy, chesty, and hot for the boys to--"<br/>
<br/>
"Why," she demanded. "Why can't I keep playing--?"<br/>
<br/>
"Because someone has to be Margery, that's why!"<br/>
<br/>
"Then <i>you</i> do it! You were playing the kid brother, and then the dad. You can take over for the mom, too."<br/>
<br/>
"And I'll wind up playing the cheerleader, too, the way things are going." He crossed his arms and glared at the floor. "A <i>silver</i> knitting needle," he murmured to himself. "Maybe it's an heirloom."<br/>
<br/>
"Well, I'm going to bed as Evelyn," his daughter said. "And I'm going to school tomorrow--"<br/>
<br/>
"I told you," her father said, his voice rising. "Someone has to play the old battle axe's daughter, and <i>I</i> have to play the son-in-law."<br/>
<br/>
"Why? Blake is about to get fired, you all but said at dinner."<br/>
<br/>
"The kids can disappear. The parents can't."<br/>
<br/>
"Then I'm definitely going to bed as Evelyn," she retorted. "One final night with <i>these.</i>" She grabbed and roughly fondled her breasts.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
Blake studied himself in the mirror as he finished dressing. He pulled his tie tight. It felt like a noose.<br/>
<br/>
For seven hundred years he had lived among the uncomprehending stone-skins, preying on them, sometimes as a lone hunter and sometimes as part of a pack. His long-standing partnership with Bela and Caractacus and Adolphus had been especially lucrative, and together they had scored some great successes. Rarely had they been thwarted when they had a net about some human. It had been nearly a century since he had seen a partner die, and that had been during one of the humans' stupid wars.<br/>
<br/>
And now he had lost <i>two</i> of them in <i>one</i> day, to a blind and batty old woman? To a woman they thought would be an easy mark? He thought back to the family--the father and mother and two children--they had studied and lured away, to ambush at a remote mountain cabin. Sardonically, he wondered how naïve those humans had been, wondered if maybe they hadn't walked into the trap with their eyes open, preferring that fate to the specter of spending an extended holiday season with a completely horrible grandmother.<br/>
<br/>
He went quietly past the old lady's room to rap on the bedroom door belonging to the teenage girl. "Evelyn," he hissed. "Evelyn, come on, sweetheart. You need to get changed." Regardless of what Adolphus had said last night, he had to change into the mother today. That form was far more important to their deception than that of the girl. <br/>
<br/>
There was no answer, and Blake swore softly when he opened the door to find the room empty. <i>If his sole remaining partner had run out on him, to get to the school early--!</i> Ah, but the girl's book bag was still on the desk. <br/>
<br/>
He returned to the hallway with a frown, then saw that the bathroom door was closed. Maybe she was already changing. He rapped on it, then tried the handle, and the door swung open easily.<br/>
<br/>
The light was on, but the room was empty. The bathtub wasn't only empty, it was dry. <br/>
<br/>
Then his eye fell on the clothes: waterlogged flannel pajamas draped halfway out of the toilet bowl. He quickly shut and locked the door, and swallowed hard.<br/>
<br/>
The toilet lid and seat were both up, and the pajama bottoms were hanging on the lip of the bowl. Floating inside was a sodden top. A black mess, like discarded tea leaves, clung all about it. <br/>
<br/>
Gingerly, Blake touched the top of the water. Nothing happened. Gritting his teeth, he pushed his whole finger in. It was just water.<br/>
<br/>
Still, the evidence was compelling. Evelyn had gotten up during the night to use the bathroom. Still sleepy, and blinded by the light, she hadn't seen that the lid and seat were up, and when she sat down she had fallen into the water and--<br/>
<br/>
And died.<br/>
<br/>
No one had ever died from falling into toilet water.<br/>
<br/>
A dark suspicion formed. Maybe Adolphus had used some of Damien's or Caractacus's remains to stage a death, and had run out on him. Well, if that were the case, there would be no one to share the old woman's estate with, would there? All that money for himself--<br/>
<br/>
"Charles!" Blake was brought back to reality by that loathsome voice. There was a sharp banging on the door. "What are you doing in there, boy?"<br/>
<br/>
Blake quickly adjusted his voice. "I'm using the bathroom, grandma!"<br/>
<br/>
"I can see that! Are you playing with yourself? You'll go blind, boy! Where's your mother?"<br/>
<br/>
"She's downstairs!" He had to get her away from the door. The knob rattled. "Grandma! Don't come in!"<br/>
<br/>
"I know what you're doing in there, you filthy little germ! Come out this very minute!"<br/>
<br/>
Blake didn't have time for this. He raised the window, briefly dangled from the sill, and dropped into the flower bed below. He sprang up to find himself face to face with a tall, broad-chested teenager in a letterman jacket. <br/>
<br/>
"Mr. Slane?" the kid asked in an awestruck voice. "Are you okay?"<br/>
<br/>
"What? Oh. Yes. Bathroom door was stuck."<br/>
<br/>
"Oh." The kid didn't look convinced. "So, is Evelyn ready? I'm supposed to pick her up."<br/>
<br/>
Blake briefly considered just running off and leaving the boy in the lurch, but he might choose to stay and look for the missing Evelyn, and if he met up with Mrs. Ketterley--<br/>
<br/>
"I'll see what's keeping her," Blake said, and let the boy follow him inside. "Just wait here and I'll roust her out."<br/>
<br/>
He took the stairs two at a time. Mrs. Ketterley had apparently given up on the bathroom, and he ducked back into Evelyn's bedroom without meeting her. There, he tore off both his business suit and his carefully composed masculine features. "Evelyn, Evelyn, Evelyn," he muttered to himself, trying to conjure up the girl's features. His eyes were closed, so even though he was facing the mirror he didn't see as his face slimmed and acquired cheekbones and a chin and a faint dusting of freckles. His eyebrows sloped up to slightly elfin points, and his bare pate sprouted a thick lawn of reddish-blonde hair that lengthened into long tresses. He slapped on a bra, and concentrated on filling it until it was tight and compact while he covered it with a fuzzy green sweater. He dropped his pants and wrapped a pleated skirt around his hips. Legs-- Where did she keep the stockings? No time for that. He found her sneakers on top of a pile of discarded tops and jammed his feet into them. He gave himself a quick once-over in the mirror and dimpled a quick smile while wringing his hands to make the fingers long and slim. Yes, Evelyn was a hottie, and he couldn't really begrudge Adolphus his desire to stay as the girl. <br/>
<br/>
Oh, wait, what color were her eyes? But his mind was too frantically occupied to dredge them up. He could only hope the kid downstairs--<i>have to find out his name in some way that won't cause suspicion</i>--hadn't really noticed. He took a last quick glance at his legs. Slim and shapely enough to pass muster, he decided. He grabbed up her mostly empty book bag, and breathlessly returned to the stairs.<br/>
<br/>
"How do I look?" the new Evelyn smiled as she came down.<br/>
<br/>
"Whoa," the kid said. His eyes gleamed with undisguised lust.<br/>
<br/>
"You look like a whore," a croaking voice said from behind and above. Evelyn wheeled. Mrs. Ketterley was glaring at her while clutching the balustrade weakly.<br/>
<br/>
"Oh, grandmother," Evelyn said in a simpering tone while throttling the urge to kill the old woman right here and now, with bare hands, in front of a witness. "You just mean I look sexy."<br/>
<br/>
She turned back to her boyfriend, and on an impulse she spun in place on the bottom stair, letting her skirt fly up.<br/>
<br/>
When she stopped, she found the kid staring back with open-mouthed horror. He pointed to somewhere low on her body, and took a step back.<br/>
<br/>
"What's wrong?" she asked. <br/>
<br/>
He just swallowed, and ran from the room. The sound of the front door slamming obliterated the awkward, "Hey, you, whatsyername!" she called after him. She looked down and lifted the front of her skirt.<br/>
<br/>
<i>Oh hell!</i> No stockings, no panties, and she'd forgotten to get rid of <i>the package</i> when changing into the feminine form?<br/>
<br/>
Well, that tore it. Evelyn would <i>definitely</i> be dropping out of school.<br/>
<br/>
"A <i>whore</i>!" She jumped at the nasty voice just behind her shoulder. The gleam in Mrs. Ketterley's eye combined triumph and malice. "Whores can attract a boy, but they can never <i>keep</i> them! Yes, go change!" she called after Evelyn as the girl ran back upstairs. "And send your mother down! I'm hungry!"<br/>
<br/>
But it was Blake Slane who came back down and charged out the door without a further word. Maybe the old woman would starve to death while he was work.<br/>
<br/>
To continue investigating the room: "<a href="https://www.Writing.Com/main/interactive-story/item_id/1510047/action/view/chapter_map/11221111111212222112" target="_top" title="Interactive Story Chapter in Item # 1510047">Disposing of Lucy</a>" <a href="https://www.Writing.Com/main/interactive-story/item_id/1510047/action/view/chapter_map/11221111111212222112" target="_blank" title="Open in new window."><img border="0" height="12" loading="lazy" onmouseout="$(this).css('opacity', '.4');" onmouseover="$(this).css('opacity', '1');" src="https://www.Writing.Com/nw.gif" style="opacity:.4;" width="12"/></a></span></div></div>


path: 112211111112122221111121111111111
author_id: seuzz
title: The Replacement Killers (3)
chapter_content:
<div><div> <span>He returned after seven, having arranged to stay late at the office: not because he had work to do but because he wanted to avoid the harridan at the house. But Mrs. Ketterley was fully dressed and sitting at the dining room table when he came in. "Margery's run off," she barked. "I haven't seen her all day."<br/>
<br/>
"She, uh, she had lots of errands to run," Blake improvised lamely.<br/>
<br/>
"And where are your brats?"<br/>
<br/>
Blake actually felt a stab of defensive anger on behalf of the children he and his partners had gotten out of the way. "They're off helping their mother."<br/>
<br/>
"We have to go shopping. I've made a list for Thanksgiving." She feebly tapped at a sheet of paper in front of her.<b></b><br/>
<br/>
"I'll make a trip to store now. You just relax in the living room. Watch some TV."<br/>
<br/>
"You'll get the wrong things. I'm going with you," she said stubbornly.<br/>
<br/>
"Let me change clothes, and then we'll go over the list," he said through gritted teeth.<br/>
<br/>
Upstairs, he changed into jeans and a t-shirt, and set out some of Margery's clothes so he could make another change later that evening without the same rush and embarrassment as he'd suffered in the morning. <br/>
<br/>
He had to get rid of her. His sanity wouldn't stand much more of this. But he still wanted her money, so he had to do it carefully. Caractacus had been very clear that the woman's son would be alert to any hint of foul play.<br/>
<br/>
<i>Hmm.</i> An accident in a public place would do nicely. A public place like a grocery store? It would be tricky, but he should take advantage of any possibility.<br/>
<br/>
"Alright, mother, let's--" he started when he got back downstairs, but she had moved. He searched the entire lower floor without finding her. Finally, he looked in the garage. There she was, perched in the front seat to the SUV, glaring at the front wall. She already had the motor running.<br/>
<br/>
<i>Carbon monoxide,</i> he briefly thought, then dismissed it. Elmer might demand an inquest.<br/>
<br/>
"You have to open the garage door," she snapped as he started to get in. With a sour smile, he jabbed at the button of the automatic control, but the door didn't budge. "I already tried that!" she snarled. "You'll have to get out and do it yourself."<br/>
<br/>
<i>Please let her slip and fall at the store,</i> he prayed to his dark gods as he went round the back of the SUV, and bent to manually lift the door.<br/>
<br/>
As he did so, he heard the car motor race, and he looked up just in time to see the brake lights go off, and the SUV leap backward at his face.<br/>
<br/>
It was the last thing he ever saw.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
"Four kills in forty-eight hours," Elmer said wryly. "Not bad, ma'am, for a girl of eighty-seven."<br/>
<br/>
Mrs. Ketterley lay back on the settee, her eyes closed and her mouth open in a light snore.<br/>
<br/>
Elmer smiled to himself and put away the preliminary report. Her spidery, old-lady scrawl was difficult to decipher, and he would wait until the office had it transcribed before giving it a closer read. Still, he'd read enough to get a chuckle from it. He especially liked the "holy water in the toilet bowl" ploy--a tricky device, since she'd had to carefully replace the tainted water afterward so as not to raise any suspicions in the surviving monster. "You didn't ask, but we retrieved our decoy agents before they could come to any harm," he told her. "The boy, Charles, had to be hospitalized, but--"<br/>
<br/>
"I didn't ask about them because I knew you could do <i>your</i> job," she snapped without opening her eyes. "Same as I could do mine."<br/>
<br/>
"And you did it well, ma'am. Thirty years as an administrator hasn't dulled your skills as a field agent."<br/>
<br/>
"And I'll be only eighty-<i>four</i> in March," she grumbled. "So don't think it was that hard for me." She let out a soft sigh. "Still, it was easier when I was fifty, and it was only <i>vampires.</i>"<br/>
<br/>
To continue investigating the room: "<a href="https://www.Writing.Com/main/interactive-story/item_id/1510047/action/view/chapter_map/11221111111212222112" target="_top" title="Interactive Story Chapter in Item # 1510047">Disposing of Lucy</a>" <a href="https://www.Writing.Com/main/interactive-story/item_id/1510047/action/view/chapter_map/11221111111212222112" target="_blank" title="Open in new window."><img border="0" height="12" loading="lazy" onmouseout="$(this).css('opacity', '.4');" onmouseover="$(this).css('opacity', '1');" src="https://www.Writing.Com/nw.gif" style="opacity:.4;" width="12"/></a></span></div></div>


path: 1122111111121222211111211111111111
author_id: seuzz
title: When Strangers Meet (1)
chapter_content:
<div><div> <span>"What's it like?" Caitlin asked as she bobbed in the pool with the water lapping gently at her chin. "Love, I mean."<br/>
<br/>
Ryan tensed, at her question and at her tenor both. Despite the clammy heat of the high school natatorium--a bubble of warmth in the midst of a January morning of fell chill--he clasped his skinny arms around his narrow torso and kicked awkwardly at the water. Caitlin's question would be impossible to answer anyway, even if her skeptical glance warned him she would probably laugh at anything he said. So he returned her challenge with one of his own: "How old are you?"<br/>
<br/>
"How old are <i>you?</i>" she retorted.<br/>
<br/>
"Old enough to have been in love many times."<br/>
<br/>
Her eyes widened, and she faltered so that her mouth dipped briefly below the water's surface. "Shit, what are you doing playing the high school student, then? Shouldn't you be in college? Or, I dunno, have a job or something?"<br/>
<br/>
"Don't ask your elders where they've been or why they are where they are," Ryan said sharply. This time she slumped into the water up to her eyebrows, and she coughed hard when she reappeared, to gasp out an apology. "It's alright," he said in a kinder tone. "It's hard to tell with things like us who is an elder and who isn't, right? I suppose you're hiding in a high school because you're still young." He shrugged. "I have my own reasons for pretending to be a sixteen years old boy."<br/>
<br/>
"You know, you're the only other one of us I've ever met," Caitlin said. "Except for my own mother, of course."<br/>
<br/>
"How long have you been on your own?"<br/>
<br/>
"Almost a year," she said proudly. "I caught Caitlin by herself up in the mountains. That's where my mother and me were living."<br/>
<br/>
<i>Hillbilly stock,</i> Ryan thought to himself. <i>That explains a lot.</i> Aloud he only said, "Then it's lucky for you we ran into each other." Perhaps he didn't mean to accent the "you" in what he said, but it came out that way.<br/>
<br/>
Apparently she didn't like his tone, for the skepticism, which had retreated before her sense of deference, reasserted itself. "Have you ever been married?"<br/>
<br/>
"Once," he said, and looked away. "And not by choice. It was someplace I needed to be. I definitely wasn't in love with his wife."<br/>
<br/>
"What's it like, being in love?" she asked again.<br/>
<br/>
<i>It's like being lost,</i> he thought to himself. <i>It's like letting go of someone's hand, then turning around and finding they've gone, and you're in an empty and impossible labyrinth. You turn corners, thinking you'll find them on the other side. But they are never there. And though you feel their presence on the other side of a wall, you can never get to the other side to find them.</i> Again, when he spoke he used different words. "It's like being with someone, but they aren't there. They aren't there because you're not there. And you're not there because they can't see you, not really, even though they're looking right at you." He shifted restlessly, keenly aware that she would probably take his description as referring to his (and her) ability to assume a false identity.<br/>
<br/>
But her confusion tended in another direction. "But you <i>can</i> get inside them, the way you got inside Ryan and I got inside Caitlin," she objected.<br/>
<br/>
"Not like that," he said impatiently. "You see them, but you don't <i>take</i> them, the way we took these forms. And they see you, but of course they don't take <i>you.</i>"<br/>
<br/>
"Who are you in love with," she said shrewdly, and he kicked himself for unintentionally revealing that he was describing current feelings and not memories. His words may have made no sense, but they were plainly too vivid to be mere mental shadows.<br/>
<br/>
"I'm in love with Micah Johnson," Ryan said with a sigh.<br/>
<br/>
Caitlin's giggle was a shriek. "Good luck there," she chortled, and kicked away from the wall to do a lazy backstroke. "He'll never go for <i>Ryan,</i>" she continued. "Brianna, maybe."<br/>
<br/>
"Yes, I know. I've been thinking of making a change." And now the thought transmuted into an intention.<br/>
<br/>
"Why don't you let <i>me</i> make the change," she said, and dove under the surface. He watched her dark form undulate beneath the surface as she swam toward him. And when she broke the surface again--<br/>
<br/>
"Dude, I hear you got a crush on me," Micah laughed as he pushed his lank, wet hair from his face. His dark eyes glittered with amusement and jesting affection, and down one cheek marched the three moles toward his sharp chin. <br/>
<br/>
"Stop that," Ryan hissed, and kicked savagely at the imposter's face.<br/>
<br/>
"Alright, alright, I'll change back." Micah hoisted himself out of the pool, and water poured off his back and limbs. <br/>
<br/>
Ryan's teeth were chattering with anger, so he didn't watch as the transformation reversed. Caitlin's swimsuit was hanging limply off Micah's shoulders, but as the other took deep breaths the fabric began to tighten and grow taut as wider hips and large breasts filled it. He stretched out his legs, which became slimmer, and the feet more dainty. The sharp edges of his chin and jaw softened, and his eyes grew large and drifted apart. The hair lightened but grew no shorter, and Caitlin's wet bob retained the same general dimensions. She rubbed her arms and twined her fingers, then turned to spread the towel out and lay back on it. "I like being Caitlin more, anyway," she said. She stared at the high ceiling, whose glass panes were deeply fogged by moisture condensing against the cold. "I don't suppose we'll fall in love, you and me. Just fall in heat, and mate." She turned her head. "What's <i>that</i> like?"<br/>
<br/>
"It's like being hungry, and then you mate and then you're full," Ryan said. It was an easy question. "I've mated a few times." He glanced at her with a barely adequate sense of interest. "You might even be one of my pups. You have a familiar scent." He sniffed delicately at her. "Well, it's covered by chlorine now, but you smell of citrus. I remember planting a larvae in a bitch who smelled like oranges and cloves."<br/>
<br/>
"I don't know what you smell like," she said.<br/>
<br/>
"I smell like aftershave. I keep my scent covered. I'm not interested in mating anymore, and don't want anybody to find me."<br/>
<br/>
"You're <i>old!</i>" she cried.<br/>
<br/>
"Yes I am," he said, and his voice was hollow. "I will never have another chance to love again." He punctuated the declaration grimly. "I want one last chance, and I want it to be <i>good</i>."<br/>
<br/>
"How can I help," Caitlin asked with sudden excitement, and sat up on her elbows. Her eyes shone. <br/>
<br/>
Ryan turned sharply and stared at her for a very long time. Then wordlessly he slid into the pool. With amphibian ease he glided over the bottom of the pool, and rose cleanly on the other side. Now he was a tall figure with wide shoulders and powerful arms, with long, black hair that fell sleekly to the small of his back. He turned mica-like eyes onto her. "Keep Jose Fernandez out of the way," he said in a louche accent. "Tonight. While I get to Brianna."<br/>
<br/>
Caitlin grinned and bit her lip.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
Brianna gasped and groaned and dug sharp fingernails into his shoulders; his thin white t-shirt barely softened the piercing pain. "Oh God," she squeaked, her voice breaking. The words came from the back of her throat, and maybe from farther back, for there was an ache in them. She shifted and pressed her knees against the sides of his pelvis. "You're so big," she gasped. "You're so big! I never--! I never--!"<br/>
<br/>
The thing that looked now like Jose grinned to himself. Yes, he was big, and not because Jose was big. He had no idea how big Jose was. But even if Brianna didn't like her lover large he would swell and unfurl and fill her, pushing in deeply until there was no more room, and harden into something of adamantine strength inside the hot, wet, secret part of her body. He closed his eyes and concentrated, and down in his own loins a small gland began to pump out a hot and sour excretion. As it seeped into her own sensitive tissues, Brianna threw her head back and screamed--a cry that filled and reverberated off her small sedan. He grabbed her by the back of her head and pulled her forward to bite her mouth closed with his own hard teeth. She roared again, but he muffled it, and she bit down hard on his own lips.<br/>
<br/>
And then the spasm began. They started low, in her pelvis, and she rocked and jerked from side to side, and then her shoulders and legs began to twitch violently. He put a strong arm around her the small of her back and pressed her tightly to him. If he were human, the spasms would have twisted and hurt his cock, but the thing inside her was no longer a thing of rigid tissue but more like a hard bone. He gripped her until with a faint gasp she collapsed against his shoulder. A sticky stream of saliva and blood slid out of her mouth and down his chest.<br/>
<br/>
He settled back to make himself comfortable, and felt around inside her for the tender spot where he would find the nerves. In the deep, dark place where no one could see, things like small, serrated hooks sprang out of his cock, to cut and part her tissues. And when the thick, bare nerve slid out of his false penis and touched that mass of receptors in her, he felt it in his head, like a match touching his exposed brain.</span></div></div>


path: 11221111111212222111112111111111111
author_id: seuzz
title: When Strangers Meet (2)
chapter_content:
<div><div> <span>He gritted his teeth and braced himself as he felt a thing like a neural vine run rapidly up her own neural pathways. It raced up her spinal column, and he felt, like phantom pains, the sensation of his own fingertips on her back. Upward it rose, past her shoulders and up her neck and then it touched the base of her brain--<br/>
<br/>
His own head jerked back. She was unconscious, but her mind still roared like a furnace heated by a million discreet tongues of flame. Slowly, but with a rapidly quickening pace, he snapped at each one and swallowed it, then sucked at its neighbors. His own mind began to heat as twin flames appeared within his own ken. Soon, his brain was burning, and the shadows of Ryan Osgoode's imitated mind wilted and fled. The flames formed a new apparition: Brianna Anderson.<br/>
<br/>
It settled around him like a cloak, and then sank within. He didn't notice his own groans and gasps as strange, new faces became familiar; as new desires and resentments flared and faded. He only became aware of himself again--and of his new situation--when he heard himself murmuring "Jose, Jose" over and over again.<br/>
<br/>
His eyes snapped open. "Oh, God!" he cried, and shoved the thing back from his chest. He gasped and pressed tears back with the heel of his hand. He was still Jose, and the thing on his lap was still Brianna, but now he saw himself and her with a kind of double vision. "Jose, you <i>bastard!</i>" he reproved himself, and sank back with a whimper and let his arms fall limply to his side. "And it wasn't even the real <i>you.</i>"<br/>
<br/>
For a moment he felt himself waver, and then he reasserted himself. But still he trembled with Brianna's explosive emotions. The thing to do now was finish the job; the sooner it was over, the sooner he could bury the ugly sensations.<br/>
<br/>
And so he crawled behind the wheel of her car and drove quickly but carefully out to the spot in the countryside he had already chosen for a dumping ground. The thing in the back seat had already begun to shrivel and blacken long before he reached his destination, and when he carried it from the back seat and dropped it into the hole, it was hardly recognizable as having once been human. In a few hours, under the soil, it would become only a lump of ash. He dropped the t-shirt and shorts and flip-flops into the hole with it, and kicked some earth over them.<br/>
<br/>
He waited until he was back at the car before finishing up. He avoided looking in the car mirror as he felt his face melt and reshape into chipmunk cheeks and a wide, full-lipped mouth. The horizons of the world rose as he shrank, and he grimaced as breasts bulged out. Without touching it, he drew the fatal cock back inside himself, folding and hiding it behind a new, curlier bush of hair. He drew his legs up and buried his face against his knees. Gently, he rubbed his new toes, as Brianna did when she was feeling upset. For he was Brianna now, and she was <i>still</i> upset.<br/>
<br/>
She had been in love with Jose Fernandez, and now the new Brianna suffered the old Brianna's pangs of unrequited adoration as an echo of those she also felt for Micah Johnson.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
"Have you seen Caitlin around," Sarah asked. "Because she was supposed to--"<br/>
<br/>
"I don't have any classes with her," Brianna sniffed, and continued to scan the crowded hallway.<br/>
<br/>
"Well, who said you did," Sarah grumbled. "It's just that--"<br/>
<br/>
"I don't hang out with her," Brianna interrupted again. She hadn't seen Caitlin since leaving her at the pool; and losing contact with Caitlin was actually a bonus, as far as the new Brianna was concerned.<br/>
<br/>
"Why are you here?" Sarah asked irritably. Brianna didn't often linger with Sarah and her group, and she certainly didn't lounge around leaning against neighboring lockers.<br/>
<br/>
Brianna didn't reply, and merely fastened her bright eyes on Micah Johnson, who had materialized out of the crowd and was now staring, jaw slightly slack, at the girl leaning against his locker. "Hi Micah," she said lazily.<br/>
<br/>
"Hey Brianna," he said, and his voice broke slightly. He gestured fruitlessly, but she didn't move.<br/>
<br/>
"You look nice today." Actually, he looked the same as he always did, dressed in jeans and a grey hoodie. His cheeks twitched, and her heart beat hard as those darling moles quivered. Her hand trembled as she reached out and touched them: one, two, three.<br/>
<br/>
He swallowed, and his eyes now grew bright. "You look nice today, too," he stammered. "I mean, you always do. Uh ..."<br/>
<br/>
"You want to get together and study tonight?" she asked. They didn't share any classes, but she didn't feel like being subtle. She finally had a hook for him, and her new form was a delectable worm.<br/>
<br/>
He hesitated for just a moment, and then his head jerked up and down. "Sure. Pick you up, go someplace special?"<br/>
<br/>
Brianna caught her breath. This was not quite what she expected of the shy guy who had commiserated so many times with Ryan Osgoode about how hard it was to talk to girls, especially girls like Brianna. But he had definitely snapped at the bait, and she grinned in turn. "Sure. Seven o'clock?" He nodded, and she made sure to brush against him hard as she passed and melted back into the crowd herself.<br/>
<br/>
"Have you seen Ryan around?" she heard him mutter to Sarah as she left, and briefly she thought about turning back into Ryan, so she could listen to him talk excitedly about finally getting a date with Brianna. But that form was now gone.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
"What is this place," Brianna asked as she frowned at the dark warehouse. "Is it like a club?"<br/>
<br/>
"Kind of," Micah said, and drew her out of the car. "A little secret place I found, to share with someone special." She hung back briefly as he fumbled at a metal door with a key, then suffered to let herself be drawn inside. But there was no nightclub inside, only a vast, cavernous space.<br/>
<br/>
He led her over to another door, behind which was an abandoned office. She frowned at the pile of quilts and blankets and sleeping bags. "How did you find this place? And what's it for?" she asked.<br/>
<br/>
"I just found it," he replied. "As for what it's for--" He stepped forward suddenly and kissed her on the neck.<br/>
<br/>
She shuddered and let her inhibitions melt away. If this is what it took to finally make him hers-- He fumbled at her blouse, and she pulled at his hoodie. Inside of a few minutes they were both naked, and had fallen onto the soft heap of bedding.<br/>
<br/>
"Oh God," she moaned. "Fill me, Micah. Make me full." She spread her legs and thrust her pelvis to accept him. He was slim--slim in the arms and in the torso and in the hips and in the cock, and he slid easily inside her. She gasped again and pulled him close and buried her face in the side of his head. He smelled sharply of aloe--a scent she had never noticed on him. There was something else beneath it, but her mind was on what was going on down below. She sighed deeply.<br/>
<br/>
He seemed to grow larger and fatter as he worked at her, and she frowned slightly. It was a familiar sensation, which he remembered from Brianna's own experiences, and from his own experiences before as other girls, but there was another sense of familiarity, too. The thing he had put inside her felt alive, and it wriggled in a way that--<br/>
<br/>
"Oh God!" she cried, and pushed at him. He raised himself and fell away from her, to lay by her side, but the thing was still inside her, wriggling. She grasped at her pussy and grunted as she tried to expel it, but it was too late. It had latched on, and she groaned as she felt it begin to suck at her.<br/>
<br/>
She wheeled and grabbed at him, and he giggled as she pressed her nose to his cheek, snuffling angrily. Aloe. But there was other scent, hidden beneath. "You fucker!" she screamed at him, for there it was, almost undetectable.<br/>
<br/>
<i>Citrus.</i><br/>
<br/>
"God, you were right," he laughed. "It <i>is</i> like being hungry, and then being full. I've been feeling it for awhile, but until you told me it was <i>heat</i> I didn't know what it was."<br/>
<br/>
"What did you do with him?" she screamed. "What did you do with <i>Micah!</i>"<br/>
<br/>
"Same thing you did with Brianna," he sniggered. "You'll find what's left of him in a box out there." He jerked his chin at the door.<br/>
<br/>
She slapped him, and his face wavered briefly and liquidly. Then she fell back and clutched her stomach. "I'm too old to have another child," she said.<br/>
<br/>
"I don't care," he said. "It's not my responsibility. You should have heard what my mother had to say about the bastard who impregnated her with <i>me.</i>" He reached over to stroke her stomach, but she pushed him away. He shrugged and got heavily to his feet.<br/>
<br/>
"Are you going to make an honest woman of me? Of Brianna," she snapped.<br/>
<br/>
"I told you, it's not my responsibility. Besides--" And his face and form altered, as they had at the pool, and suddenly it was Caitlin again. "I said I liked being Caitlin better."<br/>
<br/>
To continue investigating the room: "<a href="https://www.Writing.Com/main/interactive-story/item_id/1510047/action/view/chapter_map/11221111111212222112" target="_top" title="Interactive Story Chapter in Item # 1510047">Disposing of Lucy</a>" <a href="https://www.Writing.Com/main/interactive-story/item_id/1510047/action/view/chapter_map/11221111111212222112" target="_blank" title="Open in new window."><img border="0" height="12" loading="lazy" onmouseout="$(this).css('opacity', '.4');" onmouseover="$(this).css('opacity', '1');" src="https://www.Writing.Com/nw.gif" style="opacity:.4;" width="12"/></a></span></div></div>


path: 112211111112122221111121111111111111
author_id: seuzz
title: Stripped
chapter_content:
<div><div> <span>"Trust me," Max said. He had to shout in his friend's ear to make himself heard above the crowd and the thump of the music. "You've never seen anything like it."<br/>
<br/>
Jack smiled to himself. He'd seen a lot of queer things in his time, and he doubted a titty bar--even a high-class titty bar like this one--would hold anything really new to his experience. He peered complacently through the haze of smoke that blurred the low blue and red lights. There were several stages, but only one was presently lit. <br/>
<br/>
Max clapped a meaty hand on Jack's shoulders, and pushed him toward the stage. It was a thick crowd, and near the front they refused to part for them, until Max called to a huge black man, who roughly pushed the other customers aside until the two men were right at the lip of the stage.<br/>
<br/>
"They know you here," Jack shouted to Max.<br/>
<br/>
"I'm a regular," Max laughed back. "And I never miss Kim's shows."<br/>
<br/>
At least they didn't have long to wait for a voice to growl over the address system. The introduction was brusque to the point of being cryptic. "Ladies and gentlemen, Kim."<br/>
<br/>
And onto the stage strode a small Asian man, dressed smartly in a dark business suit. A low murmur ran through the crowd, probably from those who were new to the show. Jack's eyebrow went up as "Kim," with minimal fuss, began to disrobe, loosening his tie and throwing off his jacket and shirt, exposing a trim, well-shaped torso incongruously bound up in a tasseled brassiere. He slipped off his loafers, and then with a gymnast's practiced ease threw one leg and then the other around the metal pole as he yanked off his socks. He pulled open his trousers, revealing black bikini briefs packing a very large bulge.<br/>
<br/>
Jack gave Max a skeptical sidelong glance. If this was a surprise, it certainly wasn't the kind of surprise he'd have expected Max to enthusiastically share.<br/>
<br/>
And then the lights went low, and throbbed and flashed. Kim whirled around the pole, then would strut out to the edge of the stage briefly before strutting back to the pole. And each time he came close--<br/>
<br/>
Jack had to blink and shake his head. He could spot the changes as they happened, but each time Kim came back he looked different. The bust was bigger. The stomach more sharply curved. The legs more feminine. <i>An illusion? Contortion?</i><br/>
<br/>
But it was the hair that finally sold him on it. The short, sharp cut got longer and longer, as though each spin at the pole pulled it out by centrifugal force. It swung and then swayed and finally flopped about Kim's shoulders.<br/>
<br/>
And the face-- True, he hadn't gotten a good look at him at the start, but when near the climax Kim bent low over the lip of the stage--the better to show off the unmistakable cleavage he now sported--Jack couldn't miss the soft beautiful features of an Asian woman. And when she--for Kim was now as womanly as possible--turned back to the pole the underwear was a thong that barely held back magnificent hips.<br/>
<br/>
Jack let his eye drift down as Kim hooked a leg around the pole. No more package either.<br/>
<br/>
All signs of masculinity had vanished by the end, when with two bold, quick gestures, Kim spread her legs and simultaneously tore off the brassiere and the thong both, flashing prodigious breasts and neat little bush before the lights went off.<br/>
<br/>
Thunderous applause broke out. Jack wiped his forehead. Kim had gotten very close a couple of times, but their eyes had never locked. <i>That didn't mean the performer hadn't spotted him in the crowd, though.</i> He had to act fast.<br/>
<br/>
Jack looked over at Max. "A <i>male</i> impersonator," he said, trying to hide his excitement under a bored tone. "That's different."<br/>
<br/>
"Pretty convincing, huh? And all in reverse and out in the open."<br/>
<br/>
"Fascinating trick," Jack said. "More magic act than strip show. I wonder how it's done. Come on."<br/>
<br/>
"Hey wait, you can't just--" Max protested, but Jack was already moving off toward a doorway in the back, and he hurried to follow.<br/>
<br/>
They found the dressing room easily, but it was guarded by a bouncer, and he folded his arms as the pair approached. But his eyes froze when Jack produced his badge. "It's nothing to worry about," Jack told him calmly. "I just want to talk to your star."<br/>
<br/>
"I'll have to ask the manager."<br/>
<br/>
"Do that. Meanwhile I'll talk to Kim."<br/>
<br/>
The bouncer glowered, but he also licked his lips uncertainly. Then he disappeared down the hall. Max let out a low whistle. "It's just special effects," he said. "No reason to get professionally excited."<br/>
<br/>
"Who said I was professionally excited?" Jack said. "I'm just suddenly a fan, and the badge works." He turned to the door, then blocked Max as he started to follow. "Official business," he said quietly. "That means I go in alone." Max's face fell, but he withdrew.<br/>
<br/>
Jack knocked, and opened the door without waiting for an answer. The small room was bare of everything except a dressing table. The girl looked up and froze at his reflection in the mirror. Jack smiled, and closed the door behind him with a soft click. "Oh, how the mighty have fallen," he said sadly.<br/>
<br/>
"Hello, Jack," the girl said. She turned back to the mirror. "Have you been looking for me?"<br/>
<br/>
"Not looking, exactly. But I've been keeping my eyes open." He glanced around. "I never expected to find you in a place like this, though."<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
It was very dark in the back corner where they'd wound up, and Olivier--that had been Kim's code name back in the day--was looking like a Caucasian male now, so he and Jack were nursing their drinks undisturbed. There had been some chitchat and catching up--mostly from Jack's end--but now the time seemed ripe to broach more delicate subjects. "You just disappeared on us," Jack said. "Of course, it took us awhile to notice."<br/>
<br/>
"I wasn't any good to you anymore," Olivier said, and just stared into the bottom of the glass.<br/>
<br/>
"How do you mean?"<br/>
<br/>
Olivier twisted in his seat. "Well, who do you think I am now? Whose face is this?"<br/>
<br/>
"Is it someone special? I thought you'd be going for anonymity."<br/>
<br/>
"The point is, it isn't <i>anyone.</i> No face I've ever seen. Just one I put on for the occasion."<br/>
<br/>
"I'd be more flattered if it was a woman."<br/>
<br/>
"I can oblige." It was a short change, and not a complex one. The hair wavered and darkened in complexion, and lengthened only a little from a buzz cut to a short bob. The eyes again became almond shaped. The nose shrank and the lips became fuller. Cheekbones rose, and in a blurry, undefinable way the face changed from the plainly masculine to the clearly feminine. Shoulders sloped, and Olivier seemed to shrink in his seat. He didn't put much effort into the chest, though, and only two small bulges at the front of the t-shirt showed that bosoms had appeared.<br/>
<br/>
"And who is she," Jack asked when it was over.<br/>
<br/>
"Again, no one."<br/>
<br/>
"So you're getting creative."<br/>
<br/>
"You don't get it," she said, and her voice began to slur. "I can't do <i>people</i> anymore. It got harder, just before I ... quit the Agency. And then one day I couldn't do them anymore." Her head wobbled. "I can do general changes. Races, genders, ages." She tipped the glass back, but it was already empty, and she made a sour face. "Used to I could be a body double, perfect disguise as anyone. But not anymore."<br/>
<br/>
Jack regarded her thoughtfully. She was rather pretty, but nondescript. "Would it help if I told you that you weren't the only one that happened to?" She looked up sharply. "Beefeater, for instance," Jack continued. "He can still bench press his own weight, but the days of being able to pick up bulldozers are long past. Falcon? She has to fly commercial, no more soaring on her own. Mensa struggles with Sudoku puzzles."<br/>
<br/>
"All of us," she asked in a puzzled voice. "We <i>all</i> lost it?" Jack nodded, and she muttered a curse. "Must be because there are no more above-ground nuclear tests. That's what they said caused it, wasn't it? Exposure to radiation."<br/>
<br/>
"The Agency spent millions trying to reverse it," Jack lied. "Nothing helped. The old team is all on pension now." He paused. "You could come back in. They'd take care of you."<br/>
<br/>
Olivier grumbled and mumbled and pushed the glass away. "What's the point?"<br/>
<br/>
"You wouldn't have to work in a place like this anymore."<br/>
<br/>
"I don't have to anyway. I just do it for kicks." She smiled proudly if a little lopsidedly. "By day I'm Philip Kim, and I make good money working for a brokerage firm. The night job?" Her head wobbled again. "Just a way of keeping the past alive." Her expression turned hooded. "You're not going to tell them you found me, are you?"<br/>
<br/>
"I'll have to say something. They might come talk to you. But maybe not." They stared at each other silently for a bit, and then Jack got up. "Take care of yourself, Kim." He gave her a reassuring pat on the shoulder, and left.<br/>
<br/>
Out in the car he scribbled a short report, noting that he had found Olivier and that the reversal formula the Agency had secretly used to rob their superteam of their powers had worked on him as well. He lingered before adding the recommendation that he be brought back into custody. Then he glanced back at the front of the club. Olivier didn't seem happy, but he seemed happier than his erstwhile partners. And there seemed no danger in him.<br/>
<br/>
Quietly, he tore up the report.</span></div></div>


path: 1122111111121222211111211111111111111
author_id: seuzz
title: Only Her Hairdresser Knows
chapter_content:
<div><div> <span>"Sam," Ruby said slowly as she let the salon door close behind her. "Where is everyone?"<br/>
<br/>
"We're closed today," Sam replied. He smiled and gestured at the chair. "But I didn't wanna disappoint you."<br/>
<br/>
Ruby tightened her grip on her purse and carefully took in the interior of the hair salon. Sunlight poured in through the immense bay windows, but only Sam's station had its lights on, so it seemed uncharacteristically gloomy. There was desolate air to the other stations, which she didn't like. They looked <i>abandoned</i>, and the tall carts with their combs and scissors and curlers and other implements stood askew when they should have been neatly rolled aside or hidden in the back.<br/>
<br/>
She looked carefully at Sam, too. "Since when do <i>you--</i>," she started, but caught herself at the shrill way her voice came out. It was just Sam. Short, slim, stylish Sam Kisaragi, in his hipster-ironic t-shirt and black jeans and designer rope belt, and dark hair slashed into scissor-like bangs over glittering eyes. He put one hand on his hip and with the other gestured again at the chair. A satirical half-smile crept up one side of his face. "Why'd you let me make an appointment if you knew you were going to be closed today?" she asked him shrewdly.<br/>
<br/>
He rolled his eyes. "It's not like we <i>knew</i> we were going to be closed, Ruby--"<br/>
<br/>
"What, was there a gas leak or something this morning?"<br/>
<br/>
"Tch. It was a last-minute <i>thing.</i> You know what <i>artists</i> are like. They all decided they wanted to go to the beach or something, and just called and cancelled everyone. And as soon as I'm done with you--"<br/>
<br/>
"Why didn't you cancel with me?"<br/>
<br/>
"Because I knew you'd kill me. I've seen that cunning little pistol you carry around in your bag. Are you <i>ever</i> going to get a new one? Bag, I mean."<br/>
<br/>
"You've been snooping through my--!"<br/>
<br/>
"Oh, please, you don't have any secrets from <i>me.</i>" He gave her a sly, sidelong glance. "So, did Anais let Christian bring the tarantulas to bed with them, or did she--?" He fluttered delicate fingers over a gaping laugh as she gasped. "They were arguing about it when I peeked at your Kindle last time. Come on, tell me. I don't want to have to <i>buy</i> the book to find out."<br/>
<br/>
"You're a real <i>bitch,</i> Sam," Ruby said. She wavered for a moment, and came very close to just leaving, but she didn't want to give him the satisfaction of chasing her out. "I'm going to make you <i>work</i> today," she said as she stomped over and dropped heavily into the chair.<br/>
<br/>
"It's <i>always</i> a challenge with <i>you,</i> Ruby," he retorted. He swung her around to face the mirror. "Let me have the weapon." Ruby clutched at her bag even as he reached for it, but their eyes met in the mirror, and she reluctantly let it go. Sam snickered as he crossed to the other side of the salon and hung it on a coatrack. "I can't have you shooting me. You'll never find another one like me."<br/>
<br/>
"God, the thought of more than <i>one</i> of you," she muttered.<br/>
<br/>
"The feeling's mutual." Lightly he riffled the tips of her hair. "So. Tell me about the new job."<br/>
<br/>
"What new job?" she frowned.<br/>
<br/>
"You have a new job every time you come in," Sam said waspishly. He fingered a strand of her hair thoughtfully. It was fire-engine red at the tips; cherry red along the length; and mousy brown at the roots. "It was a real-estate office last time, and an insurance firm the time before that. I don't remember where you were three months ago--" He delicately stroked a lock of hair. "But there was an architect in there someplace."<br/>
<br/>
"You've got scrambled eggs for brains, Sam, you're all--"<br/>
<br/>
"You think I'm just a silly hairdresser," he snapped back. "But I <i>listen</i> to you, Ruby. Which is why your hair <i>never</i> turns out as good as I could-- Oh, maybe you're just making up <i>stories</i> for me. Are you a secret agent?"<br/>
<br/>
As soon as he asked the question, he felt the electric tingle running along her hair, and tugged at it. <i>Sarah Frances MacDonald.</i> The name leaped from her mind into his. <i>Office of Strategic Secrets. An agency that supposedly doesn't exist.</i><br/>
<br/>
Ruby stiffened. "I don't even have a job, Sam," she grumbled. "I'm just a housewife. I'm trying to write a novel--"<br/>
<br/>
"Oh my God!" he gasped. "That is so cunning! Is it going to be dirty?" he grinned. "With sexy vampires and some bondage?" <i>A picture formed in his head: a man with a strong nose and flat face and short, curly blonde hair. Sean Petersen. Ruby was imagining him with his shirt off ...</i><br/>
<br/>
"It's just a book about a working girl," Ruby insisted.<br/>
<br/>
"So where does she work? Where do <i>you</i> work? Pretend you're her."<br/>
<br/>
Ruby felt a twinge in her gut. Unwillingly, she found herself thinking about the false-front office on Sylvan Street, and even pictured herself walking into it, and into the back, and tapping in the code that opened the inner door: 37769551. "It's a title company," she said. "My sister works at a--"<br/>
<br/>
"<i>You,</i> darling," Sam gently reminded her. He took her hair in both palms and rubbed it, and closed his eyes and smiled. <i>Such a plain little office,</i> he saw, <i>with Mary and Lotte and Beatrice out front. Beatrice, who looked like a grandmother and had forty years' experience chasing meta threats. Ask her to bring in brownies,</i> Sam noted to himself, <i>but if she has some don't eat any.</i><br/>
<br/>
"It's just her and her boss," Ruby said in a halting voice. "But he's independently wealthy, and she usually just runs errands--" She tried to swerve off thinking about her last trip, to Utica, to confront those foot soldiers from the <i>Vorovskoy mir,</i> and the one who'd kept fighting even after she'd lopped off his head ...<br/>
<br/>
"Ooh, this boss sounds sexy. Tell me about him." Sam's voice turned silky, and he pinched a long strand of her hair between two fingers. But her thoughts only came haltingly.<br/>
<br/>
Ruby looked at Sam in the mirror. His eyes were closed, and a muscle in his cheek twitched as she deliberately formed a mental picture of Emerson--code-name Popeye. A very cold spot formed in her heart, and she kept Emerson's face firmly in her head as she reached over to quietly pick up a pair of scissors.<br/>
<br/>
Sam didn't realize anything was wrong until her hair slipped from his fingers; and he felt the sharp tip of the scissors at his jugular vein before he even opened his eyes. "Ruby," he said. "If you don't want to talk about it--"<br/>
<br/>
"Who are you," she said as she slowly got out of the chair. "You look like Sam Kisaragi and you talk like him. But Sam's not a fucking telepath, and you are." She stopped as she felt the gun barrel against the back of her head and heard the click. "I can kill him before you kill me," she said to the person who had crept up behind her.<br/>
<br/>
"No one here wants to die, Ms. MacDonald," Sam said, and the sneering whine had vanished from his voice. Quick as a serpent he struck her hand away from his throat and grabbed at her. Ruby twisted, but gasped and slumped at the prick of the needle in her shoulder. "You didn't have to wait, George," Sam sighed to the large black man who now took Ruby in his arms. "Give her here and go get the mold."<br/>
<br/>
George stepped through a door in the back while Sam laid Ruby on the floor. She was a small, slim thing, and Sam's form wasn't much different, so the Infiltrator only had to make minimal shifts in his frame--cupping and plumping two small breasts; twisting his hips to make them more womanish; wringing his fingers so that they tapered like hers--after pulling her clothes off and making a long and careful study of her. Then George handed him the mold--grey and firm, about the size and shape of a cake--and he knelt and carefully pressed it to her face. <br/>
<br/>
"You weren't with her long," George observed.<br/>
<br/>
"No, but I caught her off guard, and I got enough out of her." The Infiltrator smiled wryly. "It wasn't like having to sleep with her hairdresser." <i>Six hours had been more than enough to fully consume Sam Kisaragi's mind.</i><br/>
<br/>
It took ten minutes for the mold to set, and the Infiltrator pulled off his clothes and pulled on hers while waiting. Then he carefully pried it from her face and set it on the floor. George threw the shallowly breathing Ruby over his shoulder and again disappeared through the back, to the waiting van.<br/>
<br/>
The Infiltrator knelt and pressed his face into the mold. His hair writhed, and his face melted. He concentrated on her coloring--the pink roses of her cheeks and the dusky ridges of her eyebrows--as he felt his brow widen and his nose shrink. A dimple formed in his right cheek. "You gonna make a meal of it," he heard George ask, and the Infiltrator sucked lightly at the crease where her lips had met; his mouth tightened and grew very small.<br/>
<br/>
He raised his head but kept his eyes closed as he letting his new features harden. Then he stood up, a little awkwardly on her high heels, and opened his eyes. Ruby--Sarah MacDonald--looked back at him from the mirror. He straightened his blouse, then undid a single button. It might be worthwhile getting close to Sean Petersen ...<br/>
<br/>
She tugged sadly at a loose strand of lank, red-tinged hair and sighed. "I don't guess <i>you'd</i> know what to do about my hair." <br/>
<br/>
"Not my job," George growled.<br/>
<br/>
"No, your job was breaking Kisaragi's neck. And all teasing aside, where <i>am</i> I going to find anyone who can do anything <i>with</i> it," she groaned.<br/>
<br/>
To continue investigating the room: "<a href="https://www.Writing.Com/main/interactive-story/item_id/1510047/action/view/chapter_map/11221111111212222112" target="_top" title="Interactive Story Chapter in Item # 1510047">Disposing of Lucy</a>" <a href="https://www.Writing.Com/main/interactive-story/item_id/1510047/action/view/chapter_map/11221111111212222112" target="_blank" title="Open in new window."><img border="0" height="12" loading="lazy" onmouseout="$(this).css('opacity', '.4');" onmouseover="$(this).css('opacity', '1');" src="https://www.Writing.Com/nw.gif" style="opacity:.4;" width="12"/></a></span></div></div>


path: 11221111111212222111112111111111111111
author_id: seuzz
title: Lovers and Liars (1)
chapter_content:
<div><div> <span>Ben pushed the bathroom door shut with his foot and leaned heavily against the sink. Slowly he raised his eyes and regarded himself in the mirror; his pale face looked almost green under the harsh light, and his five o'clock shadow sprang out. His gaze drifted down, taking in the thin t-shirt that lankly drooped over a narrow torso and the boxers. He wasn't ashamed of this look, but neither was he fond of it; and if he loathed what he was about to do, it was because of where it was all going to lead.<br/>
<br/>
He hated the way Rick could be so persuasive, and hated himself for being so persuadable.<br/>
<br/>
So he shut his eyes. Rick had suggested dark red hair--a thick mane. Green eyes would match that kind of hair. Ben sniffed and slowly formed an image in his mind's eye. He didn't have to look in the mirror; usually he found it best not to, not until the touch up work had to be done.<br/>
<br/>
Ben's features began to change. His stiff, dark hair softened and lengthened and curled about his ears and down to his shoulders. He blinked behind tightly shut eyelids. He worked the back of his jaw and grimaced, and his face lengthened a little, and his chin acquired just a little bit of a point. With his eyes still screwed shut, he rubbed his face with an open palm, and the dark stubble disappeared. A rosy hue, deepening into a healthy brown tan, flushed onto his cheeks and spread.<br/>
<br/>
He took a breath and rubbed at his throat until the Adam's apple disappeared; he coughed a little, adjusting the timbre for a new voice. His nipples tingled as his chest swelled into large and round and plump breasts, pulling the shirt tight. He shifted on his feet, and his legs ached slightly as they grew stronger and rounder--Rick had suggested a swimmer's physique. Ben sucked hard on his lower lip as he pulled his cock back within himself. Ben pressed his fingers against his crotch and held them there. The pressure turned into a twinge and then into a gasping and burning yearning as he wove more and more nerve endings into that mound of flesh. If he was going to do this thing, he might as well set himself up to enjoy it ...<br/>
<br/>
Ben opened his eyes and gave his reflection a critical look. <i>Yes, that would probably do.</i> He touched up a few details--crinkling his nose and shrinking it; blinking as his eyelashes lengthened. But he couldn't wash the guarded, melancholy expression from his soft, feminine eyes.<br/>
<br/>
Rick turned quickly--eagerly, Ben thought--as he stepped back into the dorm's living room. His roommate's eyes lit up. "Yeah, wow," he said. "That's just about perfect."<br/>
<br/>
Ben hung back a moment before stepping toward him. "You know," he said quietly, "as long as I'm like this, we could--" He stretched a tentative hand toward his friend.<br/>
<br/>
But Rick stepped back and shook his head with a nervous grin. "Dude, I know what you really look like."<br/>
<br/>
"I don't <i>look</i> like anything," Ben weakly protested. "It's just like changing clothes."<br/>
<br/>
"Yeah, well, but inside you're still-- You know."<br/>
<br/>
"Inside I'm still-- Oh, forget it." Ben pushed aside the clutter on the flimsy divan and sat on it cross-legged. "I suppose I need a name. And some clothes."<br/>
<br/>
"I guess we can call you Beth. And I told you, I picked up some stuff from my sister's closet when I was home last weekend," Rick said. "That'll do for tomorrow, and after that we can go out and--"<br/>
<br/>
"Tomorrow?" Ben asked. "As soon as that?"<br/>
<br/>
"Well, there's no point in waiting. Oh, will you be able to remember that look? Because Tommy called while you were in the bathroom, and he's coming over."<br/>
<br/>
"Yeah, I can remember," Ben said. He clasped his hands together and studied his palms. He hadn't really paid attention to them during the transformation, and he rubbed them lightly together to soften away the calluses. "You don't want Tommy finding me here with you, like this?"<br/>
<br/>
"It would be kind of hard to explain."<br/>
<br/>
"Tell him you're on a date. Get rid of him."<br/>
<br/>
"I already told him he could come over."<br/>
<br/>
"I'm sure <i>Brad</i> would know what to do with a girl like me," Ben said with just a trace of acidity.<br/>
<br/>
"That's what I'm counting on," Rick grinned. "Come on, dude, change back."<br/>
<br/>
Ben sighed and returned to the bathroom.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
As Rick had promised, Ben found the lecture hall only about a quarter full when he entered it the next morning: Posby was not a popular teacher. Rick himself was already seated halfway down the front, and was eagerly looking back and forth from one door to the next, and he grinned as Ben entered. But Ben, of course, ignored him, and scanned the room for the intended target. All the male students looked and dressed alike when viewed from the back, and Ben had to walk quite far down and turn around before he spotted Brad Randall--ball cap pulled down low, fleece jacket with the collar turned up--in one of the rows. That could make the approach a little awkward--for Brad had noticed Ben and was openly staring at him--but maybe it would be for the best. Ben turned his head and let his long, reddish-brown hair screen his face from Brad as he walked back up the center aisle and took a seat almost directly in front of the frat guy. Brad had his feet up on the back of it, and Ben turned around just long enough to smile shyly at him as he dropped his feet to the floor. Brad's jaw was clenched, but there was a gleam in his eye. Ben took out pencils and a notebook and settled back as the professor entered.<br/>
<br/>
It was as dry Rick had warned him it would be, but Ben dutifully if pointlessly took notes. This wasn't his first time playing a girl--not by a long-shot--and he had no trouble writing out graceful loops and swirls. But he also took care to play with his hair, running slim fingers through its tresses, and shaking it loose every few minutes. <br/>
<br/>
He could practically hear the throbbing from Brad's erection.<br/>
<br/>
When the lecture was over, Ben stood and turned around while packing up his bag. Brad just sat there, gazing down openly at him. Ben smiled, but avoided eye contact. He doubted he would have to speak first ...<br/>
<br/>
"I haven't seen you in here before," Brad said in a low growl.<br/>
<br/>
Ben glanced back up at him. "I'm doing a favor for one of my girlfriends. She couldn't make it to class, and asked me to take notes for her."<br/>
<br/>
"That's nice of you. You know anything about Econ?"<br/>
<br/>
Ben shook his head.<br/>
<br/>
"It would kind of suck if your notes didn't make sense. If you want to get together, I could look over them, you could look at mine."<br/>
<br/>
"That would be nice," Ben said softly. "My name's Beth DiNuovo, by the way."<br/>
<br/>
"I'm Brad Randall." He hoisted his own pack onto his shoulder. "We could go over to the union, get something to eat."<br/>
<br/>
"Sure. I don't have a class until this afternoon."<br/>
<br/>
They exited together, and again Ben ignored Rick's wicked grin as he watched them go.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
"He invited me over to his place. Their place," Ben said sullenly. "Tomorrow night. Come on, shut up, I'm trying to kill this guy." He flicked at the joystick and pressed a button, but only succeeded in plinking a bullet off the far wall.<br/>
<br/>
"Oh, he <i>likes</i> you," Rick chortled. He dropped onto the divan and grinned at his roommate. "I knew he would."<br/>
<br/>
"Then why didn't he invite me over there <i>today?</i>"<br/>
<br/>
"That's how come I know he likes you. You must have been really charming."<br/>
<br/>
"I know how to treat a guy," Ben muttered back. "And some guys know how to treat a girl." He gave Rick a quick, dirty look.<br/>
<br/>
"That's what I'm counting on. Oh, man, I am going to owe you so much when this is done. If it all works out."<br/>
<br/>
"I haven't named my price yet," Ben said. He flicked the joystick again to the side, so as to get a clearer shot, and sighed as he took a direct hit to the chest. <br/>
<br/>
"Yeah, what <i>do</i> you charge for this kind of thing?"<br/>
<br/>
"No charge," Ben replied. "It's a freebie. Doing it as a favor for you."<br/>
<br/>
"Oh, the job's its own reward, huh?" Rick laughed. "Just don't fall for him, okay? It's supposed to be the other way around."<br/>
<br/>
"I know what you want, Rick," Ben snapped back. Impulsively, he shut the game down. "I guess I have to take what I can get."<br/>
<br/>
"I don't know why you don't take a bigger advantage of-- Well, what you can do. Man, if I could--" Rick lifted his own cap and rubbed the short hair atop his crown. "Let's just say I wouldn't be wanting for company."<br/>
<br/>
"Seems to me you're not--" Ben threw the controller to the side and snapped his mouth shut. "So what <i>is</i> Cynthia doing these days?"<br/>
<br/>
"I dunno. I don't like to torture myself. So, are we going to get you those clothes?" He slapped at Ben with the back of his hand. "Come on, we should go before Tommy or someone shows up."<br/>
<br/>
"Gimme a few minutes to change," Ben sighed, and got up.<br/>
<br/>
"You're fine just like that. I don't want anyone seeing me and <i>Beth</i> heading out."<br/>
<br/>
"Why? What's wrong with anyone seeing you and <i>Beth</i> together?"<br/>
<br/>
"It would just be strange," Rick said with a shrug.<br/>
<br/>
Ben bent over and slipped on his sneakers. "Are you paying for everything?"<br/>
<br/>
"Well, sure, I guess. Up to a point. I mean, all this is my idea, but I'm not going to have any use for the stuff we buy. <i>I</i> don't like dressing up like a girl."<br/>
<br/>
<i>But you think that I do,</i> Ben thought to himself. <i>So why won't you take advantage of it?</i></span></div></div>


path: 112211111112122221111121111111111111111
author_id: seuzz
title: Lovers and Liars (2)
chapter_content:
<div><div> <span><i>He's treating it like it's a workout,</i> Ben thought glumly. He squeezed Brad more tightly between his legs and tried to ignore the way his date was mechanically puffing as he thrust in and out. Brad wasn't even very big. Oh, he was thick enough, and Ben let himself grunt pleasurably as he clenched rhythmically at Brad's cock. But he couldn't get <i>deep enough</i> into fully pleasure his paramour. Ben briefly thought about doing a minor adjustment down there--shifting the nerves about. But once he started making a change it could be hard to stop, and he didn't want Brad noticing any differences when the lights went back on.<br/>
<br/>
Then Brad froze and made a slight choking sound in the back of his throat. Ben clasped him a little more tightly and prepared himself for the climax. Brad shifted his hand, and then-- "Ungh ungh ungh ungh ..." Ben whimpered and gasped throatily in time to Brad's quickened pulse. He was pushing as deeply as he could, and Ben could practically hear his face muscles creak and crack into a grimace of release and satisfaction. Then Brad buried his face in the pillow next to Ben's ear. His sniffles and gurgles were <i>not</i> sexy.<br/>
<br/>
Ben hugged him closer and turned his head to nip at his ear, but Brad just groaned slightly. Then he slowly pulled himself free, dragging the sheets away as he rolled off to the side, and Ben had to tug them back over. Brad sniffed some more, and Ben wondered if he was going to grab a Kleenex and blow his nose. <i>Like he had done a few months before, when Ben was looking like a different girl and going about under a different name, and had made the biggest mistake of his life by tumbling into bed with him.</i><br/>
<br/>
But to his surprise, Brad turned onto his side and pulled Ben close. In its masculine way, his chest was almost as big as Ben's very feminine chest. Ben leaned in for a kiss, but Brad pulled back. "You'll have to give me a little while before we try again," he muttered. "But I'll try to keep you going." Only then did he kiss his bedmate.<br/>
<br/>
"Well, if you want to," Ben said. "But I'm happy now."<br/>
<br/>
"You don't have to pretend," Brad grunted. "I can tell when a girl is faking it." He reached down and cradled Ben's taut ass with a meaty paw. "Like I say, just give me a bit."<br/>
<br/>
"Well, that's nice of you," Ben murmured back. He hesitated: He didn't want to do it, but he could imagine Rick urging him on. <i>Make him like it, make him love you, make him want to have you, forever.</i> Ben shivered. "You can let me do the work for awhile," he said, pushing Brad onto his back and struggling atop him. "You. Are. So." He didn't finish the sentence, except by thrusting his tongue deeply into Brad's mouth.<br/>
<br/>
It took a good twenty minutes to get Brad wound up again, and thirty minutes after that second time. "Jesus, what does it take to get you to turn loose?" Brad demanded when they'd finished it up a third time. <br/>
<br/>
"Who says I'm not turned loose," Ben asked. "Maybe this is what I really like. Just being with a guy who--" He bit at Brad's shoulder. "Who's willing to go through hell for me?" He raised his head. "It's not hell, is it? Doing this?"<br/>
<br/>
"No, it's really good," Brad said. "Though it's kind of turning into a point of pride for me. Are we going to do this all night?"<br/>
<br/>
"You have a problem with going all night?"<br/>
<br/>
"I can't lie, I don't think--"<br/>
<br/>
"Impress your brothers? Make 'em jealous?" Ben started to pant and gasp loudly.<br/>
<br/>
"Stop that," Brad said, and grabbed Ben close. "I can't believe I'm saying this, but can we just, like, cuddle?" There was a bitter note to the way he said the last word.<br/>
<br/>
Ben giggled. "That's fine too. If you can hold me." He squirmed and nipped at Brad.<br/>
<br/>
"Why don't you tell me a little about yourself?"<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
Rick guffawed. "He <i>cuddled</i> with you? Did he actually use that word?"<br/>
<br/>
"Well, what's so funny about it?" Ben bridled. "He's not <i>all</i> cock and thrust."<br/>
<br/>
Rick's eyes narrowed. "Are you falling for him?"<br/>
<br/>
"No." Ben looked away. "Lemme ask you something. If you could do what I can do, if somehow I could loan it to you for a couple of weeks, would <i>you</i> crawl into bed with Brad so you could--"<br/>
<br/>
"Eww, fuck, no," Rick said. "That's disgusting."<br/>
<br/>
"But you'll ask me to do it."<br/>
<br/>
"You're willing to do it," Rick countered.<br/>
<br/>
Ben sighed. "Yeah, because I'm your friend. I guess I'm your friend. I mean, we've only known each other a few weeks." He shifted uncomfortably on the divan. "And how long have you hated Brad Randall?"<br/>
<br/>
"I told you. Ever since he took Cynthia away from me."<br/>
<br/>
"If he took Cynthia away from you, how come she's not in bed with him and I am?"<br/>
<br/>
"Because he threw her over. Same as you need to throw <i>him</i> over before he gets tired of <i>you.</i>"<br/>
<br/>
"And what if he <i>doesn't</i> get tired of me?"<br/>
<br/>
"That makes it all the better." Rick's eyes hardened. "You know, I was in totally in love with Cynthia when she dumped me for him. I want him totally in love with you when you dump him."<br/>
<br/>
"Did she really dump you?" Ben asked. "Didn't she try coming back to you, telling you it was all a mistake?"<br/>
<br/>
"Yeah, but there wasn't any point, and I told her so."<br/>
<br/>
"Not very nice of you."<br/>
<br/>
"Not very nice of <i>her.</i>"<br/>
<br/>
The two roommates stared at each other levelly. Ben was the first to look away. "I guess there wasn't anything very special about her, then," he said quietly.<br/>
<br/>
"There was a lot that was special about her," Rick said. "That's what made it hurt so much."<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
Ben studied the picture on Rick's iPhone critically. He didn't have to: He knew the girl vaguely--Megan was her name, and he and Rick and Tommy had an English Lit class with her--and had seen her enough that he didn't need a photo to pull off an impersonation. No, Ben was wondering why Rick was wanting <i>her</i> for company. He had never said one word about finding her attractive. And "Beth" ought to have been attractive enough.<br/>
<br/>
Ben cupped his face in both hands and watched as his nose shrank inward and his eyes narrowed. Megan had a square, slightly squashed face with chipmunk cheeks, and his features grew puffy before tightening and growing tauter in their new shape. A mole sprouted next to his lips, which plumped up into twin little cupid bows. His eyebrows stayed dark even as his hair turned a platinum sheen: straight bangs crept down over his forehead, but his hair lengthened only a little at the sides and back, for Megan affected a slightly mannish cut. His ears shrank. The great change was at his bust: Megan had huge, floppy breasts, and Ben had to support them with one arm as they dragged his frame downward. The sink rose as his legs grew shorter and fatter on very wide hips. <br/>
<br/>
Ben's brow puckered and his eyebrows met to form a shallow pyramid as he looked at himself. It was a look of worried skepticism he'd often seen Megan wear as the professor dissected a lyric poem, and within that expression he adjusted his features until he thought he'd captured the girl's look. He suspected it was a look she often gave herself when <i>she</i> looked in mirror.<br/>
<br/>
Then he turned to the shopping bags. Rick had outdone himself for this bit of role-playing, and made a special trip to the mall to pick up an ensemble like Megan wore. Ben pulled on the panties and tucked his breasts into the enormous cups of the bra. He drew on the fresh, white button-up blouse and the short black skirt and sandals. He had the makeup kit he used as "Beth" and painted his lips a dark violet shade; and he whitened his already pale cheeks with an even whiter powder. Then from the last, small sack he pulled out the thick spectacles. They weren't prescriptive, so he could still see well after putting them on. With a tight sigh he twisted his head this way and that. Yes, he was now definitely Megan Foster.<br/>
<br/>
All this time he'd been ignoring the voices from the living room: Tommy had arrived. Probably that's what all this was about. Tommy "liked" Megan: Or, at least, he said that he liked what he saw of her. Ben guessed that Rick was going to use him to tease his friend.<br/>
<br/>
"And here's that surprise I was telling you about," Rick laughed when Ben stepped out of the bathroom. Tommy's eyes widened and glinted with pleasure.<br/>
<br/>
"Hey," Ben said, and smiled tightly as he loitered awkwardly in the doorway. "Uh, Tommy, right?"<br/>
<br/>
"Like you haven't been talking about him since getting here," Rick chortled. Ben shot him a dark, quizzical glance.<br/>
<br/>
"So, this is our study group?" Tommy asked. "Where's Ben?"<br/>
<br/>
"I think he said he was going to the library," Rick said. "I should go find him."<br/>
<br/>
"I guess we should all go find him," Ben said. He stepped over toward Rick; but the latter, to his surprise, drew back. In fact, he did more than draw back: He picked up his backpack and went over to the door. <br/>
<br/>
"I gotta test in Mass Comm coming up," Rick said as he dug his keys out of his pocket. "I'll go bug Ben, if I can find him." He opened the door and jerked his head at the other two.<br/>
<br/>
"I thought we were doing a threesome," Tommy said with a grin. "Or a foursome."<br/>
<br/>
"Nah, it's just the two of you," Rick winked. "Come on, Tommy, you can do it over at your place."<br/>
<br/>
Ben felt his heart drop as he followed Rick numbly outside. Rick locked the door and loped off, leaving the other two behind.<br/>
<br/>
Ben closed his eyes and glumly relented as Tommy put a long arm around his waist. And then Tommy's lips and tongue were against his.</span></div></div>


