Wednesday 17 July 2024

Enter the Stranger
Hell yeah, it's my first full-length story featuring the Stranger!

A man gets taken over by a thing from another world that feeds off the chaos it causes from swapping bodies and body parts, transforming people, and then commanding them to enjoy their new forms. Enter the Stranger is too dark for Amazon and available only on Body Swap Stories or Smashwords.

A scientific experiment to create a portal to another dimension results in something evil entering the world. The thing takes refuge in the body of Raymond. Another mind inside him. A thing that can twist the fabric of reality to serve its hunger for fear and lust, and control minds to force people into pleasure.

The thing inside Raymond grows stronger from the terror and pleasure others experience when he swaps their bodies, mixes their body parts, and transforms them. He sows chaos wherever he goes, swapping people around at a whim and forcing them to enjoy their new forms. To fully cut out Raymond's mind and free itself from any anchor to the world, the stranger inside him turns to Raymond's family to ensure that they'll understand what it's like to walk in each other's shoes and experience each other's desires…forever.

He blinked His eyes open to find himself looking up at a vaulted ceiling. The hard edges of the grate that formed the platform pressed uncomfortably into His back. Two scientists in lab coats knelt over Him, peering down at him with worried expressions. Beyond them was the top of the arc of the portal, the lights adorning it blinking red for the emergency shutdown. A medical officer pushed his way between His two colleagues and set down his medical bag.

He was hazily aware of people rushing around the huge room in which He lay. The susurration of voices. The hum of machinery powering up. The beep of emergency systems activating.

“Raymond? Can you hear me?” The medic asked, peering into each eye.

He knew the words for everything around Him. Understood what the medic was asking. But there was a disconnect. He felt…hazy. As if these surroundings were new to Him. But He’d been working here for years. And the colleagues standing over Him. He knew that He knew them, but He couldn’t remember anything about them.

“Raymond?” The medic asked again, still looking at Him.

Was he Raymond? It seemed right but…something felt off about being called by that name. By any name. The lack of that critical memory should have been concerning. Instead, the growing feeling of discontent was joined by a deep sense of wonder at these surroundings. This was all new. This place. This body. The platform beneath Him.

He began pushing himself to a sitting position, His hands pressing against the cold metal grating. The medic reached down and helped Him sit up. He had the sense he should have been able to feel more: the push and pull of the atoms within the platform he now sat on, the bending of the light as it moved through space, the intimate knowing of the minds of the other beings around Him. Where had that control gone? He’d lost so much in such a short time. Or had he? Had he ever had such power or did he just dream it?

He moved His mouth, slippery tongue sliding against wet teeth and gums. He still knew how to do this though it felt animalistic, vulgar to move these meat parts around to make sounds. “I’m okay,” he said, the voice spilling from His lips both strange and familiar, the words what those around Him wanted to hear.

“Can you stand?” The medic asked.

What did that even mean? Oh, yes. Muscles controlling legs pushing up His mass.

He nodded to the medic’s question and the medic helped Him to His feet. When had it become such a chore to move? To rotate muscle, pull on ligament and lift bone?

The portal stood in front of Him, powered down, only the far wall of the research lab visible through it now. Memories of looking at something wonderful and terrible through that same portal just moments ago flooded Him. He—not this meat body, the Him that was pure energy, pure terror and lust—had reached through and touched this body, this Raymond, and then…and then been cut off from His larger self as the klaxons sounded and the portal lights flashed red.

No. No. He’d always been a man. Where were these alien thoughts coming from? He clutched His head. It felt like there were two minds inside Him. One familiar. One alien to Him. To this world.

He turned slowly, shuffling in His organic body to look around. Thick wires and pipes connected the platform on which the portal stood to several huge thrumming power banks and monitors. Clouds of water vapor drifted off the super-cooled conductors to either side of the portal that had, until seconds ago, been a portal connecting two dimensions. Other people in lab coats rushed back and forth, collecting data and speaking in excited whispers. Occasionally they glanced at Him, worry in their eyes.

“What was that thing?” One of the colleagues behind Him asked the other.

“I don’t know. We’ll review the data. See what happened.”

The fear in their voice gave Him a small jolt of energy which He savored. But He would need more. More of the fear and pleasure that powered Him. The thought was fleeting, disappearing almost as soon as it came. A nonsense thought. He was human.

He leaned heavily on the medic to shuffle down the steps of the platform. Somehow He’d forgotten how to move His body. How to walk. But it was coming back to Him. Everything except His name. Something within Him fought against being labelled ‘Raymond’. The name bound Him. Didn’t encompass all that He now was.

By the time He was halfway across the room He no longer had to lean on the medic. Still, they insisted on taking Him to the hospital to be checked out. When He stepped outside the doors of the facility the sky was a brilliant blue, and so far above Him. Beautiful. Awful. He had once been that tall, stretching to infinity. Before this meat body. Looking out across the vast desert landscape made Him feel small. Insignificant. He hated that.

It was as if there were two different personalities blended within Him, each interfering with the other so that neither felt entirely right. He was uncomfortable in this body. Confined in some critical way He couldn’t quite define.

At the hospital, the doctors checked Him out. Took blood. Examined Him. Ran tests. They were disturbed by His selective memory loss.

“What’s your name?” A white-haired doctor asked Him.

“Is it Raymond?” He replied.

The white-haired doctor looked over his clipboard, his eyebrows furrowed. “Do you know what day it is?”

He thought for a second. What were days to someone who had no concept of time? He pulled a memory from the Raymond personality inside Him. “June?”

His answer didn’t satisfy the doctor. They wanted to run more tests. He was given a room in the hospital. Asked to change clothes. They left Him in His room with a hospital gown folded on the bed. He knew how to dress, what to do. How did He know some things and not others?

He removed His shirt and His pants, pausing as He slid His underpants down. There was something hanging between His legs. He had a feeling it was important in this world. This appendage hid beneath the surface of all of Raymond’s thoughts. He grabbed it and was rewarded with a dull pleasure. Curious now, He stroked it. It felt nice. The first nice feeling He’d had since waking up. But it was like feeding on himself. Was this human pleasure? He needed more. Someone else’s. He could not feed off himself.

A knock on the door interrupted Him and He removed His hand from His dick guiltily. Raymond was still inside. Clearly still clinging to human conventions of propriety and behavior. He slid on the paper hospital gown and called for whoever it was to come in.

A nurse entered. She chatted happily as she readied His room. Asked Him some questions and wrote His responses down on a chart she then hung at the foot of the bed. She seemed less perturbed by His responses than the doctor. Or maybe she hid it better.

He was sitting up in bed sometime later when two women entered the room. They bore a striking resemblance to each other in the shape of their faces with high cheekbones and the delicate curve of their noses. One was older. A mother. One younger. In her twenties maybe. The older one had long wavy blonde hair, the younger one the same color but cut shoulder length, her bangs framing her pretty face.

Looking at them, He could almost remember things about them. The older one He associated with comfort, love, relief, and that pleasure that He’d found so guilty earlier. Sex. Wife. Ah, yes. That was the concept He was trying to remember.

The younger one – His daughter – wrapped her arms around Him. “Oh, dad, are you okay?”

“I’m fine. Fine.” He lied, because that was what He was supposed to say.

The older one hugged Him too, and the floral scent of her hair wafted into His nose, dredging up wonderful memories. They burst through and Raymond hugged her tighter, fully present for the first time since the accident.

“Rebecca,” he whispered.

“Martin called and told me what happened. Well, he told me you passed out but everything else was secret. What have you been getting into?”

His wife sat on the edge of the bed. She was worried. They both were, and looked at Raymond expectantly. How could He tell them that He felt wrong here? He couldn’t explain it to Himself.

“It’s nothing. I just hit my head,” He insisted, taking His wife’s hand and stroking the back of it with His thumb.

She was warm and soft and so pretty. So many memories when looking at her. They all came roaring through His head at once. He wanted to enjoy them all together, gorge himself on the pleasure dredged up from those memories. He shut His eyes.

“Are you okay?” His wife asked.

He opened His eyes and touched His wife’s cheek comfortingly. “Just a headache,” He said, as she took His hand again and stroked it.

He was drawn into her big blue eyes. That memory of pleasure sparked up again. The thing inside pulled Raymond’s memories toward it. Raymond was overwhelmed and poured out His memories. He remembered gazing into those beautiful blue depths as He lay inside her, warm with their passion. Remembered how she felt wrapped around Him. Warm and soft and wonderful.

He needed to feed on that pleasure but He could not feed on just a memory. Nor could He figure out how to bring that pleasure into the present. There was voice and sound and light just outside the range of perception. Coming from her. From her mind. Curious, the mind inside Raymond tried reaching out with His own essence to grab it, tweak it. He found the curl of a thought, deep within the worry and fear. He grasped it with His mind’s hand. As she watched Him, the worry lines disappeared. She blushed. Fidgeted on the bed, crossing her legs and He knew somehow He was building her desire. Her mouth opened slightly, tongue skimming around her teeth as her lust grew suddenly and unexpectedly. He felt it. Felt her ardor rising and it was so delicious.

Read the rest on Body Swap Stories or Smashwords.
https://bodyswapfiction.com/enter/?p=13333

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