Alex couldn’t remember the first time he’d heard of sleep paralysis. Maybe it was a classmate in college, or an article online. But ever since, the idea of being awake yet unable to move his body had been a dark thought in the back of his mind. An irrational fear, sure, but something to keep him reading a few more pages of the book before turning in for the night.

He could remember exactly when he’d felt it the first time.

It was sixteen days ago.

It had happened every night since.

And it was nothing like what other people described.

Alex sat with his legs dangling over the bed, heart pounding. He didn’t want to fall asleep. But it had been almost two full days. His editor needed the draft within the week, and he was dead tired. No. Deader than dead. Buried beneath the ground and nevertheless needing a funeral. Caffeine had stretched out his waking hours as far as they would go, every blink in his bleary eyes a thorough reminder of the frailty of the human form. He needed a few hours of rest. But deep down he knew it would get worse. That feeling of being out of control…

At first, it was truly terrifying. Like the controller for his body had been unplugged yet he was still mashing the buttons. Whether it was seconds or minutes that passed, he had no idea. But eventually, his conscious mind was calm and coherent enough to remember what this could be. Sleep paralysis. People got it all the time, it was normal. All he had to do was wait, and he would regain control of his body.

It didn’t happen all at once. First he wiggled his toes, then his fingers and hand. Then, he pushed himself upward, and the whole spell popped for him. A strange, but interesting, start to his morning. He thought nothing of it for the rest of the day.

The following night was when things got weird. Before he woke, he experienced a slideshow of distinct sensations. The cold of a floor beneath his bare feet, the tingle of hot water around his shoulders, and something pressing against his lips in a long, languid circle. Confusing. Abstract. Not a dream, but impressions of events that he could not see. When he returned to the waking world, the paralysis lasted longer. He pulled through, holding strong to the conviction that it was temporary.

Then it happened a third night. A fourth. The preceding sensations went on for longer, the moments of paralysis becoming what had to have been hours, not minutes. Then the changes started, and worry became fear.

Alex stood up and started pacing, his nude body passing by the mirror every few seconds. If he stopped to look at it, he’d see a different person from the man who’d first fallen asleep over two weeks ago. Most of his body hair was gone, shaved with a precision and smoothness that he couldn’t master on his own. He was now without a beard shadow for the first time since he was in puberty, something he didn’t think was possible. And his skin! It was so soft! So…not oily. He’d caught himself rubbing a hand up his arm in moments of distraction. Strange. Alien. But not unpleasant.

But that wasn’t the only alteration. If it had just been his skin, he could have written it off as some strange allergic reaction. But no dermatologist could explain why his hips were wider now. Why his ass was increasing but only getting more toned, more defined. Why his facial features had softened as if he’d received a microdose of extremely expensive cosmetic surgery. And, as his fingers slid over his smooth, sensitive flesh, he invoked the most prominent of the changes to his body.

Alex was horny. He was horny in ways he’d never felt before. Painfully horny. Frustratingly horny. So fucking pent up that it was all he could think about until he jerked off. And even then it took two, even three sessions to finally clear both his heads. He’d get home from the grocery store and mere hours spent away from stimulation was too long. He’d lock the door, turn up the music, and nearly rip himself out of his office casual clothes to stroke himself out of a stupor.

And the porn had only gotten weirder. More extreme. He’d always been fairly vanilla, but now his bookmarks were full of kinks he’d never even thought about. Extreme femdom. Chastity and denial play. Women with strange features—features only possible in renders and drawings. Extra arms. Women with many eyes, or just one. And cocks. So many cocks. He’s only been able to cum in the last week if one of the people on screen was gorgeous and feminine and had a fat fucking shaft between their legs.

Just thinking about it made him painfully hard again. His dick hadn’t exempt from the changes either. Mirroring his obscene increase in lust, it had gained half again its original size. It yearned to be touched. He put his hand on it and then looked at the soft, naked, desperate creature in the mirror and—

“What the fuck is happening to me?” Alex asked. He ripped his hand away from himself and ran the cold water tap. Dunking his cupped hands in, he threw cold water on his face. It rolled down his body, making him shiver and diffusing the unnaturally strong arousal that had seized him. He’d nearly started jerking off to his own reflection. What the fuck was wrong with him?!

His primary theory for why his body was feminizing was a hormone imbalance. His body got one too many gamma rays from an overseas flight and was releasing too much from Column A and not enough from Column B. Searching for answers online yielded unhelpful suggestions at best and obvious crank explanations at worst. Ancient websites with flaming_brazier.gif spouting diatribes about succubus possession, or bizarre podcasts with fifty listens talking about losing one’s self to the toxic femininity of modern life.

He changed his diet, he tried more ‘masculine’ exercises, he even tried watching sports. Nothing had any effect. The only correlation he could see was that every time he slept, he became paralyzed. And when he broke free, parts of his body had changed. And he didn’t want to tell a doctor about this because…because they’d think he was crazy. Obviously. Because this WAS crazy.

He dropped into his beaten office chair, feet spinning it around as he thought. Who could he possibly talk to about this? Who would believe him? It all sounded so preposterous. He’d spent the previous sleepless nights trying to find some kind of trick or medication to keep him awake for longer, or to avoid the paralytic effect entirely. But all he could find was anecdotal horseshit and snake oil cures.

He stopped spinning in his chair, minimized the twelve different tabs of deviant pornography, and brought up his latest draft. As a writer for hire for a book packaging firm, even in the dead of night he was conscious of the tight deadlines they’d placed him under. Book packaging firms were the soulless middlemen stores called when they wanted a cookbook to sell for Thanksgiving, or a teen romance novel that was close enough to, but legally distinct from, something else that was popular. His current magnum opus was due by Monday morning, and he’d ground himself down to the nub trying to write another tortured scene of chosen ones handed great power on a silver platter. It was beneath him as an artist, but towering above both him and his craft was the fact that rent was due. With all the unnatural lust he’d been feeling, he still had miles to go before he had a product worth turning in.

He stood up from his chair and stumbled over to his bed. Just a few minutes, he lied to himself. Just a little shuteye and he could get back to work.

He was asleep the moment his head hit the pillow, his phone falling from his hand before he could set an alarm.

***

This time was different. Not only could he feel everything, but he could hear things too. Speakers somewhere were blaring out a pop song he’d never heard. He didn’t listen to pop, but he didn’t have the talent to make up a song in his head. Someone was humming along, too. Someone very close to his ears.

Then, his eyes opened. And in his bathroom mirror, he saw a pair of yellow eyes looking back at him, peering out of his own body. His mind recoiled at the sight as a stranger puppeted his hand up to his face and began to apply pink colouration with a soft-bristled brush.

“Don’t be afraid,” an androgynous voice said with his own mouth, the words in a smooth, musical accent that sounded like pouring wine into just the right glass. “I won’t hurt you. In fact, I want us to have fun together.”

Dozens of questions welled up in his mind. He tried to force them out of his mouth, but his jaw refused to budge. Whatever was puppeting his form must have been able to hear them, however, because they started giving answers.

“Telling you what I am would only make accepting this more difficult for you. Suffice it to say I’m a sort of visitor from a place that intersects with your own. As for who I am…call me Xandra. Yes…I like the sound of that.”

They finished applying blush and went on to a tube of candy red lipstick. When they pushed it against his lips, he realized that was the circular motion he’d felt from days before. They’d been practicing on him in his sleep!

“Thank you for keeping yourself awake for so long. It was so frustrating to only have a few minutes at a time to figure out how a computer works, start to order things online, play around with your blank canvas of a body. But tonight? The complete surrender of your conscious mind was what I needed to control you for a few blessed hours. You can’t imagine the fun I’ve had with your body, but I hope you try nonetheless~”

They moaned, hands spilling down his new curves as they made him feel himself up. His right hand drifted to his cock, now painfully hard, and the creature controlling him began to stroke.

“Where we come from, my kind cannot touch one another. Except with our minds. But once in a long while, one of us finds one of you who fits us. Like a key sliding into a lock. Or…” They let the simile fill itself naturally as they pumped his cock. He watched himself make a lurid, indulgent face as he masturbated. He tried to take control. Tried to rip through the invisible fetters that kept his mind from controlling his body. But they would not loosen.

“Oh, don’t fret. You don’t have to fight me, Alex. We could be magical together. But if you want to try denying me, well…denial can be fun too~”

They stopped stroking, leaving his cock painfully hard once more. Then, with a parting, leering grin, they kissed the mirror, fresh lipstick leaving a big red lip print on the glass. Then his body was still, slightly slumped over, like a wind-up toy whose key had finally stilled.

Bit by bit, limb by limb, he felt control return to him. It was much easier than when he’d tried to wake himself before. Like whatever had taken him over was no longer fighting him for the controls. In under a minute, he was himself again. He caught himself on the edge of the sink, staring into the mirror at the faceful of makeup. He ran his tongue along his lips’ waxy pigment, then felt the residual moisture of the lips pressed to the mirror. It was real. It wasn’t a hallucination. Or if it was, he was too far beyond the pale to tell the difference between it and reality.

Either he was off the deep end, or there was something possessing his body. Someone named Xandra.

***

After briefly thinking about voluntarily committing himself, Alex set about the much more manageable first step of removing the makeup that Xandra had put on his face. The damn demon hadn’t left instructions on how to remove the stuff, and somehow they’d also used up a lot of his hot water. In between a bitterly cold shower and copious amounts of tissues, he got most of it off his face. Probably.

It was 4:00 in the morning, the sun nowhere near close to showing itself past the hem of his dark curtains. It was an early start, but he could work with that. Alex brewed himself a coffee, poured himself up a mocha into his favourite mug, and tried to lose himself in his work. Even with a sinister creature trying to seize control of his flesh, there were still bills to pay.

To his surprise, focusing on his writing worked. Not only did it distract him, but he cleared over a mental hurdle that had been holding him back and blazed forward. He felt energized. Renewed. Like he’d juiced his batteries to full after months on half power. Words flew from his fingers before he’d even known what he was putting down. But he knew what he needed to write. He steamrolled the last of the draft and saved it to a file, preparing to send it off to his editor.

Sil. He’d known Sil since college, even before she transitioned. They’d both been two lonely JRPG nerds in programs that neither ended up finishing. They both ended up on different sides of the publishing business, only reconnecting by happenstance years later. He’d kept it professional with her, always. But the few times they’d met in person, he couldn’t help but admire her gorgeous, long black hair. Her adorable nose. Even her height. He’d always liked tall girls like her. Not just pretty. Attractive. Hot.

He was halfway to bashfully searching TRANS BRUNETTE in one of his favourite porn sites when another thought stayed his hand. Sil had mentioned, pretty offhand, that she’d gotten into witchcraft stuff. Rituals, spells, that kind of thing. He couldn’t tell how much of it was just a spirituality or aesthetics thing, but if he really was being attacked by some kind of dream-creature, maybe she’d know what to do? At the very least, it might be good to talk to someone about it.

He picked up his phone to text her.

-Hey! Sending the draft over shortly. Real quick sidenote, do you have time to talk in person in the near future? I might need your help with something-

Moments later. He received a response.

-Can’t wait to read it! And sure! Busy tonight tho. Breakfast tomorrow at GoNutz?-

He tensed his fingers, then agreed to meet tomorrow. He kept his mind occupied by hitting enter on the porn site’s search bar and sheepishly scrolling through the video thumbnails for a gorgeous, tall woman sucking dick. Surely he could survive another night’s sleep. Surely it wouldn’t be so bad.

***

“Another successful book!” Alex’s boss from his office job five years ago declared, causing a round of applause from the gathered employees. People he’d worked with faded in and out of sightlines, most of whom had worked in this office but others were from older gigs. His high school friend in a fast food uniform stood next to the janitor from his pre-pandemic job who always smelled like skanky ass ditch-weed. He stopped searching the small crowd when he found a friendlier face.

Sil. She was beautiful now, and completely unrecognisable from when they’d first met. Long black hair, normally left to flow of its own accord, had been pulled into a severe bun. She wore a long black skirt and blouse, with subtle makeup and a hint of lip gloss. It was strange to see her in such a reserved outfit, though she could certainly pull it off. She smiled, but did not meet his gaze. As if she was laughing at a private joke

“Thank you all,” Alex told the crowd. “It’s nothing, really. I’m just glad to get it over with.”

“Now, now,” his boss (what was her name again?) said, dismissing the applause with a wave, “you are far too modest! A brilliant work penned a razor-sharp mind. Film deals are already rolling in. Why, with the preorder sales alone we’ll have our best sales year on record! You deserve a reward. Sil, would you be a dear and suck Alex’s cock?”

He blinked. “What?”

But Sil was already in motion. Her reserved office outfit was gone. Replaced with a low-cut crimson cocktail dress straight out of some adolescent fantasy. A black choker wrapped around her neck. Sheer stockings ending in a pair of red stripper heels. She freed her breasts—of course she wasn’t wearing a bra—then settled down in front of Alex. Her shoes clicked together as she settled her ass down onto the backs of her heels, presenting herself for his inspection. Even in such a provocative state, her gaze peeled off to the side. Why wasn’t she looking at him?

“You want me,” Sil stated, but not with Sil’s voice. It was a husky, seductive thing. Something belonging to a femme fatale from a Noire mystery. The one who was as likely to blow your mind with a good fuck as a bullet. The crowd of coworkers stood in silence, watching with eager interest as she undid his fly and freed his cock.

“Sil, this isn’t…I don’t..” he stammered. He’d never wanted to make things weird with her. Sil was a good friend! But as she pulled him in closer with her long, graceful fingers, his stammered excuses came up short.

“Mmm…I can feel you throb for her,” Sil said, then met Alex’s gaze. There, behind her eyes, he saw the truth. Yellow eyes. Slitted pupils. This wasn’t Sil. It was the demon!

He stumbled backward, falling to his ass as Xandra bounded forward. They mounted him like a predator going for the throat, but they didn’t lose their wicked grin. When assured he wouldn’t be moving, they pinned his legs up with their arms so that he was almost in missionary position and then, impossibly, a second pair of arms appeared. The dress modified itself to accommodate them, as if they’d always been there. On some level he knew it had to be a dream, but it felt so real! He didn’t resist when the second pair of hands pressed their breasts together to squeeze around his cock. He knew he should have…but he didn’t.

A tongue too long for a human mouth rolled out of Sil’s, spilling saliva around it in unnatural quantities. Then, they began to masturbate him with their tits, letting their tongue touch his tip with every forced thrust upward.

“This can be you,” the thing that wasn’t Sil said. “Money. Power. Any partner you desire. You want Sil to suck you dry? You want her to fuck you senseless? You want her to call you Master?”

He looked up for support, but his coworkers were no longer focused on him. They were lost in their own lusty deliriums. His boss rode an intern twenty years her junior, office chair squealing almost as loud as she was. The guy who once shared a kinda homophobic joke with him in the elevator had his lips pressed to the base of his best friend’s cock. The janitor masturbated into the face of the chubby delivery girl Alex once had a crush on while she chanted in a language that he couldn’t understand. Dozens of people from his memories held up like cheap, pornographic props to make a point.

“This is wrong,” he said, catching his breath. “This is…they can’t control themselves!”

“No,” Xandra said with a purr, “but you can control them. With my help, of course. And it’ll feel so good. Here, let me show you. A whisper of the pleasure I can offer you. A few drops from an ocean of sin~”

A pressure built up inside Alex. Something beyond anything he’d experienced before. For a moment, he forgot his outrage and fear, and let the tidal wave wash over him…

***

His first waking moments were one of impossible bliss. Thick, pearlescent ropes shot out of his cock and onto his upper body, splattering him with such volume and force he thought was impossible outside of the realm of some of the hentai videos he’d been watching recently. Only when his orgasm was completed, drooling seed spilling down his knuckles, did he realize that it was his hand that had brought him to climax. The whole time he was lost in that deviant dream, Xandra had been controlling him!

As his cum rolled down his body, more evidence of their control revealed themselves like clues after a night of hard drinking. At first he thought he’d been stripped naked, but that wasn’t quite correct. A roll of fabric had gathered around his chest, partially soaking up the load he shot. Unfurling it revealed it was a bright red dress, pulled up and down in equal measure. Sheer stockings clung to his legs, while a tension around his throat alerted him to a choker made of similar material. He stumbled out of the bedding and strode toward the bathroom to clean up, only to find that he was still wearing shoes!

No. Not just shoes.

Heels.

Ruby red heels.

The same that the Not!Sil had wore in the dream.

He ripped the heels off like they were venomous insects, then stumbled in a hyperventilating storm to gaze at the creature in the mirror. Heavily made up, a choker around his neck, with feminine curves and an enormous cock that was just now going soft. A pool of thick semen drooled down his reflection’s chest. His mouth watered. It’d be a shame to waste all that—

“NO!” he screamed, slamming his hands into the side of the bathroom vanity. The moment of pain pulled him back from hedonistic reverie. He wasn’t a woman. He wasn’t a slut, either! He was just…

…

He looked from his bathroom with its rusting fixtures to the bedroom immediately adjacent, the mattress he slept on every night likely old enough to vote. His condo had a kitchen and adjoining living room, a parking space without a car, and precious little else. After that, all he had to his name was a few thousand dollars in savings, a few unpublished drafts of personal projects, and scarcely little else. He’d wanted to be a writer all his life, but working for scraps from a big company had been a Monkey’s Paw twist on his dream. All he wrote was what they wanted, at a pace and efficiency that burned out his creative drive to make things for himself.

The wisps of that demonic dream toyed with him. The applause. The smiles. He’d never been celebrated like that for his work. The company barely knew he was alive. He lived a loner’s existence with a few regular friends and a lot of open porn tabs and that was about that. He knew it was a pathetic, self-aggrandizing fantasy even before his friend started sucking his cock. But it felt good to be seen as someone worthy of praise. It felt good to be desired.

He looked at himself in the mirror again. Really looked. Past the makeup. Past the fear. He stared into his own eyes and asked himself: 

“What if I could be more? Would that be so bad?”

An irritating klaxon sound jolted him out of his reverie. His phone’s alarm! He’d set one the previous night to make sure he wasn’t late for his meeting (he didn’t say date) with Sil. But that meant he only had an hour, and as he examined the makeup job Xandra had done to his face, he had some work to do.

***

Alex stumbled into GoNutz Donutz, out of breath and wearing yesterday’s clothes: loose fitting track pants and a T-shirt from a band he didn’t like anymore. His hair still dripped from the shower where he tried, desperately, to clean off the makeup that Xandra had put on his face. This time it had been some kind of waterproof bullshit, meant to last the whole day. He was pretty sure he’d got it all, but it had made him late…almost unforgivably so.

“Alex?” asked a blob of black hair in the back booth. He rushed over to Sil, who stood up to hug him. He returned the gesture, feeling a little guilty at how good it made him feel given what his dream had been. He broke free and slid into the opposite side of the booth, trying his best to look like he wasn’t about to fall apart. His friend looked much more together, wearing a professional compromise between her off-hours appearance and what was expected of a corporate drone. Black dress with a Dahlia floral theme, heeled boots, and a lace collar, she appeared every bit the librarian of a haunted repository that she wanted to be when she grew up.

“I know I’m late,” he said, swiping with his hand. “No excuses, just apologies. But I need your help.”

Sil had half a donut in front of her, her black nails clinking as she worried a coffee mug around the table. “Is it a gender thing?”

His eyes shot wide. How could she know?! In nervous reflex he broke into the least convincing fit of laughter ever heard and he waved her question off.

“Oh no no, it’s nothing like that!”

“Because you know you can talk to me if it is,” Sil said, reaching over to squeeze his hand. “I get it, y’know.”

His preparations for a more forceful denial evaporated in his throat. Alex didn’t even think of how all this feminization stuff might come across to someone who was actually trans. What was he thinking? What if she thought he was making fun of her by coming up with this absurd story?!

“Sorry, this was a mistake.” He shot up to leave, but Sil’s gentle grasp of his hand turned into a death grip.

“Please! Listen, Alex…whatever you have to say, I’m here for you. Tell me what’s wrong. If I can help, I will. But I won’t know if I can until you tell me.”

Sil’s sparkling brown eyes and kind smile diffused his fears. Not entirely…but at least he didn’t feel like a big net was about to fall on him.

“Okay…but promise not to jump to conclusions?” Upon receiving a nod, he explained everything that had happened to him, more or less, in the last two weeks and change. He did skirt around how much arousal he felt, but he did mention that his body ‘responded’ to Xandra’s touch. Sil went through another two mugs of coffee before he was through. When she was brought up to date as to why he was late this morning, he sank back into the booth. It felt like a weight had been removed from his mind and body both.

Sil nibbled at her donut fragments as she pondered. Then, thankfully, she responded without laughing.

“Alright,” she began, tenting her fingers. “My first thoughts are that this is an elaborate excuse for you to transition without admitting you’re trans. Just want to clear that possibility out of the way.”

Alex shook his head. “It’s not! I’m really being forcibly feminized by a dream demon!” He blushed as he heard the words come out of his own mouth. “Okay I see your point. But no.”

She nodded. “Alright. Because I wasn’t going to ask why you were wearing a choker, but I do think that it looks good on you. Next idea, then.”

She grabbed the table’s salt shaker, popped open the bottom, and started pouring it out into a set of angled lines. It didn’t take long for Alex to recognise the pentagram forming. Before he could ask what she was doing, she finished the pattern, whispered something beyond his ability to hear, and then lifted her hands up like the conductor of an orchestra. When she brought them back down, so did a curtain of shadows around their table and booth. The diner disappeared around them, leaving only their small bubble, illuminated by the five pointed star of salt that flickered with an ethereal glow.

“Whoa…” Alex gasped, eyes tracing around the surface of the shadows for a seam or some hint for what exactly was blocking out the light. “You know magic? Like…actual magic?”

“Well, duh. When you become a trans woman you get a choice between learning magic or learning how to code, and I’m terrible with remembering syntax. Trust me though, this spell would be much more impressive with the proper ingredients. Stupid iodized salt…” She tapped the mounded piles of white crystals a little flatter in a few places and the flickers subsided, yielding a mostly steady white glow.

“So you believe me?” Alex asked, barely able to keep his voice from cracking.

“Of course! What’s more, I think I know the culprit.”

The pentagram of salt pulsed, and a projected, three dimensional image above the table. It was a rendered image of a painted mural, surrounded by pictographic characters in a language he didn’t recognise. The image of a feminine being with four arms loomed above a supine body. A single great eye made of citrine stared through stone and time at Alex, and a long tongue curled around its bare breast. The body beneath its hooved feet looked to be in either agony or ecstasy, with a black spot in place of where its head should be.

“This is what has been called a Qareenah. Ancient creatures, sometimes considered demons but they’re considerably older than the Abrahamic faiths. They plagued the dreams of the people of the Nile before the Pyramids were in a blueprint. Long thought vanquished by scholars from the House of Wisdom, but apparently they were only buried. Gods only know how they crossed the Atlantic. I can imagine it had something to do with the wave of tomb desecrations masquerading as archaeological expeditions in the 1910s.”

“So it’s like a succubus?”

Sil made a noncommittal hand wiggle while she poked at parts of the floating image. “Yes and no. There are aspects of the traditional succubus archetype, they do try to sleep with you at night after all. But the name is cognate with the Qareen: ancient temptation demons who serve to test the spirit and faith of single individuals. Like if the devil on your shoulder wanted to fuck you, I suppose. They offer you things, try to break your resolve.”

Alex waited for her to finish. When she didn’t, he prompted: “And then what?”

“And then…it’s unclear. In some traditions, they own the souls of those who submit. In others, they walk with them in spiritual lockstep as a kind of spectral companion. But whatever happens, it’s permanent. Or at least until you die.”

Alex told himself that Xandra’s offer was becoming less appealing by the minute. He told himself so hard he almost believed it. Still, he hated not being in control of himself. And the violation and shame of watching his own body do things outside his control was not something he wanted to repeat.

“Can you help me break free before that happens? Every night it gets worse. I’m worried that time is running out. I don’t know what the creature is capable of when they’re in control of my body.”

Sil did her best to hide her lack of confidence, but the worry was as plain as day for Alex. Nevertheless, his friend rallied. Regardless of the ridiculousness of the situation, he felt his burden lift a little knowing she’d be there for him in his time of need.

“I’m not an exorcist, nor am I knowledgeable in banishing evil forces. But I can promise you that I won’t rest until I find a solution.” She unclasped something from around her neck, coiling the thin chain in her palm before handing over a silver pendant with a curious design in the centre: a circle bracketed on its sides by two crescents, facing outward.

“What is it?”

“A medallion of protection. Wear it tonight. It should protect your body and keep spirits from infiltrating it while you sleep.”

He put it on immediately, then rushed over to hug the dickens out of Sil. Perhaps he stood a chance after all!

“Thank you,” he whispered, then pulled back for his feelings caught in his throat. “I’ll admit, I was starting to worry I’d have to agree to its terms.”

“You didn’t tell me what it offered you,” Sil said, then wiped the idea away with a wave of her hand. “You don’t have to, of course. I was just curious!” 

Alex’s mouth opened and closed several times as he wondered just how much to reveal. “The usual demon things. Charisma, success…women.”

“Women?” Sil’s lip curled up in a suppressed smile. “That must have been hard to reject. Anyone in particular?”

***

In his dream that night, he saw something new. But it offered its own terrors to behold.

He was a sailor, alone and adrift on a darkling sea. The ocean swelled as a storm rolled in, its clouds like the black curtains of a stage looking to bring the play to a permanent end. He steered his craft around it, using the gales that foretold its wrath to propel his vessel to safety. The sole light by which he ran the sails was the eerie glow of the full moon that pierced the roiling clouds above. 

But the sea rocked his ship. He held on tight, hands at the wheel, as the storm rolled over him. Rain hammered down like volleys of buckshot, his chance of surviving growing slim.

And then, in flashes of lightning, he saw the sky move. 

Legs the size of skyscrapers caused the sea itself to shudder and froth beneath Alex with every step it took. The movement of its four arms let rivulets of rain wash down in streams and rivers that threatened to inundate his boat if he sailed into them. Its naked body was too vast to be seen in its entirety, but the strobing lights of the lightning strikes made his eyes focus on the writhing monster beneath its stomach. A brobdingnagian mass of tentacles beyond size and scope served as its genitals, its appendages uncountable, and Alex could only guess as to the nature of a creature that it would be capable of breeding with. 

The storm closed in on him. His ship’s mast broke, the hull flooded. He knew his time was through. He knew he was about to sink below the waves…

And then, his boat began to float. The sea continued to rage beneath him, but his hull rose above it. He didn’t understand. That is, until he saw the massive arm of the thing extend from beneath his craft to the shoulder somewhere above the clouds. And as it lifted him, he realized it was not the yellow light of the Moon at all. 

It was an eye. 

A single, citrine orb split down the middle by a cavernous black slit. It stared through his body and into his soul. Into the very conception of self that held him together.

But of course, it was just a dream.

***

That morning, he awoke refreshed. Renewed. He’d made it! He’d fought off Xandra’s influence! He rushed out of bed to see himself nude in the bathroom mirror. No makeup, no humiliating clothing, not even the changes they’d made to his body. It was back to its masculine shape! He was entirely himself! 

But something nagged at his perception. At first he thought there was simply sleep clinging to his eyelids, but he rubbed his eyes and looked again, it was still there. There was a distortion to his appearance. A haze that obfuscated details. Like he was a mirage. Strange. Examining his body made him notice that he was also without the medallion that Sil had given him. Had it fallen off in the night?

He reached for the faucet to draw some cold water, but his hand passed right through. He tried the hot water. The basin. Panic rose. He strode on the floor but couldn’t feel it beneath his feet.

As he pondered these questions, he heard noises from the bedroom. The squeak of bedsprings. The slippery sounds of wet flesh. And the low moans of pleasure. With the fear of previous nights returning to claim him, he turned around to gaze once more at the bed he’d spent the night in.

In fact, he hadn’t left the bed. His body was still there, just not in his control. It moved under another’s spell, writhing and jerking, lost in a wave of lurid pleasure. A mixture of shame and outrage filled him to the core as he watched an obscenely large dildo attached to the headboard slip from his ass, glistening with a lubricant designed to look like semen. Bags and boxes of a manic, shameless shopping spree lay scattered around the room, hinting at just what perversions the demon that had taken his body had planned. And on their (no, his!) neck hung the medallion that Sil had given him.

But his credit card was not all that Xandra had abused. His body looked almost entirely alien now. A fully androgynous face that looked designed to perfectly lure in partners of any preference. His sensitive chest has become a fully blossomed pair of breasts, nipples widened to beg the eye to be thumbed, or tugged, or licked until stiff. Xandra had made his cock grow until it was completely unnatural in both size and shape. Easily twelve inches long and flaring out at the tip. In a moment of he regretted, he realized they’d likely styled it after the toy they’d been fucking. Only a demon would think to get off by fucking a replica of their own cock!

Half-lidded eyes revealed that the sinister yellow had filled the sclera and iris completely, leaving only a pair of slitted pupils in a jaundiced sea. 

“You mortals are so lucky. To have the joys of the flesh at your beck and call. I wish you could feel this with me right now,” they purred with a voice that was a mixture of his own and Xandra’s, then let a tongue slide out of their mouth that kept going. And going. An impossibly long and profane organ, forged like a snake, drooled down onto their shaft before sliding lazily along to flick at their nipple. Then, with a twinkle in their eye as they met Alex’s gaze, the tongue rolled back into their mouth in time to greet a devious grin. “Actually, I think you should.” 

Their eyes flashed like dawn’s first light, and suddenly, he felt what they felt. The lingering fulfilment of a profound ache to be filled that had, for now, been sated. Fluids gliding down his naked flesh, their progress barely noticed for the sensation of debasement they left in their way. His hands clenched at his sides as the pleasure made it to his cock, stiffening it into a much reduced mirror of the one under Xandra’s thrall.

“Get out of my body!” Alex screamed, throwing a fist into his lust-stricken face. His hand connected, then bounced off. It was like he’d punched the side of a bouncy castle.

“Oh honey,” they said through a mocking laugh, “don’t you remember? Your little necklace keeps me safe from spiritual intrusion! Anything more than a stroke will be bounced back. I’m totally safe from external intrusion. Of course, that didn’t stop a powerful creature like myself from pushing your limp little ghost out of your body. Now you get to enjoy the show!”

A momentary spike of anger at Sil dissolved the moment he realized this was his fault. He didn’t want to think about Xandra actually being inside him during the day, so he hadn’t flinched when she’d offer something to lock his body from intrusion when the problem was calling from inside his corporeal house. By trying to save his own ego, he’d fucked himself over.

While he beat himself up, Xandra went to work pounding themselves silly. They slid back onto the monstrous dildo plunged into his headboard. This time he felt it. A combination of squeal and moan escaped his mouth. First time penetration by something that big was supposed to hurt. But he was receiving the transmission from a trained operator. All he felt was the pressure, and the fullness, and the undeniably tainted bliss. His spirit’s cock actually dribbled out a mote of something. Ectoplasm perhaps. It slid down his shaft before being reabsorbed into his ethereal form.

“Mmm…I can go all night, you know. I doubt that your little mind will survive. Humans can be so fragile at first. Takes some time to…break you in~”

Alex tried to endure it. He knew this had to be a dream, or some kind of illusion. That if he just made it through a few days of this, somebody would find him. Sil would find him. And he could get back to being himself.

But did he want to go back to himself? Did he want to live paycheque to paycheque, grinding out a meagre life until he’d burned out his candle and rolled into a grave. He’d started writing because he did want fame. He did want people to like him. Adore him. This was his chance, wasn’t it? This was his big break, if he had the balls to seize it.

The tainted pleasure kept flowing into his body. It built and built  in him, but never crescendoed. Never tipped him over. But Xandra seemed to thrive in reaching the edge then pulling back. Their cock oozed its seed like a broken faucet. They taped little vibrators to their nipples and turned them on. They pressed a ‘massage’ wand to their throbbing underside and howled with joy. Xandra was turning his body into a debauched carnival and he could feel every second of it.

Eventually, inevitably, he began to masturbate too.

“There we go!” Xandra said, licking their lips. “I knew you’d come around.”

“I just want to cum,” he said, eyes pleading. “I can’t think straight! Please just let me cum.”

“Of course, dove, of course! But I’ll need your agreement on something…”

With another word in an unutterable tongue, their skin—his skin—exploded into fiery text. The words were in a language that he couldn’t recognise, full of curving characters that wriggled in place like snakes on an adhesive tile. 

“What did you do to me this time?” he asked with resignation. Oh great, a fresh new horror.

“Oh this?” they asked, holding out their hands like they were showing off a fashionable new coat. “This is just temporary. This type of contract needs to be written on human skin, and ugh, I’m sooo over flaying people. Awakening in this age has given me a new appreciation for body art, and so, here it is.”

“Contract…but I can’t read it. How am I supposed to agree to something I can’t read?”

They folded their arms. “It’s simple Linear Ophidian. Don’t you kids learn anything in school? Simplified then: I will give you a fraction of my confidence, my beauty, my charisma, for use in your waking life. You will gain everything you’ve ever wanted from your sad and sorry existence. Money. Reputation. Women. Or anyone your heart yearns for! They’ll flock to us, head over heels in lust. And all I ask in return…is your nights.”

“My nights?” he repeated wearily, his hand falling from his dick. “Haven’t I already been giving my nights to you already?”

They shook their head. “I’ve been taking them with what sliver of control I can get, but this taxing even to a powerful being like myself. For a mortal, and a man besides, you’re actually quite difficult to displace. Only after you started wearing this delightful little curio around your neck have I gained total access to your body. And even then, my powers are extremely limited to the malleability of your flesh.”

“And the alternative?”

“Well, if you survive the next eight hours of edging, we see how long it takes for someone to rip this medallion off of me. And then you can go back to being yourself. Nobody special. Maybe Sil might throw you a pity handjob in a few years if you play your cards right.”

The jab was weak, but it was a fig-leaf big enough to cover what Alex wanted to do in the first place. Even after removing his hand for a few moments, the urge to masturbate was overwhelming. He’d never been kept at the edge like this before. An orgasm was tantalizingly close to manifesting. Every part of his body screamed for just a little more stimulation! Just a few more strokes.

But it never came. He never came. And the moment passed, only to build again in a few minutes’ time. He wanted to give in. He ached to give in! But giving over control of his body for a third of the rest of his life…could he do that? 

After the hundredth cresting of that hill…or perhaps just the tenth…he found that he could.

“Fuck…okay. Say I was interested. Where do I sign?”

Xandra shook their head. “No signatures. Nothing so prosaic. I require an act of submission given freely and without force. Specifically.” They pointed to his mouth, and then pointed to their drooling, flared tip.

“You can’t be serious,” Alex stated.

“Deadly. To proceed, I need your full-throated agreement …so to speak~” They slid to the foot of the bed, cock throbbing in anticipation. He knelt down in front of Xandra, doing his best not to measure just how girthy this creature had made his cock.

“I’ve never…this is my first…” The words scattered in his brain as he tried to grasp hold of them. But his spirit was willing. Whatever astrally projected form he was in was salivating. Hungry.

“There’s no limit to how much cock your spirit can take,” Xandra said, like it was the tagline of a perverse motivational poster. “And don’t worry about the medallion. Pretty sure it’s fine with you sucking me off. Or at least your silly little girlfriend never coded that provision into its enchantment. I swear, it’s always the coders who pick the witch powers…”

He didn’t follow what Xandra was saying. His focus was on the flared head in front of him. He swallowed. Then swallowed again. Then, he opened his mouth.

It was enormous. He waited for his jaw to tell him no. That this was too far. But that moment never came. He’d practiced on a toy a few times out of curiosity, but this felt completely different. It was warm. He could feel Xandra’s pulse. His pulse. One in the same. He slid forward, opening wider and wider. Without the need to breathe, there was no need to hold back. The only limit was what he thought was possible, and if his spirit was willing. It kissed the back of his throat and kept going.

As he fellated Xandra’s enormous length, strange visions danced before his eyes. One moment he stared up at his own demonically-possessed form, the next he saw his old self in front of him. The cock in his mouth the same he’d jerked off a thousand times, his own lips turned the red colour that Sil’s had been in his office dream. 

“Sil, this isn’t…I don’t..” the other him stammered, but Alex pressed forward, dragging his tongue along his old self’s shaft and making them both squirm.

Another blink saw him on his knees in front of Sil, her hand around a leather leash that led to a collar around his neck. Hands tied around his back, his cock locked in chastity while she controlled the pace of his mouth and throat.

“Suck,” Sil commanded, and Alex obeyed. More visions. More faces from the past. More relationships corrupted. They skipped like the sputtering vision of an undercranked film camera, and he  couldn’t identify them all. He was dominant. He was receptive. But in all realities, he was on his knees.

But one came into view in perfect clarity. A bipartite experience that he felt both sides of. At once he was on his knees, a cock shoved down his throat. But he was also the reclining figure, a naive, pathetic man debasing himself on their engorged shaft. The pleasure that had been building since time immemorial approached its end. The man sucking the cock took it in both hands, his own erection forgotten. The creature on the bed let their tongue loll out, drooling down onto their ample tits. The world disappeared. Darkness.

“Enjoy this dear,” a voice from two mouths said. “You’ve earned it.”

White hot cum flooded Alex’s throat, pouring beyond any hint of a gag reflex he might once have had. The thick cumvein danced along his fingers, thick fluid pumping into him without consideration or abatement. When the flood of cream ebbed and he was able to open his eyes, he realized the cock was his own. The giant, demonic fuckstick was plunged deep into his own mouth, and he was currently draining himself.

“Mmmm~” he moaned, letting the flared tip pop from a pair of plump, spunk-glazed lips. A white river poured out of his mouth, sliding down his cleavage and back to the root of an enormous, demonic dick. 

Why had he ever fought this? He remembered why. The fear. The uncertainty. Perhaps Xandra had laid it on a little thick. But now he could see everything so clearly! Every sense was so much more alive. Every heartbeat a promise of more joy to come! They’d offered him this gift and he’d almost said no! 

He shook his head, then Alex giggled. 

‘He?’ 

Why the fuck would he limit himself to just being a ‘he’? 

Their old gender fluttering away like leaves in the breeze. What a fool they’d been! Alex let their head hit the pillow, feeling their cock slowly drain back to flaccid. Some of the wilder body alterations faded too. Their tongue returned to merely unnaturally long, the glow faded from their eyes to be replaced with mere yellow irises that could easily be explained by contacts. The outrageous, obviously supernatural elements receded…leaving Alex with a gorgeous, feminine body and a burning urge to use it.

They found the chain to the medallion Sil had given them so kindly and carefully, gingerly took it off. Nothing changed. Alex and Xandra were a part of each other now. Their pleasures shared, their victories mutual, their lusts slaked in tandem. 

That thought made their eyebrows lift. Alex picked up the phone and, instead of texting, he pressed the Phone Contact button. While it rang, they practiced speaking in different registers. Eventually Alex settled into their old male voice for this call.

“Hey Sil?” they asked the other line. “It’s…Alexandra. I’d like to give you back your necklace. And I think I’m ready to tell you the truth. Wanna meet somewhere? Say…your place?”