“That Old Black Magic” by Seuzz

"Holy shit," Kevin gasped as he gaped into the mirror. "It worked!"

Micah snickered. "Toldja it would. You think I was full of shit?"

Kevin hung his head; there wasn't really a good answer to that question. He peered up furtively from beneath his eyebrows, to gaze back at his reflection. He felt guilty about scoping out his new body, which until a few minutes ago had belonged to Micah Johanssen. Even now, when at six and a half feet, he towered over the other, with muscles that could easily press him into jelly, he didn't want Micah to catch him scoping out the broad, slab-like chest or the flat stomach; still less did he want him to notice the erection that was slowly but noticeably distending his underwear.

But Micah—now very short and slight under a shock of blonde hair—just grinned. "Go ahead, drink it all in. You're looking good, if I say so myself."

Instead, Kevin licked his lips and glanced around. The school basement was spooky enough, but this was the sub-basement, maybe even the sub-sub-basement, whose discolored walls sulked menacingly in the underlit gloom. The change had been done in a cistern, the deepest part of the school's unexplored depths, and he shivered when he remembered the peculiar scratches on its walls and the ghastly, backwards-running chant Micah had uttered as the two of them lay on its floor with the iron grillwork of the drain between them. "How does it work?"

Micah shrugged. "Fuck if I know. I just know it does. This place used to be a nunnery or something, you know. The Church closed it down a hundred years ago. Some scandal or other." He shied away from using the word "witchcraft," as even he was unsettled by the thought. "City bought the building ages ago and turned it into a high school, but they never tore out its roots."

"And how'd you find out about the ... the changing room, or whatever you call it?"

"Lore that gets passed down from generation to generation of students. Of course, you have to be one of the chosen ones. Which I guess makes you kind of special now, since you've been inducted."

"So you've done this before?"

"Of course," Micah snorted. "First time was when I was dating Alison. Peter wanted to fuck her, and I was hot for Sarah, but they wouldn't go along with a bed swap, so him and me did a body swap instead, for a weekend, and the girls never knew the difference." He grinned, and it startled Kevin to see the face that had been his twisted up into a leer.

"And this kind of thing goes on all the time?" Kevin asked in alarm.

"Well, not as much as you might think. It's hard pretending to be somebody else 'cos you only get their body, not their memories or anything, so we never change places for very long."

Kevin suddenly felt very cold, and he clasped his arms around his torso. It felt good to touch his new body this way—everything felt very tight and beautifully formed—but it didn't bring much relief. "I can't really pretend to be you, you know," he stammered. "I mean, I can't play basketball, and I don't know how to act—"

"That's why I waited until the Friday afternoon before break to do it. While we're out of school the only person you have to hang out with is Bea."

Kevin hunched a little more and chewed the inside of his cheek furiously. "You want me to get in good with her."

"Yeah." Micah reached up and put his arm around Kevin and tried pulling him down closer to eye level, but it was like trying to tug at Gibraltar. "Listen, her and me have been having problems. I'm gonna fuck things up if I have to spend a week with her, just the two of us. That's why I want you pretending to be me. Smooth things over, keep her happy during the break, make her think I'm a wonderful, sensitive, caring guy who isn't just trying to get inside her panties. I mean, come on, you're her best friend."

Kevin jerked a little. "You trust me? I mean, you can, I never tried anything with her when we got together to talk—"

"Come on, Kevin, give me a little credit," Micah said. "Everyone knows you're gay. Really, that's how come you thought I was dragging you down here, right? To beat the shit out of you?" Kevin swallowed. "But that's the whole reason I trusted you around her. Still trust you, to do the favor I'm asking. The only other thing I ask is that you don't cruise any of the guys on the team while you're using my body. Got it?"

"Well, if we're only going to be swapped while we're on break," Kevin muttered.

Micah clapped him on the back and smiled. He then drew out his cell phone—or, rather, Kevin's cell phone, as it was Kevin's he was now carrying. "Give me a pose," he said. "Let's preserve the moment."

Afterwards they got dressed in each other's clothes and left. Naturally, Kevin thought the photo would stay on his cell phone. In fact, Micah quickly sent it off to a specific recipient. Such a photo, coming from that phone, was the agreed-upon signal.

* * * * *

An hour later, Micah was stretched out in the driver's seat of Kevin's car, his hands clasped behind his back, smiling with beguiled anticipation. The smile only grew wider when he saw the headlights of the other car draw up, and as he watched the shadowy figure cross the evening gloom and open the passenger-side car. But instead of getting in, the newcomer froze at the sight of the other, and at the cock that stood at attention like a flagpole in front of the steering wheel.

"Where the fuck are your clothes?" Bea Reynolds demanded.

"Back at my house, in the closet," Micah grinned. "Or do you mean, 'Where the fuck are Kevin's clothes?' Well, I thought we'd just cut to the chase."

"I gave you a script, you dingaling," Bea retorted. "You know how I want this to go."

"Aw, come on, baby," Micah sighed. "Don't tell me you're the kind of girl who refuses to open her Christmas presents early and then rewraps them?" She just stared back. "Alright, fine." He struggled back into Kevin's slacks and shirt and shoes while she watched him with grim bemusement. When he was done he looked at her expectantly. Still she said nothing, even after getting in the car and shutting it behind her.

"Okay," he shrugged. He closed his eyes, rubbed them, and tried to remember the limp way Kevin acted around girls. He scratched his arm uncertainly, looked around the car in every direction but hers, and put a quaver in his voice.

"I've been thinking a lot," he said with fake nervousness. "About what I've said, and about what you've said. It's—" He swallowed. "It's a pretty big thing, you know. But— Well, I think I'm willing to try. I mean, I figure if any girl can turn me straight, it would be you, Bea."

Her smile could have melted chocolate. "Oh, Kevin," she simpered. She reached over to touch the edge of his collar with her finger tip.

"It might take a whole week," he warned her.

"I'm counting on it!" she exclaimed, and drew very close to him.

"The Bully Boys" by Seuzz

He's waiting for me, I thought as I slunk through the school corridors. There was no fucking way I could have dodged him all day, not if he'd wanted to find me. And I knew he'd want to find me, because I knew the bastard, and I knew the way he thought. He was just looking for the chance to catch me and humiliate me: that, I knew. And if I hadn't seen him yet, it could only be because he was lurking somewhere, the asshole, probably smacking his lips in anticipation. I bet he can taste my fear on his tongue.

I felt a sharp elbow in my ribs, and I jumped, but it was just a random someone in the crowd, jostling along like me, eager to escape the school. Still, it made me suck in my breath. My heart was already racing, and my skin felt clammy, and I felt self-conscious at the way my eyes darted desperately about. Not that it mattered. No way I could have spotted the bastard in the crowd, even if my slightly panicked brain could have registered faces. As it was, I could only make out bits and flashes of what was a multi-bodied, multi-throated beast: hair and teeth and cheeks and the upturned collars of varsity jackets and the pastel prints of blouses and scarves. A shrill, chattering hum hung in the air, like a sonic froth boiling up out of the adolescent soup.

Classes had let out at three o'clock, and I had until three-thirty to dodge the asshole. I looked at my watch. Three-oh-nine. I grimaced. I'd wasted as much time as I'd dared in Mr. Cornelius's classroom after the bell rang. If I was lucky, the bastard would have looked for me at my locker first, and then gone hunting for me in Cornelius's. So when I'd left I'd taken the back way, around B-wing instead of through it, so I wouldn't run into him, hoping I could hit my locker while he was looking for me in the civics wing. After that, I could probably lose a few more minutes in the hallways before they began to thin dangerously. And then? Maybe I could hide out in the orchestra room. It would be an obvious hiding place, but the asshole wouldn't have an excuse to swing by there.

"Timothy!"

I flinched, then wilted in relief. It was only Coach Bennigan, gesturing me into the biology lab as I passed. "Found your test," he said as I ducked in after him, grateful for the chance at another temporary hiding place. The coach picked up a stack of white paper, licked a meaty fingertip, and flipped through it. "Pretty good, though not up to your usual standards." He gave me a fatherly wink as he handed it over. Ninety-five percent.

I pretended to study it for a bit, started to ask a question, pretended to think better of it, and went back to chewing my lip thoughtfully. Bennigan watched me with evident amusement. "Think I pulled a boner on the grading?" he said.

"No sir," I replied. "Just double checking." I stuffed it into my backpack. "So, are some of these questions going to be on the final?"

"What do you think?"

"You have my brother's test?" I asked.

"Gave it to him yesterday. What's with you guys? Think you can just keep switching off days and sharing notes?"

"Something like that, sir. It's complicated."

"Well, don't get too fancy. You're slacking off, both of you." He winked again. Bennigan was the school's wrestling coach, but he was also a good—and dedicated—science teacher.

I smiled thinly and turned back toward the door. Three-seventeen, the classroom clock said. The hallways would be pretty empty by now. I'd have to hurry at my locker.

Sure enough, most of the students had already split. F-wing lockers were mostly taken by freshmen who'd have to get to their school bus, so there were only a few stragglers in the hall as I hurried up to the locker that I shared with Travis, my twin brother. I spun the lock, the one whose combination was our shared birthday, and tugged at it. It stuck.

I swore and tried again, going more slowly. Again the lock wouldn't spring. I punched the locker door. Then, as I spun and spun and spun the dial, to completely clear it, I suddenly stopped and stared at it. I touched it.

It was a new lock.

The bastard had changed locks on me!

"Somethin' the matter, Wimpole?"

With a hard blow from behind he caught my neck in the crook of his arm and pulled my face close to his—so close I could smell the cinnamon on his breath. He favored cinnamon gum, as an affectation, the way he favored a toothpick in the corner of his mouth, and he pulled my head down at such an angle that that was all I could see: that damn toothpick and the upper lip twisted up over white, white teeth.

Only ten minutes to go, and he'd caught me. Yes, he must have been lurking. Probably he'd been planning this denouement all day.

I said nothing, and he just kept breathing lightly in my face. I heard snickers from behind me, and knew that he had his crew with him. I felt the fingers of his hand skitter down my chest to my shirt pocket; he pulled out my two pencils and my pen, one by one, and let them clatter to the floor. "You'll wanna pick those up," he said, but instead of letting go he just gripped my neck even more tightly in the crook of his arm.

David Kirkwell was not a big guy; in fact, he was shorter than me and shorter than most of the other juniors at the school; and he didn't even go out for sports. But he was fast and had strong, rounded muscles, and he knew exactly where to punch someone so that it would hurt, and he was strong enough to make those punches really hurt. He could also take almost any punch without flinching, without even slowing down, really. So everyone, even the seniors on the football team, tended to pay him a lot of respect and stay on his good side. Not that he had a good side. Generally David Kirkwell had only two ways of treating people: calling them foul names and luring them into a good beating, or just giving them a good beating without any excuse. I didn't even have the merit of being one of his special projects.

Until recently, that is. Which is why I'd been desperately trying to avoid him all day.

Kirkwell sucked on his toothpick and smirked at me, and lightly tweaked my left nipple between his thumb and forefinger. He had his other hand, the one not draped around my neck, on his hip, and he pulled me back and around so he could lean his shoulder casually against the lockers. I made the mistake of looking up into his face. He had his shades on, but I could still make out the dark eyes behind them: the dark eyes that would be gleaming maliciously at me. His grin widened. "You wanna good fucking, Wimpole?" he asked in a soft voice that was just a little ragged from the cigarettes he liked to smoke between classes. "That how come you're scoping me out?"

"You changed my combination lock," I replied. I didn't want to say anything to him, actually, but I didn't want him filling the silences either, and I figured that little accusation would throw him.

I figured wrong. He dropped his arm and gave me a sharp shove to the chest, so sharp I bounced off the lockers. "I wouldn't touch your gay-ass locker if you hired a hooker and got her to ask me with her warm, dripping pussy." His lip was curled in a really ugly way by now. "Pick your shit up off the ground, Wimpole, or I'll make you pick it up." He flexed his right hand menacingly, and behind him I saw Thomason and Evans and Mendoza grinning at each other.

Damn it, I swore to myself, and followed it up with a lot more choice words. Because I was actually getting aroused.

It was only to hide my swelling boner that I acceded, bending over to quickly snatch up my pencils. But as soon as I'd ducked Kirkwell clapped his hands on either side of my head and pulled it toward his crotch. "Kiss it, Wimpole," he ordered. "Kiss it, and I won't make you suck it."

"Bite me," I snarled back. Still, I could only stare at the front of his jeans, and I felt my cheeks flaming.

A chorus of chortles and guffaws broke out from his crew, and I heard one of them start to clap. "So you do want a good fucking," Kirkwell gloated. He grasped the front of my shirt and hauled me up. "I know just the place to take your virginity. Take it good and hard, too." He swung around behind me, gripping the back of my belt with one hand and with the other pushing me along with a forceful palm between my shoulder blades. In this manner he frog-marched me off toward the custodian's closet.

I didn't struggle much. The hallway clock read three twenty-three as we passed, and I figured he couldn't do much to me in seven minutes.

He made me open the door and then pushed me in and closed it behind me, leaving me alone with the stench of cleaning solutions and ... something else. I fumbled about until I found the light switch. Under the ghastly yellow light I saw that that something else was a moldy old gym mat. I couldn't figure what it was doing here until the obvious answer occurred to me. Some enterprising students had dragged it in to make their illicit, on-campus coupling more comfortable. You can get away with that when your school custodian is just out of college, and willing to trade copies of the closet key (and privacy) for blow jobs.

I could hear voices through the door. Undoubtedly Kirkwell was inventing excuses for sending the others away, which I took to be a good sign. But when the door opened again and he stepped in, his face wasn't any friendlier. If anything, he looked even more sadistically gleeful. "Take your pants off," he ordered.

This surprised me. "You're not fucking serious," I stammered.

He pulled his shirt up and over his head and tossed it away; his torso was smooth and hairless and well-defined. "You wanna make this hard or you wanna make it easy?"

"Jesus, you're really into this." Slowly I began to untie my shoes. I would have to take them off sooner or later, and normally would have been eager to get them off sooner. But these circumstances, as they played out, were unnerving me.

I had barely gotten them and my socks off when Kirkwell grabbed me and shoved my face into one of his bare armpits. "You like the smell, cocksucker?" I mumbled something in reply—the game was proving a lot less fun without an audience—and he began kneading the back of my neck. "Yeah, you like my stink, don't you? You want it all over you."

Yes, I admitted to myself. I do want it all over me.

Then he shoved me away. "How come you still got those pants on?" He pulled his own belt off with a quick snap and ripped the front of his jeans open. He burrowed down into the front of his boxers and pulled out his cock. It was small and very limp.

"Christ, all that foreplay and you still haven't got it up?"

"You're gonna suck on it until it's hard and raging," he taunted back, and his chin tilted up. "And then I'm gonna fuck you up the ass until I cum. And then you're gonna suck your own greasy shit off it until I cum again."

I rolled my eyes, but then I caught the dangerous light in his eyes, and I actually quailed inside. He stepped up close—head tilted back a little, because he was shorter than me—and slowly reached up and grabbed my hair at the top of my head and pulled it back. "Shit!" I squealed, and sank to my knees.

"You think I'm fucking with you?" he said softly. "I can make you do whatever I want. Because you're a pussy and you know it."

Hot tears were in my eyes, and the top of my scalp felt like it was on fire, but I said nothing. How long did I have to delay? Two minutes? Three?

And then the tinny electronic alarm on Kirkwell's watch went off. "Saved by the bell," he said, and let go of my hair.

* * * * *

"Fuck, that was intense," I said as I tore the rest of my clothes off. Kirkwell already had his back on.

"You liked that?" he grinned. He reached back behind some boxes and took out the leather case. "You're gonna have a hell of a time living it down."

"What did you tell the guys, to get rid of 'em?"

"Nothin'." He had the case open and picked out a syringe and a vial. "I figured I'd leave it to you to tell them what happened, or was gonna happen." He plunged the needle into the bottle and carefully drew out the prescribed dosage.

"Set it down over there," I said when he offered it to me; I was still getting my underwear off. "Well, at least you were having fun. Did you have to keep it going to the last moment? I'm glad your—I mean, his—watch was a few minutes fast."

"Is it?" Kirkwell didn't even glance at the watch; he was filling another syringe from another vial. "I was actually trying to time it so I'd get you on your knees or something at the last possible moment. I think I nailed it pretty close."

"Close enough," I said as I picked up my syringe. "That was a performance that's gonna be hard to top. Skoal!"

I raised the needle in a toast and then carefully I slid it into my forearm. It hurt like hell, but it was a pleasant hurt because of what I knew was to come. Kirkwell was doing the same with his syringe. When we were done we quickly packed the equipment away.

It took only a few seconds for the changes to start. Kirkwell's shot hit first. He bent double, then dropped to his hands and knees. His back arched and his chest heaved in an inhuman way, like something was trying to burst out. And then the stuff began to pour out of his mouth. It was red, like arterial blood, and full of ropy tendrils and tubes. It lashed and throbbed as it hit the floor, and flopped away as still more poured out of him. He made snuffling, gagging noises as it slid wetly out of gullet; even when he paused to take deep breaths it kept gushing out. Eventually he began to weaken, and as the last of it slipped to the floor his joints buckled and he toppled over, unconscious, onto the floor.

The bubbling mess, meanwhile, had begun to pull together, becoming darker and more opaque, and then sheathing itself in a livid membrane. First one appendage, like an arm, shot out of it, and then another, and then it split halfway up the middle. It jiggled and then solidified, and a sudden shadow passed over it. And when it sat up it turned a friendly, familiar and mischievous face toward me: my own identical twin brother, Travis.

"Jesus, you look like shit," he said. I glanced down at my arms; yes, they were mottled and red, and growing transparent. I could guess what my face and head looked like: like his had looked just a few moments before.

"Tip him over," I said, nodding my head at Kirkwell, and Travis obliged by rolling our victim over onto his back. Kirkwell groaned and his eyes fluttered open. He stared up as I sauntered over and gazed down at him, then focused on me. Fear ... terror ... pants-shitting horror flared up in them, and weakly he tried to wave me away.

"Please ... Don't," he gasped. I barked a laugh and started to reply, but then the serum hit full force, and I buckled and collapsed to the ground. My vision faded, so that I couldn't even see my final transformation into a semi-gelatinous mess similar to what Travis had just transformed from. I felt as a vibration, rather than heard as a sound, Travis's mocking reply.

"We're not gonna hurt you, Kirkwell. We're just gonna fuck around with your body."

And then I was over his face and inside his mouth and forcing myself down his throat.

"The Brotherhood" by Seuzz

Darren turned as he heard someone call his name from across the library, but not so quickly that he didn't see the flash or fail to hear the muted click from phone's camera. He slowly turned his steely gaze back on Stephen. "The fuck was that for, dude?" he asked.

"What was what?" Stephen asked. He couldn't quite meet his friend's gaze.

"You wanna picture, take a picture." Darren leaned back and thrust out his chest. "This'll be a nice one." Stephen muttered a demurral, but Darren pressed him, and reluctantly he held up the phone again and took another, better shot. "Now how about one of the two of us together."

Stephen's lips disappeared. "I gotta get to my locker before class starts," he muttered, and quickly stood and shoved his books into his bag. "I'll see you around."

"Yeah, around," Darren said. Stephen felt the wrestler's eyes boring into the back of his head as he hurried away.

* * * * *

"Fucker's been acting weird for the last week," Darren said to Karl. It was the evening of the same day, and the two of them were down by the river, watching and listening as it hissed shallowly over its stony bed beneath the concrete overpass. From the other side, from the renovated warehouses of the downtown district, came the muted thumps from the night clubs.

"He's been having problems with Monica," Karl replied, and chugged down a good quarter of his Coke. From a hip flask he added a few liquid gurgles of rum to the bottle and carefully swirled it until it mixed.

Darren shook his head. "So why's he acting weird with us?" He told Karl about the camera incident. "He's been spying on us, or something."

"You think it's a matter for the Brotherhood?" Karl made a face after taking a pull from his bottle. He jerked his head toward the nearby parking lot, where Trevor and Mike were leaning against their cars, arms draped around their girlfriends.

Darren made a face of his own and kicked at the concrete abutment. "Something for the Brotherhood," he agreed guardedly.

"It wouldn't be hard to stage an intervention. Remind him who his friends are, and not to dick around with them."

"But why is he dicking around with us? I think a replacement might be in order."

"You mean like with Taylor?" Karl's own tone became more guarded. Josh Taylor had been the fifth member of the "Brotherhood," until he'd hooked up with a girl no one liked, and then they'd persecuted him out of their group and even off the wrestling team. Mike Grissom, now so confidently and firmly a part of the posse, had been almost pathetically grateful when he'd found himself elevated to the innermost circle of jocks at the high school.

"Something like that," Darren said, though his mouth hardly moved. He took his iPhone from his pocket, called up a few images, and showed them to his teammate. "Carson? Emwalt? How about Mustafa? That'd be a hilarious."

Karl cursed. But Darren persisted, and in the end agreed to submit the matter to the other two.

* * * * *

At his house, Stephen carefully studied the photo he'd tried to surreptitiously snap. It was too blurry to really make anything out, and with a sense of frustration he turned back to the website he'd found on a tip, and uploaded the copy of the photo he'd emailed to himself. The results of the scan it performed were equivocal.

"Nothing to do but take a chance," he muttered, and entered his credit card information. He chose "Overnight Delivery," and was relieved when he checked his email an hour later to find a confirmation that his order had immediately shipped.

* * * * *

No one said anything to each at school the next day—or, at least, no one said anything to suggest that they found each other's behavior uncharacteristic. Darren said nothing at practice when, having been able to pin Stephen to the mat, he felt the latter stealthily reaching around to grope at the muscles between his shoulder blades. Mr. Olewsky said nothing when he returned the biology tests, having had to given Mike a much better score, and Stephen a much lower one, than he normally had to. Naturally, no one in the school said anything when Karl and Trevor hustled a twig-like junior, a member of the glee club, out into the parking lot and shoved him into the trunk of the latter's car and drove off after classes had let out.

If anyone said anything about Stephen, he himself was not around to hear it, having hurried home to find the expected package sitting on his bed. With trembling hands he tore it open and studied its contents: a vial of amber liquid and a vial of ochre liquid, and six syringes. He sat for a long time on the edge of his bed, not touching them, as he studied the snaps he'd taken of some of his best friends.

He finally decided on Darren.

* * * * *

"He called me," Darren simply told Karl. The latter hadn't said anything, had only given Darren a black look when they bumped into each other at the bend in the trail that led deep into the campgrounds.

"Pretty fucking short notice," Karl said. "I had to give my dad a real story to get out of working at the shop this evening, and I could tell he didn't believe me."

"It's best to settle things while they're hot," Darren said. "But maybe we can just stick to an intervention after we see what he has to say."

"Too late for that," Karl snapped.

"But that's why I wanted to get here early," Darren persisted. "The four of us talk about things, and when Stephen finally shows up we have a solid story about how he's fucking up."

"But there'll be five of us waiting for him," Karl retorted. "And why are you being a fucking pansy all of a sudden? You're the one who wanted to pull the plug on him."

"I guess when it just comes to the point ... Oh, hell, me and him have been friends for a long time."

Karl gave Darren a slit-eyed sidelong glance and snorted.

In fact, when they entered the circle where they had their Brotherhood meetings, they found they were the fifth and sixth persons there. Stephen had also come early, and Mike and Trevor had him on the ground with his arms locked behind him. The other member of their company, who they'd brought along, stood to the side, hunched against the brooding violence that still hung in the air.

* * * * *

"So it's like that, is it?" Darren said softly as he fingered the syringe. "Jesus, dude," he said, turning to Stephen. "You are so fucking smart. But which agent were you planning to use on me?" He indicated the two vials.

"I don't know who you are," Stephen spat, "though I'm pretty sure I can get it in four guesses." He pulled against his captors; three solid sets of muscles strained, but no one shifted more than a few inches, so tightly did the others have a hold of him.

Darren smiled thinly. "Yeah, in four guesses. But did you even know there were four guesses you could make? You know what," he added with a snicker as Stephen glared. "Just so this isn't too horrible for you, I won't even use the stuff you so kindly thought to provide." He tossed away the packet they'd taken from Stephen and instead drew out a syringe and amber vial that he'd been carrying in a pouch of his own. "It would be ironic turnabout, but I'll use my own supply. The green stuff I'll add to my own collection—since none of us plan on shedding our skins any time soon, it's not much use."

Stephen tried to draw back, but the effort was as vain as his attempt to escape, and he began to slowly wilt after Darren had jabbed him in the side of the neck. "Son of a bitch" was the last thing he could mutter before he collapsed.

Karl beckoned the remaining member of the company over—Mustafa, the unhappy victim of their abduction. He swallowed and watched with keen fascination as the others began to press and squeeze Stephen, until there was nothing left but a shapeless sack of skin.

"You believe it now?" Karl gloated. Mustafa twitched, and ducked his head in a quick nod. "Good. Then today's the first day of the rest of your new life," Karl said. "Get undressed, and we'll get you into your new skin." The newest member of the Brotherhood tore his shirt off.

* * * * *

"It was just a lot of little things," Stephen said as he leaned back against a rock and scratched at his chest. "Actually, he'd never even have suspected something was wrong except that he got that link from an old middle school friend. That's some crazy shit they were peddling, but it seemed to fit a lot of what he'd noticed about you."

"What you had noticed about me," Darren corrected his friend.

Stephen blinked. "Yeah, sure," he shrugged. He peered closely at Darren and Karl and Mike and Trevor in turn. "Now, which one of you is Ron? I've missed you, man. Tore me up when they said you'd vanished."

Four pairs of cool eyes returned his querying glance without cracking. "There's no one here named Ron," said Darren. "Just as there's no one here named Mustafa. It's just the Brotherhood."

"Boy and Man" by Seuzz

"Hi Dad!"

Ben Carstairs would have replied, but he had barely time to glimpse the back of his tow-headed son before Brian had vanished down the hallway and into the bedroom. He watched the boy's swirling wake with bemusement for a moment before turning again to gaze out the front door, at the blonde woman who stood by the minivan with her arms folded in a disapproving manner. He hunched as he trudged down the front walk to the street where she waited.

"I guess I'll say hello to him later," he called as he approached. "Hello to you, Cynthia."

"Hello, Ben."

Carstairs smiled thinly. "I guess we're speaking again."

"Of course we're speaking," she said, but her smile was also thin. "I don't want to give you any reason to think I'm feeling unfriendly."

"You mean aside from the restraining order? Or that letter your lawyer sent last week? Jesus, Cynthia, if you'd seen my expenses last month you wouldn't be asking for more alimony."

"I'm not asking for more, only for what you still owe. And I should be your primary expense."

"First mistakes are always the most expensive," Ben said bitterly. "Sometimes we never finish paying for them."

His ex-wife's eyes glinted coldly. "I had to come within a thousand yards so I could drop our son off at the curb. Don't say things that could be used against you in a court appearance."

Ben felt a nasty ripple up his spine, but he forced himself to smile. "Then let's both stop being unpleasant." He looked her up and down. "You're looking well."

"You're not. You've lost a lot of weight. You look haggard."

"Some people would say 'You've lost weight' and mean it as a compliment," he retorted. "But you're not like most people."

"Pretend I'm concerned. You're wasting away." She seemed to debate with herself before blurting out the sequel. "But you could disappear completely, and I wouldn't mind."

Ben felt a lop-sided smile creep onto his face. "I haven't been eating well," he admitted. "My work in the lab—and your alimony—have left me subsisting on ramen."

"Then blame yourself and not me." She paused, as though unsure how sincere he'd been in pleading poverty. "But if you need money for Brian over the summer, I can be patient a little while longer."

"I don't want your charity," Ben snapped.

"Then you won't get it. And it wouldn't be for you but for Brian. It's all he's been talking about for the last month. Coming to see you." She peered at him narrowly. "You've been promising to spoil him, haven't you?"

"The settlement says I only get him three months out of the year. Naturally, I want him to enjoy himself."

"And that's why he dashes past without speaking more than two words when he finally sees you."

"I told him in our last email that I had some new hardware for him."

"That virtual reality system that's been sucking up your life for the past five years?" Her eyebrows arched. "The one that busted up our marriage? Well, that and the abuse."

Despite himself, Ben found himself bridling. "My research may have pushed you and me apart—and yeah, it was bad for mu temper—but it's brought my son and me closer together."

"He needs sunlight, Ben. He needs fresh air, and exercise, and flesh-and-blood friends. He doesn't need to be shut up in a ... full-body glove, or whatever it is that you've designed."

"And he'll get all those good things. That's what summers are for."

She stared at him evenly. "Well, I'll just say goodbye to him, then."

She started to push past, but he blocked her. "Remember that restraining order, Cynthia," he said with a nasty grin. "You can call him tonight."

Red spots showed in her cheek. "You can be such an asshole, Ben." But she turned away without pressing the matter.

Ben Carstairs waited a few minutes after she'd driven away, and then with a quizzical smile returned to the house. Inside, he knocked quietly but firmly at the door to the spare bedroom. "Are you decent, son?" he asked. There was no answer, but he opened the door anyway.

The thin, blond, sixteen-year-old kid who had barreled past him was nowhere to be seen; only a pile of hastily discarded clothes suggested he had even been present. The room wasn't unoccupied, however. On the other side of the room, admiring himself in a full-length mirror, was a solidly built, well-tanned young man with chestnut hair. He was stark naked, and fully entranced with the biceps and pectorals that reflected back at him. For a moment he was too caught up pressing a strong palm against his chest to react to the intrusion; but he caught sight of Carstairs in the mirror, and grinned back at him. "It looks even better than in those jpegs you sent!"

"How does it feel?"

"Totally natural!" He rubbed his arm lightly. "I can't even tell I'm wearing anything."

"Anyone who caught you like this would say you weren't," Ben said wryly. He crossed to a chest of drawers and pulled out a pair of track pants, which he tossed to the seeming stranger who was actually his son. "I had to set the biochemical interface to my own signature, but I figured it would be close enough to yours. I can tweak it if there are places that are ... not quite sensitive enough." Naturally, he chose not to mention the number of times he'd taken the body suit out, to the gym, to the park, to nightclubs. To test it and refine it, he'd told himself, as though that were his primary excuse.

"I look ... older than sixteen."

"That's the least of the differences." Ben continued to be wry. "But yeah. Here's some ID for you." He tossed a thin wallet to Brian. "It says you're nineteen. I guess you could pass for twenty-one, though."

Brian blushed as he grinned. "I get it. Thanks, Dad. This is the greatest graduation present anyone ever got. Well, early graduation present, I guess."

"Keep your grades up, and you can take it to college next year."

"I wish I could go now. Junior year sucked."

"So you told me. Here," Ben said, his manner suddenly shy. "I'll take your old clothes and suitcases and put them away. Nothing you brought will fit you now, and I doubt you'll be wanting to get out of the suit any time soon." But Brian had already returned his attention to the mirror.

Ben Carstairs smiled in relief to himself as he opened the secret door at the back of his closet and deposited his son's things in the little space, behind the other flesh-colored suit, the lanky one with shaggy, light-blonde hair. It had taken a lot of exercise and starvation diet, but he could now fit inside this other suit, the one that made him into the physical duplicate of his own son.

From the way Brian was talking, he would hardly need convincing when the time came to suggest he not return home for his senior year. And then when Ben was in that other suit, and back inside his ex-wife's house, in the guise of the last person she would ever suspect meant her any harm ...

Then he would finally finish paying for that first, fatal mistake, and have the wherewithal to settle all his other financial problems.

'Old Wine, New Bottle" by Seuzz

There was something in Christine's tone —a note of breathless, of strained alarm, perhaps—that suggested to Ken that there'd been a magnificent cock-up in their little scheme. He didn't wait to ask her what was up, but quickly clapped his phone shut and trotted over to her apartment.

Sure enough, her brow was deeply creased and her cheeks pale when she answered the door. "He's not breathing," she said as soon as he was inside the doorway.

Ken stared. "Of course he's not breathing," he snapped. "He's not supposed to be breathing, not after you gave him the knockout drops."

Christine stared back. "But—" Then her expression changed—a subtle change, something deep in the eyes, but it clearly spelled relief. "Oh," she said.

"Jesus." Ken sighed. "Well, as long as I'm here." He pushed past her toward the bedroom, where he found Chad, her boyfriend, spread-eagled on the bed, completely naked. Ken bent over his face with a frown. Yes, he wasn't breathing, and his eyes were staring vacantly. "How long since you—" He did a mild double-take as he glanced back at the fully dressed Christine. "You put your clothes back on before you called me?" he asked wryly.

She folded her arms. "After I called you. You know, it was real tricky thing getting that eyedropper up close to his mouth while we were, um, ..."

"Alright, where's the rest of the stuff I gave you," Ken asked mildly. "We can talk later about the kind of fun you were having."

Christine gave him a look as she pulled open the top drawer of her bureau. "I guess we'll be missing our three o'clock Lit class," she said as she handed him the syringe and the small bottle.

"Maybe, maybe not," Ken replied as he stabbed the needle into the bottle and drew out a carefully measured dose of clear fluid. "This won't take long, so unless, you know, you want to take up where you and him left off ..."

"Stop it." She winced as Ken carefully lifted Chad's testicles and pressed the needle deep into the flesh where his genitals attached to his body. For his part, Ken smiled tightly at the size of Chad's flaccid cock.

"Okay, give it a few minutes, and then I'll need your help as he starts to deflate."

"Oh my God," she said. "This stuff really does ... I mean, it ... it actually ..."

"Yeah, I've seen it in action before," Ken said airily. "He's not really full of air, you know," he continued, and added "Just shit" under his breath. "But it will look like he's deflating."

Christine gave him a carefully measured look. "You mean you've seen other guys do this to ... other guys?" She paused. "Who?"

"Not really your business," Ken replied. "Let's just say there's more than one jock on campus walking around with someone else inside him." Christine swallowed.

"Alright, there he goes," Ken said. He gripped one of Chad's thick, lightly haired calves and began to massage it roughly. "Grab his foot and start kneading." With something like loathing, Christine picked up her boyfriend's foot and started squeezing it. "Come on, harder than that," Ken chided her. "I'm sure you two got up to rougher stuff than that when he was naked."

A red spot finally showed in Christine's cheek. "You know," she said in a voice that had a shrill in it. "The main reason I'm doing this is because he was a jerk and I wanted to give you as second chance. But if you're going to act like an asshole—"

"It's a little late for second thoughts now, isn't it?" Ken retorted. "But I'm sorry. I'm just giving you shit." He grabbed their victim's leg behind the knee and pressed; the joint bent at a painfully unnatural angle. "Still, it does kind of suck when your old girlfriend will take you back only if you pretend to be her new boyfriend."

"It was your idea," she said. "I'd never heard of this stuff till you mentioned it."

"I know," Ken said. He pressed both his hands down on Chad's hard-muscled abdomen. "I wonder if I'll like being on the lacrosse team," he added, as though following a thought.

They continued pressing and squeezing on Chad's body; it became softer and flatter, and finally became a limp, leathery thing. Ken had just dropped Chad's buzz-cut head back onto the pillow when there was a sharp rap on the front door. Christine looked at Ken with alarm. He shrugged. "Close the bedroom door and go see who it is," he said. "I'll finish getting ready."

As he slipped off his own clothes, Ken heard the muffled sound of the front door opening and Christine's voice as she greeted the visitor. The voices continued after the door closed; he smiled wickedly at the thought that he'd get such a quick chance to model his new identity.

He flopped his new body onto the floor and sat on the edge of the bed; carefully he stretched open Chad's mouth and slipped his own thin leg into it and down the flaccid throat and through the torso. He pulled the mouth open wider and stuck his other leg in. It took a little bit of fishing around before he got them into the separate leggings, and it took even longer to get his feet and toes inside Chad's. But once he had them arranged he felt his new skin and muscles adhere to his own, and the warm prickle as Chad's old nerve endings became his. He waggled his toes appreciatively and ran his hands and fingers up the back of his new thighs.

It was trickier getting his ball sack and penis into Chad's, since he had to fight a swelling erection while trying to get Chad's flaccid skin over his own stiffening member. Then he gasped with intense pleasure as the new skin adhered; with a groan he fell back on the bed and stroked his new penis and fondled his new balls. He glanced down; it was very thick and very long, and it was straining mightily toward the ceiling. His pleasure at the size of his new cock was slightly equivocal; it was, after all, not originally his own. But whatever envy he might have felt was quickly transmuted into the hot and panting anticipation of thrusting it deeply and violently into soft, moist, warm tissues. He bit his lower lip and gradually mastered himself.

The hard part was now out of the way, and he soon had his thin arms inside Chad's hard-muscled ones, and his shallow chest enclosed in Chad's slab-like pectorals. Before pulling Chad's head and face up over his own, though, Ken went to closet, where he knew Christine had a full-length mirror. In its reflection he regarded his nearly transmuted self: Chad's stocky, tawny body, lightly downed with blond hair on the calves and forearms and chest; more thickly and darkly under armpits. Set incongruously over this athlete's body was Ken's own narrow face with its thick mop of mousy-brown hair and his round spectacles and dark eyes. He gave himself a lopsided smile; yeah, even he'd worked out he would have looked ridiculous. He closed his eyes and drew Chad's face over his head and down over his own visage; he rubbed and pressed it into place. When he opened his eyes again, it was Chad who stared back out of truculent, hazel eyes: and it was Chad's flushed cheeks and chapped lips and a mouth that seemed permanently set in a semi-sneer. He quickly pulled on some dirty underwear and athletic shorts, but didn't bother with a  shirt or anything else.

"Hey Tony," he said brusquely as he entered the living room. It was one of Chad's teammates, sitting on the sofa and chatting casually with Christine. Ken swaggered on his new legs into the bathroom; without closing the door he pulled out his cock and let a long stream of piss geyser out and into the toilet bowl. He pointedly ignored the dangerous expression on Christine's face when he re-entered the living and dropped onto the sofa next to her. "So what the fuck do you want," he asked Tony as he dropped a meaty arm around his girlfriend's shoulder.

Tony shrugged. "I was bored. Thought I'd hang out with you guys."

"Chad and I have a Lit class at three," Christine said. "In fact, we need to leave now if we don't want to be late." She stood up.

"Take notes for me, won't you, babe?" Ken said insolently. "I'm gonna skip today, hang out with my bro here."

Christine turned so that Tony wouldn't see her face and stared hard at him. "Remember what we talked about this afternoon?" she said sharply. "There are going to be some changes in our relationship. Like, you're going to start going to class every day."

Ken looked up at her with an amused expression. "Sure thing. But let's put the new stuff off until tomorrow. I wanna squeeze a little more juice out of the old life first." He smirked and rubbed the front of his shorts with the heel of his hand. Christine turned very pink but didn't say anything; she said nothing, in fact, as she scooped up a few scattered books, shoved them into an over-the-shoulder bag, and stomped out the door.

Neither Ken nor Tony said anything either, but the former snickered after she'd gone. "Fuck, I'm in trouble now," he chortled as he rose from the sofa and swaggered over the refrigerator in the nearby kitchen nook. "Wanna beer?" he asked as he opened it and looked in.

"Fuck yeah," Tony said. Ken didn't look around as he heard Tony come up behind him. Then he felt Tony's hand on the small of his back, and his dick, which had never entirely collapsed, sprang back to vibrant life. But he ignored the approach, even after Tony leaned in and lightly kissed the back of his neck.

"Playing it dangerous, huh?" Ken said as he straightened back up. "I ought punch you out for that, you know."

"I was watching through my front window," Tony said as he took a beer from his friend. "I saw you running over. Unless you and Chad were fucking each other in the bedroom, I knew it was going  to be you when he came out."

"Can't keep your eyes off the fucker, huh?" Ken grunted. He leaned in and snatched a quick, noisy kiss from Tony. "You got more of the knockout drops?" Tony grinned as he dug a small brown bottle with an eyedropper stopper out of his front pocket. "Sweet," Ken said as he took them. "I'll use them on her tonight, give you a call around midnight when I've got her ready for you." He leaned back against a kitchen cabinet and rubbed the front of his shorts again. "After you're out of Tony and inside Christine, there's going to be some changes in our relationship. Like, she's going to start giving me blow jobs every night, and three times on Sundays."

"Old Habits" by Seuzz

I tilted the iPhone so Paul could see better. "How about this one?"

"He's okay."

"Only okay? Alright, how about him?"

"Better, I guess."

"You guess?" Flick. "Him?"

A shrug.

I continued flicking through the pictures, more and more rapidly, but I stopped looking at them, and watched Paul instead. He was a quiet one, had been ever since I'd known him; not diffident, but thoughtful. If he seemed unenthusiastic, I was sure, it wasn't because he was uninterested, but because he was looking at things from an angle I hadn't appreciated.

He caught me staring at him, blushed a little, and looked away. "Are these the only ones I get to choose from?"

"They're the only ones I have access to."

His eyes crinkled with skepticism. "You can't just go pick up someone?"

"I could," I shrugged. "Within reason. But then you wouldn't get to choose. You'd have to take whatever the special was that day."

He leaned back and gazed over my shoulder, out through the large plate-glass window that looked into my back yard. "And there are no take backs?"

"I'm afraid not. It's a one-way trip."

He smiled softly when I'd expected him to frown, and nestled closer against my shoulder. "Show them to me again. Tell me about them. I have to know more about who I'd be getting into."

Ah. Of course. Paul's a smart one. It was one of the reasons I loved him so much.

"Well, this is Will Coakley," I said, flipping back to the start of the gallery. "He's a finance major, good grades, probably going to get a good job at a major firm. As you can see, he's a snazzy dresser, and he jogs for exercise.

"This is Greg Czernowicz. He's still just a sophomore, hasn't settled on a major yet. I met his family. They're good people. His grades are not spectacular, but then he was mostly interested in athletics in high school. Great starting material, since he's in terrific shape, but totally unformed upstairs."

"This is Adam Elgar. He's already losing his hair, which is why he keeps his head shaved. I don't think the other guys like him much, and he was probably a bully back in high school. Maybe that's why he interests me/—I bet he'd be fun to ... ah ... wrestle with."

I looked up in time to see Paul smiling privately.

And so we went on in this way. I had to concentrate on the pictures, dredging up the memories of who these fraternity brothers were, and which of their qualities might pique Paul's interest and which of their quirks he might find a turn off.

And so it wasn't until I'd lighted, again, on Richard Tigh, that I figured out what Paul was up to. I'd been dying to get to Tigh again: his skeptical, obsidian eyes and level, alabaster teeth; his broad chest and strong shoulders that could not be hidden under a dress shirt at official functions, and which glistened brownly when with hard discipline he drilled a basketball down a blacktop; the fraternity president who quietly boasted that he would clerk for a Supreme Court justice, and no one really doubted that he one day would. I outlined these and all his other advantages to Paul, and glanced up to find him grinning at me.

"This is the only one who really makes you come alive, isn't he?" he said.

"He's the one I'd pick for you."

"Then he's the one I pick. Because you're already in love with him."

"I'm in love with you."

"It'll be the same thing." We kissed lightly. "Are there any disadvantages to him? Bad breath? Dandruff? A hangnail?"

"He has a girlfriend," I shrugged. "We'd have to do something about her."

* * * * *

"Pages two-forty through three-ten for next time," I said, writing the numbers on the board. A groan went up from the room. "It'll go fast," I promised. "Just try to keep the Guelphs straight from the Ghibellines. Mr. Tigh," I called to him as he rose from the table in the corner. "May I see you a moment?"

He came dutifully to the front of the room, his face the very portrait of neutrality.

"I'd like to have a little talk with you tonight."

He shrugged lightly. "Sure. If you stop by around six I think we were gonna be grilling some steaks."

"I'd prefer we meet alone. It's kind of a delicate matter."

His brow clouded. "Nine o'clock? Pool at Ernie's?"

"Private. I was thinking a drink at my place. Around seven. After that, maybe pool at Ernies."

He tensed visibly, but assented. I couldn't help but stare at his retreating back as he left. He walked with a slight rocking motion—I knew his family owned horses—and he was wearing a t-shirt with very short sleeves, so that the bulge of his biceps made everything south of my diaphragm quicken. I started a little when Paul—the last in the room; he'd sat in, to get an in-person view of his home-to-be—materialized at my elbow.

"Pretty impressive that you can get the president of a major fraternity chapter to just come over to your house at short notice."

"You can do that when you're that fraternity's faculty adviser," I smiled.

"Still, you were masterful," he said quietly, and a faint flush rose up his throat.

* * * * *

"This is probably going to sting like no one's business," I warned him. "It hurt like the very devil when I did it."

Paul leaned forward in my bathtub and clasped his arms around his nakedness. "How did you even manage to do it?"

"Sheer force of desire," I said as I peered at the amber liquid in the heavy syringe. "I baited and hooked him at the dance club, then let him reel me here, to his place. Sucked and swallowed, sucked and swallowed, until I wore him down. He was magnificent, but I was better." I couldn't resist a boast. "Together, we are unstoppable."

"I didn't want to mention anything," Paul murmured, "but you have been on fire since you joined the university faculty."

I said no more as I warmed the needle between my fingers, then swabbed the back of his neck with some alcohol. In truth, it had been a horrifying experience. I'd left him exhausted in his bed, finally, as the fingernails of the dawn dug into the horizon, to hide in his bathroom, in this very tub, where I had plunged a similar syringe into the base of my own skull. Afterwards, outside my skin, I had wobbled and staggered, then crawled, and finally bonelessly clambered back to his bed, and with nerveless, fleshless, flimsy fingers stabbed the object of my lust with the complementary solution. Crawling inside him had been like a return to the womb after the raw, gasping hell that had taken me from my own shell to his, and I slept for hours, hammered into oblivion by the struggle, swimming in the vomited filth that was all that remained of the old professor. The cleaning, the laundering and the scrubbing that ensued had been a vacation by comparison—a reward, even, for I had gained a fine and beautiful body with which to do it.

"There are no take backs?" Paul said to my surprise just as I was about to prick him.

I could have hesitated. I should have, probably. I didn't. I wanted no take backs, even before it became impossible. I wanted him—I needed him—in Richard Tigh's body.

"No take backs," I said, and I drove the needle deep. "I don't know where this stuff came from, I don't know who made it or who wrote the instructions. There were six of these paired syringes when I found it, and I spent four of them on the lab animals, testing it, and testing again, to see if there were take backs." There weren't, and the attempts left a residue whose stench I never wanted to smell again. "And so here we are, with only one shot each, even if we had more of the stuff. I've taken mine—" Paul suddenly heaved forward— "and now here is yours."

He twitched and gasped soundlessly, and flopped onto his side. His mouth opened and closed, and his eyes stared. I swallowed hard and wanted to look away. It had been bad enough with the mice, and naturally I'd not witnessed my own transformation. To see it happen to another human being, to one that I loved ...

His eyes glazed, and he sagged, and suddenly his very form curled up around the edges. He had, of course, split open along his spinal column, and what was left of his exterior tissues curled up, like paper burning in an invisible fire.

And then there was Paul, a livid pink thing of roughly human form; he had limbs and a trunk and a head. But his eyes—though I knew they could see—were blank white protuberances, and his mouth was a sucking, swallowing hole, like that of a toothless hagfish. Tears sprang into my eyes as it trembled and tried to speak. I knew it could feel no pain, but the fear it must have felt ... I patted its head tenderly. "Don't try to talk. Just rest. You'll be fine for hours yet, if you have to wait even that long." The spasms stopped, and the thing became much calmer, though the mouth continued to slowly gulp at the air. "In fact," I said, glancing ostentatiously at my watch. "He should be here in fifteen minutes, for he has never been tardy in my experience."

Quickly, I gathered up what was left of my lover's skin—his face, his hair and coverings, everything I had ever directly perceived of him. I didn't even glance at them or give them a farewell before stuffing them into the bottom of the trash.

* * * * *

"This is the good stuff. The very good stuff. The stuff that is so good that you never ever drink it because the occasion is never right." I set the tumbler of amber liquid down in front of him, and the glass made a satisfying clack against the tabletop. "So that gives you an idea of how serious this is."

Richard looked up at me from beneath his brows. He had dressed for this "official" visit in a crisp white shirt and tastefully casual khakis; his white ball cap—which was at least brand new—was his only concession to fratdom. "It means it's either really good news or really bad news," he said, and his sour tone suggested he was expecting the latter.

"Perhaps you'd better drink up before I tell you which."

He didn't flinch and he didn't stir. He just stared until the moment became uncomfortable, and I had to swallow and look away. I hadn't counted on having to temporize.

"How is your relationship with Megan," I said abruptly, chasing after a train of thought that had begun with the thing in my bathtub.

He tilted his head stiffly. "It's good."

"How is it progressing?"

"You want clinical details?"

"No. I mean, have you discussed future plans?"

"Yes."

I stared intently at the glass in front of him, trying to will him into picking it up.

"What are they?"

"Our plan is to keep them in the future."

"Do you have any idea what her attitude is toward those ... future plans?"

His lips had whitened as they compressed. "I think her attitude is that future plans will remain in the future until she decides that the future has arrived."

"Then let me ask about your present plans. Do they include allowing each other to play the field while waiting for the future to arrive?"

His eyes, which had merely been dark before, flashed that obsidian glint that excited me. "Is that a hypothetical, professor?" he softly asked.

"Let us call it a freighted question, Mr. Tigh."

I had calculated successfully, though the timing was very close. He slung back his drink in one swallow without expression and set the tumbler back down with a noise that was closer to a crack than to a click. His eyes were now flat, with the reptilian hardness of a serpent with a grudge. His hand still held the tumbler, and I saw the knuckles whiten, and I had the sudden vision of him hurling the heavy glass at my forehead. Probably that is what he intended.

Instead, he of a sudden fell sideways, like tree knocked over by a landslide. Fortunately, I caught him before he could damage his beautiful, beautiful self.

* * * * *

I quickly had him out of his clothes, and bending double I lifted him under the armpits and clasped him close to my chest and dragged him to the bathroom, inhaling deeply of the back of his neck as I went. The thing in the tub smacked its orifice—hungrily, I thought—as I gently laid Richard with his throat on the rim of the toilet and his face hanging over the water. "Five minutes, lover," I said. "That is all. Just five minutes now."

From the medicine cabinet I snatched the last needle and quickly but carefully slid it under Richard's skin. (I wanted not a scratch on his perfect carapace!) A gurgle rumbled from inside his body, and then a groan went up: the air of his last breath, rushing from his lungs, to echo in the porcelain bowl. And then came the slurry, the yellow, foaming slurry that poured out of his mouth in a soundless stream. I flushed the toilet to clear it, and flushed it again; and as it poured out Richard's frame grew slacker and slacker. And when the last dribble of the thing that had been inside his skin dropped into the water, his flat, flap-like head slipped heavily onto the tile floor.

"Now, just slip in here," I said with what I fear was a snigger, "like you've done so many times before. It'll be so lovely." I hauled the heavy skin over to the toilet and pulled apart the flanks of the flaccid buttocks. "Just slip in. You won't get caught on anything."

The process was like watching a snake shed its skin in reverse. First one pink limb, and then the second slid up into Richard, and then the head. The thing's torso narrowed and contracted and wriggled, and the legs merged seamlessly into a worm-like tail to follow. The skin billowed and bulged like a sack, but never came close to splitting. Instead, it filled out, and tightened, and flexed. There were muscles beneath it, and they bulged and swelled before relaxing inside their tight casing.

And then it turned over and took a deep breath, and the eyes opened. They settled on me, skeptical and querying, and then they softened, and a faint smile, of the sort the old Richard had never turned toward me, appeared.

I held out my hand to help him, but he effortlessly rose to his feet and stretched and sighed. He rubbed his forearms and his chest and his taut belly, then stretched down to briefly grip his calves. Without a word he stepped out of the tub and brushed past me, to gaze into the mirror. Gently, curiously, he laid an open palm against his cheek, and turned his face this way and that, to catch the light on its planes. He smoothed his hair, and then, charmingly, blew softly into his hand, to catch a sniff of his own breath. His eyes lit with amusement, and he smiled.

I reached out to stroke his back, but he pushed my hand away. "Lemme get dressed first," he said in a gentle baritone. "We'll start with the how-dye-dos and work slowly from there.

* * * * *

He sat back on the leather sofa, another glass of Scotch dangling lazily from his fingers. He crossed his legs. He was entirely at ease, and gracefully leonine.

"That was bullshit about Megan cheating on me, wasn't it?" he said with amused contempt, and took an appreciative sip.

"What makes you think I was talking about Megan cheating?" I smiled back at him. I was sitting across from him, and though I was the professor I was feeling more like the abashed student, trying to show off.

His chest swelled with an unreleased laugh. "Of course I'm cheating on her," he said. "Right and left. But I didn't think you'd have known that, and so you wouldn't have meant it."

My eyes widened, for I hadn't thought that Richard would be so casually unchaste. Still: "That will make it easy for you to end it with her. For her to end it with you, I mean."

His eyes dropped. "Maybe. On the other hand, it would be a useful cover. She has her good points, and she is attractive."

"Still, you would make time for me, wouldn't you?" I meant my wheedle to sound like a joke, but it sounded too plaintive, even in my ear.

His smile widened, and he looked over my shoulder. "The faculty advisor can get the fraternity president to stop by his house whenever he wants."

"I promise I won't abuse the power." I was starving by this point, and lurched rather than rose from my chair. I wanted to pin him to the sofa and drive a kiss down his throat. But he intercepted me, standing up and pressing his hand against his chest.

"Paul?" I asked in puzzlement.

The use of his old name seemed to stir something, for he blushed and hung his head. "Sorry," he said. "New reflexes and all."

"I don't mind the new reflexes," I said. "In fact, I'd like to see how they work."

He smiled and relented, wrapping his arms around me and drawing me in. I decided for my part to let him take it slow, and contented myself with nibbling and sucking rather than biting. It wasn't as satisfying as I'd hoped it would be, in part because he was much sloppier than I'd imagined he'd be. He became less ardent, too, until he finally withdrew, even dropping his arms and stepping back.

"What's wrong," I asked, for something queer seemed to coil in the air between us.

He tilted his head to the side. "The instructions ... Did they say anything about ... Well, about how old habits would interact with new ones?"

"Only that the person who took the skin would be the dominant personality, but would be able to convincingly fake being the person whose skin he had assumed."

"And the best way to do that would be to have the same habits and preferences," he mused.

"What are you saying?" I asked, and something cold clutched at my heart.

There was a peculiar gleam in his eye as he turned toward me: not the obsidian gleam of hate, but a jewel-like gleam of amusement, which frightened me almost as much.

"You were gay, and the professor was gay, so of course you didn't notice a change there," he said. "But don't you find yourself like the foods he likes, now?"

"I hadn't paid attention," I admitted.

"Well, start paying attention," he said. "We'd both better start. Because the fact is—" He took a deep, ragged breath and scratched the back of his head. "The fact is that Richard Tigh wasn't gay. He was totally, completely, 100% straight."

"But you're in control now," I protested wildly. "What about your feelings?"

His laugh sounded like a hiccup. "His feelings are so strong that I can't bend them. I've tried, I've been trying. Very hard, believe me. But they won't bend. By even a tiny little bit." He hiccupped again.

"Oh, baby," I said, and I don't know who I pitied more: him or me.

"And that's the good news," he said, and his voice began to teeter toward hysteria. "Now, you want the bad news? The crazy-ass, awful, horrible, not very good at all news?"

There was something like a flame in his eyes now, and I was so fascinated by his gaze that I didn't answer, couldn't answer, and certainly didn't see his fist before it was suddenly in my face. My jaw cracked and I hit the ground hard.

I looked up and could see only a blur. But through the ringing in my ears I heard perfectly the perfectly horrible conclusion to our affair.

"The bad news is that I— Richard— I—" His voice cracked and broke.

"I hate fags! I mean, I just. Fucking. Hate them!"

"Internal Affairs" by Seuzz

The rain falls on the just and the unjust alike, he mused to himself as the cold drizzle trickled off his cap and down the back of his neck. And which one am I now?

He tugged his uniform tight, but some of collected water slipped down his spine. He squirmed a little. Something didn't fit quite right, but he had to content himself with pulling the heavy coat closer around his shoulders. That did help, though he still wanted to find a changing room someplace, to tighten things. But there wasn't time.

And it wasn't a long wait, either, before a patrol car swam out of the diminishing afternoon murk and growled to a stop in the alley by the river. His eyes lit up when he recognized Danny Vance stepping out from the behind the wheel: Danny the dark; Danny the trim; Danny the panther-like, just out of the academy.

Greg Yarborough was with him, though, and the man waiting by the warehouse carefully composed his features so that the twenty-year street veteran—too smart not to be a detective, but held back from promotion for never-disclosed reasons—wouldn't spot his chagrin.

"Can't handle a punk by yourself, huh?" Danny jeered in his good-natured way.

"There's two of them." The man who'd put in the call for back up jerked his head toward the metal side door into the warehouse. "I knicked one of them, I think. They're unarmed, but I'm not stupid enough to go in alone."

Danny and Yarborough checked their pistols. "Then what are we waiting for?" Yarborough said curtly. Most of the guys at the precinct liked Yarborough for his cool, tough, confident ways.

But at least one of the other two cops in the alley didn't. "I took a look around before calling," he said as he opened the door. "Just long enough to know it was a bigger job than I could handle alone. It's a maze, and the light's bad." He and the others stepped into the gloom, where tall metal shelves, packed closely with anonymous crates and boxes, stretched toward the grimy skylights.

Yarborough found and flicked at an electrical box, but nothing happened. "You and Vance take the north side," he said. "I'll cover the south."

Yarborough and Vance struck out into the gloom, but the third hesitated. He liked the idea of splitting up, and he liked to be paired with Vance. But he didn't like the assignment. He felt in his pocket for the syringe as he followed Danny, hoping he'd get a chance to use it quickly.

But Vance moved swiftly, with cat-like tread, never pausing, swinging around each corner with practiced ease, and cocking his head in every direction; he left no blind spots as he swept along the wall. He left his partner breathing heavily through his nose, but not from exertion. No, he breathed heavily because his gaze was hooked helplessly onto Vance's dark, close-cropped hair and broad shoulders; he wanted to clasp Vance's neck and gnaw on it. Memories that had once belonged to another but now belonged to him swam to the front of his mind, of Vance in the precinct changing room, in his tight gray briefs and their enticing package. There weren't many such memories, for the man whose eyes he now looked out of hadn't the interest to stare, but they were distracting. At least once he missed a chance at Vance because he was concentrating on the gleam off the man's cheek as he stepped briefly through a dim patch of light.

They moved quickly, and Yarborough must have been similarly swift, for they heard a sharp, short bark not long after they had separated from him. For a moment Vance exposed himself, but soon moved out of reach, and his partner hurried along behind, unable to catch up until they found Yarborough standing over a huddled heap on the floor.

"Is this the one you shot?" he asked. The heap resolved itself into a human figure, dressed in dirty jeans and a plaid shirt, propped up limply against the wall. The head, shrouded in darkness, lolled to the side at an unnatural angle.

"I thought I only winged him."

Vance clucked his tongue. "We'll back you up, Bobby, if anyone asks," he said. "You can't see for shit in this place."

Yarborough, however, merely knelt down to examine the suspect, which naturally alarmed the officer that Vance had called "Bobby." "Shouldn't you wait for the detectives?" he asked.

"There's something wrong here," Yarborough said, and the others could see his moustache bristle. He poked at the figure. "Jesus, it's like there's nothing inside the clothes." He reached up to touch the man's face. "Christ, it's a mask. It's like a goddamn latex mask."

"Danny, go get a flashlight from the car," the one called "Bobby" said. Vance nodded grimly and retreated into the darkness. For an instant, the one left standing over Yarborough almost hurried after him. But sense won out over desire after the briefest of struggles, and a moment later he had the syringe out, and jabbed it deep into the back of Yarborough's neck.

The patrolman gasped and gargled, and collapsed. The other quickly shoved him onto the ground face down, then pulled him back by his heels so that the ochre-colored foam that began gushing from his mouth wouldn't wash back and stain his uniform. He jumped a little at the sound of another man dropping lightly onto the concrete floor nearby. "He's not my first choice for you," he said to the newcomer, whose face and form remained shrouded in shadow. "But we gotta take the hands we're dealt."

"He's a fat one," his friend sniggered.

"But smart. There won't be any embarrassing questions if he's the one making the report."

"What about the other one?"

He felt himself die a little as he slowly pulled his gun from its holster. "I know our motto is 'Never leave a body behind,'" he said with vast reluctance, "and that's not a body I want to leave behind. But I think we're gonna have to in this case."

But the other grinned and drew from his pocket the last thing his friend expected to see after they had depleted their most recent stock: a syringe. "Be prepared," he gloated. "That's another motto for us. I took it to heart after we were Boy Scouts last summer."

Impulsively, the cop grasped him about the torso and kissed him deeply.

* * * * *

"Gonna be a shitty few days for awhile," Yarborough said grumpily. "Even I'm gonna have a hard time explaining how Rodriguez disappeared." They had, in fact, found a trap door leading to the river below, into which they'd dropped the clothes and the three skin-suit remnants, the former to eventually wash up and the latter to be devoured by the fish.

"What's gonna be shitty is making love to your fat, bald, middle-aged face for three months while waiting for a new batch of fluid to mature," Vance joshed as he slid behind the patrol car wheel. He closed his eyes and massaged the back of his neck. Everything fit beautifully, and he softly grunted as he swelled with pleasure.

Yarborough gave him a slit-eyed, sidelong glance. "Don't underestimate me, Danny," he said in a mock warning tone. "I know a hell of a lot of tricks, not all of them relating to Internal Affairs. Haven't you and the boys speculated about how come I never married?" He reached over, to grip the younger cop's thigh.

"Cocktail and Chaser" by Seuzz

"You sure you okay?"

The cop's voice seemed to come from a long way away, and Ryan Glaser had to jerk himself out of an unwilling reverie. The effort to concentrate left him dizzy—a feeling amplified by the way the hard strobe of the club's neon lights fought with the blaze of the patrol car's flashers against the late-night urban darkness. He blinked and tried focusing on his interlocutor's face.

It was a friendly visage, though craggy and lined. The eyes were set deep, but they seemed warm and liquid with concern. Glaser was absurdly conscious of the way his own face twisted unbidden with puzzlement, and he felt as though we were falling, and he had to fight the urge to grab onto something. Not that there was anything to grab onto except the detective, and at least he had sufficient control of his limbs not to do that.

"Yeah," he said, and his tongue felt thick, like it belonged to someone else and had crawled into his mouth. He swallowed—a hard trick—and tried to nod.

"You look like you're about to fall over. You, uh, have a little something you shouldn't have?"

His heart—another foreign object—hammered inside his chest, and he stared. In fact, he came very close to blurting out that there must have been something in his last drink, and he came almost as close to begging that he be taken to the hospital to have his stomach pumped. Queerly, the hard suspicion that he had been drugged was twinned with the terrible certainty that there had been a cocktail of something's in his beer; but this sense of certainty, far from reinforcing the fear that he'd been poisoned, fought against it.

And then as he struggled another thought slipped in. A memory. "Uncle Paul," it whispered behind his ear, and he suddenly knew who the detective was. No, not a parent's brother, but a family friend much closer than the distant uncles and cousins. He felt himself relax.

"No," he said, and he was steadier now. "No, just a little freaked out that that—" He glanced over at Maxwell.

Ewan Maxwell, a lanky junior with limp hair down to his shoulders, slumped in defeat and staring at the ground as two patrolmen glowered at him. His hands were behind his back, though there were no bracelets around his wrists. Not yet, at any rate.

"Uncle" Paul Garrett followed his glance, and shrugged grimly. "It's always the small ones that surprise. Don't let it eat at you."

"I guess I'm lucky you were here too," Glaser said. He felt more in control of himself, but he could still feel the blood drain from his face. "Jake too."

"Like I said, don't let it eat at you that you couldn't take him alone. He had you wedged in pretty good in that bathroom stall."

"That doesn't have to go in a report, does it?" Glaser suddenly asked. The less anyone—at home, in the community, but especially at the high school—knew about the way a scrawny junior had pinned the captain of the basketball team inside the nightclub and gotten most of his clothes off him, the better he would feel.

"Depends on if it goes to trial," Garrett said, and his tone came freighted with several unspoken cautions, not all of them consistent with each other. "Are there any other details you'd like left out?"

"Don't think so." Glaser shook his head.

Garrett drew very close and gave the athlete—who was at least a head taller—a very penetrating gaze. "Are you sure?" Glaser felt a rustle at the pockets of his hoodie, and glanced down to find that his benefactor had drawn a large plastic bottle from it. It rattled.

Glaser turned red. "That's not, uh—"

"It's not asthma medication, I'm sure," Garrett said. He sighed. "Laws are one thing, and morality is another. You wanna screw around, save it for the cheerleaders. Don't go hitting nightclubs on a fake ID, and don't go putting shit like this in the ladies' drinks."

Glaser bit his lip; it felt a little numb, but there was more feeling in it than there had been only a few moments ago. But he bit it not from shame, but to suppress a dangerous smirk. He tried affecting shame. "Do you think you could, uh, drop those in a gutter someplace? Out of the report, and out of temptation, you know?"

The detective snorted but smiled. He backed off and took a slow tour of the sidewalk. Glaser saw a flash of white in the shadows as the bottle dropped through a grate. Without meaning to, he glanced back again at Maxwell—just in time to see that Maxwell had witnessed the same drop. As he stared at the junior, the latter turned his face slightly to look back at the ballplayer—and Glaser, despite himself, quailed under the baleful gaze of hot hatred. It only broke off when the metal cuffs finally went around Maxwell's wrists, and then a cop was pushing his head as he shoved him into the back of the squad car.

And yet though that would have seemed the best end to a nearly catastrophic evening, Glaser gave in to a dangerous feeling of reluctant fascination, and on feet that felt both very close and yet only distantly under his control he walked over the squad car. His muscles seemed to catch fire as he went. The sensation puzzled him at first, until Maxwell turned to look up through the window, and then Glaser recognized the feeling of adrenaline pumping through his powerful frame. Though Maxwell tried again to stare him down Glaser felt no new stab of terror. Instead, he balled a fist and pressed it into his other palm and stared back.

"Save it for the schoolyard." Uncle Paul's voice was close behind. Glaser ducked his head deferentially and backed away.

The police left soon after, and Glaser found his friend and teammate Jake Mercer loitering just inside the club entrance. "That was fucked up," Mercer said flatly.

"Thanks for being there," Glaser said. "It wouldn't have been any fun explaining things if you hadn't been."

Mercer shrugged. "How's your head? That shit wearing off yet?"

"I think so." Glaser pressed the heels of his hands against his temples. "The cop confiscated it, though. I talked him into dropping it into the sewer."

"They found it on him?"

"No, me. I put in his—" He caught himself and smiled crookedly. "I mean, I put it in my pocket just before the transfer started."

"Losing that stuff will piss Kevin off," Mercer said. "It'll take a month to whip up another batch, and he wanted to get inside Trier before the game this weekend."

"Piss on him. He can keep an eye on our old bodies and their new owners a little while, keep 'em from talking to anyone who might listen."

Mercer smirked. "Don't you think we can handle them ourselves?"

"Oh, we can help." The team captain balled his fist again and admired the way the muscles in his forearm flexed. "You know tonight wasn't the first appointment me and Ryan Glaser have had inside a bathroom, and fuck me if it's gonna be the last."

"Male-Order Suit" by Seuzz

Robert pressed the flat of his palms on the rough cardboard packaging and rubbed it slowly. He bent over and lay his cheek against it. A soft moan escaped his lips. "Twelve weeks of waiting," he murmured. "Twelve weeks of waiting, and watching for the mail truck every afternoon." He closed his eyes and breathed softly. Then his eyes snapped open and he stared excitedly at his roommate. "You as excited as I am?"

Craig smiled slightly but didn't meet his friend's eyes. "I'm just happy if you are," he said. His tone was unmistakably tactful, but if Robert noticed he didn't say anything.

Robert closed his eyes again, then with a deep breath straightened and fished some nail clippers out of his pockets. His roommate could see the tremble in his fingers as he clumsily slit through the tape and unfolded the flaps.

Craig withdrew and flopped back against the cheap sofa. "You know, I hope you're not going to be too disappointed with it," he said in a tone that continued to be guardedly neutral.

"And why would I be disappointed," Robert asked brusquely. Perhaps it was only the exertions as he tugged at the Styrofoam box inside the cardboard box that made his voice strain. "You sound like my mother."

Craig reached over to rub Robert's shoulder. "I just mean ... Well, just remember it wasn't my idea that you order such a thing. You don't need to impress me. I like you just the way you are." The hard squeal as the inner box turned loose drowned out Robert's muttered reply. "If it makes you feel better to wear such a thing," Craig continued, "then I'm all for it. And if it's a change of look you're only after ... Well, a new wardrobe would have done as well. Woulda been cheaper, too."

"It was my money, it didn't come out of the household expenses," Robert said curtly. He cut open the tape that kept the two halves of the packing box together. "And it wasn't that much more expensive than a top-to-bottom, inside-out, first-class wardrobe would've been."

"Well, maybe that's the other thing that has me worried," Craig said. "You ordered from a discount catalog, made in China—"

"So you pointed out at the time."

"Really top-model body suits are a hell of a lot more expensive than what you paid."

"Well, like you said, it's a change. If it turns out to be a piece of junk I won't wear it outside the house."

"And then what's the point?" Craig grimaced despite himself. He leaned over and gave Robert a hard kiss on the side of the neck, and ignored the way his lover twisted away. "Maybe I won't want you in it, even if it's awesome, when it's just the two of us."

But Robert had the box open now, and he gasped as he drew out the heavy, fleshy material. "Oh my God, just feel that!" he exclaimed. He gripped a flopping appendage, then held it up against his cheek. "It's so smooth." His eyes popped wide with a thought. "I bet that's how come it's so cheap!" He pulled it all out and draped it out over his lap; it was, mostly, featureless and a uniform color—light brown—all over. "No body hair. That probably saves a lot, not having to put all the little hairs on the arms and legs and stuff."

"I guess," Craig grumbled. "Though my Mach 3 can—"

"Oh shut up." Robert snapped up the mop of hair at one end and frowned. "Black. Or dark brown. I guess maybe that's a cost-saving measure too. I was hoping for one of the blonde models."

"Didn't they let you pick?" It was Craig's turn to frown. At the time he had pointedly refused to look over the order form as Robert filled it out.

"No. I mean, there were all kinds of models in the ad, but the actual form didn't have any, uh, any real place for, you know, customization."

"One size fits all?" Craig's face tightened, but at least he realized how counterproductive it would be to voice his doubts aloud.

"But they know what the customers want," Robert said with complacent satisfaction. "I mean, feel these abdominals." He gripped the muscles around the midsection, which even in their flaccid state remained stiff and well-defined.

Craig watched carefully as Robert kneaded the suit between his fingers, and then let all the fight slump from his shoulders. He clapped Robert on the back. "Well, don't keep us in suspense. Go try it on."

* * * * *

He picked up the living room after Robert had disappeared into the bedroom, and then he washed the dishes in the sink, and then he cleaned and scrubbed down the counters, and he took out the garbage; and when all that was done and there was still no sound from the bedroom and the door remained closed he gave serious thought to emptying out the refrigerator or pulling out the vacuum cleaner. He had suspicions about what was going in the bedroom, and he felt a hard twinge of pique that Robert should be satisfying himself without any help, but he was fair-minded enough to realize that his boyfriend had a right to act a little selfishly after all the scepticism he had had to endure.

But finally Craig could endure it no longer, and knocked softly at the door. "Robert?"

The reply was indistinct, but it didn't sound friendly. Craig frowned and twisted the door open. He just had time to see Robert swing around on the bed and turn his back. "I said go away!" He buried his face in his hands.

"Oh, Bobby," Craig said softly. "Let me see." But Robert remained hunched over, unmoving. "Well, it looks very nice, what I can see of it."

And it did. Robert's back was very smooth and entirely natural looking, with no weird bumps or protrusions. He touched his friend, and the muscles tensed and relaxed in an inviting way. He ran his hands gently up and down his boyfriend's back, then reached around to clasp large, firm pectorals, and abdominals that were as rewarding when filled out as they had suggested when they were empty. He was also relieved to notice that the false skin felt very real as well; he'd half-worried that it would be cold or even plastic to the touch.

"How does it feel?" he asked. "Does it fit?" He put his other arm around Robert.

There was silence for a moment, and then the other sighed deeply. "Yeah," he muttered through his hands."

"Not too tight? Not too loose?" Robert shook his head. "Does it feel natural? I mean, does it feel like your skin, or like you're wearing something?"

"No, it feels alright. Totally like it's my skin."

"Then what's the problem?" Craig wrapped his arms around Robert and tried laying his cheek against the other's; after a moment, Robert dropped his hand and let his friend pull him closer; but he remained downcast with his chin pressed against his chest.

"Come on, what's wrong?" Craig asked again.

Robert raised his head, and Craig raised his too, and the two of them stared across from the bed into the full-length mirror that hung on the closet door. Craig couldn't help but start at the apparition of the stranger that he now held in an intimate embrace. He tried hiding his reaction, but Robert had clearly seen it, and a red flush darkened his cheek. "I guess this just wasn't the look I thought I'd be getting," he said tightly.

Before he could stop himself, Craig let out a bark of laughter, and the flush in Robert's cheek blackened. "Oh, I'm sorry, babe," Craig said. He tried to hang on, but Robert pulled away, to huddle with his knees drawn up at the head of the bed. Even then, he couldn't resist applying the obvious needle.

"Come on, you have to admit it's funny," Craig grinned at his newly Sinicized lover. "Of course, the country that sends us Asian mail order brides would send you an Asian mail-order body suit!