You'll need to read my story "And All This But Mere Perceptions to understand a few things here. I wrote this story because I used something called "gene candy" in that previous story and someone wanted to know a little more about it. And, in a way, so did I. By the way, this story is rated R for sex, in case you were wondering.
He opened up the bag and poured its contents out onto the table. Four syringes clattered on the faded yellow plastic. One fell off the table and landed on the floor, needle end impaled in the carpet. He picked it up gingerly and placed it back on the table with the others. Four syringes, all full of gene candy. Four, enough to make things interesting.
He was not addicted, he told himself that over and over again. Attracted to it? Oh sure, that was a truth. He was fascinated by it, entranced by the effects it had upon the human body. But addicted? No, that was too rare, too difficult to happen to him. He was fine. A little socially isolated perhaps, but still perfectly normal. Only those with really addled minds got addicted to gene candy. And with the amazing psychological therapies these days, even the addled didn't stay that way for long.
Today's sequence was river otter. It wasn't his absolute favorite. That honor belonged to the grey wolf sequence. The wild eyes, the sleek power, they kept him coming back. Sadly though, the resident sequence peddlers, or "candymen", as they liked to refer to themselves, had been fresh out of grey wolf, and would not have anymore in soon enough. He guessed that was alright. Part of the thrill of gene candy was discovery; anticipation of a new sequence, wonder at exploring its possibilities.
He picked up one of the syringes and walked into the living room. It was best to have plenty of space available when taking gene candy. Sometimes a sequence might add mass or extra appendages, and garden variety cheapos were the most likely to do just that. If he was richer, pulling in just a little more bank, then he could have afforded party flavors and tailored sequences that minimized the amount of added mass or allowed the user to keep a somewhat human torso. But he wasn't doing that well. Pushing numbers in the dark inner pit of a monorail station wasn't going to give his lifestyle that kind of improvement anytime soon. At least it allowed him this house. And that ever steady supply of gene candy as well. He only needed enough to ensure his happiness. Anything else was too much.
He walked over to the door and locked it. Then he went about the long process of drawing all the blinds and closing all the shades in his little house. It would do no good for the entire neighborhood to get a glimpse of what he was up to. While the use of gene candy was not illegal, quite a few circles frowned upon it. Some, like the Church of Human Purity, that pillar of 'ethics' and 'humanity', did a lot more than simply frown. He had no desire to bring that kind of attention upon himself. He was nobody, and preferred to keep it that way.
Once he was fairly certain he would have no audience, he went over to the couch. It was a sad, tired thing, its supports worn down by years of use. His weight descended upon it swiftly, and it let out a bitter creak of protest. He ignored it, instead stripping down to his boxers. Now he turned his attention to the syringe nestled in the palm of his hand. For a moment all the anticipation caught up to him and his gaze was quite transfixed upon that syringe. It and the blue liquid within it was all the universe he knew. Then, with clinical slowness, he brought the syringe up to his arm and pushed the needle into his vein. It stung, but how sweet indeed was that sting. He pushed down on the syringe and watched as the blue, form-altering liquid left it and entered his body.
The changes began to take effect almost immediately. His skin began to itch as his hair began to slowly grow. He threw the syringe away. It hit the wall with a thud and fell to the floor. He didn't care. Its purpose, to deliver the wonderful gene candy into his body, and been served. Now it was useless and passed from his mind altogether. The itch became stronger and deeper, twisting its roots down into his very bones. He forced himself to remain still, to ignore the urge to scratch. Everything was delicate at this stage. Any wound now could cause severe and unfixable scarring when all was said and done.
The changes brought about by the sequence began to speed up. His hair became thick fur. The bones in his hands and face shifted as they stretched out. The tips of his fingers and toes screamed in sudden pain as claws erupted from them. The base of his spine did the same as he felt a tail grow out of his boxers through the specially cut hole in them. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity of pain, it all left him. The conversion sequence was over. He stood up slowly, allowing himself to adjust to his new body. It was not that much of a stretch from a grey wolf; both were carnivores at least. But instead of wild power, there was a quirky curiosity. Not his personal preference, but in its own way it was enjoyable.
He took a few experimental steps. His new toe-claws clacked on the wood floor. All was well there. He could move around without slamming into things or wincing with pain every step, which was very good. Sometimes the gene candy got fouled up in the manufacture process. Sometimes a chromosome or two got misplaced, or a genotype became slightly tainted. Usually mild discomfort was the worst of that though. And in any case, he was fine now.
He made his way towards the bathroom. His house had a smell now. It was more of one than just the bacon and eggs he had for breakfast, or the pile of dirty clothes in the hallway. It was a "scent." But it was not a completely alien thing to him. He'd smelled it before when he'd taken the grey wolf sequence here. The only noticeable difference was that the otter came with a stronger pull to check things out. He had to tug a little bit to prevent himself from letting the animal instincts take over. That was the one side effect of gene candy that even the rich could not iron out. The instincts of the base animal would always carry over into the conversion sequence. Some liked this more than others. He didn’t mind them. In fact, he kind of enjoyed the alien desires they brought with them. They were much better than the responsibilities that humanity brought with it.
He opened the bathroom door and looked in the full length mirror on the opposite wall. As far as appearances went, the gene sequence had indeed worked. He appeared to be a humanoid otter, complete with a shiny coat; exactly what the "candyman" had said would happen. He twitched his nose a bit, and saw his new whiskers twitch too. This pleased him. It was a delightful little quirk, the way his muzzle moved. Different from the grey wolf, but in a good way.
He walked out of the bathroom and shut the door behind him. He returned to the living room. Leaving this house was not going to be possible for the next day or so. Doubtlessly there would be ways to keep himself occupied. Perhaps he could call up Claudia, his latest piece of eye candy. She had always been up for romps of this sort before. He thought she might be very pleased with the otter sequence. Very pleased indeed.
As he walked towards the phone, he spied something on the couch. It's needle sharp point glistened in the artificial light. The blue liquid within gave off a faint glow. It was a syringe, very much like the one that he had just used.
At first he was scared. Then he shook his head and started to calm himself down. I'm being paranoid, he told himself. That's not the syringe I used. That's one of the others. I must have picked two up for some reason. He smiled at his sudden jump to conclusions. He picked up the phone and dialed Claudia's number. As he turned to put it to his ear, he noticed the kitchen table. Or more specifically, what was on it. Three syringes full of river otter gene candy, the exact number that he had left in the kitchen.
He hung up the phone before it could even start dialing. His eyes darted from the table to the couch. The one syringe was still there. He turned back to the table. The three syringes were still there. A certain weakness entered his legs and he sat down, sprawled out in confusion on the living room floor. This was impossible. He had taken the gene candy, he was sure of it. Had he not felt the change sweep over him? And even if that wasn't proof enough, one look at his furry, clawed hand was enough to chase away any doubt of that. So what was going on?
He crawled on all fours towards the couch like the very thing he resembled. He stared at the syringe. Once again, the syringe was all the universe he knew. This perplexing thing, once the giver of pleasure, was now the giver of puzzles. One hand reached out to touch it. As his fingers closed around it, the needle end jabbed into his skin. He let out a squeak of pain and pulled his hand back. Then he shook himself. It was nothing, just a minor breaking of the skin. So why did it frighten him so?
He reached out and took the syringe again. He brought it closer to his face. He examined it with a wild eye, searching for some explanation of these strange events in the very nexus of them. But as he turned it over in his hand, he was hit with another shock. His hand was smooth and hairless again, as though he had never taken the gene candy. A lump formed in his throat and he tried to swallow it down. It dissipated, but his hands remained as original as the day he was born.
This had never happened before. Sequences were supposed to keep their effects for at least a few days, and then gradually fade away. That was how it had always happened. He should know, he’d taken enough gene candy to be considered an expert. He should still be an otter, he still needed to be. He hadn’t gotten near enough satisfaction from it yet.
He got to his feet, legs shaking from shock and fear. They carried him, stumbling, to the bathroom. He put all his weight on the door as he opened it. It struck the wall with a loud thud, threatening to knock the mirror off the wall. As it trembled from the tremor he got an all too good look at himself, minus the effects of the gene candy, in his boxers.
His skin began to feel cold and clammy. He slammed his fist into the wall in some vain, thoughtless effort to wake himself up, to drive this nightmare away. This time the mirror did become dislodged. It fell to the floor and hit it with its edge. Pieces shattered and scattered onto the tile before him, casting what was before them in hideous light.
He was barely breathing now as he saw what was reflected in them. No one image was in the same two shards. One still showed him as he had always been. Another showed him as he had appeared minutes ago. And another showed a river otter, devoid of any trace of humanity. And still another showed him under the effects of a grey wolf sequence. Another still yet displayed him stuck full of syringes, like a ghastly artificial porcupine.
On and on without repetition or end he saw himself reflected in changed and hideous light, tainted by the images the shattered glass revealed. All the myriad avenues judged by his mind as insanity and yet not too far removed from possibility. All so close to being reality, so close to being what was, instead of what might be. But how to know which was which now? The thought added to his fright.
He fell to his knees, slicing one of them open on a shard of the accursed mirror. He flinched at the sharp pain and growled; a deep guttural noise from the back of his throat. He sniffed the air without even thinking. A scent came up, registered itself as his blood, and was filed away for future reference with a sort of quirky mannerism. He stopped cold, the realization of what he had just done hitting him in the gut. The animal instincts were still there, still abiding in the background.
He held his hand up. It was furry again. He looked at the shards of the mirror. They were not there to be seen. Slowly he looked up at the wall. By some evil trick, some impossible sleight of hand by the magician of the cosmos, it hung on the wall as it always had. But it was still fractured, still showing it's menagerie of images in every facet, like a twisted diamond.
This shouldn’t be happening. He was normal; his mind was clean, wasn’t it? This only happened to the people who had something fundamentally wrong with them. Why was this happening? Had the “candyman” sold him a bad sequence? No, that wasn’t it. Sequences only affected the DNA, not the mind.
He tried to back away, tried to stand up, succeeded only in falling flat on his tail, quite literally. One hand he held up, trying to shield his eyes from this strange vision, trying to keep it from rushing into his mind and overwhelming him. At last he was able to look away from the accursed mirror. And as he looked, two otters scampered from the kitchen into the living room.
He trembled, pulled back for a moment, afraid of more. He knew that he should not go down there, should not see just where the otters had run to. But in the end, his body rose as though he were not in control anymore, and was merely a puppet on strings, a plaything for some child god. He took it one step at a time. And each step bore him closer and closer to something which he knew he would never be able to turn from. And yet, still he pressed on. As do all of us. As do the best of us.
He rounded the corner and looked into the living room. And what he saw there touched the dark corners of his mind harsher than anything else thus far. Claudia was lying upon the couch, though he had not heard the door open or her call his name, legs sprawled in a sensual pose beneath a blanket. All around her a pack of otters moved in sleek serenity, tumbling and rolling in anticipation of something. He opened his mouth to speak, and found that all that came out was a squeak.
Something moved and the blanket fell away as Claudia moaned with content. An otter that was bigger than the rest writhed in rhythm with her naked body. It squealed, she moaned, and they heaved in the carnal struggle. Her breathing quickened and the otter’s thrusts became more urgent. It squealed and she screamed in pleasure and pain as they gave that final shudder. He fell to his knees again, the claws of madness grasping his mind in their pitiless clutches.
Claudia seemed to notice him. She turned away from her animal lover towards him and he saw that her eyes were black, black as night, black as coal. Then, in the breath of a moment, she and the cavorting otters were gone. And in their place was something even blacker than her eyes had been. A shadow robed in a void, or so it seemed to be. It flowed in place before him, staring at him with a blank abyss for a face. His arms hung limp at his sides and his eyes stared dumbly ahead, struck that way by terror. And yet, from his lips escaped one final question.
"What are you?"
The dark figure moved and billowed on the couch, stretching itself out to the bounds of the living room, and then beyond them in a motion that broke all the laws of physics and reality. Then, with a whisper and a scream, it gave him an answer.
"I am a Thing Other than you."
That was my only one! haha XD
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