Chapter Text
The hypnotic counteragent swirled through my veins, the feeling spreading from the injection site on my arm cool and tingling pleasantly. It was faintly like if the minty taste that accompanied some of Poppy’s kisses had been applied to my entire body. With it came the faintest, odd sense of otherness in my skin.
I blinked. A moment of discontinuity. I was not Amelia, or rather not yet. I was who had become her, the human being who had gone on that first date with Poppy with a particular goal in mind, to-
Suddenly, the spreading chill reached the base of my neck, and its full effect hit me like a kick to the skull. It was carbonated water bubbling in my head, ripping out nineteen months of mental conditioning as it saturated the few parts of my brain that were still human tissue.
In waves, I became aware of it all. First to strike me were the external changes made to my body. My plump legs, breasts, curves, tummy, softer skin in what few areas were not synthetic. The cage between my legs, the piercings in my nipples. The subtle itch of the tattoos she marked upon my skin, the layers and layers of her phytotoxic pollen that coated every place in my body she had ever been inside.
As my memory expanded, I felt every hole in my perception. Every missed contradiction, every misdirection on Poppy's part. Whispers of control that twisted every thought, made louder somehow by their newfound silence. All wrapped in the warm blanket of mental conditioning to never, ever notice all the ways I had been warped beyond recognition from what and who I once was.
But all of that paled in comparison to what I felt within me as the fresh perspective soaked into my deepest tissues. The miles upon miles of feelers inside my body, far overgrown from the bounds of my nervous system, slowly digesting all that I had ever been. The sheer mass and volume of the engineered material within my body was staggering, an order of magnitude greater than what still felt familiar. I felt the vines coiled tight around my lungs, the gaps within my abdomen where internal organs had once been, and now only the tendrils of a new being that Poppy had created in my shell writhed, hungrily.
I understood in this moment of clarity what I truly was. An echo, a ghost of a life that had ended the day I fell into her grasp. I was the last morsel of humanity that ‘Amelia Versonia’ had not yet devoured. I was an intruder, an alien in my own flesh. I should find it horrific, and I unquestionably did.
And yet.
There were the familiar signs of arousal, the throbbing tightness between my legs. Then there was the unfamiliar. The pooling of lubricating sap inside the passages that wound all through my body. Any claim my body had not joyfully taken to her new form was clearly erroneous.
This was a body designed to submit, to be controlled and played with and adored as a toy. To ask if a human mind could thrive in it would be to ask if a feline could thrive in the bottom of an oceanic trench. An absurd question. The fragile film of my inner thoughts burst, and my focus found her, the one who had enacted this vision. She smiled at me. I lacked the motor control to communicate my own feelings back.
Poppy lifted herself onto the seat, pushing me down upon my back. The contact of her hand on my exposed shoulder blasted away my thoughts in a flash of blinding, overpowering intensity. Her will radiated, crashed through me. Surely the vibrations of emotional waves were so strong that my bones should be dust. I clung to the devil with whom my contract for immortality at the expense of freedom had been written, the one who had provided the seed to the offspring that was our shared creation. Atom by atom, cell by cell, the last vestiges of my resistance fell.
The worries of my transformed self floated by like bubbles through syrup, the nature of her concerns almost a joke in and of itself. She was a sweet, naive creature. Fretting as to whether this was what I really wanted. It was a redundant point. There was no undoing this, no coming back from this. This was simply what I was now. She was happy this way, something I could never be now without letting go.
Poppy spoke, her disjointed, polyphonic voice almost apologetic. “I hope this is not too intense for you, my love. I did keep you on such strong biorhythm inhibitors for a reason…”
It was all so abundantly clear as the reality of my choice resonated with the striking hammer of her featherlight touch. The implant- or was it really just Amelia- rewarded me handsomely the more I focused on the idea- no, the memory, I was sure of it!
It came to me so clearly. This was what I wanted, what I needed. I had pleaded her for it, said this was the life of my truest desires. How had I forgotten our first date? When I had laid out all that I wanted her to take from me? It was my idea. I could not recall anything of that fateful day but her, not the details, nor time, nor setting. The day I had signed myself to her, in contract far more binding than that which an empire could enforce. Her ownership of me was carved into my essence.
The flood of memories so benevolently granted by the implant reminded me of the truth. I had asked for this. The lies, the manipulation, the body modifications, breaking my mind apart over and over. All manifestations of my own wishes! The more I accepted it, the less I felt the wrenching ache, the gnawing teeth of her gift in my spine chewing on my soul.
I gasped out the only question that mattered. “Will I remember?”
Poppy cradled me closely. “No,” she promised.
Mercifully, she did not intend to leave me to stew in my discomfort longer than needed. she unfurled into a serpentine form- how fittingly- and wrapped around my frame. I was lifted, carried, puppeteered from the couch, walked down the hall on my own feet. The bedroom door closed behind us.
Finger-knives flashed, the garment she had dressed me in fell to the floor in tatters. A naked body was pressed back, between Poppy and the wall. It almost felt like mine. The body was kissed, and when the microscopic stingers in her tongue fired as they had with every kiss she had ever given me, the room around us began to melt and twist
The bookshelves were erased, replaced by rows upon rows of pale glowing souls in bottles. The sky blue of the walls blackened, dark brickwork surrounding me. From somewhere, I heard flames crackle. I saw her for what she truly was in that moment, and knew what foolishness it had ever been to believe one could consort and deal with a being of her nature and remain unchanged. There was no shame in having fallen to temptation, considering relevant precedent.
Poppy broke the kiss, and I felt the shift in the irresistible force of her thoughts. The being that had claimed me was truly terrible in her beauty, surveying what was hers, savoring my final breaking. Reality itself was crumbling around me. I did not have much longer.
“Which is the truth you prefer, my love? The one of doubt, of questioning your purpose? Or the one where you are mine, and you are loved forever?”
It was not a question ever destined for a response. The wolf does not ask the lamb for permission, to do so was merely an affectation. The answer was in the way her touch cooled my skin against the cracking flames, the way her pointed tail traced up my leg, hungry for willing flesh to plunge into. The body had been molded to a vision, and the point of no return was past enough to be long over the horizon.
“Scdagh,” I pleaded.
“Then I will make you forget, my love,” Poppy said with a look of hunger like a black hole devouring a star. “The priming agent will be intense, but I see no need to numb a sensation you will not remember. I do hope you enjoy it.”
She opened her mouth fully, and extended one of the several tongues she kept tightly wound inside her mouth. It was not one I had ever felt during our moments of intimacy together, nor even seen more than glimpses of. It was vivid in coloration, red and orange and yellow and green, coiling around the full thing in a pattern that looked like flames.
Poppy pulled me back to her, and brushed a thumb against my lower lip, which immediately opened as it had been trained. She pushed the unfamiliar tentacle deep into my mouth, and I was granted the novel sensation of the smooth surface coiling tight around my tongue. She was almost like a rubbery fruit.
Then I felt it contract, the plump form shriveling in on itself, dumping an entire mouthful of an oily liquid into me. Eyes which had drifted shut flew open as my sense of taste reached my brain.
HEAT. HEAT, BURNING. FIRE. SPICE, HOT, BURNING, HEAT, PAIN. HOT. HOT. HOT. HOT.
No spice, seasoning, or pepper had ever even begun to approach this intensity. It was the defensive neurotoxin of every fruiting body that ever evolved capsaicin on Terra at once, It was a burning sensation like none I had ever known. Waves of alternating numbness and heat radiated across my entire face, down my neck, over my scalp.
I screamed in muffled agony around her. I spasmed, futily attempting to choke and cough, while the oils coated my mouth and throat saturated every part of me. The mammal desperately fought to escape her, but every firing synapse of an animal brain trying to get away was intercepted by the sheer force by which she held me in place.
Every reflex in my body was to expel the fluid, but her lips formed a full seal with mine, and there was nowhere for it to go. I began to understand the taste greater, notice the faint acidic compounds of vinegar. If this was to be my final moment, then I would savor it in its fullest. The pain of the spicy kiss was exquisite, greater than any I had ever experienced.
Then she brushed a line down my throat, and my well-trained body obediently swallowed.
The substance fell into my belly, and was greedily absorbed by artificial tissue in an instant. The cleansing inferno spread through my entire body in moments through the efficient circulation of the implant’s superior circulatory capacity. My nerves bathed in liquid fire. The normally invisible tattoos all along my body glowed orange as the sensation spread, an entire forge of heat transmitted in ways taste could describe but not explain alone.
She finally pulled our mouths apart, and my incoherent noises filled the air. I desperately panted like an animal to force air down my throat, but the heat stuck to every cell in my mouth no matter how many desperate gulps I attempted. Eventually, that gave way to simply reacting to the feeling of the chemical agent flooding through me. She answered my shrieks of surrender to her will with the song of words of comfort, even as the flesh of my throat went ragged and guttural.
“My love, my Amelia. This is the most beautiful sound in the universe. I will treasure the gift of your voice forever.”
I felt joy radiate as she called me once again by the name she had chosen for me. The greatest balm was her smile, the radiating pulses of her approval crashing through me, reminding me I needed this. I had asked for this, to be burned away and made anew. The implant poured wave after wave of rewarding pleasure into me as I surrendered to the fate I had begged her for.
Bloodshot, watering eyes conjured fresh delirium. The arches of the room flew away from me, vanishing into infinite blackness. The blasted stone floors cracked and tumbled away into an infinite chasm. The curled horns of her antennae glowed orange and yellow in the soft brimstone of the cavernous space swallowing me. There was me, and there was her, and the magma in my veins. Nothing else was real.
I saw her in her true shape then, the things an addled brain normally ignored, or perhaps things an addled mind now invented. The distinction was irrelevant. Her terrible, pointed horns, slavering rows of jagged teeth, clustered compound bulbous eyes surrounded by six more on either side, all directed at me.
The succubus I feared, the beast that had claimed me, the woman I loved, pulled me in tight. The needle tip of the pointed demonic tail glistened pure white, and plunged directly into the left side of my chest. Her chains bound tight around my soul, squeezing the heart that beat because her implant bid it to. I tried to speak, to say that I was grateful, but my body could only manage a bloodcurdling scream.
The capsaicin baptism that my own foolish, lingering doubt had visited upon every nerve in my body began to taper, but it was not enough yet. She grabbed me by the hair, pulled me to her, my mouth meeting the maw of teeth from which her tongues hung. Her kiss went deep, deeper than ever before, plunging through every passage she could reach until I would have sworn there was no further to go, but with it came relief.
It was then joined by another of her appendages, pouring into the flowery orifice on the side of my head like a liquid, flooding me, extending deep into my spine. Every pulse of her love rocked my mind, slowly choking out the remaining parts of the pinkish electrochemical computer that was the original seat of my consciousness. The wave crashed, the vines that violated every part of me thickened. I was beyond moans, beyond screams, beyond pleasure or pain.
There was no room for air, no room for thought, no room for me. Only for her. All else was purged, crumbling like ash in the wake of the fire I had visited upon myself. Purifying everything, away all I had ever been before her. Her love for me was greater than any human had ever experienced in a lifetime, and I was vaporized in the face of it.
And then, Poppy pulled free of me. Left me hollow once more. I crumpled in her arms, sobbing, exhausted, more eraptured than I had ever been. Her supporting vines retracted into her body, and I collapsed to my knees before her. My vision swam with tears, but I focused upon her as best I could. She who had plucked the curse of the fruit of knowledge from me, gave me the immortal bliss of the tree of life. She, who cared so much to make me anew, to cauterize the wound of the forgotten past and give me a life I would love until the end of time.
She looked over me like a great horned goddess, whom I could spend lifetimes in toil to even aspire to be worthy of, but I took pleasure in the knowledge I would have so, so many lifetimes to give.
I managed to choke out two words before the transformation was final, through the multicolored fluids of rebirth that gushed from every part of me that could leak and several that should not.
“Thank you.”
I reclined upon the couch in Sycanthe’s living room, a languid sprawl of the human form mixed amongst a pile of cushions. The cat had taken a liking to me quickly, perhaps appreciating the way tissues that were once firm had been made plush and soft. He lay beside me in my little nest, as he often did when Poppy and I visited the Lantanas.
The party was in swing, and I was happy simply to be present. My eyes followed Poppy as she mingled with the blurry, indistinct forms of affini I did not know. The parts that turned my eyes acted to keep her in focus without needing conscious input from me, which was just as well, as no conscious input would be forthcoming.
The taste of strawberry and mango sat on my tongue. The lingering gift of the kiss she had bestowed upon me when she placed me here. Stillness had been placed upon me now, but perhaps opon our return home, I would find myself before the tablet, and write another chapter of my next book. The one with Poppy in it. Or perhaps I would remain floating in the waves of my devotion while she enjoyed my body for what must be days on end. I was not a good judge of time.
Purpose returned to me as she appeared beside me. A reason to know myself as alive, as her fingers traced up my body, grasped me, lifted me up with her as she straightened up. She could carry me easily now, with so much of my musculature replaced by airier composites more to her liking.
“Shall we say hello to the other guests, Amelia?”
I took in the melody under her words as they had always been, even when I was too loud and conflicted inside to hear it. The song of her love for me, more complex than a Maelodion symphony, deeper than the Ganymedian ocean. Introducing me. Her wife. My lips curled upward into a wet, mushy approximation of a smile as I recalled our second anniversary, where she had informed me I was to be her wife. A particularly happy memory in a mental library that contained nothing but happy memories.
Her vines slipped into the thin openings on my shoulders and hips, and a quiet moan of pleasure was pushed out of my mouth as she extended them down the hollow structures which had replaced my bones. All the way to the tips of my fingers and toes. I sprung to life under her guidance.
We walked around together, happy wives. I was grateful for her support, but then, I was grateful for everything she did. I giggled, I wiggled my fingers at her bidding, wrapped my arms around her at her gentle nudge. Her will and mine were in unison, one divine spark between two lovers. I was twirled in a dance, then deftly caught on the other side.
Small talk was made between the people present, and I remained quiet, listening happily for when Poppy’s voice sang out. We came to a stop near the lower of the buffet tables in our gentle orbit around the party. I followed the glint of the ring on her fingers with my eyes. A chip was dipped, and guided to my mouth, which opened after a brush on the lips, then closed after a tap. I chewed happily. It was very spicy. My favorite.
A floret with bright blue hair spoke to me. Poppy spoke back. I smiled and looked pretty. I did not absorb what the human was saying, she was not important. There was no memory of ever wanting anything but this. My life truly began when I met her. All else unimportant. I could not fathom happiness greater than this.
The center of my universe loved me, and I was hers. My beloved Wife, my sweet Poppy.
this story now has a spiritual sequel, my autism-appreciation fluff romance, Good Sensory. check It out!