A dark room, chained to a wall

Consciousness came slowly, and unpleasantly. My head hurt, a dull thud, and my whole body felt uncomfortable and alien. I could hear bickering in the background, the words unclear, as slowly I began waking up.

At least I’m still alive… so far.

That small piece of gratitude was about the only thing that felt good in this moment, as I tried to summon the energy to open my eyes.

My vision was blurry, as the darkness resolved itself into light, or at least less black shades of grey. I appeared to be in a dark room, with a very minimal aesthetic. It appeared to have been a modern, expensive apartment at one stage, with that contemporary, stripped back look that would allow the property developers to inflate the price when selling to oh so stylish children of wealth.

Now though, it seemed to have been converted into a makeshift **** chamber. Chains attached to a wall that had been hastily yet solidly installed, the contrast with the rest of the room making me feel like a medieval prisoner being held by time traveling millennial sadists.

Back when I was in the library that day, it seemed I had been totally right in my assessment of those three special guests. My blurry vision resolved and revealed all three to be in the room with me. Lucy stood by the far wall, bickering with that muscular guy from earlier over something I couldn’t quite make out on a table in front of them. While it seemed they weren’t paying me any mind, there was one of them that certainly was.

Standing, staring at me with her arms folded, was the woman who’s lead them into the library that day. Her eyes were a shade of amber so bright they resembled gold, and struck a contrast with her slightly tanned skin and high volume dark hair, bisected only by a streak of gold that moved down the front right side. Her looks were every inch a Persian or Arab beauty, yet even covered by her black leather jacket and tight dark jeans it was clear her body had been sculpted by long training sessions. Her wide hips and powerful thighs exuded a perfect atmosphere of both explicit femininity, and dedicated strength.

“He’s awake.”

Immediately, the bickering from the other two stopped, as they turned to see me. Lucy’s sadistic grin lit up immediately upon seeing me, while the other guy just glowered.

“Chains? Are you sure I’m the perverted one?”

My voice sounded weirdly strained as it came out, my cheap joke being about all the resistance I could muster right now. There was a strange swirling of emotions inside me, the natural fear roiling within at the imminent potential **** I would be experiencing being counterbalanced by the idea that I should at least get a couple jokes out if I could.

I guess it’s true that in a situation like this, if you don’t laugh, you’ll cry…

My laugh sounded very grim as it followed, but even still it made me feel slightly better. That was until I realized; It really was my laugh.

Huh…?

It then began to become clear why I’d felt so strange and so uncomfortable. Gone was the erotic, indulgent feeling of Grace’s breasts on my chest, the inviting shape of her hips instead of mine. The natural dopamine boost a skinwalker permanently enjoyed as long as they were in a skin was gone, replaced by the cold, wretched feeling they endured all the time they were out of one.

They… they knew a way to get me out of Grace…??

Looking down confirmed my fears; the body chained at the wrists to the wall was undeniably my male one. Somehow, it felt even worse than normal, as though my skin had been sanded just a little with sandpaper, or like I was wearing clothes that absolutely didn’t fit right.

However they stripped me from Grace must have upset my skinwalker side way more than getting out of her myself would have…

It raised another terrifying question: If Grace had been stripped from me, where was she?

“What… what have you done with Grace??”

Surprising vitality covered my voice as I shouted it, causing very different reactions from the few people in front of me. The guy looked confused, while Lucy just started to laugh. The woman who seemed to be their leader, who I remember Lucy calling “Kobrina”, on the phone, developed a deeper look of contempt for me than the one she already had before.

“Don’t try and pretend like you care about her, monster. Your kind are such natural deceivers, don’t think you can sway us with some pathetic appeal for clemency.”

Kobrina’s words were cold, a certain disgust running through each syllable as she delivered them. It was a jarring contrast compared to Lucy’s twisted enthusiasm, as she lifted up what had been spread on the table for me to see.

“Don’t worry A-lex, your precious little friend is right here! Isn’t she cute?”

Lucy held up Grace’s deflated face for me to see, her small fingers roughly bunched in the smooth, black hair.

“You must be feeling pretty shitty now, huh? Getting you out of her skin was a little brutal. It was like the sinews kept connecting, but we eventually worked you out. And to think, it’s only been in the last 50 years we got the chemical dosages right to get your kind stripped of skins without killing something. The wonders of science, right?”

Lucy’s couldn’t help laughing, finding this whole situation so amusing. I couldn’t help but feel a chill work through me, as my situation seemed to get even darker.

“Whatever happened to experimenting on me in a girl’s skin, huh? Taking me apart ‘piece by piece’, was it?”

That shut Lucy down a little, the twisted glee on her face being obscured by a restrictive gloom quickly.

“That kind of thing wouldn’t be ethical, now would it? That girl is an innocent, she will never be a part of any experiments like that.”

Kobrina said it resolutely, causing Lucy to just start grumbling, before she decided to try her luck.

“Buuuttt Kobrina! Don’t you see the potential all of this has! We have a real-life early stage Skinwalker right in front of us. He’s brand new, he’s only been one for a few weeks. Think of the opportunities for data! And even better…”

Now she started to lick her lips, a strange expression crossing her face for just a moment.

“… You know, he likes to wear girls the most? Doesn’t that make him interesting? Just think of the last couple early skinwalkers we killed. An unpopular girl who wore a prom queen and an obese guy who wore a top football player. They were so conventional. Alex is a guy who wore his crush, which is so pervy already, but even more than that, he gave her up… now that’s fascinating!”

Kobrina cut her off with a withering look.

“You sound like a spoilt child being denied a toy, Lucy. Listen to yourself. Your love of science is getting in the way of our mission, of humanity's mission. ‘Understanding them’ anymore won’t do us any good. They must be destroyed, one by one, until they are eradicated. The only reason this one still lives is as bait to lure his wretched creator here. Even then, I can barely stand to see him breathing.”

She turned to look at me, a certain fire suffusing her being as she delivered her next line.

“I don’t care if you were a normal boy just a few short weeks ago. You took the worst kind of advantage of two young women, indulged in all the evil of your power fully. Your human soul died the moment you became a skinwalker, it’s energy fully expended to power your unholy transformation. The instant you were turned, your biology was set on a one way trip to hideous damnation, to be warped far beyond any natural reasoning. Even if you were originally taken as bait, I feel my will to resist the urge to destroy you personally eroding with each moment that elapses.”

The power and dedication that flowed from her words stunned me a little, as she delivered her speech with an articulate certainty that left no doubt of the purity of her beliefs. Kobrina was a true zealot, a hunter who knew exactly what she wanted to do with her enemies. I looked at the guy, who was nodding, acknowledging all Kobrina had said, and then at Lucy, seeing her torn enthusiasms shredded in moments.

I understood very clearly in that moment, a number of things. Kobrina was the undeniable leader of this cell. Her dedication, intelligence, and most importantly, her power, were clear to see. As long as Kobrina was in charge, Lucy’s more scientific ideas would never be allowed to be explored, and she would remain a subordinate with a different ideology, unable to have any true agency. Finally, I noticed that Kobrina had charged me with the sin of wearing two young women.

So… They don’t know about Elise, Samantha, and that pizza delivery guy…

I took some heart, even in this **** situation, that they weren’t unstoppable. They had been suspicious, and had found out a lot, but maybe my earlier actions might have changed something. Maybe I might have had at least one victory over them.

“I can’t wait any longer. The sight of you makes me sick.”

Kobrina grabbed a long knife from the table, and began advancing on me. Panic gripped my heart as I began tugging at the chains, using all my strength even as the restraints began to bloody my wrists.

“Kobrina, wait! What about the girl he turned-!”

The guy started saying, but Kobrina had made up her mind.

“With this, the world will be a little brighter.”

She smiled, a strange look of vindication passing in her expression for just a moment, before she raised the knife. It gleamed in the electric lights, a terrifying length of metal that represented ****, and the serrated edge that represented just how painful it would be,

“N-no!”

I couldn’t help but feel terror, true horror in the moment, as time seemed to slow down.

I wish I could do anything to escape this! I wish there was some way out! Anything, anything, I’d give anything to get away right now!

Panicked thoughts ran through my head, as desperation made them fly at a million miles per hour. A tension built in my bones and in my heart, rushing from nowhere, my heartbeat pounding faster and faster until it felt like it could rip from my chest. I gasped, yet no breath came out, and all at once it felt like my bones went on fire, and then like they liquefied.

It wasn’t just a feeling. The bones in my wrist, my hands, my forearm, they grew soft and pliant. A vision came to me for just a minute, something between a creation of my imagination coupled with memories of the way Candida’s exposed bones had appeared under her translucent surface, in her fully evolved skinwalker form.

The bones she’d had I now did, ones soft enough to slip through the restraints, as both my hands slid out, a sickening and unnatural sight. I rushed in a blur, moving even faster than Kobrina, managing to grab her own forearms just in time to stop her stabbing me. Even with all my **** strength, it wasn’t enough to stop her own power, as my whole body was pulled into the corner by the wall and the floor with a painful crunch. I knew I would have surely broken several bones if not for their newfound, adaptable pliability.

**** prayers thanked whatever deity was looking out for me, as I’d avoided getting stabbed and gotten free.

“You’re slippery, aren’t you?”

Kobrina said, unimpressed, before she kicked me while I was down. Blood flew from my mouth as I gagged, the **** somehow seeming so much more brutal than even the vicious kicks I’d endured from Lucy earlier. My vision was spinning and white, the pain too great to even move as I lay there, while Kobrina reached down to end me once and for all.

“Time to put you out of all of our misery.”

The blade approached me, a certainty to it I was too weak to resist, as I closed my eyes, almost ready to accept my fate.

I… at least I won’t have to worry about being a monster anymore…

My pitiful last thoughts echoed in my head, but rather than the sharp pain of a knife wound and the darkness that would accompany it, I felt a rush of color, light and sound; a huge burst of heat and **** that seemed to come from no-where all at once.

So great was the chaos, I couldn’t work out what was happening as the wall behind me cracked and crumbled and the **** ragdolled me through the air. An explosion had burst from the apartment below, shattering the floor and causing the apartment as I’d seen it to come apart, a huge divide running across it. I bounced into the wall, the new-found pliancy of my bones again preventing any breakages. The meat on top wasn’t so lucky, pain throbbing across my entire form as gasped and floundered.

“Fuck…”

I felt like a piece of beef that’d been tenderized for hours, as even the adrenaline and shock was struggling to help me. I stumbled up, amazed at my own vitality, trying to make sense of what was going on in the chaos.

The floor had been split in two, with a hole too big to jump that fell away into the oily black smoke. I had no idea what was down there, or even how much of the building was still standing. Immediately, I started coughing, trying to take shallow breaths, anything to keep the smoke from coating my lungs even more. In the chaos and darkness, I could see the far side in the distance still had Grace's skin, and the fallen muscular guy. Then my eyes focused on a more immediate sight, and I could just make out a figure climbing up from the gap in the jagged hole in the floor, a blazing determination in her eyes.

Kobrina…!!

She was alive, scratched only superficially, with some minor bleeding.

She must be seriously tough, what the hell?? I have to do something.

If she made it up here, I was finished. Right now she was ****, yet even still I could feel the raw power she was exuding. Even like this, I could feel the fear holding me back, way too much anxiety to risk something like trying to skin her.

“I’m coming for you, monster!”

She shouted, the fire of the explosion not coming anywhere near the fire that blazed behind her eyes.

I have to do something… right now!

I grabbed a bit of debris, one of the steel support beams of the building that had come loose, and lifted it from it’s discarded position on the ground. It was weighty, and long; like an improvised spear.

It’s perfect.

I lifted it, holding it as my arms throbbed in pain, and charged. Kobrina only had time to gasp before the end of it rammed into the top of her chest, by her shoulder. For a moment, I wasn’t sure if I’d been enough; until even her intense strength faltered and she fell into the smoke below.

“Holy shit…”

I stood there panting, sweating, before I began to stumble away. I had to get out of here. I’d survived, for now, barely.

I was so close to **** there, I can’t believe it. If it hadn’t been for that explosion…

There was a shuffle of motion, just ahead of me. The darkness and smoke made it unclear, for just a moment, until she started standing.

Lucy…

She was a lot worse for wear than Kobrina had been. Blood had streaked across her pink dress, while her cardigan was torn. Even then, she still looked pissed.

She’s hurt… and she hasn’t seen me yet. If I run in now, try and turn her, I might succeed. I might be able to turn her into a skinsuit! But if I’m wrong, if she’s still fast and strong enough to take me, my story would end here… should I risk it? It’s a miracle even to still be alive now, should I push my luck?