I looked up at Maxxie’s house— the Flare household— its windows shining with light even this late into the night. From the number of cars lining the street, and based on the knowledge I acquired from Raiyne, I knew what lay behind the door to this home already. My friends, their parents, and my mother. All gathered around, trying to conjure up some happiness as they ushered in the new year. 

I smiled as I imagined Maxxie taking up the mantle of the master of ceremonies, pulling out all the stops to bring joy to those she cared about. Either to reassure them or help them forget about the tragedy that happened just over a week ago. That’s just the kind of person she was, willing to make a fool of herself to bring joy to others, and that’s one of the reasons why I cared for her so dearly. As I walked up to the door, I imagined repeating what I’d done to Raiyne to Maxxie. To her and everyone else in that house. It made me feel… moist.

I culled away such feelings as I brought a hand to the door, knocking the back of my hand to the door three times. A knock that Maxxie and I had been sporadically using as a ‘signal’ for the better half of a decade. Maxxie opened the door as expected, wearing a bright violet dress with a sparkling substance along the hem of her skirt. 

Despite this being a bit much for her, she was still the same Maxxie I remembered, her hair was still a mess, and her freckled brown face just as adorable as I recalled. Her initial grin turned into a look of confusion as she saw ‘Raiyne Underwood,’ looking back at her. Somebody she had not invited to her New Year’s party, yet arrived mere minutes before the end of the year.

“Oh, hey Miss Underwood… why aren’t you wearing a coat?” Maxxie asked.

“It is a lengthy story, Maxxie. One that involves… Jad,” I said, a sense of foreboding dread in my voice.

“Oh no… What happened? Is he going to be okay? He didn’t do anything bad, did he?” Maxxie said, the party environment behind her clashing the fear in her voice. 

“I am afraid that Jad did something very, very bad, Maxxie. He is going to continue doing bad things… And you are his next target.”

As I filled Maxxie with a sense of dread, I entered her house, closing the door behind me. Maxxie looked at me with widened eyes, but before she could utter a single syllable, I embraced her. Our mouths joined, hands latched together, and my arms moved to her exposed back. Dread gave way to shock, but that shock soon dissolved into horror once she realized that the process had begun. Our lips were becoming one. Our hands began fusing to the very bone. Our senses began to overlap. And her memories became my own.

I now had two perspectives, two sets of thoughts, two pairs of formative emotionally rich recollections of our halcyon childhood days. The talents and knowledge she accumulated through those years and her teens became mine. I could feel the artist’s touch flowing through my merged fingers. I knew what she was feeling as she dejectedly went through boring high school days. I learned what it was like to truly have and love a sibling, during the best of times, and the worst. I comprehended just how hard the past few days were for her, filled with unrest and horror. 

Maxxie was only truly taken out of her slump after she met with Raiyne on December 27th. Raiyne told her, my friends, all of their families, and my mother that I should be released in January 2015, a short month away. I then thought back on Raiyne’s memories, digging to determine whether that’s true. It was. If I had waited patiently, I would have likely been freed to see my friends in a few days, under government surveillance, and required to undergo several tests, but I have been free. Free to live with my mother and friends.. 

It is what I had wanted. It was a chance to live a normal life. It is what I wanted… until Abigale persuaded me. Until she told me of my power. As I caught this glimpse of a potential future, I asked myself if I regretted my decisions… and I didn’t. All of these people who I loved were inevitably going to pass away, die, and crumble into dust. They would be naught but memories. And the only way I could keep them with me, prevent them from ever leaving me, was to have them become part of me. 

To save them, I had to become an all-encompassing being, a consumer of loved ones, a deplorable soul digesting monster. It was dark, cruel, and wrong on many levels. I was killing them, keeping them alive, but removing any and all sense of individuality and freedom. Yet, this felt right. It sounded good in my head. And it would allow me to get what I wanted.

This way, I would also get to know more about my friends intimately. I would become closer to them than I possibly could otherwise, get into their very thought process and learn what truly makes them tick. It was something far greater and purer than friends or family. To absorb, to digest, to become one being with another… that was love. That was love in its truest form.

As I sailed through this maelstrom of thoughts, the process concluded itself, and Maxxie’s dress fell flatly on the floor as my skin readjusted itself, returning to the form of Abigale Quinlan, and robbing me of my guise. Not that it would have helped me at this point. I had already become the center of attention, and all attendees of the party looked at me with widened eyes. 

Zoe Xing, his mother, Shiaka Kurokawa along with her parents and older sister, Maxxie’s parents, her sister Terra, her caretaker Babs, and my own mother, Caroline Steticks. The eleven I was looking for, all horrified, shocked, and clearly sickened by my actions. It made sense. I was a monster. An inhumanly cruel or wicked being. Not worthy of a term as kind as ‘person’.

The look of dread painted on their faces, their recognition of the maliciousness of my actions… It brought a smile to my face. I had become her. I had become the sort of person who I reviled, despised, and loathed just a few days ago. I had, in so many ways, become Abigale Quinlan… That discovery should have broken me. I wish it had. But instead, as I thought these words in my mind, the only reaction I felt was… arousal.

Arousal as I saw the fear in their eyes. Arousal as I recalled the heinous act I had committed. Arousal as I felt everything Maxxie was mingling with my person. And arousal as I thought of how everyone before me would share the same fate. 

I began to strip, unbuttoning my jacket, my shirt, and my pants. With a flick of my hands, my underwear came undone and my body was exposed to them. Still dazed and stunned by my actions, the onlookers remained statuesque, changing their expressions as they stood their ground. Staring directly at me and my body’s beauty as I walked closer to them and changed my form into that of Maxxie. An idealized Maxxisaurus Omega Flare.

My skeleton shrunk, fat grew beneath my skin, and I felt my face contort itself rapidly. My hair grew and flowed down to my back, messily covering my head before I parted it away to show my visage, morphing as my form attempted to sort out Maxxie’s genealogy to accentuate her finest features. Especially her freckles! 

Beneath my neck, I could feel my hips billow outwards to accommodate my expanded ass, while everything else from the tips of my fingers and the tips of my toes both changed in hue and fine proportions. I lacked a mirror to see myself. But from the way I walked, the way my body was arranged, and the warmth that radiated from the core of my being, it was clear to me who and what I looked like. Even without these myriad sensations, I still could tell just how I was being seen by looking into the eyes of those around me. 

“It’s okay guys. It’s still me, Maxxie. I don’t really get what the flipping fubar is going on here, but you don’t need to be so scared.” I said, adopting Maxxie’s voice and speech patterns.

The eleven looked at each other, confused by my words, and unsure if they should trust me or not. 

“Maxxie, are you…” Terra began, letting go of her mother’s hand.

“Am I what, Terra?” I said, looking down at her.

The two of us locked eyes for a moment, staring into each other’s iris as if we could discern any greater meaning from it. A smile appeared on Terra’s face as we did so. I went up to hug her. But then… she ran. She ran back to her mother, rejecting me and my embrace. I ran after her, tackling her small person to the ground, where I began the process by squishing Terra’s head between my breasts. I whimpered as the process began. Within seconds, her ears merged with my breasts, and the rest of her head would soon follow.

As Terra’s screams began, her crass boyish screams, I darted my head to those around me. All were backing up, ready to flee from me and my embrace. But I would not allow that. Regardless of my form, my agility and dexterity remained what it had always been. They tried to flee, but I managed to grab them, tackle them, make the necessary skin to skin contact to meld with their beings. They howled as they ran, but they could not hope to run fast enough. A simple brush of my skin against theirs, and their fate was sealed. Their bodies would slowly be malformed into mounds of flesh, and I would consume their very essence.

Their memories, their biology, their… everything. I stopped caring about who I was chasing, stopped focusing on the delicate sensations flooding my brain. 

After consuming my twelfth person of the evening, I was a hulking mass of flesh and flailing limbs, my body struggling to absorb so many people at once. But that did not stop me. I could not let anybody escape my grasp. They needed to be preserved. They needed to be part of me. And I refused to lose anyone for any reason.

The final strangler was none other than my mother, Caroline Steticks, who had rolled herself up in a bathroom that, given my inhuman form, I could not enter. I poked what had become my head through the door, pleading with her to “join me,” saying that I would save her from death. Yet my words only made her cower into the bathtub. 

I groaned as my body continued to digest others, shrinking my form while flooding my brain, fueling what I could only describe as lust. A lust I enacted onto my mother. 

I shrieked as I flailed myself against the doorframe, breaking it away and stumbling into the bathroom, where I slammed misshapen inhuman form into Caroline. She resisted, like all the others, but there was no escape, no sense in screaming.

With the process nearing its end and my body becoming more humanoid, I sprawled myself onto the bathroom floor, content in my actions, and enamored by the sensation they brought. The thoughts, the memories, the fusion of nerves, the ability to feel and perceive so much more… It was intoxicating. It was elating. It was everything that Maxxie always said orgasms were like… but a dozen times better. 

I felt I could simply lay there forever, drunk off pleasure, but I was greedy. I wanted to achieve something greater. And with one hand I could at least partially control, I sought to stimulate myself once more, humping my form against the floor and the walls, flailing my limbs in the vague direction of my erogenous zones. 

This led me to the apex of this gluttonous assault. A final climax. A burst of unbridled ecstasy so great, so intense… that it made me lose consciousness.