Two Drowned

 

American couple to Chinese couple TG.

Possession.

The gorgeous maiden begged and whimpered as she felt the sword point against her face.

“You look so beautiful bathing.” He tried to focus as his excitement got the better of him.

“Please… It’s freezing.” She bit her lip.

He pressed it next to her left eye.

“Please!” She look at him as reservedly as she could, he returned it with a blank murderous stare.

The fat man went down on all fours. “You think you can both just embarrass me in front of all those people. You… I can’t help I look this way.”

 

 

Her eyes widened. “I… he was just protecting me. Why didn’t you stay away like you were told?”

“I bet...stay away and keep your head down. No, I'm tired of it you high-strung bitch.”

She shot him a fierce look. “Bastard. Wan will have your…”

“Don’t say his name!” He roared. He tossed his sword aside and ferociously grabbed her hair. He pushed her head under the water. She tried to pull his hands off but each act of resistance only emboldened him to scream and push harder.

“I can’t wait until he finds your corpse you stuck up whore.” 

Eventually her hands let go and floated at her sides. The fat man glared as what he just did began to sink in. He drew his sword along the back of her neck and watched the blood mix in the water. A small snicker broke out into cackling as he backed off into the trees.

The young man gasped as he saw the body of his lover. He placed his hands into the water and pulled her out, his hands shaking just above the back of her head. He stood staring at it, for as long as it took him to realise a new feeling, one he’d never felt before. Despair. Then he threw himself into the water. He let it fill his lungs. His petrified body was later found gently lying on the back of his wife to be.

The trip to China had been rather uneventful. All the horror stories of undercooked food, unfriendly and unhelpful staff and other bad vibes had not materialized at all. They arrived in Beijing, and spent the week there. Then had even pretty much managed to get to their hotel in Hangzhou by nightfall after only half a day in Shanghai. They ate down at the in-hotel restaurant. Everything was open so late here, and there were people digging into some spicy dishes. How could they possibly sleep on that stuff? He looked up at Amelia. Her mousy red hair was a bit messy today, but she sometimes kept a wink and a smile, despite all the stress of travelling.

“Did you see the photos of that lake? Gorgeous. If I lived here I’d never leave it.” Amelia said.

Matt shrugged. “Plenty of lakes in America too.”

She gave him a hard smack on the shoulder. “Be respectful. Besides, no lake in America has got this much history. And hm… I don’t know… freakin temples around it. They really understand how to balance the old and the new here.”

He rolled his eyes. Right out of a Feng Shui guide. “The ones back home have booze and dead gangsters at the bottom. That’s plenty of history.”

“Far too many of those. We can hardly market that. Speaking of the dead…” She smirked.

“I think we should take a walk around the lake now. Honestly, there will be a migration in the morning. You know crowds give me headaches.” She said.

“Are you joking? We haven't stopped all day. Out of the question.” He said.

“No no no… my clients want to know this stuff. Come on, we have one day tomorrow and a lot to see.”

He drew closer to her and threw his hands up.

“I read there is a bridge along the lake that two lovers took their own lives on.” She joined her fingers together and smiled.

“Just why I came here. A suicide pact.” He sank back into his chair.

“Come on, it’s not even thirty minutes away. It’ll be like we walked there turned around and came straight back.

He sighed. “Fine. Although I remember you said something similar about our vacation to Mexico….”

The water shone prismatic as the stared out into the huge lake. The city was just on the horizon but he felt like he was almost in the countryside. They walked over what seemed to him like a hundred bridges before Amelia started to get excited. Each one managed to impress him with its unique shape or curves, some extended right out into the interior of the lake.

“What do you think?”

“Not bad, really drinking it in.” He smirked.

She groaned.

“Oh! This is the place.” She flashed the light in his face then she looked around wildly for something “Aha. The information point!”

He inspected around the pavilion. The bridge here seemed really steep and unnatural. And all the markings on it seemed actually ancient and weathered. Unlike the works on the way, which seemed kind of airbrushed, as if they had just been rebuilt yesterday.

“Two Drowned Bridge… seriously? How… literal…” She blinked rapidly.

“And morbid” He groaned as he walked near the edge of the lotus field. He saw something surfacing in around the side. A turtle maybe.

“Wonder how many species of birds there are around here…”

He noticed the cresting bump in the water was now swimming towards him. He bent down and got ready to take a closer look if it was generous enough to pop out. Just as he did, the thing snapped its head back, and the two sunken pinpoints it called eyes looked up from the murk into the night sky.

“Holy shit are you…” He instantly held his hand out. He then went to hold his flashlight over the face and instantly recoiled.

The featureless wraith in the water lunged upward and pulled his head closer. Its hands were slimy and soft enough to rip. She kissed him on the lips. He tried to pull away but stagnant fluid pushed out of her throat down into his. He heard a voice in his head. A woman moaning as if rousing from slumber.

Amelia spun around, only for her jaw to drop as she saw how entwined Matt was with the figure in the water. She hovered the flashlight over them, and her head began to shake. The tips of her fingers went cold. It was female… she couldn’t see her face… but… her skin looked rubbery, and was covered by a horrid slimy membrane that looked like it could be peeled off. Bruises covered every part of her and her fingernails were gnarled and black. Bones poked out of her sides, and her belly and breasts were protruded and swollen. Amelia got ready to shriek, but a slick slapping sound came from near her feet. Her knees went weak as she felt a hard frigid grasp around her leg. She shook, not daring to look downwards. Then it dragged her predatorily into the water.

The creature let go and fell lifelessly backward into the water. He tried to call out, but water trickled out of his mouth. He felt that boundless panic, panic that only comes from pure asphyxiation. He gargled and nearly tore up his throat as he tried to eject the nearly endless stream of liquid.

 

Amelia found herself being dragged down, deeper than she imagined the lake could ever go, but a blink later and she was escaping onto the platform. Liquid spluttering out of her lungs, which were barely pulling in air. I need a hospital, can’t breath, fuck fuck. In her daze she saw her boyfriend’s silhouette as he thrust his own head in and out of the water and laughed in a shrill voice that was not his own.

The growing presence smacked her reflection in the water. She wailed and cried as her pounding grew faster. A tortured expression appeared on Matt’s face. This is not me, this is not me, this is not me. Where is my face? My pretty face.

“My skin to feel, my eyes to see.” The words poured out his mouth.

The pounding and screaming of the mad spirit then suddenly went silent.

“I feel you… I won’t hurt you…” She said softly.

His limbs flew wildly around him as he flipped onto his back against his will. He looked down at his stomach and saw an impression of a face bulging into and out of his flesh. He screamed but his mouth was quickly shut. Internal pressure struck randomly all over his body. Blood trickled down from his eyes. Was he going to burst like a boil?

This was followed by an immense weakness and wasting heat, as if he had been stricken by the flu. His muscles became soft and flabby in some places and disappeared completely in others. He gasped for breath as limbs broke, spasmed and warped until they looked misshaped, more like a doll than a man. Ankles and tendons in the feet became dainty and thin, as his legs took on beautiful strokable curves.

He tried to lift himself up again but struggled against the force on top of him. He pulled up a few inches and turned onto his back then vomited nearby. This can’t be happening. It can’t be happening… his thoughts stopped there as words became jumbled in his brain. He tried to speak but could only mutter sounds which had no meaning to him.

His skull vibrated violently as frontal bones, nasal bones and cartilage cracked open and shifted. His hard jawline softened and curved into an opal shape. Cheekbones rose and his forehead became smoother and vertical. All the while the soft slick brain matter underneath began to depress and morph into the brain of a young female. Old instincts violently wrenched out and new ones pressed in. The transportative pain kept him far away from what was, indeed, happening.

“Where is Amelia? Where is Wan?” Amelia.. he thought. Who did she matter to? She loved Wan.”

The thoughts and desires of the possessor were becoming his own. She was unmoored, desperate after passing centuries without a body that was pulsating, warm, renewing. Visions appeared in her mind of how she used to look. What she should be. Not a tomb of festering flesh. She was determined to make this sinew and meat into a home.

His skin bubbled and grafted itself anew on his skull, the face of beautiful Asian woman beginning to emerge out of the mould. Then his eyes stung as fine blue turned brown in hue. His skin pulled over the corner of his eyelids and melded to create epicanthic folds. Eyelashes became fuller while his lips puffed up and took on a provocative red shade.

His blonde hair began to creep downwards over his face, then a wave of pitch black colour followed it, until he was left with a wet untamed mane. His skin thinned and took on a creamy unblemished tone. His fingers became delicate and untested by work and nature.

He tossed and turned in the throes of a nightmare. His throat constricted as his Adam’s apple sank in, leaving a smooth clean neck, all the while a prosody of moans came out as his voice ascended in pitch. He pleaded and slurred in an accent that was becoming gradually less American and more tonal, more Chinese, until he stopped speaking English completely. Instead, he spoke in the local language of Wu. That made her happier, and soon so would he.

Amelia found herself suspended in mid-air going through her own change. She whimpered as muscles and shank tore and loosened as she grew in height. It would seem to an onlooker like every extremity was hanging out of socket while they stretched and swelled. In the moment they all socketed themselves into place, she let out a single hideous screech deep into the night.

She groaned as her abdomen temporarily distended. Her breasts receded and milk ducts became barren, as the fat spread over her chest into a set of wrought pectorals. Her long thick nipples sunk into her chest becoming flat bumps. Her muscles packed with power, they bulged awkwardly and mismatched at first, but eventually every muscle group stood out defined while skin pulled tight around them and her torso streamlined. A hard six-pack appeared where once had been a delicate stomach. She took in deeper and longer breaths as her ribcage grew, and her lungs gained capacity. Her thighs and legs nearly doubled in size, forcing her to plant herself down. Her stature settled at an intimidating height. She felt like she could do so much more now. Charge about like an ox, spring around like a tiger. She could take all-comers with her bare hands. A prize-fighter, an idol among men.

She heard a demonic demanding voice in her head. “Hands to touch, lungs to breath, tongue to taste…”. Everytime it spoke it made her own mind and thoughts cower. Her features were getting rougher, her lips thinning, eyebrows thickening. Her skin became coarser and thicker. Her blue eyes dimmed to brown while her eyelids formed strong folds as her new Chinese heritage was written on every inch of her body. Her ginger hair fell out in clumps until it turned black. Meanwhile needly hair began to cover her muscled legs and arms, while her skin took on a farmer’s tan. Her jaw popped out and careened side to side as it grew larger and angular. Her nose grew longer and the bone thicker and stronger. Her skull set heavier and brutish, his expression sullen. The grunts she let out became more masculine, now sounding like a teenage boy than a woman now. No one would ever be convinced she had an ounce of femininity.

Matt looked deep in blackness. He tried to breath but water surged into his lungs. He looked to side only to scream and bubble as he saw the desiccated corpse of another man. He wanted to flee, but his new part of him wanted to stay. To stay with her lover in his embrace. He swam with the current to the corpse and kissed it. My handsome man…

He realised this was no place, a liminal state. A portal between places. Her lover was gone. He wasn’t here in his body, Where was he? He shook the lifeless meat helplessly. Did he leave without her? Wan, I love you. Why don’t you show yourself? What did I do wrong? Please my love!

She clenched around him. He tried to tear them apart but she dug her nails deeper into his head, neck and stomach. Matt’s mind began to fracture as he was being overrun by memories. Her life became his life. Emotions that were never his. He began to absorb her adoration and singular devotion to another man. This was boundless feminine love. He remembered being raised as little girl in a timeless village. Running around in the spring as her dress trailed behind. She remembered the elation as he finally noticed her. She remembered standing over a sea of clouds as she and he waited for the temple bells to beckon the sunset. She remembered draw out kisses under the fireflies. They said being born as a woman into life was a curse, a punishment for past misdeeds as a man. Yet now she wanted nothing else but to be a real woman again.

“Where are you my love?” He cried out.

“Over here!” Amelia replied almost instinctively.

At the sound of his voice, Matt’s change intensified even more. He let out a lover's moan that mixed pleasure, desperation and joy. His chest thrust instinctually forward as two points of pressure began to surge outwards. His enlarging sensitive nipples were inviting, perfect to breastfeed a smiling new-born. They tingled as an epicentre of pleasure while areola bumps grew and thickened around them. Fat pooled. He recalled vivid memories of mornings in front of the mirror, applying blush and tones. He tried to reject these feelings of femininity, but the memories he clung to grew frail. As if they never happened at all. How could she have played such rough ball sports? Those men would break her tiny body in two. How could she have ever laid on top of a woman? She didn’t have the needed tools. These rites of passage and strong words between men seemed so foreign compared to the quiet work of women. The idea of kissing a woman almost made her stomach churn. She drifted in and out of lucidity as the apparition of his penis flickered between her legs. He tried to tense it, to summon some limited feeling again. His heartbeat thumped louder and louder… his midsection and ribs compressed making his breaths become shorter and weaker. He let out a gurgling choking sound of pain as his spine arched drastically into a more elegant shape, then his hips snapped outwards and organs spread to make room for a developing womb. She could give birth to life! An act she never fulfilled. She imagined holding a tiny baby in her arms and signing it a lullaby late into the night. It wasn’t fair. Not fair, not fair, not fair…

He took in a sharp breath. He was dying… not fair, not fair!... no, she was being resurrected. Water filling her lungs? Why? Because she was murdered. IT WASN’T FAIR. what’s my name!? What’s my name… get out of my head! We are one.

He let out of a moan. Then she spoke. “Yes! Give me it back. He can’t see me like this.”

His head dropped back as his deformed genitals were enveloped by a birth canal and labia. His two testicles swam upwards and were quietly absorbed by the womb, while his glans became the engorged clitoris. Two tubes unfolded from the pear shaped hollow, the ovaries ripening like fruit. The skin tore and his throbbing new crevasse discharged a trickle of liquid. The idea of having a penis grew distant. There had only ever been these her vulnerable gossamer folds. SHE wanted to feel her soft yielding body pressed against a solid hard one again, she wanted to run her hands along a jaw jagged as a cliff edge. She could feel someone nearby, smell his musk through her new nostrils. She wanted feel him inside of her. Oh glorious. Soon! Soon… together they would be far from this black lake!

Amelia groaned. Images flashed through her mind of herself. Who was she? She heard the clanging of steel as a sword in her hand tried to overwhelm the other. Training. She… he recalled lifting her up and running over the stepping-stones as the river burbled. Her mind flickered between herself underneath Matt, then herself underneath, on top, underneath, on top… no it was him and ---. How could she forget her lover? No he hadn’t forgotten, he had failed her. He didn’t deserve to remember her face. The heavens were open to him, but he stayed bound in these waters. Near her, forever hiding where darkness met her line of sight.

Her mind emerged in the void as she tried to struggle her way back to existence, but something was crawling up over her back, all the while stealing her strength. It kicked at her, preventing her escape and pushing her back down into the depths. Black sludge rushed into her orifices, tainting her. This is the only way he could come back. To force himself through her, by overwhelming her thoughts with his own. Even he wasn’t sure which memories belong to who any more. He despised being a parasite, but it was the only way. Her hips began to contract and she felt a horrible sense of loss as her womb began to close up. Her two ovaries unhooked themselves and began to travel downwards. She would soon have a new role in life, that of the father and not the mother. A deliverer and not a taker.

“I can’t be a man.” Amelia groaned and pressed on her vagina with her large hairy hands. She still had this hole, that had bled once a month for her entire life. Real men didn’t have that vulnerability. Her clitoris began to stir.

Her brain was now bathing in testosterone. Her sex rippled with contractions as she felt like she was being filled from the inside out. She needed to push! Her lips peeled back over her teeth as she strained. It wasn’t fast enough. He needed to think… think about her.” Feiyuan. My dear. I promise I’ll find you. Whether to give your bones rest or meet your reincarnation. I can at least say I am sorry. He imagined gently rubbing her neck and laying her down. To stare into her eyes as she waited patiently with need. 

 

 

This burst of will made his nether regions tense. The lips of Amelia's vagina rapidly sewed together as two spheres dropped in a sack. Her clitoris grew longer and heavier. A glove of skin soon formed around the engorging tissue. until it stood out fully brandished. The purplish red glans throbbed in time with the sculpted veins. She felt herself surrender to the depraved impulses of the old corrupting soul.. At first, it felt like an attachment, a toy. She felt like an imposter playing at being a man.A novice swordsman. But then he began to play with himself and it all came back. Sensation begin to fill the shaft as her and they became truly connected. She pulled the virgin foreskin back and forth. He felt the instinctual male need to thrust, an undeniable sexual appetite. He imagined his lover beneath him, her tiny body and hips rocking against his enormous frame, ploughing her with bestial need. Kneading her tits and pinning her down by her thin arms, as all the while she whimpers and begs to be filled. The faceless woman’s appearance gradually changed into Feiyuan's as his love for her renewed. His new balls tightened followed by his excited rod spitting fluid onto the floor. He let out a strong steady masculine groan then fell to his knees. He inhaled deeply, taking in the fresh air. Amelia had given in.

Matt’s metamorphosed body was still shaking as it eased out of the state of shock. She made tiny little mewling sounds and pouted. A hand rested on her forehead as she lifted herself up. She touched her soft lips and pushed her hands into her breasts.

She turned to the heavy breathing behind her. The voice was recognisable to her, it made her feel safe. She was back, no longer lost and unimportant. She stumbled towards the sound, slowly learning to walk. She tried to focus on the shadowed figure under the pavilion. Her eyelashes fluttered and he stared back, as if they were just coming to terms with who they were looking at. Then they finally imprinted on one other.

“Wan“ She said, with tears in her eyes.

He grabbed her head and kissed her squarely on the lips. “Feiyuan”. She ran her fingers along his bare chest as he did the same to her wet hair. They kissed more and more. He would have been on top of her, but she turned her head with a sense of modesty.

“I don’t want to ever see this lake again…” Feiyuan said. He nodded in agreement. The couple passed by the lotus field all the while caressing and teasing each other’s bodies and faces.

An old woman peered up at them as they danced by. She looked back a couple of times sheepishly.

"Could it be?" She remembered a painting she saw as a young girl. She muttered nervously to herself.