Becoming Beth

When I entered hospice I was admitting that my money had failed to save my life. I'd visited doctors all over the world but I was still here, waiting for my time to come. Barely a year after contracting a disease doctors didn't even have a name for and my time was running out. But if nothing else, dying slowly gives you ample time for reflection.

My forty years had been spent well so I had few regrets. I had made money through honest work and had been inspired on more than one occasion. I'd given part of my profits to various charities since I founded my first company. I'd kept what I felt were honest business practices even if it kept me from joining the yacht-buying elite. No, my public life was all anyone could ask for.

My private life? Well, there lay my regrets. After hours and days in the laboratory or later in offices and board rooms, I had developed my "escapes" as a way to relax. I never found a true love or a wife and my romances were sadly brief. Still, my escapes were always there for me and I became a master of them. Or perhaps they mastered me.

As I lay in the hospice bed, I found myself dreaming more and more. At first I had fantasies about my escapes. You see I'd always dreamed of the world of the feminine. Even at the first emotions of youthful puberty I was drawn to delicate things, sensual things, satins and lace, panties, stockings and bras. The shape, the scents, and texture of a woman's clothing became things I craved, things I channeled my sexual needs into. It stood to reason that my exploding lust for girls and women would extend to their intimates and if I couldn't get a girlfriend, I could get all the panties I wanted.

Sure I wanted to be with girls, with women. But my fascination with lingerie caused me to spend years pondering my nature, never feeling actually homosexual but over time fantasizing more and more about being a woman, sexually. With other women but then also with men. It had left me confused for years, this powerful sexual yearnings that didn't seem to match how I saw myself otherwise as a capable and intelligent man.

My track record at dating was pretty poor though not from lack of trying. In the beginning of a romance I would forget about my escapes, leaving my special clothes put away in storage. But it was never enough though I would have been much happier if it had been. I couldn't rid myself of those thoughts. I knew that my desire to see my girlfriend's panties was a little different than other guys. I was the only guy they'd dated who wanted to put on their panties and more while having sex with them. Inevitably this desire would emerge as we got serious. Determined not to live a life of secrets with someone who might be my partner for life, I would be honest and share this with them. Every time it changed things between us. Goodbyes, sad or mad, were never far behind.

Between these romances I channeled my energies into my school work. When college became too constraining for my ideas and ambitions, I left with a semester left to go for my degree in order to found my first business. My field of study and intellectual passions were bio-engineering and psychology. I always felt that the power of the body and the mind was limitless. There was too much evidence of miraculous healing or even other self transformations to ignore. I sought a catalyst to unlock those powers to enable people to heal themselves.

Bouyed by moderate incomes from some early medicinal patents, I studied Eastern mysticism and Western medicine. I toured through the religions of the world seeking my answers. I even found a handful of psychics and supernaturalists who had empirically provable powers but were always disappointingly limited. While I had minor victories, I never found the one key I was looking for. The last lead I chased was rumors of people living vibrantly into their second century in remote areas of Africa. It was on a trip to the region that I contracted the nameless disease I later learned was going to kill me.

But that battle was over. I was not going to see the victory I sought. My fate was to lie in well-appointed hospice and dream of other lives.

-

One night I began to have new dreams. I dreamt of a woman I came to call Annabeth Rose or Beth for short. This was not a person I knew or was even real, though she became more and more real each time. Most remarkably I didn't dream about her, I dreamt I was her.

The first Beth dream happened in a garden, a garden of Eden I suppose. I opened my eyes and breathed in the air. I saw vibrant green leaves high above me and dappled sunlight. I felt the grass and no pain. No pain. It was like a joy, even an orgasm of sorts to be free of the pain. I moved and everything about me felt different. My muscles felt alive with energy. My skin was afire with sensations. My lips parted and I brought in the sweetest breath.

Blinking my eyes in the sunshine, I rose from the grass and felt my nakedness. I looked down and saw a body that was a foreign country to me. I saw large, firm breasts with dark areola. My breasts partly broke my sight downwards but leaning over I saw a neat V of curly hairs where I expected a cock. My hips flared below my neat waist. My legs were nicely toned with pleasant curves.

I began to walk and then to run without thinking of it. Her body responded as mine hadn't in years. It was different to be sure and moved differently. I slowed to a stop, looking down. I took a step and then another, feeling my hips move, I felt the sway.

And then I touched myself.

Once I started, I couldn't stop. My hands ran up and down my sides, over my breasts, my neck, my face, my thighs. I found myself lying on the grass again, my body responding as I'd always dreamed. My nipples engorged and fire shot all over my body. My loins were moist, dripping and I came.

I woke in my hospice bed crying. Crying from the beauty of the dream, of the perfection of the woman I was, the overpowering pleasure. And I cried for fear it would never happen again.

-

But I dreamed of her again the next night. I dreamed of her beauty and for a time I was again her. I walked and wandered the garden enjoying the movement of my body, the sensual, natural swing of it, the weight of my breasts.

This time I laid down slowly and took my time. As much as I'd leapt to orgasm the first dream, I walked up to it slowly then, building the wave higher and higher until it overwhelmed me.

The third night's dream startled me. I woke in a bed and for a moment, I was terrified that she was gone. But a short movement under the sheets gave me a delight of sensations. A satin camisole shifted over my breasts and torso. A pair of little panties hugged my round bottom and cradled my pussy. My hair streamed around my head and across the pillow, long and blonde.

Getting up, I began to explore where I was. I was in an apartment. The dream felt so real, unlike any dream I'd ever had. I could knock on the formica of the end table. I could find the manufacturer's tag of the bed spread and read the fine print. Every movement was my exact wish, not a drugged/delayed metaphor in a dreamscape.

My female body was feeling more natural to me with every 'visit' though my delight at it never disappeared. It responded with eager arousal to the tug and caress of the simple satins and nylons of my lingerie but I resisted another easy masturbation.

Looking further I found clothes in the closet. Taking my time to get it right, I slipped on the blouse, the skirt, and the heels. Walking into the bathroom, I studied my face in the mirror. High cheekbones, healthy blond hair, enchanting blue eyes, I was beautiful and perhaps in my early twenties. I was woman in full flower, if you will.

I found makeup and other things in the bathroom and spent another hour reveling in the ability to groom this beautiful body. Years of practice on my own flawed canvas allowed me to put the makeup on just right. A touch of scent and I was ready.

But ready to what? My dream was in this apartment but what lay outside the outer door? Was there a world out there or just waking up? I wasn't ready to risk that so I gave into my desires again.

I laid on the bed facing a mirror on the far wall. I gazed at this beautiful woman as she began to touch herself. Soon a flush washed over me as my breasts ached to be sucked and I craved someone inside me. Skirt pulled up and panties pulled down, I did the best I could with my fingers, teasing and raising myself quickly through layers of passion and pleasure. All too soon I was cumming, my body shaking, my throat filled with my cries of ecstasy.

This time I did not wake from the dream after the orgasm. I lay in the bed for a time in the afterglow, softly touching myself, running loving caresses across my skin. After a time, I slept and woke again in hospice.

-

The dreams became more frequent and my desire for the adventures of Beth soon overcame my interest in the real world. The attendants and doctors at the hospice looked on me sadly knowing the course I was taking to my death.

But as Beth I had a new lease on life. I wanted to do everything before my candle burned out. I found myself in a mall with a credit card and spent hours trying on all sorts of lingerie, swim suits, heels, and clothes. I ate at fine restaurants and danced with men and women at clubs. I certainly didn't have long so I took every advantage... a stolen kiss, an orgasm with a stranger in a dark corner.

It was intoxicating but knowing that time was short made me focus.

-

The next dream I had a plan. I woke as Beth, still in the silver dress I'd worn to the clubs. Resisting my body's eagerness to replay the night before, I looked to the desk. The laptop was resting next to a hot cup of coffee. I'd planned both before falling asleep so I knew I could direct my dreams even more. Time to see what else I could learn about this super dream.

I changed into a silk kimono and sat down at the computer. Sipping the coffee I started exploring "Beth's" world. She had a bank account with a little less than $10,000 in it. I could find no evidence of her occupation but I did learn that her name was Annabeth Rose. And for all my skills, I could not discover any evidence of her existence before about two weeks earlier.

It was as if she'd been born out of thin air, conjured from my desires in full form: body and soul but with my mind. I say soul because I felt like I was a different person when I was Beth. It was a fascinating question of body controlling mind or shaping soul.

Looking around the apartment, I couldn't see any evidence that Beth had been up while I'd been awake in hospice. I was concerned with how few dreams I might have left. Suspicions were growing in my mind and if I was right, the holy grail I'd sought for years was in my grasp. Taking a drink of the coffee, I began to put things in motion.

-

My life in the hospice was becoming more dreamlike as I suffered the last stages of the disease. My thoughts only became clear when I was dreaming of being Annabeth. Sometimes I felt like I lay in the bed and saw her by my side.

-

It was very quiet the night that I died. For days, it had become harder to breathe and the hospice had strict orders to let nature take its course in my passing. For hours, my frail body gasped and I feared I wouldn't be able to sleep before the end came. But at last it came, whether it was sleep or just lost consciousness. I closed my eyes and slipped into blackness.

-

I walked into the hospice in a suitably somber A-line dress and heels. By now the nurses knew me well as Edgar's daughter. They'd called my apartment early in the morning to let me know that my 'father' had passed during the night.

Walking into the hospice room, I looked down on my old life for the last time. The disease had robbed my body of its vitality leaving me a sad specimen under the white sheet. I did not weep for myself. I'd been given a tremendous gift, a gift of a new life. My old life was done.

I confirmed the arrangements that had been made for Edgar's remains, paid the final bills, and thanked the hospice staff for their kind care of my 'father'. With that I shed my old life and was Annabeth Rose, a beautiful young woman who had just inherited a fortune.