Be All That You Seem Ch. 01

This story has both fantasy and mind control aspects in it. This is a sequel to 'Be All That You're Meant To Be' and was prompted by discussions with RobotUnit8 about a lesbian take on that story. Whilst that previous story is a heterosexual in orientation you may find like to read it for background on a number of the characters featured here and what concubivores are.

The outfits, as is common in my stories, notably Marianne's, are drawn from examples I have seen in real-life and for the other characters from online images. This story has many influences including: the short movie 'Rosebud' (1991); the (as it turned out) ironic 'Bay of Married Pigs' softball episode of 'Sex and the City'; a television link between programmes which showed a lesbian businesswoman readying for a night out and a whole host of real incidents I witnessed while travelling around London, notably the scene with the woman explaining to her friend about the different qualities of leather trousers.

*

Tom looked very pleased with himself as he walked into the bar and joined his three friends. He had known his fellow concubivore, Jake, for the past four centuries, maybe longer, and Carole, another of their species, certainly since the late nineteenth century. The larger woman dressed in denims, Della, was a more recent acquaintance but one who was certainly now firmly in their group. She was different from the other three in that she was a demoness from Nemarash. However, like the concubivores, she also enjoyed watching humans in all their diversity and occasionally playing with some of them, usually to achieve some sexually interesting outcome.

Unlike the three concubivores, for whom sex provided the energies that they needed to survive, for Della, and Tom had no idea what a demoness needed to live on, it was all about pleasure. Della was a devout lesbian and believed that females of whatever species would get most from loving another female. She always took the opportunity to promote this view especially among the humans. Her powers to shape shift, to manipulate people's minds and to cross dimensions was in a different league to that of the concubivores. However, unlike many of her kind, she was unwilling to intervene in a heavy-handed way and it seemed to Tom that she had fallen in with them because she enjoyed the more cunning manipulations that the three concubivores used, often taking months to craft a rare individual into someone from whom they could derive the most delicious energies out of the best sex around. Concubivores did have limited glamour powers that enabled them to make people see them and feel about them in a positive way, but Tom had been speculating what different methods they could use if they could convince Della to play along. Then again, he needed heterosexual women and, maybe, Della would be unhappy at providing him and Jake with one.

"Tom, you're looking well." Della said as he sat down. "I guess that is six months of the finest quality concubivore interaction." She added lightly.

"Certainly, but I'm sated now; I can't take much more. I've warned Monique that I'll have to go abroad for work. She'll find herself losing interest in me soon anyway; I never like to make it hard on them."

"Yes, but she's in such a different place to this time last year. I can guarantee she'll have a much better sex life, a much better life all round, because you intervened." Della commended.

"Yes, I'm sure, you know us, we feed on people but there's no need to be a parasite."

"Well said. You know me, I'm looking out for the rights of females no matter what species they are."

"Even if they're straight?"

"They're all sisters to me." Della smiled. "And that brings us to the discussion we were having before you arrived. Your friend Jake here was on for a wager. He was challenging the female team members here," Della nodded to Carole, "that we could not pull off as successful a transformation as you did with Monique, certainly sticking within the boundaries that you do. Of course I could charge in there and I could make any woman here my red-skinned demon sex-slave for eternity, but that's why I am hanging out with you guys rather than any other demons who might be on the plane at the moment. I like your subtlety, I like the twists and turns of the hunt and I like seeing some female come out of it with a good deal for herself."

"Right, it sounds good. So what are the bets?" Tom asked, clearly interested to happy to be part of this game.

"Well, we've come down to what seems like a fair deal. If we win Carole and Della work to provide two more women, one for each of us, as delicious as Monique, within eight months." Jake explained, smiling. "If they win, then we provide Carole with two humans of similar quality either male or female as we can find them."

"So you're happy with a woman?"

"Oh yes, Della's opened my eyes, and a few other parts of me, to a some things." Carole grinned broadly. "Maybe I was denying myself by just sticking to suave men."

"Well, it seems we have the easier end of the bet if we lose, so I'm not complaining. What about you Della, what do you get?" Tom asked.

"For me, Tom, a lot of the satisfaction will be in the game, and the woman will end a contented lesbian or I'll admit failure right out myself and I'll manufacture you a whole string of charms and mirrors and all sorts of tricks to aid your hunts."

"So, does she start a lesbian and you simply turn the woman on to Carole?"

"Well, you and I select the candidate." Jake outlined. "The only rule being that she must be able to produce top quality sex, so the usual avoidance of professionals or those who just do not have it. Obviously it is in our interests to pick the hardest candidate we can for them to change. She has to be over the age of consent and below forty-five. For us, I guess we need someone like Monique was when she was Monica: straight but naïve and rather isolated."

Della continued. "And knowing that that is the kind of woman you would go for, it's going to delight me to make her into a lesbian goddess. If she's not getting any at present, then there's no violation of your fair play rule, no boyfriends or husbands to disappoint or anger."

"But she still has to come out to her family and friends with the new sexuality you're giving her." Tom noted.

"And most lesbians don't have to face that challenge?" Della questioned.

"Okay, I get your point."

"You two have a fortnight in which to find the suitable candidate and then the game begins; and may the best gender win!" Della laughed, raising her glass to clash with the others.

**** Steph Clarke had lost track of how long she had worked for Morcar Publishing. It had to be somewhere over twenty-five years. No-one had bothered to present her with anything for her long service, but she was grateful for this job and for the fact that she had never felt her post was at risk. She wondered why she thought of that now. Maybe it was seeing that young woman, Jane, bustling in this morning. Steph knew she had been like that once, seeing publishing as something exciting: sitting alongside authors; getting on in the Media. It was also a profession that has used her intelligence and had offered a bit of glamour. Morcar had survived all the mergers and takeovers, probably because of the diversity of its output and the fact that it ran very lean; its prosperity generally came from how hard its employees worked.

This publishing house had been good for Steph and fitted with the lifestyle she had adopted after that attack, now more than two decades back. She supposed she should have healed from it by this stage and she guessed, that to some extent, she had. However, the passing of years had weakened her in so many other ways. Her day-to-day routine was such a shield and yet it had thickened to the extent that it closed off other pathways to her. Of course she had her cat, Marlene, as in Dietrich, and her knitting and the knitting circle and the bridge club. She had acquaintances rather than friends and certainly no-one closer, and, certainly, no lovers. That had been the problem, of course, Steph had always loved women, though she made sure she never allowed any sign of that to be visible and there were even a few decoys. She made sure she kept a few movie magazines around her, open at the page showing the latest male movie heartthrob. For a while she had jumped between Johnny Depp and Brad Pitt, all the time actually preferring whichever woman they were pictured with, but that was a secret she kept hidden from everyone, and quite often herself.

The one who had driven her to lock everything, every loving feeling, away had been Sarah-Ann Faulkner. Of course these days she could never conjure up just how besotted she had been with her; everything she had experienced subsequently had killed that feeling. Sarah-Ann had been a cyclist, just like Steph, and the memory of her in lycra still did bring a warmth back to Steph no matter how many years had passed, but it was her in an abstract way, just as an ideal of a sexy woman. How much Steph wished she had fallen for someone else; had taken a chance with anyone else, with a woman who, at worst, would have scowled and stamped away embarrassed or even spat at her, Steph could have dealt with all of that.

Being ambushed on her way home and kicked and punched, and kicked and rolled over, and her head stamped on: now, picking a woman like that had been a painful mistake. Sarah-Ann was more than charismatic enough to recruit helpers, women who were more than eager to be 'dyke bashers' and, so, through their violence assert how wrong Steph had been to even consider that Sarah-Ann might find her attractive; well, then, let the men keep them. Of course, the police laughed at her. They had enough trouble comprehending male-on-female rape, especially back then, let alone female-on-female violence with an overtone of a sexual orientation to the attack. When she had admitted she was gay, well, that was the end of any help she could have expected. The jibes and the jokes, that had followed, had been more than she could cope with. All her dreams of finding a woman to build a life with together, here in London, where, supposedly, there were more lesbians than anywhere else in the UK, had been smashed out of her. Now, she was not gay, she was just an asexual middle-aged woman, no different to the thousands of straight women worn down by time, work and indifference.

As Steph looked over at Jane she felt a little glow of pride. She believed things had changed a great deal in the years since her bitter encounter and, whatever Jane's sexuality, Steph hoped she could safely find happiness and a good shag here in London. In this office of obnoxious men on first seeing Jane, Steph had been determined to ensure that she would do whatever she could to help this lovely young lady; keeping it discreet of course, so that neither those male bastards nor Jane herself would get the 'wrong' idea about Steph or how she felt about things. She had not achieved a great deal so far, but remained heartened as each day she saw that Jane was not being worn down by life.

**** "There she is." Jake nodded in the direction of the young woman entering the café.

Carole looked round subtly, Della more boldly.

"How old is she? She looks like she's approaching forty."

"Twenty-four. Her name is Jane Portland. She has worked for Morcar Publishing in Bloomsbury for the past eleven months. She graduated from university, where she read English Literature, almost three years ago, and was doing odd jobs on local newspapers before getting this. She lives in Kilburn, alone in a flat. She has not had any sexual partners since leaving university. She slept with three men while there but none of them on more than five occasions. She works long hours at the publishing house and seems to have no social activity except sitting in some café, preferably in or near a park, on a Sunday afternoon, hence her being here today, oh, and of course, re-reading classic English literature. I suggest she expects romance to happen to her, but is too self-conscious and too much in a pattern of drudgery to do anything to engineer that. She is not badly off given the expense of living in London and saves furiously for fear of losing her job. She would be a challenge even for me or Tom, and, like Monique, we would have to begin by altering her thinking about things in a major way first."

"Thanks for the background. She certainly seems to fit the specification." Carole said, not uncharitably, but with an air of seeing a real challenge.

This Jane, now with her coffee and pain-au-chocolat, was coming to the table a couple away from the quartet. She did look older than her true age. She wore a brown wool coat over a maroon sweater and a long charcoal grey skirt which stopped at mid-calf. A large university scarf finished off her warm clothing. Her hair was well tended despite the damp, cut precisely a few inches above her shoulder so that it resembled a helmet. The only feature which lifted the dullness about her, was the rich shade of her hair. It was the darker side of blonde as it approached auburn that some women would have sought out as a dye colour. Her only jewellery was a flat gold signet ring on her right hand and two plain gold studs, one in each ear.

"You might not want it," Jake began, "but my assessment is that to her employer she looks the epitome of a woman who will be working for the company until retirement. She will take even excessive orders without complaint; will rarely be ill and will only take the occasional holiday. From what I can tell from her memories, the men who slept with her as a student saw something similar: a serious young woman who, though they would not admit it, strangely reassured them due to her almost middle-aged demeanour. She was not going to threaten them or challenge them or demand anything more than they were willing to give and they could even expect her to be grateful to them for paying her attention. That made them feel worthy, big men."

As the four of them watched, Jane's nose was soon in the dog-eared copy of 'Mansfield Park' and she certainly seemed to be paying no attention the two women and two men seated close by.

"Well, we will leave you to it." Jake said, finishing his coffee.

"The best of luck." Tom added with a mischievous smile.

Della retorted. "I don't think we need luck, this is going to be a case of skill in action."

Once the two male concubivores had gone Carole turned to her comrade. "Well, how are we going to start this? We need a way into changing her mind."

Della sat silently for a moment as if receiving a message directly into her head. "She wants a gift for a friend of hers. There's a jewellery stall up the road from here, the owner's getting chilly. I'll pop out and take her place for a while, she should be in here for ten minutes at least. Give this Jane sufficient desire to drink up and head out and then guide her my way."

"What's the idea, something with jewellery?"

Della nodded. She held her fingers in an 'o' and the air rippled between them until a silver ring sat there. "Something I've used before. It'll get her seeing herself very differently, as a real hot lesbian. Not only that, but it will affect all but the strongest willed around her too, particularly those who might have an interest in seeing her as a lesbian."

"Other lesbians."

"Precisely, and the more she sees it, the more others will too and then she'll start believing it's really her."

"Sounds a good place to begin. We've got to start somewhere and if she begins to experience shifting perceptions then that is always a situation us concubivores are good at offering assistance with."

"Excellent, that's decided."

"We should give it a few days to get into motion before we need to meet to discuss the next step. We'll take turns to check her out somewhere she goes regularly..."

Della hesitated for a moment. "Yes, there's a place closer to her flat that she stops in most mornings before work."

"Right, we'll use that as our checkpoint. You check in tomorrow to see if the ring has taken and I can pick up the next day. We'll leave her to her own devices on the weekends for now, I don't want to have to be chasing her all over London even with your powers to help us."

"Yes, we don't want to rush this. Right, well, this is where it starts." Della planted a kiss on Carole's lips and sprung up; in moments she was out the door.

Carole gave a shudder that made her smile and seemed to show that she was enjoying the frisson of the game being afoot.

**** "Can I borrow the sugar?"

Jane heard a woman's voice close to her and caught the sight of just some brown hair from the corner of her eye. She was loath to look away from her book. Whilst she could read on the underground, there was no guarantee on any given day that she would get a seat and she hated having to balance her bag and book, it was useless.

"Sure. Take it."

The woman reached past Jane, brushing her arm as she did. Jane felt suddenly a little disorientated. She put her bookmark in her place and looked around the room. She thought she had slept well but maybe she was coming down with something. It felt rather warm in here, perhaps she needed to get outside and get some fresh air. She had passed some stalls a little further up the street. She always liked searching the second-hand book ones and now she remembered, if she was going to invite Rachel for a visit, she had thought about buying her a present. Hadn't there been a jewellery stall with ceramic and glass stuff of the kind Rachel had liked since their student days?

Jane hurriedly finished her drink and bun and shoved her book into her bag before heading from the café. She wandered the row of stalls glancing idly at them until she reached the jewellery one. It was staffed by a large, dark-haired woman dressed in a long denim coat and what looked like dungarees, pretty dated, but Jane guessed they were useful for holding her change.

"Anything you like?" The woman asked.

"Erm, I'm looking for something for a friend, she loves ceramic and glass jewellery." Jane said, though strangely she felt more that she was asserting that than really knowing it to be the truth.

"What about this piece?"

The stallholder held out an amber coloured glass ball captured in spirals of slender silver and hanging from a leather thong. As the stallholder held it, the light seemed to glint off warmly from the glass in all directions. There was something about it that felt like security, which Jane hoped was similar to what she felt about Rachel.

"Yes, that's excellent."

"I'll wrap it. To you, fifteen pounds."

The price seemed reasonable and Jane paid without thinking.

"How about something for yourself. Do you like rings? We have some wonderful silver rings."

Jane only ever wore the signet ring her parents had given her when she turned eighteen, but there was something about the silver rings here that attracted her attention. A plain band somehow drew her to it.

"You like this one. Here, try it on." The stallholder removed it from the velvet-lined tray.

Jane took the ring and tried it on her index finger of her left hand. It was too large.

"That's a shame. It's too big."

"Ah that's because it's a thumb ring, see." The stallholder took Jane's hand firmly but gently and in an instant had shifted it to her thumb. "There, perfect."

Jane suddenly felt the disorientation she had suffered in the café. She blinked and found that she was away from the stalls, heading in the direction of home. What had happened? She felt a little queasy. Had she blacked out? She reached into her bag and found the wrapped necklace as she had remembered. Reassured that she had not lost it, she guessed it was probably best to head home, she clearly needed to rest. She bought some chocolate from the shop on the corner and hurried up to her bedroom and dug out her favourite DVD version of 'Emma' and sat back indulging in the things that made her feel secure. The disorientation did not return and Jane found no further symptoms of the onset of illness. She guessed it had been the heat of the café and then the change to being outside that had caused it.