Finding Rhiannon Pt. 01

FINDING RHIANNON

[An earlier version of his story was originally published on a member-only website, under a different name.]

Chapter 1 -- A Rustle of Silk

"Did you hear that?"

"Hmmm?" Caroline was staring intently at a rack of clothes.

"I said, did you hear that?"

She looked round, caught my eye, then looked back at the garments she was examining. "Hear what?" she asked in a distracted tone.

"Uh, kind of a rustling sound, like -- I don't know, clothes rubbing together?"

Her glance was once again fleeting, though this time it was accompanied by a half-frown. "In a lingerie store. Really?"

I winced at the scornful tone. "This wasn't normal, it was... in the air, really close to my ear... Sort of like -- wait, there it is again! Can't you hear it?"

I whipped my head around, trying to locate the source of the sound. It was faint but perceptible, the same noise that two fabrics make as they brush against one another. But I could see nothing to explain it.

When I looked back at Caroline, she had an exasperated look on her face. "No, Ryan," she hissed, " I can't hear anything. Now stop going on about mysterious noises, you're weirding me out, all right?" With a sigh that eloquently conveyed my shortcomings, she turned back to the rack of nightwear.

"But --" I began to protest, then thought better of it. I was obviously imagining it. I wandered off, trying hard not to look too closely at the merchandise festooned around the upmarket store, or at the pretty young sales assistants who patrolled it. I hated it when Caroline dragged me into a place like this, I always felt so... embarrassed.

Now don't get me wrong, I liked lingerie as much as the next man -- on women, I mean. And I especially liked seeing it on Caroline's lithe body. Which is why I'd promised to buy her something sexy for her birthday. Only she didn't trust me to pick anything out -- so here we were.

Without meaning to, I found myself in front of a display of stockings. For some reason, one particular pack caught my eye and I lifted it off the rack to take a closer look. The packaging, which proclaimed the contents to be black and made of the finest silk, exposed a section of the material. Curious, I brushed the sheer fabric with the back of my fingers. As I did so, the sound I had heard earlier returned -- but this time ten times louder than before.

"Woah!" I yelled, dropping the packet and jumping back as if shot. I looked around frantically, but could see nothing that might have produced the noise. Strangely, none of the other people in the store we're looking my way. I obviously hadn't shouted as loudly as I'd thought -- or maybe some kind of collective deafness had descended on them.

Feeling more than a little shaken, I strode over to find Caroline, who was in conversation with one of the staff. She was speaking very quietly and it was only when I got close that I could hear what she was saying.

"-- something for my girlfriend. She's pretty much the same size as me -- say a 10, with a B cup. Something slinky and see-through, maybe?"

"For your girlfriend? Sure," said the assistant, an attractive redhead. She gave Caroline a quizzical look. "But, uh, if you don't mind me asking, the guy you came in with...?"

"Girlfriend?" I repeated in a puzzled tone. But Caroline ignored me. Running her hand through her blonde hair, which was currently cut shorter than usual in a pageboy bob, she looked around the store, her gaze seeming to go through and past me.

"Him?" she said dismissively. "That's just my husband. He thinks he's buying it for me... I can't think where he's got to though. Must have popped out to get some fresh air, he was bleating about hearing strange noises. Idiot."

"Darling," I said, "what are you talking about, I'm right here!" But again, she paid me no attention. As she listened to whatever the sales assistant was saying, I reached out to grab her arm.

My hand passed right through her.

I recoiled as if stung, then stared, dumbfounded. Slowly, I repeated the gesture. My apparently solid hand seemed to disappear as it came into contact with her bare arm, then re-emerged as I retracted it. There was absolutely no sensation of touch.

"Aaaaargh!" My shriek of horror rent the air, but met with no response from the women in front of me. Wild-eyed, I stared around me. "What the fuck is going on?" I screamed. Again, I was totally ignored by the staff and customers in the shop.

As if in a daze I walked to the nearest rack of clothes and extended an unsteady hand. There was nothing there that I could feel. "Help me," I moaned weakly, "someone help me, please." But there was no aid to be found. As I looked around, I saw my wife heading for the exit, her face angry.

"Caroline, wait!" I called and scrambled to follow. I caught up with her just as she reached the door, which was being held open by the assistant. I clutched at the strap of the handbag that was slung over her shoulder, but again could get no purchase. As she walked out of the store I made to follow. But as I stepped through the doorway something seemed to smash me in the face and I reeled back.

"Ow," I exclaimed, gingerly touching my nose and forehead. There didn't seem to be anything broken and the pain quickly receded. I tried once more to leave the store, this time with my hands extended cautiously in front of me. But at the door, which was still being held open by the assistant as she exchanged some parting words with Caroline, they met some kind of invisible barrier. Try as I might, I could not push past it -- and it seemed to fill the doorway.

There was movement to one side and I turned my head, just in time to see the assistant close the door -- right through me.

"Urrrghh." I stumbled backwards, tripped and found myself on the floor, in total darkness. Once again I screamed, flailing my hands around madly. Nothing happened. But as I sat up my vision cleared, at least partially. I could see blocks of light and shade, the colours muted. As I shuffled forward, the shop came back into full view. A horrid suspicion formed. Slowly, I looked behind me, to see a rack of camisoles, with a cupboard behind it. My head must have come to rest inside the cupboard...

Swearing, I got to my feet, desperately looking around to steer clear of anyone moving in my direction. Notwithstanding the apparent evidence that I was both invisible and insubstantial, I did not want anyone walking through me.

I spent the next 15 minutes or so exploring the shop. I found that I could touch and feel nothing except my own body, my clothes, the contents of my pockets, the floor, the walls and the window at the front. (I presumed I could also have felt the ceiling, but I had no way to reach it to test out the theory.) While I could get into the cubicles at the rear of the store that served as change rooms, simply by walking through the curtains that concealed them, the doorway at the back that led to what looked like store rooms and a toilet was no more passable than its counterpart at the front had been.

It occurred to me that I might be able to use my car keys to scratch a message on the wall. But they would not make a mark. Nor could I seem to impart any force on the shop window, no matter how hard I banged it with my fists. The people walking along the street outside paid me no heed, though I noticed some of the men sneaking furtive looks at the merchandise on display. Yelling right into the ears of the staff and customers likewise elicited no response. Worse still, as I walked past a mirror I realised I was not making a reflection.

It seemed I was unseen, unheard -- and trapped. Patting my pockets for my phone, I realised I had left it in the car. I sat down in a corner of the shop and wept in frustration, hugging my knees to my chest. Every now and again I pinched myself, in the vain hope of waking up from a dream. But no matter how many times I tried that, or squeezed my eyes shut and reopened them, my situation was unchanged.

I was still in my corner when the staff closed up shop and, after briefly tidying up, left for the day. The summer sunlight still bathed the shop with a warm golden glow. But in a few hours it would be dark -- and I had no way of turning on any lights.

Forcing myself to my feet, I started a second tour of the shop. I came across a pack of stockings lying on the floor, presumably the ones I had dropped earlier. Wondering why the staff hadn't picked them up, I gave them a morose kick. Two things happened. The rustling sound I had heard earlier returned, though it was not as loud as on the last occasion. And the packet skittered across the floor.

I stared at the packet for a minute, then scurried over to it. I knelt down beside it and gingerly extended my hand. This time there was no sound -- but my fingers closed around the object and I was able to pick it up.

For one glorious moment I thought that all was right again. But a quick test killed that hope -- I could still touch nothing else in the shop. Scowling, I turned the packet over in my hand, then tore it open and carefully took out the stockings. They were wispy, but I could feel the material against my hand. Wonderingly, I slipped my hand into the open mouth of one of the stockings and pulled it part way up my arm, marvelling at how lightly and sinuously it clung to my skin.

The rustling noise sounded again. Startled, I looked up -- and caught my breath at what I could see in the mirror opposite me. Something dark and snakelike was floating in the air. Closer inspection revealed it to be my hand, my wrist and half my forearm, inside the black stocking. Where the stocking ended, so too did any sign of my arm. It was bizarre. If I pulled the stocking up, more of the arm showed. Changing it to my other arm showed that one too -- but then the first one disappeared.

If it worked on my arm, maybe it would work elsewhere? I went into one of the cubicles, unlaced a shoe and pulled off the sock. I wiggled my foot into one of the stockings and held it up for inspection. Sure enough, I could see the foot in the mirror. I took off the stocking and then stared at it dubiously. Maybe I should... put it on?

I flushed. That would be ridiculous, I told myself, I couldn't wear stockings, they were for girls... But something was badly wrong here, and while it might seem crazy, what other option was there? Sighing heavily, I slipped of my other shoe and sock, then pulled down my trousers and stepped out of them.

Standing awkwardly on one leg, I rolled one of the stockings up as I had seen Caroline do, pushed my toes inside and then tried to unroll it up my leg. After much tugging and smoothing I could get it as far up as my mid-thigh, though with nothing to hold it up it quickly slipped down again.

Still, it had the effect of making the part of my leg it covered visible in the mirror. And it really was the leg I could see, not just the stocking itself. The hairs underneath clearly showed through, as did my toenails. When I repeated the exercise on my other leg, I got the same result. The trouble was, I could not get the stockings to stay up.

I shook my head. This was too silly for words. Stripping off the stockings, I made to pick up my pants -- but couldn't. My fingers went straight through the fabric. The same happened when I tried to take hold of my shoes and socks. I howled in frustration and sat down heavily on the cubicle bench -- only to go straight through and land heavily on the floor. Worse, my head went backwards and straight through the cubicle wall, so that I found myself on the outside, looking at a torso that was cut off just below the neck.

Cursing, I picked myself up and went back into the cubicle. My trousers, socks and shoes were, it seemed, now lost to me. I stared at the stockings in despair -- until a thought struck me. If there was one item of clothing in the store I could see, why couldn't there be others?

My previous exploration of the store had concentrated mainly on the fittings, not the stock. Sure enough, while I could not feel everything, I quickly discovered that were a few garments I could touch. But my sense of feel was selective. The only items I could handle were black, lacy, see-through, or all three.

Hmmm. Frazzled as my thinking might be in the face of the perplexing situation in which I found myself, even I could start to see a pattern here. For a moment I was on the verge of rebelling and throwing away the clothing I'd found. But with daylight ebbing away I was getting desperate -- and this seemed to offer a way forward.

Hastening back to the cubicle I'd been using, I fastened a garter belt around my waist, tugging it around to get it into what I thought was the right position, then pulled on the stockings. It took me quite a while to figure out how the fastenings worked, to get the stockings far enough up my legs and then to get the clasps to hold them securely in place. I kept being distracted by the feel of the silk on my legs. Indeed I had to fight the desire to keep stroking the material.

Eventually, however, I was done. I tugged on the last suspender to check it would hold, then released it. The elastic gave a satisfactory snap -- and I heard the rustling once more, close by my ear.

I stared in the mirror. I could now see the tops of my thighs, indeed everything up to the waistband of the garter belt. But there was a hole where my groin should have been. Sighing, I pulled down my underpants -- or tried to. Somehow, they were stuck. I stared at them in perplexity, then rolled my eyes in exasperation. Cursing my idiocy, I unhooked the suspenders, took down my underwear, then laboriously reattached the stockings.

Rummaging through the pile of lingerie I'd been able to harvest, I selected what seemed to be the most substantial pair of panties -- or rather, the least insubstantial pair, since they were still pretty skimpy -- and stepped into them. As I pulled them into place, the black lace nestling against my genitals, I felt a frisson of pleasure, as if I'd been softly caressed down there -- and the rustling sounded again.

A glance at the mirror showed that my lower half was now fully visible -- including what was unmistakably a male member trapped inside a pair of lacy knickers. It was a surprisingly sexy sight and my cock throbbed and hardened a little. I felt myself blush and quickly turned away from the reflection. It must be the stress of my predicament, I thought, there was no way I wanted to be wearing women's lingerie. And as for being turned on...

Once again, I nearly got undressed. But I'd gone too far now to turn back. I picked up a long, gauzy gown that I hoped would cover my upper body. It did indeed, but nothing showed in the mirror. So -- no short cuts then. This time I selected a lacy black corset, with mesh panels. It took me a while to find the right size (which turned out to be a 10) and even longer to pull the ties tight at the front, twist the corset around until it was the right way around and slip the straps over my shoulders.

When I'd done all that I could see most of my upper torso, though not my arms. Slipping the gown on over the top of the corset fixed that, though my hands were still not visible. There was another thing wrong too. The bra cups in the corset hung loose, clearly needing something to fill them. A couple of rolled up panties solved that problem. They didn't look particularly convincing, but I moulded them with my hands, as if I were fondling a pair of boobs.

I was rewarded with a twitch of my cock, and another rustle -- only this one was a little different. The noise seemed to have an overlay, as if someone was whispering over the sound of clothes rubbing together. Once more I looked around, but could still see nothing to explain it.

Biting my lip in vexation, I looked back at the mirror. The image I saw was both alluring and jarring. The lingerie I wore looked undeniably sexy and with the corset cinched tight my figure could almost be called feminine. But aside from the ghoulish and unsettling absence of any head or hands, I couldn't help noticing the hair on my chest, my arms and -- especially -- my legs. I found myself wondering what it would be like to have that hair removed and feel the silk and lace against smooth skin. The thought made my cock throb...

There was something else amiss with my legs, besides the sight of hair underneath and above the black stockings. I stared at the reflection and then downwards at myself, wondering what it could be. My legs actually looked kind of attractive, except they were somehow... the wrong shape?

I pondered for a minute, then went out of the cubicle and took another look around the store. I wasn't entirely sure what I was looking for until I found a stack of boxes under a shelf, hidden away at the very back. And then I knew. Looking through the stack, I found the right size and was not surprised to discover that I could handle the box. Taking it back to the cubicle I opened it, unwrapped the tissue paper and drew out the contents.

The shoes were pumps, made of black patent leather with heels that must have been four inches long. I looked at them dubiously, then shrugged. Getting them on was no easy matter, without a bench or chair to sit on. I could stand on one stockinged foot and slip a shoe on the other, but when I tied to repeat the exercise I found I could not maintain my balance. I could don both shoes easily enough while sitting on the floor -- they slipped on comfortably -- but standing up in them took a deal of effort.

When I finally made it to my feet, the rustling sound was repeated -- and again there seemed to be a word there. It sounded a little like my name, but with too many syllables.

I quickly forgot about this conundrum, however, when I saw the dramatic effect of the shoes. My calves looked shapelier and my legs longer. My cock stiffened again and it was all I could do not to pull it out of my panties and stroke it. My pretty, black lacy panties, that was, the ones that felt so good against my throbbing member...

Gritting my teeth and cursing, I tore my eyes from my reflection. My head and hands still couldn't be seen, and I had the powerful sense that more needed to be done. There must be something else in the shop, but where hadn't I looked? There were some cupboard drawers behind the counter, but I couldn't get into those... Oh wait -- I could.

I swivelled and took a step -- and nearly crashed to the floor. I threw out my hands for balance, one of them passing though the cubicle wall. I'd forgotten about the heels! Carefully straightening up, I tottered rather than walked to the counter. Curiously, it didn't seem to occur to me to just slip out of the shoes.

Finding the cupboards, I reached my hands into and through the front of the drawers, proceeding slowly in case I hit anything sharp. In the third one I hit pay dirt, my questing fingers encountering a rectangular object that turned out to be a makeup case. That must be it, surely?

A glance out the front window showed daylight was starting to wane. I nearly scurried back to the cubicle, before remembering my footwear. This time my walk was a little more convincing, though my calves were already beginning to protest at the strain of having my feet in such a position.

When I opened the case, I found a full array of cosmetics. After giving the matter a little thought, I selected a nail polish. Unscrewing the lid, I very tentatively and inexpertly daubed the little fingernail on my left hand with the bright red colour I found inside. When I was done, I held it up to the mirror and saw the whole finger appear.

Encouraged, I completed the other four nails and was rewarded with the entire hand reappearing. The right hand was harder -- and messier -- but soon enough it too had reappeared in the reflection.