Skin Deep

There are beings that walk among humanity, older than they. Unseen, unobtrusive, unnoticed, they take whatever form makes their fancy. Sometimes for an hour, other times for a lifetime. We are often marked by misty beginnings and abrupt endings. Do you have a husband who was adopted? A daughter who changed all of a sudden when very young? A friend who will never let you see their family? I have played all those parts, and will again, before humanity crumbles into the dust from which it came.

Yet perhaps humanity will not crumble. Those who walk human paths do so even as they wear the bodies of birds and trees. We must wear some form, and human is as good as any. I had never cared for a human, even as I had been every role within their society. I had lied love as a father, and respect as a son. I had seemed to care as a daughter, and screamed passion as a mother, yet I had never felt these things.

This is the story of how all that changed.

* * *

He was a soft spoken man. Fair hair and dark eyes. Beautiful but not movie star beautiful, he had a way of looking unattractive in pictures.

I didn't even notice him the first time we were in the same room. There was a dance that happened every week I'd begun going to. I was a young woman named Cathy, she'd died in a car accident on her way to college, and I'd seen the opening and taken her place. One miraculous recovery and I was good to go. New environment with minimal communication with her parents, it was worth wearing this face and body - the poor girl had been the ugliest thing I might have ever seen.

I was on a bus on my way to do some shopping when he got on and sat near me.

"Hi Cathy."

I dimly remembered him from dancing "I don't remember your name."

"Sylven" he told me. "It's okay, I don't usually remember names, I just happen to remember yours."

We talked a bit, happened to be getting off at the same place, and walked a bit. It was ordinary, in the way that I had experienced these things thousands of times before. We parted ways but it stuck with me. The friendliness despite my current appearance. He'd have noticed the burn scars on my neck from the "accident" He'd have seen the sallow skin and thin hair. But he was kind.

Over the next couple weeks he danced with me, and made a point of talking to me. All normal things, all ordinary things - but there was something different. I usually wore beautiful bodies and wielded my beauty well. Kindness could be attributed to courtship.

But this man was just being kind, not for me but for the decency of it.

I began, unexplainably, to fall in love.

I began to desire him, my whole skinny little burnt body aching for him. I would dream about him and wake up wet with my own desire, but how does an ugly girl seduce someone? Old as I am, I didn't know.

So I cheated -as I never had before.

* * *

"I have a secret to tell you" I told him. As we sat in his dorm room where I'd invited myself to play cards.

"What's that?"

"I'll show you in a moment. What's your type?"

He's wary for a moment. It's not me and we both know it. Then he relaxes and smiles. "I have a thing for redheads."

"be more descriptive. Dream girl." I encourage him.

"aum, I guess she'd be short, and curvy, and cute? Maybe glasses."

"close your eyes." the transformation isn't pretty. He does so, eyes spring open when he hears the crackle of bone.

"I'm a shapeshifter" I say. His jaw drops open.

"I really like you." I say "and I can be anything you desire."

* * *

Sex is different when you care for someone I discovered. I was good at it - thousands of years of practice will do that to a woman, but having him inside me was never sacred. Now it was.

He reveled in the beauty of me, in the flowing red tresses and the big dark eyes that you could get lost in. He played with my perfect breasts and slid himself into my tight hot pussy. It wasn't love, it was more akin to awe, but it was enough for now. When he came inside me it felt like I had been given a gift.

It was then that I knew that I was his. Completely and utterly. What's a single human lifetime in the span of an immortal's existence? I could surrender myself for a single life. I'd played housewife before. Why not devote myself to making this man's life perfect?

Cathy had to go, and Laura showed up the next quarter. She immediately ended up in a public relationship with sweet Sylvan. I went for something that fit what he liked but also classically eye turning. I wanted other men to be jealous of him. Always telling him what a lucky man he was.

But Sylvan was Sylvan and kind to a fault. Seeing his friends desires he invited them home to have a go at me, and since it made him happy I was willing. There is very little that can phase something as old as me. I'd been the communal property of ancient african villages, the shared wives of eskimos, the sex slaves of arab sheiks. I put myself into his request with all my skill, making my vagina suck and quiver in a way that made them explode inside me as they never had before.

During the later years of college, his friends would just stop by all the time and I found myself spending a lot of time on all fours. They would sit and watch t.v. and then when one got horny he would just reach over and pull up my tight little skirt and spread my legs, pulling me onto his cock. I was always wet, and with full control of my insides always exactly the right size for whatever man was using me. When I had sucked him dry, and balls aching and gasping he would roll off of me swearing softly, I'd always subtly point him to Sylvan. How grateful they were. How many friends he made.

Occasionally I would spend time in the house as other girls, equally affable to be tumbled at a moment's desire. It got to where men just assumed any woman in the house was available and the women who visited found themselves unexpectedly on their backs. They started to visit more often too.

Alone Sylvan had a different woman every night. Sometimes I was young sometimes older than him. Sometimes I was a woman he'd admired that day, sometimes a magazine cover or celebrity, often something new. He would come to me with images he had saved on his computer, or pictures he'd taken on his phone, and then we'd roleplay through what he wished he could have done.

One night, near the end, he surprised me. He asked me to take the form of Cathy again. Not because he found it attractive - but because one more time he wanted me to know it didn't matter how I looked. He made love to that ugly girl, and I felt like he was making love to me. I don't know what a shapeshifters' true self is - but he made love to it.

Then, in a brief moment away, he did what all humans do. He died. One more car crash. I couldn't give him up.

So I became him.

Sylvan had been kind, unquestioningly kind, and in that kindness he had loaned me out to all his friends. He wanted others to enjoy sex as much as he had. He understood, as I understood, that a life isn't really about choice, it's about surrendering to something greater than yourself. Happiness comes from contentment, and for Sylvan he tried to give his friends that contentment in the form of my pussy.

As Sylvan, I began to move as Sylvan never could have - to make his dreams a reality. Sylvan didn't have the ruthlessness for power, but I did. It was just one more role. In the service of his dreams - In his memory - I started to destroy.

Politicians found videos of themselves in compromising positions. Newscasters were seduced into saying what I wanted. World leaders came into work on days they stayed home sick and made decisions they couldn't unmake. A shapeshifter who wants to change the world has the power to do so.

That's how Sylvan came to power. You know his name of course. Perhaps if I call him President Lancaster you'll know him better, but you also probably know the Sylvan project. You must have wondered how all those conservative asses and politically correct schmucks miraculously agreed on something as edgy as a law requiring women to have sex with any man who asks. Blackmail would be the simple answer. Political maneuvering would be the more complex one.

I understand people, and I understand how choices work. That's why I structured the initiative the way I did. 100 dollar fine to refuse a man sex. It's a small thing really. A choice, an expense. A consequence of your actions. If you hadn't been flirty or dressed like that you wouldn't have to pay. Given no choice, people would have rebelled, but with a pay out people assimilated. The government got used to the extra 2 billion coming in annually from the "Sex tax." Men always report women who refuse them.

Eventually I started to add incentives to the choice. There's a precedent for taking away the freedoms of felons - so I started there, tripling the tax if you were branded a felon. Of course I'd started by making abortion a felony long before - a set of criminals that tend to be pretty young women.

I brought in a campaign talking about how the stupid millennials couldn't afford housing because they were paying so much on the sex tax. Give up your pussy and buy a house, the advice columns spouted. Women who spread their legs were kinder, sweeter, better citizens.

Eventually we instituted the reminder that the fine was for breaking the law. If you're caught jaywalking every day there must be consequences. Saying no 31 times in a month to 31 different men became a misdemeanor - which stacked with other legal issues.

There were outs of course, and women used them. Refusing a man with an STD or who refused to show his "clean card" was okay. Refusing a man when there was a medical emergency and you were an important member of that person's wellbeing. If you were a government worker actively doing government work. If you were responsible for someone else's safety like a plane pilot or taxi driver. Women became nurses, pilots, and government employees like never before. Some focussed on making enough money so they didn't have to worry.

But all this wasn't to force women to be free use - it was to get them to try. Women would go to great lengths to avoid promiscuity, but once they tried it -- once a man pushed himself inside her in an alleyway as other people passed and smiled -- once the initial horror had passed and the reality of pleasure and enjoyment was felt -- most women chose to stop paying the tax except against the most truly repugnant men.

As time passed, the brief habit of wearing sweatpants and baggy sweaters passed as well, and women began to wear clothes that were practical for a quickie. Skirts that could easily be pulled up without too much hassle. Panties that unsnapped or no panties at all. As there was more sex fewer people who really didn't want to were asked - and the tax became a mere nuisance for those who chose to keep their legs closed.

It only took fifty years. I chose to let Sylvan - my beloved - die again, "peacefully in his sleep," and went out as a young attractive woman again, legs open for any man's pleasure. Every time a man slips inside me on public transit, or I look over to see a woman on her back on a cafe table I smile thinking of him. That kind young man would have loved the world I made with his face. Now every man gets the gift I gave to Sylvan.