"Coldly calculated to pander to your shrieking demographic!"
- Twilight Rifftrax

I glared at myself in the mirror.

Dark hair, dark eyes, fatigued eyes unrelieved with a my morning dose of caffeine.

"Only for you would I do this," I muttered into the phone.

I waited for my roommates. fulsome praise. Her fulsome, flu-ridden praise."

"Yes, your hero, I get it. Bye.”

There wasn’t anyone in the shopping center, as I crossed the parking lot in the pale light of dawn. Which was why I hadn’t been able to find coffee. I cursed my roommate’s inadequate vaccine regimen as I fumbled with the keys, my breath steaming in the cold morning air.

Maybe she was an anti-vaxxer and just didn’t want to admit it. And I would suffer the consequences.

The inside of the store was oddly warm, so I shucked my coat and left it by the door, which I locked behind me. The lights flickered fitfully when I hit the switch.

I flicked on my flashlight, shone it around the dusty store. Katy had been supposed to give the abandoned video joint a once over before reporting back to her boss at the real estate agency. The sudden onset of the flue left her bedridden and unable to fulfill her duties, and given her boss’s manpower - or in this case womanpower - shortage, the task was postponed indefinitely until I was dragooned into it, with the damnable combination of a trembling lip and moistened eyes.

And there went my Saturday morning.

The area under the counter was clear. Not a mouse to be seen. The safe had been left behind, oddly enough, maybe because it was bolted to the floor. Sadly, they hadn’t left anything to compensate me for my generosity.

I’d get to the back room and office and - eurgh - the bathroom later. There was nothing in the lower cupboards. One of them seemed dark, but that was probably the lighting.

Now, as for the upper cupboards, I don't suppose I'd be lucky enough to have the previous owners leave a convenient step-stool or ladder lying around.

As I turned, my motion was halted. Chagrined, I looked down to see what had snagged my foot. Instead of a nail or something normal like that, there was this strange, black...thing wrapped around my foot.

What.

I didn’t even get a good look at it before it pulled on me, hard. I fell to the floor, and by the time I realized what happened, my foot was in the cupboard. I kicked my way free, and scrambled to my feet.

Correction. Foot.

There was something wrong with my left foot. It was covered to the upper calf in some sort of black substance, with a foot on the small side. It didn’t look like my sneakers or jeans. In fact, it looked like a bare foot, attached to a rather...um healthy-sized calf.

Even as I looked, the goop crept up my leg. The portion it covered felt like it had fallen asleep.

Okay. Okay. Maybe it was some chemical. So I needed to get outside before I blacked out. Maybe I was already hallucinating.

Have you ever tried to hop to safety? It’s not as easy as it sounds. Especially when your weird alien leg tries to throw you off, such as, for instance, throwing you backwards toward the cupboard.

I say something impolite as my arm enters the darkness. Going numb. When I pull it out, it’s flexing on its own, which sends an electric shiver down my spine.

Okay. All I needed to do was ignore it. And not look at it. Focus on crawling out of the store with half my limbs.

Correction. Three of my limbs. I had control of my left hand, and use it to pull myself up, leaning on the wall. This makes things so much easier. I can feel the numbness creeping up my thigh.

My hand suddenly slips, and I land on the floor. I roll away before the tendrils can do more than brush my face, but even that’s enough for me to lose my left eye.

I’m sitting on the floor, chest heaving, when something odd happens.

"Thanks for getting me out," my lips said, with someone else's warm, amused voice.

What was that?

"Just call me your inner goddess," it said.

It could understand me? Wait - it could -

"Yeah, I can read your mind." My lips pouted. "Plump and kissable. Now, isn't that so much better?"

No! Give me my body back!

"Ah ah ah. You didn't say the magic word."

What - okay, please!

"No, I mean a real magic word."

What? What was it you going to do with me?

"Oh sweetie. I've already started. Haven't you noticed? Look down."

While I had been having my little chat, the tar had dripped down my shirt, smoothing it over. What was she -

Oh. The thought hit my brain like a staccato. Boobs.

I struggle to my feet. Foot. Try to plot my next move. My balance is off, and I look down.

The rest of left leg had well, thickened, into something more likely to be found on a porno model, or someone with a lot of people following her on Twitter for things other than her frittata pictures.

I could nearly feel the weight, the presence of it. Briefly, insanely, I wondered how many likes I would get if I posted a picture of it on-

Wait.

My phone.

If I could just -

I took a step.

"Good idea! Let me help!"

And before I could react, she swung my left leg over and bought it down on my phone, which cracked.

"Whoops! My bad! Say, is there something on your leg?"

Of course there was. She was on it.

"No, your other leg."

What?

I looked down; my neck was stiff where it was covered in black muck, until it abruptly unstiffened. Was that her, or me?

The inside of my right leg was covered. Through my shoes, I felt the little drip-drip as it dripped to the floor.

No.

"Yesss."

Was she enjoying this?

My left arm came up.

She had covered most of the left side of my chest, caressed it in her hand, and it bloomed into her hand, luscious curves that didn’t belong on me, that felt wrong.

My left eye flicked to the side -

Oh no.

My right leg was completely covered now, and it lurched towards the cupboard. She was clumsy, Frankenstein steps, like she had never used -

“Nope! Just out of practice!”

I knelt. My left hand grasped the frame of the cupboard. My right pushed against it.

But she outnumbered me, overwhelmed me. My head was thrust into darkness, and something gave my face the barest of caresses, running along my nose, ears, eyes -

I would've held my breath, but my lips weren't mine anymore. They drank in greedily - so greedily - the darkness running over my tongue, down my lips, my throat, past my drumbeat heart -

And there...we...go.

My arms pulled me out. I could still see, but I couldn't move. I couldn't move anything. My right arm wasn't covered, but I couldn't -

"Sorry about that." My body pushed itself to my feet, looked at itself in the glass of the display case. Was my night vision better?

The face in the mirror seemed...wrong. More angular, and my hair wasn't the deeadlock-looking goop I saw. I'm also pretty sure my face wasn't, entirely black, down to the teeth. A steady, black gaze.

My new face, her/ face, reminded me of, of...

Of something.

I shivered.

Internally.

"Don't worry, it wasn't like you were using those memories anyway." My left arm darkened my right. Lower down, the ooze had progressed steadily past my waist, and was creeping up my stomach. Instead of feeling numb, it felt almost electrical.

I couldn't let her win.

"I don't think you're in charge here", she says, her voice going momentarily flat.

My heart beats faster.

"Look, I don't even have to do anything. I can just left it finish all by itself." She spreads her hands wide. "See?"

I can't see,she won't loik down far enough. Is she teasing me? I can only track it by feel, that faint tingle as she envelops my upper chest, molding it to her liking. Not much left of me now. I should never have...something. I should, I should...just relax.

She creeps up past the purge around my waist. Envelops it in black liquorice. But it doesn't matter, really.

A voice, breathy and low. "Shhh. It's okay. Relax. You don't have to fight anymore."

But...there was something important, something I needed to...what was it?

A whisper.

"Come into me."

++Q++

The woman standing in the middle of the abandoned shop seemed to be made largely of hips. It would've drawn any observer's eye, after they noticed she was made of some sort of dark goop that roiled across her form, except for the one spot that appeared to be a T-shirt, swiftly encroached and enveloped by a tide of black.

After which, the Venus stood still for an instant, her ebony lips slightly parted. Then she shuddered with some indefinable emotion as a ripple passed through her form.

"Yesss," she half-murmured, half-breathed. "Mama likes."

Turning, she regarded her recent abode fondly. Kneeling, she placed her feed in the compartment, which appeared to be a perfectly ordinary cupboard. Nonetheless, she began to insert herself into it. While the lower portion of her legs - those thighs and incongruously dainty feet one might scarce believe would support her generous curves - presented no difficulty, she seemed to strain when it came to her hips, with the entryway far too small for her thickened frame, and the compartment divided by a shelf.

"I have got to go on a diet," she said to herself.

After taking a deep breath to steel herself, the strange creature thrust herself, with much gruntings and groanings, into the chamber which spawned her. The process resembled that commonly found in a cartoon, where some item emerges from a container far too small for it, but more slowly and in reverse. At the end of it, the chamber was filled with darkness, and the door slid shut over it.

It was hard to believe that someone with such voluminous hips could squeeze into the tiny space, but it was a lot easier when you didn't have any bones to worry about.

Some time later, a young woman entered the premises.

"Yeah," she said. "Just gone. Left the door open." She bent over, came up holding a piece of Japanese consumer electronics. "And...his phone. It's on the floor, broken...I think something happened to him."

Behind her, the cupboard silently slid open.

ENDFILE

"Fifty Shades of Black"
2015 Eulalie "Nequ" Quentin
CC By-SA-NC
Fan works encouraged.