The Thieves of Passion

This is definitely a Lovecraft pastiche with a modern day setting. This is a bit light on graphic sex but a bit heavy on horror. There's a bit of body horror and some weird situations, especially at the end. All characters are over 18.

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My tale begins four weeks ago when I felt compelled to search through the creaking shelves on a rare bookshop I had not known existed in Arkham's recently gentrified downtown area. It's shelves were full of countless ancient tomes, mostly molding poetry collections and lengthy treatises on long-forgotten pseudosciences.

It must be said: This was not a shop that mysteriously disappears after some fool receives a cursed gift from it. The shop, quite coincidentally, burned down two days after I visited, the owner likely deciding to retire to warmer climes with the benefit of a fat insurance check. I cannot blame her: Had I similarly moved away from this town, I would have spared myself the horror that store caused me and my associates.

On one of the shelves in a dark corner I found a rare tome I had heard of in my reading. Pushing aside a late Dee-edition Necronomicon, I held it in my hands: The Exegernomicon, or Book of Enlightenment, or so I thought. Perhaps 'Book of Cursed Arousal' would have been more apt, but my ancient Greek was sorely lacking. I was a graduate student at Arkham focusing on electrical engineering, but the student body had heard many strange stories of rare books to be found in that place.

I paid for the book with two twenty-dollar bills from my wallet and returned to my lodgings, an ancient and weathered Victorian house that had been converted so as to allow three graduate students including myself, to inhabit the top floor while the owners, a professor and her electrician husband, inhabited the main floor. I giggled a bit: even if this was merely some cheap mockery it would be an amazing object to decorate my abode, and if it was truly one of the rare tomes said to haunt Arkham's literary scene it promised a transcendent experience.

I placed the book on my desk in my small room and joined Johnny for a few rounds of Call Of Duty, the tome forgotten for a time. This was joined by a few beers, as is our custom, and nothing more occurred that evening.

The next day I found myself with a surfeit of free time did find myself pouring into the book. It teased of strange rituals and magic to appease the 'Eater of Lusts' and I found myself wondering if I'd summon some sort of succubi if I continued my exploration of the pages of cramped writing and occult equations. I found nothing so brazen, however, until late in the day when I was studying a page of hand-drawn diagrams and a freak accident caused my blood to be shed onto the book: A paper-cut followed by a drop of blood that seemed to be sucked into the ancient work as if it were a black hole. The book levitated! It flew from my hands, spinning around, before settling, closed and upright, onto my desk. It no longer was a thing of pale leather and faded red detailing guarding dry, brittle pages, but appeared to be made of some pale stone, masterfully carved.

Holding my injured hand, though it no longer bled, I allowed a cry of panic to escape my lips, but then passed out.

When I awoke I found myself curiously changed: I had no genitals! As most do, I sought to relieve myself after waking from a slumber, and was amazed to find I was in possession no longer of the defining masculine feature one would expect. I was smooth from anus to belly-button save for a light graze of hair and a tiny orifice, merely a dot. Nothing akin to a woman's elegant blossom, but merely a hole which released urine as one would expect. This was quite curious and obviously related to the cursed book which stood on my desk to mock me. I grabbed at the tome, seeking to open it, but it seems unwilling to even move from it's place on my desk. I perused the internet, researching throughout the morning.

Clothed to cover my shame, I crept down to the kitchen for a brief repast at noon. I found Dr. Weis and her husband Ted there, finishing a brief lunch as well. They seemed surprised as if I interrupted them, but deferred when I asked if anything was wrong. Fortified with a sandwich, I returned to my room and commenced a second avenue of research: Was I able to be aroused, and if so what would occur?

I found that I was still quite enthralled by young women as I had been before, and felt a curious stirring I'd have assumed was an erection had I the required organ. It was pure frustration: My ardor rose and I needed some release, but had nothing with which to achieve such. Touching my smooth unbroken crotch was like touching a piece of warm meat, nothing more.

I continued my research: A blog discussed the Exegernomicon as a spell book containing magic that could be used to inspire lusts in others or to aid fertility and the like, not this cursed affliction! It had been spotted all over the world, with even a grainy picture of the tome next to a massive fertility idol in Japan.

Refusing to leave my quarters I went to bed early, hoping this strange occurrence evaporate as if merely a dream.

It was not so: The next day I woke to a similarly smooth crotch, and grew concerned that my body hair had lessened. The book stood on my desk as if judging me. I cannot say if it was merely my imagination or if it had moved slightly, as if to get a better view of my sleeping form. It remained impassive pale stone as I remained unbroken flesh.

After breakfast I was surprised when Roger Smith asked to talk to me. A student of German literature, we rarely talked, but bore no ill will to each other.

"James, I know this is weird, but...."

He pulled down his pants quickly, as one would pull off a band-aid to lessen the pain. Like me, his crotch was smooth and unbroken. He had woken this morning so afflicted, thus I had spent perhaps twenty-four hours more as this sexless thing than him, but we both knew in our hearts that this was no mortal illness or syndrome. Was it somehow spreading? Would the entire world be doomed to sexless agony?

I began to tell him the tale of the Exegernomicon when Johnny banged on my door, demanding entry. He repeated the display as well: We were three former men, now genderless! It had spread to the entire floor of the house in which we lived. We confirmed details: Roger had had a lady friend over and everything had proceeded normally, although she did note he was a bit quicker than normal. He had gone to sleep, and awakened as he was now. Johnny had attended a party but been unsuccessful in his quest for companionship. His return had been late, and he had been quite normal before seeking rest for the night.

Our first task, we agreed, was to see whom else was transformed. Dr. Weis and her husband Ted were the immediate concern if perhaps the effect was radiating from the black stone tome that sat on my desk as if proud of its works.

We shuffled down to the kitchen solemnly, unsure what to expect. Ted was out working, but Dr. Weis had uncharacteristically opened a bottle of wine and sat at the table.

"Boys!" she said with a wine-cheered lilt to her usually flat voice, "Come have a drink! Your day can't be as weird as mine."

We sat and, as custom demanded, joined her in a drink, then another. We prodded her and plied her with more wine, followed by shots from a bottle labeled "XXX Moonshine" Roger had stashed in his room, before she broke her silence.

"You see boys, it's just that me and Ted have always had a great sex life. And yesterday nothing worked. And today it's like I don't even have a puss."

Dr. Weis, a brilliant professor of anthropology, was quite inebriated. I tried to steer the conversation, "Do you mean that in a metaphorical sense, or..."

Readers, I am quite surprised at what I saw next, for I had never suspected the older Dr. Weis to stand and push down her yoga pants. I had not even fantasized about such a thing, and was by now unsurprised to see that she had joined us in our shared lack of genitalia.

She continued drinking, but we elicited from her a confirmation that her husband had been similarly afflicted. The entire house, it appears, was without any ability to fornicate at the moment. We helped the drunken doctor to bed after repairing her state of undress, and sat around the table.

We were not without resources: Three graduate students with access to the libraries and laboratories of a fine institution like Arkham. And of course Dr. Jane Weis, a professor in high esteem, and her husband. We must be able to find a solution. We had some time: it was summer break, so few classes and students to distract us.

We spent the next few days researching and experimenting. We began more thorough documentation of our status, as we noticed additional changes: We all became more pale, which was most noticeable on Roger's dark complexion. Our hair thinned, as did the visible musculature on our limbs. Our fingers grew long and nimble, with thick horn-like claws for nails. Even our heights changed, as we all seemed to be growing towards some single unifying standard. Dr. Weis had been gifted with generous breasts, but they dwindled to little more than bumps on her chest.

By the end of the week we looked like some sort of simple dolls or mannequins, quite unable to pass for specimens of humanity under any sort of inspection. Our skin was pale and we were featureless without birthmarks, tattoos, or other distinguishing features. We appeared as identical as if produced on an assembly line, devoid of identifying features. Curiously we had no trouble distinguishing each other.

Johnny proposed and executed a cunning experiment: In person we had no issues distinguishing one another despite our rapidly converging appearances. Yet photos were a different story: We could identify a cohort by photo perhaps one time in five, but that relied on recognizing a trace of scraggly hair or the dwindling swells of Dr. Weis' chest. As those differences were lost, so was our ability to distinguish each other if we were not actually present.

We found our habits changing as well: Clothes were meaningless between our band of altered individuals. As our likeness grew garments felt subtly wrong when among our kind. We found solace in sitting and talking in the evenings as we discussed our changes and research. We were all oddly numb to both our situation and the entirety of the world. Food was merely fuel to keep us moving with little taste or smell, and we drew no joy from anything it seems. The others agreed that we continued our expected triggers for arousal, but merely felt uncomfortably tense and unable to act upon the animal urges. Once triggered, we were forced to simply wait for he passion to fade.

It was not all bad, I must admit. We saw old wounds recover, and each of us was blessed with a set of perfect if somewhat oddly rounded teeth in their mouth. Ted had an old leg injury, a souvenir of a college football career, but that had been healed by his transformation, decades after he'd lost hope of seeing his slight limp disappear. More recent wounds healed unnatural fast as well. Scratches and cuts healed in mere seconds and we'd had to discourage Johnny from testing a theory by chopping off his own pinky. We looked to all like undercooked cookie-dough given human form, but we were healthy by most standards.

We researched in the libraries and other facilities, mostly by night. Despite the summer warmth we wore long coats, hats, and other garments despite our new-found hatred of the irritating cloth against our pale skins. We saw no sign that the affliction had reached to our neighbors, a fact of which we were glad.

On the seventh evening since I'd opened the cursed book, the dreams began. I am not one accustomed to vivid dreams and they normally fall away in the light of day like sand castles being consumed by the tide, but now the dreams came to me and were deeply erotic. They were sex dreams in a multitude of combinations, and I found our band were all having them. We became fond of sharing them as we ate our simple breakfasts and prepared for the day's efforts to explore our strange circumstances.

The dreams came nightly and covered the entire spectrum of human sexuality: Around that table we recounted lurid tales of sex in countless variations. Straight, gay, couples up to an orgy measured in the dozens. Sometimes the dreamer was a man, sometimes a woman. I remember one notable tale where I was an elderly woman, perhaps two decades older than Dr. Weis' mature fifty, and was pursued and pleasured by a young man a third her age. The dreams were exquisitely detailed: I felt the weight of the old woman's pendulous breasts on her -my- chest. I felt the hot tongue of her twenty-something lover dart over her body before set tingly in the moist, hairy orifice between her legs. I felt the feeling of impeding arthritis forgotten for a brief time in a haze of pleasure. Roger recounted his night as a gay man, pleasuring three other men with great gusto, while Ted sobbed as he shared the story of a young girl being raped by her uncle.

We found ourselves becoming constantly aroused. Sharing the dreams seemed to help a bit, and without that we could not function, but we all felt a constant stirring of passion from our desolate and unresponsive loins.

Days later I found myself walking at night to clear my head. This would be a minor detail in this strange tale, but I was in an unfamiliar street and heard a sound of noisy love-making coming from a nearby window. Stealthily, I crept closer, burdened by some impulse. Revealed by an open window I saw two students noisily satisfying their lustful needs: A blonde woman, her breasts heavy and full as they swung beneath her, while a muscular Asian man, well-endowed and energetic, pounded her from behind. I was captivated, despite dreaming such scenes for nearly a week. I hunched over as I watched, drooling a bit as some strange new instinct forced me to approach the couple as they approached their climax. I could feel her orgasm approaching and began to breath heavily in time with her. It came, and I felt a curious feeling in my stomach/ The feeling was a sort of fullness, similar to when one overindulges at a feast. The feeling redoubled as the man climaxed with cry. They turned and kissed as I slunk back, my stomach in pain.

I let myself in to the Weis house via the back door, which we had taken to using to prevent our strange predicament being observed. I shrugged off the long coat I wore, letting it fall to the floor along with the hat and other garments. I had to tell someone of this night.

I found Roger in the kitchen, idly playing a game on a tablet.

"Roger, we must talk. The most amazing thing happened to me tonight..." I put my hand on his arm, pale flesh like a plucked turkey touching his own smooth flesh.

That is when I felt the pain in my gut change and move, It spread through my body like I was on fire. It spread to my hand, and I could feel the odd energy spread to roger. My body melted, changed. I was no longer the blank slate our group had become, but the Asian man I'd seen so vigorously plunging into the attractive blonde earlier! I felt my manhood return, extending from my crotch as if a mighty tree growing from the earth.

Roger was changing as well: As it could only be, his body shrunk a bit in height, and his butt and chest swelled as a mane of blonde hair sprouted from her head. She gasped as I saw a patch of blond hair appear in her crotch which rippled and folded as her vulva formed. Before me was the duplicate of the blonde I'd seen earlier, naked and holding on to her heavy breasts.

We saw no other option than calling a house meeting: It felt so odd having a voice that was not identical to my housemates. Mine was deep with a slight accent, while Roger's was delightfully feminine, something I'd not heard in this house in days.

We had to explain this new wrinkle to our predicament: Johnny and Ted, especially, had become wary of what unaltered humans would think of our bland identicalness. They were worried some students had broken in for some reason, but we calmed their fears. We even dressed for the first time inside the house in days: Roger covered herself with a sweater that hid her prominent features while I struggled to fit in one of my own old T-Shirts.

As a group we pondered this new change: We kept returning to the twin questions of "Would it last?" and "Could the others do it?"

No answers came: We simply didn't know. What we did realize is that while Roger and I had been released from the torment of near-constant unresolvable arousal, we now felt drawn to each other's nubile forms. It should not be surprising, I assume, but we both felt a sense of attraction that matched the people of whom we were simulacrums.

We were unwilling to experiment, however, and returned to bed. We chose our own bedrooms, the doors locked. I found myself aroused and, able to actually satisfy my need, did so vigorously three times before passing into sleep. I did not dream that night, although I woke thinking about my hard shaft entering Roger's hungry snatch.

Breakfast was odd: Johnny, Ted, and Jane seemed wary and distrustful. Perhaps it was jealously, but my recent transformation had caused a rift between the 'blank' inhabitants of the house and those gifted with young, sexy bodies. We settled on a new plan: Tonight I would drive Johnny's old minivan to a nearby hotel known as the place for affairs and casual hookups to meet for intimate liaisons. Johnny, Ted, and Jane would see if they felt the same yearning and if they could somehow copy others as I had. We weren't free of trouble, as I had no license or ID for the unknown student whose form I'd copied, but at least I looked human if pulled over.

As the meeting broke I noticed something: The Exegernomicon, still a block of carved stone, had moved from its place in my bedroom to lurk under a shelf in the kitchen next to the coffee maker. It was a curious change, but we accepted Ted's laughing suggestion that the thing wanted to be part of our frequent discussions.

That afternoon Roger came to my room dressed in nothing but a towel, her intent obvious. We made idle conversation, reveling in how different it was to have these stolen forms after the days of torment as the mannequin-things we had become. My arousal was obvious as well: Despite our previous relationship as colleagues, we both needed each other's touch, and it was unsurprising when I found myself thrusting my oh-so-sensitive penis into her presented moist orifice. We came nearly simultaneously and both froze for a moment, expecting to melt back to our featureless inhuman forms, but we seemed unchanged.

We executed our plan just after darkness fell: Roger remained at home looking at women's clothes online to drape his new form. I drove the minivan full of my swaddled associates to the hotel, stopping when one touched my shoulder and announced, "Wait, I feel something."

I think it was Ted, but I admit it was hard to tell now that I had returned to something akin to normalcy. I'm not sure how my faculty advisor would handle the sudden revelation that I was now an athletic Asian with a generous cock, but the last part was outside his purview anyway.

Ted began feeling along the side of the minivan, urging me closer. I pulled in to a spot near a tree that would provide cover, and suggested the three carefully exit the van to get closer to their target.

They did so and soon after I felt a turmoil in my guts. The fire that had made me human again returned, and I found myself a pale bald thing as my cohorts returned. Ted was pleased, as was Jane, but Johnny had been unable to find a suitable intimate moment upon which to draw from.

"I think it was Mrs. Bergman from HR and that guy that restocks the vending machines" Ted said with a smile. "I felt it, like you said. I can feel their passion within me."