Editor's note: this story contains scenes of incest or incest content.
*****
It was the same, but different. Nevyn marveled at Aubrey's memory. It had taken him all afternoon, but he had found what had eluded him for so long. The reason he could not possess Derek. It was so similar to how his abnormality had come to be, yet the result had been completely different.
The similarity forced Nevyn to recall what had happened to him as a child. He thought he might have been 11 or 12, it was so long ago and he had stopped counting the years. But now the details seemed painfully relevant. He had been playing in the fields with his brother and they had not heeded their mother's cry to come inside. Before they knew it, the sky had darkened around them. As the wind had picked up, they turned their feet towards home, but too late as lightning split the air, striking Nevyn where he stood.
He remembered vaguely the fleeting sensation of pain, but also a profound weightlessness, as if gravity no longer held sway on his body. His brother rushed to his side and took in Nevyn's charred visage. He put a hand on Nevyn's arm, and from where the point of contact was made, Nevyn's soul forged a bridge into his brother's body, leeching on to the soul inside. This had resulted in a massive shudder that shook his new host from head to toe.
Nevyn resumed consciousness just in time to and see his physical body evaporate in a shower of light before his eyes. He assumed he was dead and now a ghost made to wonder the earth. But as he looked down on himself, he did not feel ethereal in any way, which is how he believed a spirit or ghost would manifest. Then he noticed the clothes he was wearing and understanding started to set in. They were his brother's clothes. He was his brother.
He did not understand what was happening to him or why the body he now occupied was not his own. He was an intelligent child and intuited that it must be because of the lightning strike or his own physiology, or perhaps a mixture of the two. Whatever it was, his soul, sensing the end was near, had been able to escape to a new body when his brother had touched him. Now worried about the fate of his brother, he ran, panicked and scared, to his parents. Even though the voice that came out was his and not his brother's, his explanation of events seemed impossible and he was told to stop telling lies. In his desperation, he reached out and touched his father and again, his soul transferred from one body to the next.
A moment later to his mother's astonishment, Nevyn's voice started shouting in his father's body, trying even harder to convince his mother he was telling the truth. She had eventually calmed him and told him to sleep. Moments later, when his brother seemed to come to himself, his mother sent him to fetch a local priest in order to perform an exorcism, convinced that there were dark forces at work.
Nevyn awoke to a priest chanting over him and believed any explanation at this point would be futile, so he touched the priest and left in his knew disguise. His parents would go on to mourn a son whose body they could not find, and Nevyn would begin a hidden existence of moving from one body to the next. That had been over 200 years ago.
In an attempt to feel normal, he had first inhabited bodies that would have been his body's age year after year. He learned to hone the curse that had befallen him. Learned he could reshape a person's thoughts and ideals the longer he stayed in someone. He learned he could edit their memories making them forget anything was amiss after he had moved on. And perhaps most importantly, he learned how to copy a host's personality, the way they talked, moved, reacted to any given situation.
Nevyn went many years hiding this way. He feared being discovered, but after 13 years, when his real body would have been 24, he fell in love. He had possessed a man who was a newlywed and became smitten with his bride as much as his host had been. Nevyn drank in the love that the woman poured out for the man she believed was still her husband. Nevyn stayed in the guise of the young man for many months, until the day came where finally he confessed his true identity, thinking naively that it was him that she loved. It was not.
Again Nevyn felt the rejection that he had felt at the beginning of his imposed nomadic lifestyle. He abandoned the idea of love and put all his energy into a pursuit of power. He possessed government officials, kings, and presidents. He achieved what history books would record as both amazing triumphs and colossal failures. For a time, this was enough. He was like a kid with all the toys in the world. At the end of each day though, he felt the same isolation that had plagued him for decades.
Eventually Nevyn embraced what he felt was the futility of it all and started only seeking that which would give him pleasure. He found his favorite thing to do was possess people and seduce those around him, and this quickly became all that he cared about. For decades, he moved from body to body, town to town, city to city, caring only about how many orgasms he could have in one day.
This had gone on for the last few decades and he had built up a wall of emotional detachment that allowed no one in. It was perhaps for this reason that he had reacted so poorly when he had first met Derek, the one person whose body it seemed he could not inhabit. Nevyn reflected at his reactions towards this fact. He realized maybe he had been needlessly angry and petulant. He only desired control and release and when it had been hindered by Derek's presence, he had proceeded to take out his frustrations on Derek and those around him. But it had not been Derek's fault. It appeared that, in a way, he and Derek might be the same. He had initially thought this, but had dismissed it as Derek seemed to be incapable of hopping someone's body himself.
He let Aubrey's memory run through his mind again. The scene had been eerily similar to his own experience. Aubrey and her brother had also been around 11 or 12. They had been far away from home, exploring somewhere they were not supposed to be. They had gotten distracted and not noticed the rapidly approaching storm until it was upon them.
Nevyn saw in Aubrey's mind the flash of light and her brother thrown to the ground. She cried out and ran to him. As she approached, she saw his clothes were singed and he was very still. She touched his arm in the same way Nevyn's brother had. And through the hand that rested upon Derek, she felt something try to pass through the physical connection, and her body begin to shake. But then, as quickly as it began, the feeling receded, and Derek sat up with a gasp. He was stunned, shaky, and oblivious to what had just happened, but he was alive. In fear of their parent's wrath for where they had been, they never told them or anyone else about that day.
