Author's Note:
This Shudder one shot takes place between Shudder: The College Years and The Last Shapeshifter. I have tried to write all but the epilogue in a way that if you haven't read any of the Shudder sage before, you'll be able to follow along. If you'd like to start at the beginning though, start with Shudder. Thanks for reading!
It was Richard Johnson's birthday, and he was a man on a mission. He was going to pick up a beautiful woman in a hotel bar using only his appearance and charm. He hadn't needed to rely on those attributes in a very long time, but still managed to have a different woman in his bed every night. That was one of the perks to being married to a bodyhopper.
For the ten years that she'd been a bodyhopper, Nancy Johnson loved bringing home women that would entice her husband to fuck her senseless. If a pretty cashier caught his eye, or the cute teller at the bank, or a seductive college cheerleader, or one of the many local milfs, Nancy would make sure each of their bodies spent some very intimate time with her man. She'd even gone on a few trips to bring in some celebrities that he'd crushed on forever.
Nancy became bodyhopper during an experiment run by her twin children, Derek and Aubrey. They'd used an electrical charge to spark a gene inside of her. They knew it was there, because it ran in their family. Once activated, she gained the ability to pass her soul from one body to the next. In doing so, she gained access to that person's mind and could pass for them with the greatest of ease. She had used it to seduce her husband, and eventually persuaded him to leave her aging body behind.
The couple were still very much in love, and when Nancy wasn't fucking her husband's brains out in a body typically younger than her previous one, they were enjoying hobbies and conversations that were akin to people who had been together for many years. They didn't go out on many dates though since Nancy was usually in the body of a woman in her 20's that could have been Richard's granddaughter. It was here that the trouble started.
A week ago Nancy had gently teased her husband while in the guise of a cute, blonde 21 year old. She told him he'd never be able to pick up someone like her in real life because of the age gap. She thought it would turn him on. One of his favorite things was when she brought home a young woman and began calling him 'Daddy.' Perhaps because his 55th birthday was a week away, or the fact that they could no longer grow old together, he took it poorly.
"Age is just a number," he snapped back. "I could go into a bar, any bar, and have a woman on my arm by the end of the night."
Nancy had then made the catastrophic mistake of laughing at this remark. The idea of her husband with his wrinkles and gray hair going to a club and using his cheesy lines on a woman to take her back home was honestly absurd to her.
Richard's pride took a hit, and he went to sleep on the couch that night, and no amount of cajoling or seduction could get him to return. This was also a blow to Nancy, because a bodyhopper continually craved sex. It seemed to be part of the gene. In instances like these, she'd had to seek other options. In that case, she'd taken the blonde home and fucked her boyfriend.
Nancy fucked a lot of boyfriends and husbands when she inevitably returned a host body. Richard knew this of these indiscretions, but also knew that as horny as he often was, his wife had an itch that he couldn't always scratch, especially as he got older. He'd never resented her for it, because he'd been around a few bodyhoppers the last decade. Derek was one, and like Nancy, no longer had a body of his own. Aubrey was too, but had to keep her body hooked up to life support if she ever hopped someone.
Then there was the third bodyhopper they all knew. The one who had passed the gene on to so many people over the last few centuries. His name was Nevyn, and he'd almost ruined all of their lives.
Nevyn had possessed Nancy for a few months long ago, living with the Johnsons and teasing Derek relentlessly. But after Nevyn lost his bodyhopping power and became stuck in Derek's body, he'd briefly aligned himself with the Johnsons in the pursuit of getting Derek his body back. They'd studied the gene and made several breakthroughs, and somewhere during this process, Nevyn felt sidelined, and eventually betrayed. He used what he knew to get his powers back by himself, which led to a close friend of the Johnsons named Bekka to lose her life, although the twins often spoke of her like she was still alive.
Nevyn's actions spurred the twins along two different paths that ran parallel to each other. Aubrey continued unlocking the secrets of the bodyhopping gene to try and find a way to track it, while Derek pursued Nevyn by thinking like him, and looking for his telltale signatures in society.
A month ago, Derek had success, and had intercepted Nevyn. In a phone call, Derek had given his parents the good news that it was finally over.
"Nevyn's dead. He knew I was chasing him and he ran into traffic. A second later he was hit by a bus. After all this time, that's how it ends. It's so strange. We finally all have our lives back."
The Johnsons had all moved on as best they could, with Aubrey stating she was going back to college to get her doctorate, and Derek possibly moving back home.
But tonight, none of this was on Richard's mind. Because tonight he was celebrating his birthday. Because of Nancy's insensitive remarks, husband and wife made a wager. If he could pick up a woman at a local hotel bar and get her to go upstairs to a room for sex, she'd join them for a threesome.
"But what if she doesn't want a threesome?" Richard had asked.
"You mean if I can't convince her with my very impressive feminine wiles?" his wife had responded with a laugh. "Then I guess I'll be doing some very fast hopping. Wouldn't be the first time."
This is why Richard now found himself up past his bedtime at a crowded hotel bar where the music was too loud. He'd much rather be at home, waiting to see who his wife was bringing him that night. But his pride was on the line.
Even though he'd been out of the dating game for a long time, he felt confident he'd be able to land a hottie and take her up to the hotel room they'd booked. He scanned the sea of people. It seemed full of possibilities. He locked eyes with a pretty raven haired woman behind the bar as she mixed a drink. She winked at him. Nancy had chosen this bartender as her vantage point to watch the proceeding.
She totally wanted him to win, which is why she pointed towards a small circular table where a couple of young women sat, chatting and giggling away. After observing them for a few seconds, he shot an upturned eyebrow back at Nancy. He knew these women were at least 21 years of age, but probably not a day older. They still had their whole lives ahead of them. He was just the man that could teach them a thing or two. Richard strode over confidently, believing that this would be over quickly, he'd be fucking one or both of them within the hour, and could go to sleep.
He assessed them as he got closer. The girl to his left was a curly haired brunette with a dazzling smile. She wore a short black dress, but didn't have a lot going on in the chest department. That was okay. He was always partial to brunettes. They reminded him of his wife and his daughter Aubrey, although they had both been stacked.
To her right was a shoulder length blonde who was offering a generous amount of cleavage to all passersby in a low red blouse with lipstick that matched. His eyes lingered on her exposed skin, and it distracted him so much that he forgot to say anything upon his arrival.
"Can we...help you with something old man?" the blonde said with a pitying smirk.
"He looks lost," the brunette giggled. "It seems like he's trying to find directions to your tits."
"Don't even!" the blonde squealed, and whacked the brunette on the shoulder playfully. "I'm sure this grandpa is harmless."
"Or he's a dirty old man," the brunette clapped back. "He's gotta be, right? I mean he came over to our table. To what? Hit on us?" She crossed her legs and looked up at him as if she'd caught him doing something scandalous. "Do you even know how old we are, mister?"
"Um, uh, 21?" Richard replied as he tried to recover from their verbal assault.
"I am," the blonde said, "But Kinzie here is only 19."
"How did you..." Richard started to ask.
But the girl identified as Kinzie interjected. "Fake ID grandpa. What? They didn't have those back in your day?"
"I don't think they had that kind of technology back then," the blonde added.
"Just had the wheel and fire, right gramps?"
"I am not that old!" Richard fumed.
"Yeah? How old are you then?" Kinzie asked with a raised eyebrow as she haughtily picked up her drink to take a sip.
"Old enough to...uh...teach you a few things," Richard said as he tried to turn this interaction around.
This elicited a cringe response on both their faces that ended when they looked at each other and burst into a giggle fit.
The blonde's eyes drifted down to Richard's crotch, then back up to meet his. "Can you even get it up? I hear that can be a real problem for senior citizens."
"I'm sure he can, Makayla, with the help of a pill!"
The giggle fit resumed in earnest, and Richard found himself wanting to retreat, from this table, from the premises from civilization. This had been a horrible idea.
Suddenly the bartender was at his side carrying a tray that had three drinks in martini glasses on it. "Here's your drink sir, and how nice of you to buy a round for these two lovely ladies."
"Ugh," Kinzie said with an eye roll. "Well, a free drink's a free drink.
She reached for it, but Makayla hesitated and asked the bartender, "He didn't pay you to slip something into it, did he?"
The bartender's pretty face faltered as if she'd been slapped. But then she set her jaw, and said tightly, "I can assure you that he'd never have to do anything of the sort. Not when he has me."
As Kinzie's fingers curled around the thin stem of a glass, the bartender's fingers brushed against her for the briefest of moments in a way that so often happens while passing something from one person to the next. A fleeting second of contact that feels both innocuous and yet strangely intimate. It is usually a moment that is here, then gone, but this time, it left a lingering effect in the form of a shudder that began in Kinzie's hand.
"Excuse me?" Makayla asked loudly in response to what the bartender had just said. But she got no response, because the bartender's gaze had gone slack.
"Um, Makayla, I think maybe I've had too much to drink," Kinzie said as she looked at the tremor rapidly spreading up her arm.
Makayla didn't look at her friend but continued to study the bartender. It was like she was asleep, but her eyes were open. She was just standing as still as a statue holding the tray. "You've only had one Kinzie. I swear, you're such a lightweight. You really should be building up more of a tolerance for the parties at college."
"No, really, I...I think I want to go..." but the rest of what she might have said was lost as her mind was no longer her own.
"Just kidding!" Kinzie suddenly squealed. "I feel fine! In fact, I think we should go to this handsome guy's room. You got a room, don't ya mister?"
Makayla's jaw dropped as she turned her head away from the bartender towards her friend. "Are you fucking kidding me girl? You've got to be insane if you think that I'm going anywhere with grandpa here just cause he got us a free-"
But she stopped mid sentence as her friend grabbed her wrist, and it too began to shudder.
"What the hell? Why's my arm fucking doing that? Am I having a stroke or some-"
But then Makayla went quiet for a second before looking up at the bartender and taking the drink she'd previously insinuated was spiked. "Thank you, ma'am. Now go back and attend to your duties."
