My eyes dilate. Sweat streams down my cheeks. I swallow dryly. I can discern no answers about what this future will hold.

“I’ll do it” I say, and lick my cracked lips as I sink to my knees.

The dark figure crouches with me in the alleyway. The needle draws a clear effervescent liquid from a vial, and smoothly sinks into the flesh of my exposed thigh. My skin parts at the gentle touch of the needle, and my blood beads around the sterile spear’s shaft.

“How does it feel to be penetrated?” the figure in front of me asks, while pushing down the plunger. I bite my lip, and a soft moan of pleasure/fear escapes my mouth’s imperfect seal.

“It’s the only thing I’ve ever wanted”, I manage to gasp as the fizzing liquid clutches the fat and muscle of my leg, and crawls through my crotch and up my belly. The tissue twists, separates into individual cells, and they rejoin in new configurations. I’m a butterfly pulling loose the tacks that pin my body to my display case.

“Your desire is so much greater than you can imagine,” purrs the figure as they caress my face. The blood in my chest begins to boil and I suck air through my teeth faster and faster as the serum reaches my heart. It bursts through me with each heartbeat, and cascades through my chest cavity along kaleidoscopic trajectories.

“It burns so much, and I have no idea how to put it out…” I whisper through clenched teeth. I feel every grain of the alley’s rough concrete, and I hear each cell keening as they drown together in a hormonal holocaust.

“You must practice the tender art of surrender if you plan to make it into the future,” instructs the figure as their open palm strikes my face. The warm sting of pain dances across the thin border of arousal. A wave of buttery heat radiates from my reddening cheek and throughout my shapeshifting body.

“I’ll let go” I say, and then I do.