The maddening crowd under Samuel’s apartment was a twenty-four-hour entertainment network. Couples necking, friends bickering, strangers arguing. It was a vibrant area near a thriving college and the perfect place for a person with Samuel’s talents.
Every morning he would wake up around nine. Yoga, and meditation, not because he liked them but because they prepared his body and mind for his day’s work.
Money, of course, was the first concern of each day, and it was also one of the easiest problems to remedy.
Looking out on the busy street, Samuel picked out the wealthiest-looking individual. Usually a man in a suit. At one time, fashion was important to him, so he knew the cuts that meant bespoke, could spot working sleeve buttons, and knew Italian loafers from American fakes.
He would find someone of means and then sit back in his chair and let go of his body. He would float out in the street, his soul-self invisible and free, and he would find that wealthy man.
Then came the real trick. When he was young, Samuel had listened to the wisdom of his father and his grandfather. He learned that some people could travel without their bodies, either by practice or by natural talent. Among those few, only a fraction could perfect the magic of jumping into another shell. Shell being the rather dismissive word his father used for the human body.
Samuel had been able to do it on his first try. It seemed as natural as breathing to him, to his father’s amazement.
“Your grandfather studied all of his life and was able to jump into another shell exactly twice,” he explained to fourteen-year-old Samuel.
The morning his father took him into town to explain jumping, Samuel did it four times.
He still remembered those first jumps. An old man named Gregory, whose body was nothing but stiff aches and pains. A young dancer named Sara, whose body seemed to be constantly ready to spring and twirl. A baker named Henry, who had thick, powerful limbs and lungs full of cigarette tar. And finally, a child who didn’t even know their own name. A little girl who knew nothing but her mother’s face and the pale blue sky above her pram.
At thirty, Samuel still felt the novelty of jumping into a new shell, how similar it was to kissing someone for the first time. He had become more prepared for the sensation, though, and more adept at the control it necessitated.
Now he could jump into someone who was walking and not even miss a step. And so it was that he became Patrick Albertan, eccentric real estate mogul.
When jumping into someone, that person’s psyche contracted to make room for the invading spirit or soul. Well, usually. Those who were knowledgeable about these things could defend against them, but in that day and age, almost no one was.
The contracted psyche was a mailable orb of information. Walking down High Street, Samuel rummaged through Mr. Albertan’s thoughts. Bank accounts, hidden stashes of liquid assets, what was in his wallet.
Samuel’s goal for every day was a simple $1,000. It so happened that Mr. Albertan had a rather large number of twenties in the handsome billfold in the pocket of his blazer. A little over three hundred dollars. But more impressively, he had an envelope in his briefcase with $5000, which was to fund a rather illicit appointment he had with a lovely woman named Mistress Thorn later that evening.
Samuel had Mr. Alberton turn left and make his way into a bank. As he stood in line for a teller, Samuel saw the various crooked dealings Mr. Alberton had done over the years. He was perhaps not the worst of men, but heartless enough that Samuel wouldn’t feel bad about taking a little extra from him.
With the account number in his head and Mr. Alberton’s wallet in his hand, Samuel withdrew $8000 from a certain rather shady account.
On the counter, he placed that sum in hundreds in the envelope with the five grand and all the money save a twenty from Alberton’s wallet.
He then walked to his apartment. Samuel’s apartment, that is. The building belonged to Samuel, a purchase that was a complicated mix of business acumen and magical verve.
Alberton’s hand dropped the envelope in Samuel’s mailbox. Samuel then walked Alberton’s body down to the bad part of town.
He went into a liquor store and purchased a pint of Jim Beam. He walked down a pier, taking long pulls on the bottle. It burned but in a pleasant way.
When the bottle was 3/4 empty, but before the alcohol hit his body, Samuel let go of the invisible mooring he tied himself to. He floated out of Alberton’s body, leaving the confused and drunk man to fall over onto the splintered wood planks of the dock.
It was security. Not that he had ever even come close to getting caught. Not that most people could even comprehend what he was doing. Still, he set up situations rife with confusion. Having the shells fall and hit their heads or drink or take drugs or just randomly sit them in an emergency room.
Samuel floated home thinking as he often did of the silver string people sometimes imagined tethered those who astrally projected to their bodies.
There was no such line, which made that liminal time of transport between shells a little frightening. But soon enough, he was home and in his body.
As he often did, Samuel rushed to the bathroom, his bladder aching for release. When he did a prolonged jump, he would use a catheter, but he hated putting it in, so he tried his best to keep jumps to only an hour or two.
He had some breakfast, drank a sports drink to keep his energy up, and sat back down in his chair. He had bought a fancy ergonomic thing, with all sorts of support and adjustable angles. Something that would keep his empty body comfortable and stable.
He wheeled the chair forward and leaned against his window frame once more. Again, he scanned the crowd.
Businessmen headed to lunch. College kids milled about. A busker set up his guitar case to hold the change people threw his way.
Then, from the pretty little perfumery across the square, came a vision.
It was her dress that captured his attention first. Low cut, silk, designer, holding her large breasts high without a bra in some feat of architectural legerdemain. Paisley and damask and flowers all gold and royal purple and burgundy flowed around her curvy body.
Her skin was brown, smooth, and perfect. Her hair, flowing curls of dark amber. Her stride spoke volumes about her nature. Confident, sensual, mysterious, seductive. He wanted her immediately.
Samuel, though, was an odd man. Because of his gift, wanting someone was always tied to wanting to be them. He hadn’t slept with someone with his own body for years. He enjoyed it far more in the body of some ridiculously attractive woman or man, going to a club and picking up a stranger for some sordid coupling in a lavish hotel room.
As he watched this woman in silk gaze into the window of a jewelry store, he remembered a month before, jumping into the body of some precious little pixie of a ballerina. He went to a club in a tiny slip of a dress and got picked up by a couple, a muscle-bound man and his over-eager wife.
They fought over him in their big bedroom, rough and greedy, taking turns eating Samuel’s borrowed pussy. Memories of the husband’s fat cock filling up Samuel’s mouth, pussy, ass, every inch of his five-foot-tall twenty-year-old body.
Samuel shook his head, realizing the woman he was watching was almost out of sight. He closed his eyes, sat back in his chair, and let go of his body again.
The flight to her was fast. Sometimes time and space felt different when out of his body. Sometimes it was slow like honey. Sometimes it was like a rush of water.
Before he knew it he was in her, the shock of her body rocking him, making her stumble for a moment. Women were always different, with their high heels and their dresses and their smooth rhythmic gates.
He let himself fall into the sway of her hips. Her breasts were heavy on her chest, changing his center of gravity. The breeze blew her dress, and it slipped smoothly across her legs. Samuel felt the wind brush the woman’s cleavage, flowing through the dress’s thin material. He had to stop walking while being overcome by the sensations.
Looking into a shop window, he saw her reflection. She was even more beautiful up close. He searched her repressed mind and found her name, Leticia. She was from Brazil, but she had lived in the states for a few years. Her thoughts were scattered shards of English in a sea of Portuguese and Spanish.
She had traveled the world, been an artist’s model in Paris, taken a lover in Rome, and worked as a dance instructor in Hong Kong.
Samuel looked around. He saw eyes on his borrowed body from all sides. Men, women, and even children were in awe of Leticia’s beauty. It felt good but uncomfortable. He hurried off, across the square and to his apartment.
The door had a key code. He remembered to pick up the envelope from the mailbox. The cash felt solid and heavy and made him smile.
Walking up the stairs, he realized that Leticia had very recently shaved her legs. The dress felt wonderful against her smooth skin.
She had also shaved or perhaps even waxed between her legs. A Brazilian, staying true to her homeland. He felt her nipples hardening as her legs squeezed together.
He opened his familiar door, though the angle was different, Leticia only 5’5” to his six feet.
Then he was confronted with the strangeness of seeing his own body, his own shell. It was always jarring. He didn’t come face to face with himself very often, but he had a special plan for Leticia.
He walked into his apartment and saw himself sitting in the big grey mesh chair. He looked older than he remembered. More salt than pepper in his hair.
He was medium height, on the softer end of medium build. Mixed heritage, Chinese, German, random European blood. His face was slack, a deeper rest than sleep, something inherently different than dreaming. An unmoving coma, devoid of life, but still breathing.
He closed his eyes and let his hands roam over his stolen body. Her breasts were magnificent, large and soft, and pert.
She was thirty and perfect. So irresistible, he felt her eyes tearing up as he felt her hips and licked her lips.
He put on music, jazz, slow walking bass. He went to the mirror and swayed. Her body was made for dancing. It was locked in her muscle memory.
He twirled, and her dress flew up, and he laughed a soft high laugh. Then the dress came off.
She wore only red panties under it. Samuel quickly removed them as well and then and stepped out of the high heels. Naked, she was a goddess.
Of all the things his power did for him, the pleasure of exploring a beautiful new body was by far the best.
Another strange thing was how familiar things felt in another body. His bed, with its freshly laundered sheets and firm but luxurious mattress, felt somehow far more comfortable and inviting to that curvy soft body. He rolled around and laughed, then hearing his pretty bell-like laugh, he laughed even more. Then his hands found his breasts, and the softness of them made his light voice moan.
He thought about how her perfume would linger on his sheets. The thought made him emotional for some reason. Happy and full of intense longing.
The best part of being a woman was the wetness. The way it became so easy to fuck yourself with your fingers. Leticia’s body was by far one of the wettest Samuel had ever felt. She seemed soaked the minute she touched herself. Her body was primed for sex.
Reaching into her memories, Samuel saw flashes of all sorts of encounters. Men, women, couples. A bullfighter in Spain who left her blissfully sore for a week. A woman in New York whose tongue was so adept she made Leticia come in thirty seconds flat.
He opened her eyes and watched her hips roll in the mirror. Her legs splayed open, her pussy a little slit of coral and pink barely covered by fat golden brown outer lips.
Pleasure rippled through her body and penetrated Samuel’s mind. He gasped, and it came out as her pretty feminine moans.
She squeezed one breast hard while the fingers of her other hand thrust in and out of her wet sex. Her body demanded roughness.
Samuel strained to keep her eyes open, needing to watch her in the mirror.
The cycle of her pleasure was alien to him. She was nearing an orgasm after only a minute of playing. It was coming like a freight train, and Samuel tried to hang on for the ride.
As the electricity exploded in her core, images of her life flooded Samuel’s mind. All those hard cocks pounding into her. All those wet cunts. All of those ropes holding her down and hands spanking her ass and all of those moments, pinned between two people, a toy for their desire.
It took a moment for Samuel to figure out what exactly happened next. It was a first for him.
The explosion of her orgasm rocked him so hard that it had actually shaken him loose from his anchor. It actually expelled him from her body, and for a moment, he hung there in the air above her body, looking down as she writhed and shook and whimpered.
She opened her eyes in that instant, regaining her awareness in the middle of her climax. She was confused and enraptured, and her eyes seemed to almost see Samuel’s ethereal form in the air.
Then, like falling off a cliff, he plunged back into her.
The pleasure was still there, but her fear and confusion had filled her body with even more adrenaline. Her heart was racing. Her vision tunneled. It was only Samuel’s meditation training that let him calm her. He fell into mantra and made her body very still. He found a place of comfort. In a few minutes, his borrowed heart was beating normally.
He stood, dressed, and looked into the mirror one more time. She was truly one of the most beautiful people he had ever seen.
He turned to his body, walking over to it. He brushed his own face, almost startled at how warm he felt. The vacancy of his own face made him think the flesh would be cold, but it was alive, still thriving.
He leaned down and kissed his own forehead. Anything more would be against his own strange set of rules, but he needed that. He needed some connection.
Then he walked downstairs and down the street and to the park. He sat on a bench near a fountain and relaxed. He closed her eyes, focused on her breathing, and let her body calm and almost sleep, and then he very gently left her body.
Not wanting to end things with her quite yet, he jumped into an older woman walking her dog nearby. He watched as Leticia continued to rest for a moment and then awoke, not with a start, but with a yawn and a stretch.
She looked around, a little confused but not afraid. She looked up at the sky and checked her phone for the time, then she took a long deep breath and laughed aloud.
Samuel let go of the older woman’s shell and returned to find his body. The bittersweet remorse of what he had done mixed with the ecstasy of the new memory.