The Split Read online

  Once I’ve done this, I turn my attention to the molecules of my neck and arms, trying to imagine them stretching and pulling apart like taffy. It’s not long before the internal sensation of myself starts to shift. I open my eyes and find that I’m extending towards the air vent, my body elongating itself in a strange but beautiful arc.

  To my surprise, my clothes stretch around me, as well, somehow infused with the same nanobots that make up my biology. Everything that was locked inside that chamber with me is now one, single entity.

  Soon, I find myself grasping the edges of the air duct with my long, slender fingers. I can see that the front panel is screwed on tightly by a Phillips head screwdriver, which is a problem at first until I realize that I can easily create that shape with one of my digits. I press my pointer finger into the head of one of the screws and twist, letting my flesh form into the cross shape that’s embossed within it’s hard surface. The next thing I know, the screws are popping off left and right, dropping down onto the floor below until finally the entire thing its unsecured and I lower it gently with my long, strange arms.

  Now I’m pulling myself up into the vent, which is no more than a foot wide on any side. I slip deeper and deeper until eventually I can feel my feet lifting up off of the ground below, and soon enough I’ve disappeared completely into the tiny duct.

  I slither for a few yards until I find another vent, this time located out over the hallway; the path to freedom.

  From this side unfastening the screws is easy, and I manage to pop out the vent with relative ease. The front panel drops onto the hallway floor with a clatter and I wince, desperately hoping that the sound won’t draw anyone’s attention. As quickly as I can, I slide out of the vent and then immediately return to my usual proportions.

  Briskly, I walk down the hallway towards the nearest exit, aching for freedom from this living nightmare until sudden I stop dead in my tracks. There, staring down at me, are the new laboratory security cameras.

  All of that work I spent avoiding exposure was for nothing, because I know for a fact that the second I get home, the Department of Homeland Security will come knocking within the hour. Everything has been caught on tape; my security breach, the nanobot exposure, and even my supernatural transformation.

  I let out a long sigh, defeated, until I’m suddenly hit with yet another idea.

  The security office is close by, and the hard drives that record these video feeds are sitting out in the open, just waiting for me to unplug them and take off without a trace of evidence left behind. Theft of Allencorp, and government, property only adds to the long list of problems I already have to deal with, but I’ve already gone too far to stop now. Besides, the second I step out that door I’m technically stealing myself.

  Without a moment to spare, I turn on my heels and head back towards the security office.

  When I arrive, I’m met with yet another hurtle. The office is not only locked, but currently being manned by a young guy, fresh out of college and about my age. The guy stares blankly at his computer screen. I can only see him through a small slit of glass in the room’s door, but from this angle I can plainly manage to make out the subtle reflection of hardcore porn reflecting off of the man’s stylish eyewear.

  “Shit.” I say aloud, spotting the hard drives of security footage that sit on the shelf behind him, slowly filling with data.

  Once again my brain flips into emergency mode, coolly assessing the options at hand, of which there are very few. If I was a bombshell like Jamie, I could simply walk in there, give the new guy a few playful winks and then take the drive without him even batting an eye. However, these day’s I’m having trouble even getting noticed at all, let alone ogled and lusted after.

  Suddenly, it hits me. Maybe now, I can be a bombshell like Jamie.

  I focus intently on the internal workings of my body once again, only this time I start to let my imagination run wild. I picture my breasts like the ones that you’d see bouncing down the beach in a show about blonde bimbo lifeguards, my hair long and full, jet black as it cascades down my shoulders, and my face that of an exotic, European model. I imagine myself with perfectly toned curves that turn my body into a womanly hourglass, and an ass that would make jaws drop.

  Once again, my transformation is painless, but strange. It doesn’t take long, and suddenly I find myself pulling out my phone to get a look at my imagination’s handwork with the front-facing camera.

  The results are shocking, to say the least, and absolutely surreal. There is a completely different woman staring back at me from the tiny screen of my phone, an unrecognizable face that, had I seen out on the street, would more than likely fill me with bitterness than excitement at its pure, almost surreal beauty. Instead, a slow smile now creeps across my new visage.

  Filled with a pristine confidence, I rap hard against the security office door.

  It takes a while for the new guy to zip up his pants, but eventually he saunters over and throws open the door angrily. The second that he sees my face, however, everything changes.

  “Whoa.” The guy says, dumbstruck by my beauty.

  His reaction is so severe that it takes me off guard for a moment. Is this really what it’s like to be a beautiful woman?

  For the first few seconds I freeze up, the two of us standing here in awkward silence as we stare at each other. The man’s change in demeanor is so severe that my initial reaction is to assume that he’s joking, my brain barely able to accept the possibility that he could be that taken with my outward appearance.

  “Hey there.” I finally say. “What are you watchin’?”

  The guy hesitates, still incredibly unsure of himself. “Nothing.” He finally says. “Security footage. Can I help you?”

  “Oh yeah?” I coo, ignoring his question and reaching down to take the name tag on his uniform between my slender fingers. “Does Tucker know what you’re doing in here while you’re supposed to be paying attention, Greg?”

  Greg plays dumb. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You’re not watching porn in here, are you?” I ask, giving him a little wink. “Because that’s kinda what it looked like to me.”

  The raw sexual power that I wield now would be intoxicating enough, but in the hands of someone who’s been celibate for two years, like myself, it’s like giving a baby the keys to a nuclear arsenal. I try to pull myself back a bit, to restrain my thoughts from disappearing too far down the rabbit hole of lust and excitement, but it’s already too late.

  “No, I wasn’t watching porn.” Greg scoffs, trying a little too hard to feign his innocence. “Who are you? I haven’t seen you around the lab before.”

  I think for a moment, pursing my lips. Suddenly, a name just comes to me. “Ms. Hyde.” I tell him. “Well Greg, it’s too bad you’re not watching any porn in here, I love porn.”

  Greg’s young, dumb eyes suddenly light up as I say this. I notice now that he’s literally shaking as he stands before me, cowering in the presence of such a beautiful, feminine sexpot. “You do?” He stammers.

  “Oh yeah.” I say, pushing up against him as I make my way into the room and shutting the door behind me. “It makes me so fucking horny.”

  I’m lying through my teeth. I haven’t watched a porno in years thanks to my sex-addicted celibacy streak, but from what I remember it all seemed a little too fake to me. I suppose there’s a time and a place for that kind of thing, but it’s not like I’m dying for it on a daily basis.

  Greg however, is completely eating it up. I have him in the palm of my hand already, but teasing him like this is so much fun that I continue laying it on thick.

  “Want to show me?” I ask in a breathy voice.

  “Show you?” The security officer responds, his face turning bright red.

  I giggle. “The porno you were watching. Maybe I could help you take a load off or something.”

  Suddenly, sobriety alarm bells are going off deep within my brain. I can’t
relapse, and as fun as this is I’m drifting dangerously close to the edge. It doesn’t help matters that Greg is actually pretty cute in an unassuming, dorky kind of way.

  I just need to get the drive and get out of here, I reaffirm, collecting my thoughts.

  “Sure. I guess you can see it if you really want.” Greg offers, walking back around the desk and sitting down in his chair. An image is paused on the laptop screen, and as I follow Greg and stand behind him I suddenly find myself with a perfect view. On there computer is the hardcore depiction of a man and woman in the troughs of passion, there bodies intertwined as this muscular, handsome guy penetrates the woman deeply. She’s not so bad herself, either.

  Greg presses the spacebar and the images instantly come to life, dancing across the laptop screen in vivid colors of perfectly tan skin tone. The office is filled with exaggerated moans of pleasure.

  Trying my best to focus, I reach back behind me with one hand and unplug the currently running hard drive, then carefully slide it off of the counter and slip it inside my lab coat.

  I breathe out a sigh of relief, happy to have the evidence of my exposure secured, but as I turn to leave the office something stops me.

  My eyes are now transfixed onto computer screen, following the beautiful porn star bodies as the rock together in a million shifting pixels. Greg looks up at me to see my reaction, and when he notices that I’m not recoiling in horror he smiles.

  “Pretty hot, huh?” Greg asks. “Her name is Alison Coxxx.”

  I nod, not saying a word. I can suddenly feel my empty hand, unburdened by the hard drive, slipping its way down from Greg’s shoulder and along his chest. Lower and lower it goes, drifting dangerously closer to the waistband of his jeans.

  Greg’s breathing is heavy now, and I can see that his member has swelled to an enormous size within the fabric of his pants, just waiting from me to set it free. Greg repositions himself uncomfortably, aching to be touched.

  “Need a hand?” I ask him.

  “Yes.” Greg sighs, and then begins to undo his belt buckle.

  I realize now that I’m shaking with, not only anticipation, but fear. It’s been years since I’ve seen anyone’s manhood, and with good reason. My abstinence means too much to me to just throw it away, but seeing the lust in Greg’s eyes is just so hard to turn down. I’ve never known what it was like to be seen like this; as a prize, a trophy, a true beauty.

  Still, I need to stop.

  I try and retract my hand, but my subconscious desires let it drift lower and lower across Greg’s bare abs. He let’s out a soft whimper as my fingers creep under the waistband of his boxer briefs.

  Stop. I tell myself, but it’s no use.

  I feel my fingers close slowly around his massive, rock hard rod and the two of us gasp at the same time. Greg sinks back into his chair and closes his eyes, letting out a long sigh of satisfaction as he reels from the sensation of my touch.

  Suddenly, the gravity of what I’m doing hits me like a ton of bricks. I’m sick to my stomach as I release Greg from my grasp, immediately turning around and heading for the door of the office.

  “Hey! Where are you going?” The young security officer shouts in startled confusion.

  The next thing I know, I’m barreling down the hallway towards the back exit of the Allencorp facility, tears streaming down my face despite my best efforts to keep them contained within.

  I hit the exit door hard and suddenly a loud, blaring alarm is sounding in my ears. I break into a sprint, running across the parking lot with my long white lab coat flowing behind me. Almost immediately, I hear voices shouting and I turn back around to see Tucker and some armed military personal standing at the doorway, but before they can spot me I duck into some dense shrubbery, then climb a fence into the back alley. From here, I sprint about a block away until I finally run out of breath.

  As I stand panting, with my hands on my knees and my makeup smeared down my face, I focus deep within and then let out a sigh of relief as I turn back into myself.

  4

  “My name is Mandi and I’m a sex addict.” I tell the group, sitting in my familiar spot in the church basement on Hollywood blvd.

  “Hi Mandi.” The group responds in turn.

  “It’s been one day since my last sexual encounter.” I announce.

  The silence is deafening. I look around the circle of familiar faces and see that all of them are staring back at me in complete shock. For two years, I had been one of the most solid members here, the last person that anyone would expect to relapse. I guess it happens to everyone as some point.

  Tara and me lock eyes for a moment and, despite her best efforts to hide it, she looks utterly heartbroken; understanding, but heartbroken non-the-less.

  “I relapsed last night.” I continue. “Pretty hard, actually.”

  There is a long pause as I try to collect my thoughts. The events of the last few days are just too unbelievable, and potentially dangerous, to share. Even though these meetings are the safest environments that I know, I need to tread carefully.

  “I found myself in situation that I’m not really used to.” I explain. “This guy really wanted me, and not just because he wanted to fuck someone. He really, really wanted me.”

  “We’re you flattered by that?” Tara asks.

  “I was. I mean, it felt really nice to have someone reacting to me in a powerful way.” I tell her. “But at the same time, in the back of my head I knew that it wasn’t me he was attracted to.”

  Tara shakes her head. “I’m not quite sure what you mean.” She tells me, her expression one of someone who’s desperately trying to relate. She really does care about me, I can see it in her eyes, and in this storm of confusion that crashes about in my head, it’s nice to know that she’s there trying to shine a light.

  “He liked me, but I was pretending to be someone else.” I tell her. “I’m not that girl anymore, but I slipped because it was just so easy to fall back into the old ways.”

  “The girl that you were two years ago?” Tara questions.

  “Yes.” I nod. “I’d forgotten what it felt like to let myself go like that, only this time was different. This time I had so much more power than before.”

  “Well, we need to accept that we’re powerless against our impulses sometimes.” Tara tells me.

  I’ve heard that a million times around here, and of all the pieces of advice that get thrown around, this is the only one that really kind of rubs me the wrong way. I’m a fighter, and I know that I’ve got the power to change my life. In fact, sometimes it’s that faith in myself that keeps me going.

  Or maybe I just don’t truly understand this part of our mantra yet.

  “I know.” I lie to her, nodding. I don’t even want to get into it tonight, there’s way too much going on in my head to be focused on the semantics of our sexaholic code.

  “You’re always going to be you.” Tara says, looking me dead in the eyes.

  It immediately strikes me how bizarrely relevant her comment is, but also how terrifyingly untrue. At this point, I can be whoever the fuck I want.

  “But what if…” I stammer, my words faltering. I’m getting emotional but I don’t know why. After taking a minute to collect myself, I try again. “But what if I didn’t have to be me anymore?” I ask. “Or what if I got to be me and the addict was someone else entirely?”

  Tara still doesn’t follow what I’m saying, but she tries her best. “Either way, we’ll support you right here in this room. We’re all struggling, Mandi, but this is your family and we’re gonna support you.”

  With that, the group bursts into a pleasant applause.

  “Thank you.” I tell them, and I mean it.

  After our sharing session, I make my way over to the snack table yet again, still dreading my return to work the next day, but for entirely different reasons. Allencorp has left three messages about speaking with me the second I get into the lab, and it wasn’t until I called them back to confirm
an eight AM conference that they left me alone.

  I have no idea what they’ve found to connect me to the break-in back at the lab, but no matter how optimistic I try to be, this meeting can’t be good.

  “That was pretty powerful stuff tonight.” Comes a familiar voice, as Derek steps up next to me and pops a baby carrot in his mouth. His charm is so weirdly effortless, I can’t even begin to understand it.

  “Thanks.” I tell him. “It’s weird starting back down here at the bottom again. Two years is a long time.”

  Derek nods. “Well, it happens. The world keeps spinning.”

  The way he looks into me is incredible, and it suddenly hits me that Derek is genuinely interested, heart and soul. It’s not at all the way that the security officer had leered at my body the night before, and the difference couldn’t be more apparent.

  Still, there’s that mystery and silence to Derek that I find so incredibly sexy. He’s powerful, yet reserved; needing validation from no one.

  It was a mistake to turn him down the other night. I’m trying to abstain from random, meaningless sex; but if I find the right partner this could all be over. I’d forgotten that, but after my relapse I’ve received a powerful reminder of the difference between these two distinct kinds of attraction.

  “Hey, so I was thinking…” I start, trying to summon all of the courage that I can.

  Suddenly, Tara joins us, saddling up next to Derek and putting her arm around him.

  “That was really brave of you to share today.” Tara tells me. I try to look her in the eyes but I can’t stop staring at her arm, which is draped around Derek’s shoulders and pulling him close.

  “Thanks.” I tell her, meekly.

  Derek turns to face Tara and gives her a quick peck on the lips, then the two of them smile at each other before turning back towards me.