Callie left Dr. Visner’s office in a whirlwind of emotions. The psychotherapist gave her continuing jolts of attraction and repulsion. It wasn’t so much his physical resemblance to Mort as it was the seeming similarity in their personalities.

Visner seems so kind and empathetic, just as my stepfather used to be, she thought. Is this just going to be another charm offensive, as it had been with Mort–whom I can barely still call my stepfather–he who charmed his way into bed with me? The disappearance of Daddy, my real daddy, from my life, after his and Mom’s divorce, had been a throbbing pain in my heart, which got worse when he died a year later in that car accident. Mort then came along and filled in the void…among other voids.

Callie could also feel Kluh’s lust for Visner, a lust that was being incorporated with Callie’s feelings, and confusing her. She and the demoness felt like spiritual Siamese twins, as it were, with the conjoining growing more and more absolute all the time. It was getting more and more difficult to know where Callie ended and Kluh began.

I want Dr. Visner, Callie thought and she walked down the sidewalk in the direction of The Gold Star, but will he betray me as Mort did?

****************

Detectives Surian and Thurston were on the streets of downtown Toronto, questioning people who’d seen or heard anything connected with Wayne’s murder. They were following up questioning from the local police, looking for further links with the killing of Mort Brahms in Hamilton.

Sometimes, they spoke with people whom the Toronto police had already questioned. At other times, as they walked down the streets and talked about the case with those they were questioning in the neighbourhoods, other people oddly began presenting themselves to the pair, as if eavesdroppers to the conversation.

A homeless man told them he saw a “hairy humanoid” racing by the alley where he was sitting and drinking at about 2:00 in the morning. He said ‘she’ had a curvaceous female figure, “with big tits,” but all covered in dark hair. She let out a growl that startled him, then he saw her run by.

Other people spoke of “grunts and growls” several blocks down the road from the alley at about 2:05 to 2:10, suggesting the direction the beast was going in. At about 2:30, someone was looking out of her third floor window and thought she saw a hairy figure flying in an arc across the street in a huge jump, then landing on the sidewalk at a corner; it then turned left. The woman’s apartment was on a road intersecting with the previous road with the alley, suggesting that the beast was moving in a zig-zagging, diagonal direction.

Surian and Thurston went with that hunch, finding others who’d “heard a few growls” around 2:40 to 3:00, in areas of the neighbourhood still suggesting a diagonal direction. The last person to have heard growls or grunts was around 3:10, still in the same general direction.

“I can’t believe the luck we’re getting in finding people who know of the beast,” Thurston said.

The detectives continued following the direction of their hunch, and though there were no more sightings or any hearing of the beast, they started noticing long, brown hairs lying on sidewalks, some wrapped around trees–that is, after the wind blew them there–and some on lawns; and with more and more hairs found clumped together in tufts, until finally they reached the alley with the boxes and garbage bag piles where Callie had woken up nude.

“The end of the line, damn it,” Surian said, studying the largest of the cluster of hairs.

“Where could it–she, I guess–have gone?” Thurston asked.

“She?” a man behind them said, startling them.

“Who are you?” Surian asked.

“Oh, uh, I cook in a café just a block down the road,” the man said. “Sorry if I startled you. I don’t normally walk up to strangers and chat with ’em, but I couldn’t help noticing you asking where ‘she’ went. Just around 11:00 or so this morning, I saw a ‘she’ right here where you’re standing–dirty and smelly, but also naked and beautiful.”

“We’re looking for a hairy female animal,” Thurston said.

“But with a curvy body, sharp claws, and big tits,” Surian said. “Remember what the drunk said, Andy?”

“This naked woman was curvy, with big tits,” the man said. “I got lucky with her during my lunch break–oh, sorry, ma’am, for the locker-room talk.”

“That’s OK,” Surian said. “Actually, this is helpful.” She took out a photo of Sandra Brahms. “Did she look at all like this girl?” The photo was a full body shot of a chubby, seventeen-year-old brunette.

“Um, no, she didn’t look anything like that,” he said.

“Not even her face?” Thurston asked.

“No, not at all. Sorry.”

“I guess them both being here was a coincidence,” Surian said with a frown.

“The woman said she worked at a strip joint, The Gold Star,” the man said. “It’s just a few blocks from here.”

“Wait a minute,” Thurston said. “Wayne was last seen leaving The Gold Star with a stripper, a curvaceous one with big tits, according to a witness who spoke to one of the Toronto cops.”

“What colour was her hair, this woman you were with?” Surian asked.

“Blonde,” he said. “Dirty and messy when I found ‘er, but blonde.”

“The witness who saw Wayne leave with the stripper said she had bright red hair,” Thurston said.

“Sure, but I think we should go over to this ‘Gold Star’ peeler joint,” Surian said.

“What are we supposed to make of this?” Thurston asked. “Am I supposed to believe there’s a stripper werewolf, or something, killing men she fucks?”

“Killing men?” the man asked with a shudder.

“No, of course not,” she said. “But both men died with their dicks hanging out their unzipped pants, the gossip around the Brahms family’s neighbourhood involved suspicions about Mort’s relationship with his daughter, who’s still nowhere to be found, and this here is the best lead we’ve got. What’s your name, sir?”

“Stan,” he said.

“Take us to The Gold Star, Stan,” she said with a smile. The three of them started off on their way there.

Thurston said to Surian, “As hot as the girls are in this strip joint, I promise I’ll always like you better, Agnes, my cutie.”

“Oh, shut up, Andy,” she said with a smirk.

I don’t know what possessed me to come out here to this alley again, Stan thought.

I do, Kluh thought, her spirit monitoring all the action.

“Oh, no–I did it again,” Callie whispered as she stared at the dried blood on her hands.

She lay naked in an alleyway, behind a pile of garbage bags, crates, and boxes. It was late in the morning; she looked about furtively, trying to see if she could recognize the area.

She crept towards the end of the alley with one hand over her breasts and the other over her crotch. To her knowledge, she had the same sexy body she’d had in the swimming pool. Sexy, but smelling of sweat and garbage.

She noted a street sign on the corner: it was white with black bordering, like many seen in Toronto. In fact, the street itself looked familiar. She breathed a sigh of relief.

Well, Kluh? she asked. How do I get home?

Trust our instincts, the spirit told her. Do what we did last time. Sense if there’s a man walking by who’ll be suitable.

Callie backed up and hid behind some boxes. Then she closed her eyes and concentrated. She could feel the psychic energy connecting her with her surroundings, including all those passing by the alley. Kluh’s connection to her mind made it easy for her to master this meditating. Many men and women walked by: she focused her scanning on each person’s thoughts, wishes, and desires.

The women, as well as one gay man, would have been safe for her to present her nakedness to; but she sensed that they were all either too busy or apathetic to be willing to help her. The vast majority of the men would have been so voracious in their sexual appetites that she’d have risked another sexual assault, and therefore another transformation into the beast.

Then, one rather timid man was approaching. She sensed that he’d desire her, but be gentle enough with her to exchange a pleasant sexual favour for borrowed clothes, a shower, and a ride to her apartment. She chose him, flashing with a grin he mirrored.

*****************

As the beast had been racing and jumping about the night before, Kluh had used her powers to put Wayne’s landlady in a trance to go into his apartment and retrieve her purse and clothes, all before the cops arrived. The entranced woman arrived at Callie’s apartment just in time, around noon that day, when Callie also got there, so she could unlock her door and get in.

That afternoon, she lay on her bed thinking about her situation. That merging of her mind with Kluh’s was progressing. Now what scared Callie wasn’t being raped, nor was it even killing potential rapists: she now not only liked the sex, getting a thrill from the danger of being assaulted, but she was also beginning to like the killing.

“I need to find a shrink,” she said.

Good idea, Kluh told her, knowing exactly which one to direct Callie to.

******************

Detective Agnes Surian had been sulking at her desk that morning until the newspaper was dropped on her lap.

“Prepare to brighten up, Agnes,” Detective Andrew Thurston said. “The dawn of a new day for the Mort Brahms case.”

“Oh?” She looked at the headline on page two of the Toronto Star: “Toronto Man Clawed to Death by Mysterious Hairy Beast.”

“Did that flash of insight put the fire back into your heart, cutie-pie?”

“Yes, it did, Andy,” she said with a smile. “Like a bolt of lightning. Looks like I’m heading off to T.O.”

******************

Callie found arranging an appointment with Dr. Visner easy and prompt, for he had a free afternoon that very day…thanks to Kluh’s influence. She went up to the fifth floor of a building in downtown Toronto, then walked into the reception area.

“Ms. Seaver?” the receptionist asked.

“Yes,” Callie said. “Is Dr. Visner in?”

“Yes, he’s waiting for you. You can go right in.”

“Thank you,” Callie said, then went over to the door of his office. The sign on the window said Dr. Chris N. A. Visner, Psy.D. She put her hand on the doorknob and paused. He’ll never believe me when I tell him about you. He’ll think I’m crazy, which I probably really am. She turned the doorknob.

That’s OK, Kluh mentally replied. Getting all your pain off your chest will be good for you. That he’ll never believe in the clawed beast means we’ll be safe from the law.

She opened the door and saw Dr. Visner sitting at his desk.

Her eyes widened at the sight of the handsome middle-aged man. “Holy shit.”

“Is something wrong, Ms. Seaver?” the therapist asked.

“Oh, no…it’s just…you look a lot like my late stepfather.”

“Oh?” he said, gesturing to her to sit on the couch across from him. The transference is already in effect, he thought. I still don’t know what possessed me to cancel all my other appointments today.

Indeed, Visner was a lot like Mort, in many ways. His wavy, grey hair, the soothing sound of his voice, and his agreeable manner were all practical replicas of her stepfather; but especially there was Visner’s choice of clothes that day–a grey suit and vest, with a red dress shirt–the outfit looked eerily similar to one Mort often wore.

Good, Kluh thought. He dressed in the exact way I influenced him to this morning, all without Callie knowing. My power is growing, with every lover.

Callie sat on the couch, still feeling awkward and at a loss as to what to do. “What should I say?”

“Anything you like, Callie,” he said. “Is it OK if I call you by your first name?”

“Of course,” she said with a nervous giggle. “But I don’t know how to tell you…what’s bothering me. It’s going to sound so crazy.”

“Don’t worry about what I think,” he said, his Bob Ross-like voice sending ASMR-like tingles all through her. “I can’t help you if you don’t tell me what’s troubling you. Just say whatever’s on your mind, and don’t censor yourself. That’s crucial.”

“O…K…,” she began. “It all started, I guess, when my mom and dad got divorced, she got custody of me, then he basically showed no more interest in my life. I was about ten.” There was a lump in her throat. “Then, she met a man–Mortimer Brahms. He was so smooth with the charm, with me as well as with her. I actually liked him at the time he was dating her.” A tear ran down her cheek.

“Did she marry him?”

“Yes.” She fought to keep from sobbing. “And that’s when my real troubles began. He–” She paused, letting out a sob.

“Seduced you?”

She sobbed again. “Yes. He told me never to tell Mom, that it was me he was in love with.” She sobbed some more. “He…had me…for the first time…when I was…twelve.”

“Oh, my God,” Visner gasped, then handed her a Kleenex.

******************

At the coroner’s in Toronto, Detective Surian was looking at the claw wounds on Wayne’s body.

“The wounds have the same contours, the same look to the slashes, the same cutting style, as on Mort Brahms’s body,” she said. “It must have been the same animal…if only I could identify what kind of animal.”

“I don’t know if this will help your investigation,” the coroner said. “But the cops found Wayne’s body, fully clothed, with his fly open and his penis hanging out. You don’t suppose he tried to commit bestiality with the animal, and that’s why it killed him?”

“If he did, it must have been one hell of a sexy animal,” she said, “because Brahms’s body was also found fully clothed, with his fly open, and his dick showing.”

[some sexual content]

As Sandra, or Callie Seaver, as she was now calling herself, was lap-dancing a man in his forties in the VIP Room of The Gold Star, the strip joint she was working in, she contemplated her situation of the past few weeks. She was getting used to her new body, her new life as a stripper, and even her relationship with Kluh, who–it seemed–didn’t need to take control of her body so often.

As the man’s hands were sliding along her skin and caressing her breasts, she thought about how she no longer found it so distasteful being viewed as a sex object; the huge amount of money she was making each night gave her a feeling of power, over the men who lusted after her, that made her objectification seem a trifling disadvantage in comparison.

She rubbed her buttocks on the man’s pointy lap, noting how close the tip was to her anal cleft; but it didn’t frighten her as it had before. She’d already slept with a few clients during her first few days as a stripper, in order to have a place to spend the night until she’d find a suitable apartment; and in the process, the trauma she’d associated with sex was fading away, and she was even beginning to enjoy sex now.

She got up and turned around to face him, then brushed her large breasts against his face; as perfectly round as they were, they weren’t silicone, to his delight. She had the body of a goddess, and he was worshipping her. She could psychically sense his worship of her in his mind, just as Kluh could sense it, and Callie was beginning to like being worshipped, just as Kluh, that self-proclaimed goddess inhabiting Callie’s body, had always liked it.

She sat on his lap and felt his hands on her buttocks as she touched her nose against his. His fingers were creeping like a spider’s legs toward her anal cleft. Being touched in that secret area was bothering Callie less and less, since the memory of her stepfather sodomizing her was drifting further and further away from her. What’s more, Kluh as a goddess of lust and death liked being lusted after and touched lewdly, for the spirit considered the body she was inhabiting to be a temple to be adored at.

Now here arrived an important development: between Callie getting used to these recent big changes in her life, with Kluh inhabiting her body and influencing her decisions, and she and Kluh increasingly enjoying the same pleasures, what was emerging was a growing fusion of their wills, of their very identities. Callie and Kluh were slowly becoming one being.

With this fusion of wills, Callie could sense more and more what Kluh’s intentions were: a wish to have more power, which came as a result of merging contraries. She sensed Kluh’s intentions, and felt herself irresistibly more and more sympathetic to them, though some intentions were still mysterious to her…and still frightening.

Two weeks had gone by without any transformation into that clawed beast, though Callie could vaguely sense an urge in Kluh to let the beast out again, to provoke another transformation. That urge seemed to be set aside for the moment, so Callie didn’t fear having more blood on her hands for now.

Indeed, she was relieved to know, from having read in the newspaper that the detective investigating the case, an Agnes Surian, had all but given up on the case. All Surian had brought to light was that some clawed beast attacked Mort Brahms and jumped out his second-story bedroom window. How the animal got in the man’s house was a mystery.

Another mystery was what had become of Mort’s stepdaughter, Sandra. The shy, chubby eighteen-year-old seemed to have vanished. Callie liked the sound of that. No more Sandra, no more Mort. No more bad past. No tracing of the killing to Callie in Toronto.

The man had one set of fingers between her legs, and the other set between her buttocks. He was arousing Kluh’s lust, making sympathetic Callie feel it, too. It titillated both of them to have their secret places known. Callie was just glad Surian didn’t know anything about the secret identity of the beast.

The closest anyone could trace it to Callie was in a few people having sighted a hairy, anthropomorphic beast running and jumping high in the air through the streets of Hamilton, then heading towards an exit of the city. But where it had gone after that wasn’t at all known. No one had sighted it since.

So as long as no one provoked the monster by trying to rape her, Callie would be safe. All these men lusting after her nakedness, and being lap-danced by her, and fondling her in the VIP Room, seemed less and less of a danger to her; thus, she wouldn’t be a danger to them…if only such assurances could last.

She was licking the man’s ear, then he whispered in her ear, “I’d…love to draw you, Chloe.”

“You’re an artist, Wayne?” she asked, rubbing harder on his erection, and as delighted to hear herself addressed by her mother’s name (now also her stage name) as she was to be so worshipped.

“Yes,” he grunted from the feeling of those rubbing buttocks. “You have…the body…of a goddess.”

She was so surprised to know that a man’s lust didn’t terrify her anymore. Her curvy body no longer seemed to be a risk of rapes, but was now a source of pride. She’d made herself fat as a teen in the hopes that Mort would stop being sexually attracted to her; actually, he’d rape and sodomize her no less than before. But now, sex no longer meant powerlessness to Callie; making hundreds, thousands of dollars every night from sex-addicted customers meant sex was power for her, something Kluh had always understood.

I told you I’d be good for you…Chloe, Kluh told her mentally.

Yes, Callie answered in her mind. You may not be my mother Chloe, but thanks to your help, I am now Chloe, the sex goddess of The Gold Star.

WE are the sex goddess, Kluh corrected. We grow to be more and more one with every passing day, with every sexual contact. Remember what I told you before: the merging of contraries, male and female, sex and death, pleasure and pain, delight and terror, make me more powerful. And as I get powerful, you get powerful. For we are one.

Fuck this man, and we get stronger? Callie asked.

Yes, Callie. Even his attempted rape of us, if that happens, means we kill him with the claws. Sex merged with death makes us stronger, too.

Oh, I hope we won’t have to kill again.

That’s up to Wayne, isn’t it?

*********************

An hour later, they were in his studio apartment, her nude on his bed lying on her back, and him at the foot of the bed with a pencil in one hand, drawing her breasts on a sketchpad.

“Usually strippers look less attractive in the bright light,” Wayne said, his erection poking a visible bulge in his pants that made flattered Callie smirk. “Not you. You’re even more beautiful than I’d imagined possible.”

She giggled. “Thank you.”

“I thought you were blonde in The Gold Star,” he said, detailing her erect nipples. “I see you have bleached white hair.”

“Oh, I change my hair colour a lot, actually,” she said. Kluh made my hair blonde, white, light green, yellow, even pink, all tonight over several hours when I danced in the dimmed lights, didn’t you?

Yes, I did, Kluh answered in her mind. My constant changing of your appearance is how I make it difficult to trace where you are, in case we need to let out the beast again.

Callie shuddered at that thought, but her fear soon changed back to titillation. I can psychically feel Wayne’s lust, she thought. It’s so exciting!

It’s good to be worshipped, isn’t it? Kluh asked her.

Yes, Callie thought. Everyone in high school bullied me for being fat. Mort made me his sex slave; I won’t even call him my stepdad anymore. But now, men are my sex slaves, enthralled by me, they must please me!

That’s the spirit, Kluh told her. The union of his phallus with your yoni, or even your anus, will make us even more powerful, the merging of male and female, of penetrator and penetrated. United opposites make us strong.

Oh, let it not be anal again, she thought. Your lubricating me stops the hurt, but I still feel the fear, the trauma. The painful memories.

Don’t be afraid, Callie. I’m making you stronger and stronger with every lover, not weaker.

“OK,” Wayne sighed. “That sketch is finished. I’d like to do one now of you on all fours, with your ass pointed at me. Will that be OK?”

“Better than OK,” Kluh said. She got into position, with both her anus and vulva showing for him.

“OK,” he grunted, that bulge in his pants straining against his zipper as he began drawing. “No, don’t look at me, Chloe. Face the head of the bed.”

Callie’s heart was pounding. She couldn’t stand being so exposed, so vulnerable to this stranger, yet Kluh kept her body in this position. For the demoness was aroused by Callie’s fears combined with the energy of Wayne’s lust, which she welcomed. She would take his phallic energy and make it hers.

This man was far from being Kluh’s ideal to mate with Callie’s femininity, but he’d give her some power that night, anyway. As for the ideal male, he would arrive soon enough…quite soon, indeed, actually.

Kluh felt Wayne’s desire as he sketched her ass, his urge to penetrate her. The demoness felt his eyes staring at the holes he wanted to enter, just as she visualized entering him in another way. The penetrator would become the penetrated, a fusion of opposites, giving her more power.

Kluh knew he was planning to sneak up behind her, thinking her not seeing him coming meant she wouldn’t know what he was about to do. Callie sensed his desire to come at her from behind, too, and she was terrified–terrified of reliving Mort’s sodomizing of her, and terrified from knowing she’d kill again. But she couldn’t stop Kluh from letting this all happen.

Wayne’s pencil touched the paper softer and quieter with each stroke, sketching the wrinkles on her anus, where he was itching to enter.

Without making a sound, he put the pencil and pad to the side, got up from his chair, and crept over to her ass. He had no idea that both Kluh and Callie could sense his exact movements psychically, every second of them.

He put his hands on her buttocks and opened them, widening the orifices.

Callie yelped and looked back at him with agape eyes and her jaw dropped.

“Am I sexy?” Kluh had her sigh.

“Yes,” he sighed back.

“Am I beautiful?”

“Yes.”

“Do you want me?” (Callie dreamed of an answer of no.)

“Yes.” He unzipped his pants and took it out. “Oh?” He noticed her anus was moistening with lubrication. “How convenient.”

“I’m gonna surprise you in more ways than one tonight, you stud,” Kluh moaned.

“I’m sure you will.” He was surprised to find himself lubricated, too. “What is this, black magic?”

You could call it that, Kluh thought.

He pushed inside, and as he moved back and forth, Callie was having vivid flashbacks of Mort: she could feel, once again, her stepfather’s sweat dripping on her bare back, his bad breath blowing on her right ear, the pain of his pushing and pulling, even though Wayne wasn’t hurting her at all.

Swelling with lust, the man reached around with both arms and grabbed her breasts, squeezing them hard and pinching her nipples. Mort had done that on one occasion, making Sandra scream in between sobs. This was too much for Callie. She shook, her head spinning.

When her eyes refocused, she saw hairs slithering out of the follicles on her arms. Her fingernails were stretching out into claws, each at least six or seven centimetres long.

The last image that flashed in her mind, before giving her consciousness away to the beast, was Bill Bixby’s irises turning white on TV. Before she had time to wonder if the same thing had happened to her eyes–it did, actually–she blacked out.

“What the hell?” Wayne grunted, pulling his dick out. “How’d you get so hairy?” Her hair was no longer the ‘bleach-white’ colour: it was brown, as it was all over her body. Now she was grunting, and her bestial head twisted back to look at him. “Jesus fucking Christ!”

Her claws slashed his face, one of them gouging his eyes and blinding him. The other claws sliced lines of red into his forehead, nose, and lips. He fell off the bed on his back, clutching his bloody face and whining on the floor.

The beast jumped on him. She dug her claws into his guts, tearing his intestines to pieces. His body shook on the floor as a river of blood flowed out both sides from his waist. He was coughing blood.

She stabbed her claws into his chest, and his body lay still.

There was a knock on the front door of the apartment. “I heard a scream,” a male neighbour said. “What’s going on in there?”

She ran at a nearby window and jumped out, splashing shards of glass in all directions.