Fuck! Not now! I was pretty damn happy for once!
I'd jumped again, this time from being a 55 year old man getting caught in the cross-fire of a drive-by shooting while getting off the bus from work.
I'm not sure how many times I've flipped into awareness of a new body any more; I've existed as a mobile soul for thousands of years. If it weren't for the fact that I didn't seem able to die...
This time I saw the gun the body was holding. I wasn't yet ready to access this body's memories as I looked over the weapon of self destruction in my new hands.
It's almost always like this, jumping into the body of some poor soul who has actually made the decision to kill themselves. This one had a gun. Other times I have seen pills, razor blades, a rope or, frightening enough, tensing for a suicidal charge on a battlefield.
Yes, that last scares me but it's been played out more times than I care to recall.
I hate wars, I really do. Wars mean that I'll end up jumping too often, from one to another, often jumping across the battle lines multiple times. One of the worst in recent memory was Guadalcanal. You don't want me to recite any of the other battles and wars I've experienced.
For one such as I, wars suck. There are times when I really do suspect that the real drive towards peace may often be motivated by souls like mine.
Yeah, yeah, so I digress. Hey, I'm good at it.
So, now that I was in possession of a new body and a different life, I put the gun down and looked around, taking stock of this new body and surroundings.
I don't know why but it seemed the ones most ready to die usually had no shortage of worldly goods. That this sixteen year old boy was able to get his hands on such a nice .45 showed me that money was not in short supply in his family house-hold.
Finally opening up the flood-gates to this body's memories I saw that my predecessor hadn't paid enough attention and so didn't see it as his home.
I have been an adult for too many years so I was able to see through to the truth he'd missed seeing.
Sure, this boy, Dave, had been in emotional pain-- but most of it was because he didn't see any of the trees, instead focusing on the forest, looking for rejection and trying to cope.
I knew I could ride this body for a long time but, to every one around him, he would seem a lot more mature from now on, now that I was driving.
So I got the gun unloaded, carefully cleaning it, and placed it back in his father's study, as best I could. I just wished Dave had paid more attention to how he'd found it, but, when you plan to die this way, I've found that no one is meticulous in covering up their tracks.
Oh, all right, yes, I've dropped into some anal-retentives. I've been fortunate that it hasn't been often.
Erasing his suicide note from the computer and making sure his last UseNet post got neutralized (by now I'm pretty good with a LOT of IT tools) I took stock of this new situation.
It is frankly amazing how many boys contemplate killing themselves because of virginity. Dave, here, felt like he'd been an outsider and that everyone else around him seemed to have 'gotten it right' and were happy.
Yes, you may laugh. This simple stupid misperception has been around for a long time and has provided me a far too large supply of people to carry my soul.
I knew the truth, of course.
Oh? The truth? Well, no one has it 'all' right. Those who seem happiest are often just good at acting that way.
Yes, it's true. Happiness is a choice, and, when you act like you're happy, it can seem pretty fulfilling, especially if you are a social butterfly and have too few brain cells to rub together. Most with more wit have a greater problem lying to themselves because they focus on what they don't have instead of what they do possess.
Dave had quite a bit going for him but all he'd been seeing in his mirror were his flaws rather than his strengths and intangible assets. This boy had left me a lot of material to work with and I could have a nice life with what he'd bequeathed to me.
My new life actually started when Dave's family got home from their shopping trip, moving to help bring in the groceries, startling his folks. Dave had been so low for so long that he wasn't willing to volunteer. Stepping in, as I had, to "be" Dave, I changed the life to one I could live comfortably with.
I was now Dave. He was gone and now it was my life to be lived and I intended to enjoy it. I could change what I liked.
The family around me improved as I took on more and more of the "little" responsibilities; my sisters seemed to get happier with their brother, for instance. I treated them with more respect than they'd come to expect from the "old me" and, in school, I was picking up "my" grades back up.
Another advantage to being an immortal soul was that I have learned many things across too many different lifetimes. I knew that I was now subject to the harassment that got meted out to "the nerdly different" and it drove me to start exercising so that I could use the body I'd been granted as needed.
Fortunately, I know enough from having been a soldier-- and not fearing death since the immortal I had not been able to die-- that even as a "weakling" (even the weakest nerd or geek isn't all that weak, it's all a matter of how they employed what they have) I could neutralize a jock, especially when there are no rules.
So, when I got pushed into my locker hard enough to really hurt me and create bruises, then kept getting pushed back getting more bruises, my warrior reflexes kicked in and Joe the star quarterback's gonads were suddenly in a stable geosynchronous orbit while the rest of Joe remained here on earth.
He was going to be out of play for a while, but, hey, the football season was already over anyway.
There is a reason why the "A list" uses the letter "A". It stands for Arrogance. I've faced it more times than I ever wanted to. That's what the "A" really stands for, and, the hell of it, these pricks didn't have anything except ego to prop it up.
It is strange how the administration came down on me for fighting and, despite multiple reports that Joe had started the fight by harassing and physically abusing me before I'd struck back with one blow to end the incident...
Sadly, three of his buddies from the football team decided to corner me at lunch time and, in front of the whole caf, got taken down by someone well below their weight class.
Mind you, weapons in the cafeteria are easy to come by.
And, no, sporks are not useful as weapons, which is why that was the only utensil provided by the school.
A tray makes both a wonderful shield and, with it's edges, a wonderful weapon, all at the same time. In this brouhaha I did collect quite an impressive array of bruises and a broken leg, but, when it was over, I was the last one standing.
Mind you, all three had problems. Broken noses, a cracked larynx, two broken wrists and other injuries.
Again the school's administration expressed their extreme displeasure and didn't want to acknowledge that the gorillas on the football team had started each and every fight where they'd come out behind.
Being an immortal I could afford to be killed to prove a point. Being gifted with visions made it easier to see what was going down.
And the interview with the police after the principal had briefed them started out hostile, but, given that I was able to talk to them while my leg was being straightened and a cast put on at the hospital lent me some sympathy. Showing them bruises I'd accumulated that morning didn't hurt, either.
So I told them about Joe's effort in the morning and how he had spent time in the nurse's office. I also detailed the prior efforts at intimidation Joe and his buddies had been guilty of as they walked like the lords of creation through the school.
The clincher was detailing how the three I'd disabled at lunch time had decided to gang up on me to "teach me a lesson".
The older of the two officers smirked as he dryly observed that lessons can be learned both ways.
My folks were upset given that I was suspended for the next two weeks.
Finding out that Al, Gary and Roger only got one week each was proof to me-- and my parents-- that there was a lot of favoritism in that school.
I was on crutches for an entrance exam-- and I was sharp enough to recognize why. I entered a private school to finish the year.
Changing schools before early spring doesn't solve structural issues with being human. All human beings seem to insist on being at the top of the pecking order.
I had jumped, based on the results of the comprehensive exams, to the senior year-- of which only four months were left. As a new student which placed me at the very bottom of the pecking order for too short a time to make a difference.
Here is where my more adult perspectives helped me: I had several times the wit, material and quickness of mind than even the so-called top performers who spent their time resting on their laurels. I was able to outmaneuver boys two years my senior... and that was just in witty repartee. Test results put me at the top of the heap.
Of course I knew that Joe and his buddies never forgot a damn thing and so, in one of my flashes of foresight I knew when, where and how they planned to exact their revenge.
I hate idiots, did you know that?
All right, hate is an extreme word. In my situation I long ago learned how much irony is enabled by true hatred and the best means of managing it is emotional distance. It was strange how only the negative emotions seemed to give irony an opening.
So I knew they were stealing a pair of big SUVs and were planning to "swoop and squat" on me while I was driving my dinky focus.
By this time I knew my body's performance envelope and I know enough to learn the capabilities of all of the tools around me, too, which included "my" car. Even with a slushbox I knew what I could do, though I knew that my car was going to be the loser in this battle. I also knew I'd survive, too.
So, in the appointed place, I had arranged, with another of my kind, to have "qualified observers"...
Hmmmmm... maybe I should be a cop and work my way up to Captain so I could help one of "us" in the future.
So I was out there and they didn't realize that I was 'bait' and that two police squad cars were positioned to observe the incident as it unfolded, their cameras catching the whole event.
Yes, my car was wrecked.
Yes, I got smacked around by the airbag.
Yes, I was a hurting puppy.
And, yes, three of those pricks were caught with knives in their hands. Joe had a gun and, being the idiot he was, did not drop it when ordered to, instead thinking that he could intimidate armed police officers. He got one shot off at them but didn't survive the return fire.
Arrogance doesn't do much for you unless you try to learn enough to justify it. Joe would never have the chance to do so.
Despite the structural integrity of my focus resisting the impact as well as it had, my cast had not survived and I had to be cut out of the car. I was being carted off in an ambulance while the police had what seemed to be a feeding frenzy in analyzing the crime scene. It wasn't a simple traffic accident any more.
I didn't even have to testify when Al, Gary and Roger went on trial a year later for attempted murder. It didn't look like they would need further schooling for a long time.
Graduation arrived quickly and I wasn't ready to pursue enrollment in college, so I went, instead, to the local junior college. My parents weren't impressed by the choice of college but I knew that it was best to get many of my pre-requisites dealt with locally before choosing a major.
This time I was not going to get into computers the way I had in my last life. I might use 'em as tools but I already knew there was little future in being a 'puter technologist.
So I handled all of the pre-requisites like Calc, German and English.
Now, to the outside world, I'm a teen-ager. I look like any other human being. I have feelings like any other human being. I am subject to many of the vulnerabilities like any other human being, but, in this, my 'age' provides me enough experience to manage them.
Excepting, of course, one vulnerability that all humans are subject to.
It's called "Love".
I know that love isn't truly "eternal" but I can attest to hope springing eternal as every one of us mobile souls pray for the day our travels are over. We know it happens but we wish it would happen to us. We also try to orient the newbies who take the places of the ones who've escaped this trap.
Yet, in all of this, we are subject to love. We can no more resist it than "mere" mortals.
We can and do manage our lusts-- after all, that's what self gratification is for-- but love is something we feel.
And it's the one thing that can rip our hearts out, too, because we'll jump when the body we live in dies, and leave our loved one behind, or, harder still, to lose them before it is our turn to move on.
We also know love because we can see it, into the future.
Knowing what is going to happen does not work as a case of being "fore-warned is fore-armed".
So I was just barely seventeen when I met twenty year old Lillian. Gawky, bright, thin and shy, Lily was someone I first felt warm around but a flash from the future told me that we were meant to be together. The vision didn't make me fall for her, it just illustrated some of our lives together.
It did, however, show me how to get around her fears of rejection.
Within a month we were ready to be a couple.
It was with Lily that my sex life in this body started.
She needed time to get past her aversions due to her prior boyfriends, but I went slow and, finally breaking the ice, awakened her with my tongue between her labia.
Now I've told you that I've plenty of experience as a warrior. That's damn near nothing when compared to my experiences as a lover.
I've been a woman before so I knew the kinds of things she would enjoy. Heck, I don't often think about it, but I was born as a woman, though I've spent many lifetimes as a man as well. Lily got the benefit.
She was uncomfortable with my skill level as one can imagine but I blamed it on "the right reading list" and on having "an old soul". Looking deep into my eyes as I said this was enough to quiet her fears.
She still carried her fears that she couldn't do it right so I was driving our activities and getting her warmed up. The first time we went all the way...
No amount of experience or practice is going to make it easy on your partner if their heart is still full of fears. So the first time I approached her when she was in firm control of her senses found me backing off. Plan B was needed.
Lily was concerned about "doing it right" and was mindful of how she looked and sounded. This made it hard for her to be comfortable even with just laying back and letting me drive.
By the same token, I want my lover to be an enthusiastic participant in the act of sharing joy. Her apprehensive feelings knocked the wind out of those sails.
Plan B was a matter of torturing her by bringing her to the brink of climax enough times for her to be so inflamed with desire that she'd forget any idea of propriety and demand me to fuck her brains out.
I don't know what's wrong with people these days; even at the height of victorianism women were never this fucked up. Plan B had become the norm over the last hundred years.
So it took over an hour of me using my tongue and fingers to bring Lily up to the edge and back down just enough to make the next drive to the brink shorter and, soon, she spent more of her time at the brink, with short drops so that she's have enough brain cells together to say something.
When she started begging me to fuck her I knew her mind had finally slipped the bonds of propriety and, moving over her, entered her... and we came together, body and soul.
The problem was that, on coming down, women like Lily get their sense of propriety back and worry about "how it looks" again.
Over the next month I didn't execute Plan B because I didn't want to get her too used to it, but, at the same time, when we tried the "normal" way, I backed off whenever her mind got in our way. I didn't bring up the subject myself and tended to change the subject when she brought it up instead. I maintained this phase for about a month.
The next month she spent frustrated because I wouldn't get anywhere near making love with her even if we slept together in the nude. As her sense of propriety and seriousness got in the way I'd back off, telling her that I wish she'd relax. I didn't make what I was doing too overt, instead doing my best to call some of her conditioning into question.
It was at the start of the third month since I'd executed Plan B that her anti-sexual conditioning started to crack. Fortunately her menstrual cycle provided some help.
PMS is a wonderful thing when properly channeled and is confusing to those who think there's a 'role' they have to play because it fucks up the drive to remain controlled.
Some women get angry. Others get aggressive. Those who do manage to avoid conflict recognize that they get horny and so don't try to sublimate it into anger or violence.
So she woke me up when she climbed on top of me and started to ride me like a crazy woman. I gave her a LOT of verbal encouragement as she came, well before I was ready. Given her tiredness, I rolled us over and we made love in a more leisurely fashion, talking, kissing and gently working her up to a second release which we shared.
We filled up the rest of the day by fucking as much as we could. When she finally started her period she was walking bow-legged and I was sore from the workouts.
Her niggling worries did hover here and there but soon died out as I avoided violating her 'committee on propriety'. It was all a matter of getting her to think of sex as "her right to enjoy" rather than thinking there was something sinful about it.
I've been so many people from so many different cultures yet I still do not understand the whole issue of suppressing sexuality except as a control issue. The cultures that do not demonize it have other problems. No one culture is without sin, after all, any more than any person is without sin.
So Lily finally relaxed with me and welcomed my attentions and, over time, got more vocal in showing enthusiasm.
Even though I am an immortal, it always does feel good when one's sexual partner spends time limp and panting as they recover from industrial strength orgasms.
At first Lily was fairly passive in bed and let me do things with her body but, despite her uncertainties, she started to take a more active role in our love play.
Yes, I meant to say "Love Play". Fucking, much less Making Love , is not sustainable if it is considered a serious business. It is a form of play where each partner can trust the other as they commune. Once Lily got past her worry of being embarrassed she became far more interested in experimentation and soon was driving the menu in our activities together.
I suspect that it was reassuring (if not empowering) for her to fuck my brains out and leave me, instead, panting, limp as a wet rag. I sure didn't mind and didn't forget to thank her after regaining my breath.
We soon had a very active sex life together. Lily's appetite improved to the point that she started to fill out into a womanly form though it didn't seem likely she'd ever gain much weight.
When my folks met Lily they were initially pretty wary of her, as were my sisters. It didn't take much for them to come around and soon my girlfriend was as welcome as I was.
Who knows? Maybe she was more welcome?
Lily's folks were the harder sell, her being the "baby" of her family. Her older sibs looked me over with rather jaundiced eyes. At the same time I realized her mom looked pretty good at 63 years old which can be reassuring.
Over this year at college Lily's grades improved enormously; this went a long way in reassuring her folks that she was doing the right thing, relationship-wise. I maintained a good track record with my grades as well.
Our summer was interesting, spending it together on my dad's sailboat, cruising in the Bahamas. We spent a lot of time fucking each other's brains out and, when possible, did a lot of our sailing in the nude.
And, yes, we were smart enough to use lots of sunscreen.
Lily's transfer to a nearby state university went through and she was able to continue her pre-med track. I was able to follow her but chose to pursue engineering mixed in with all of the 'liberal arts' courses I needed to take.
And it was here that it seemed things were going to go out of kilter.
Joe's girlfriend Sandra, the former head cheerleader at my original High School, was a sophomore at this university, and, being a sophomore, ended up sharing an English class on Poetry with me.
Don't laugh. I could probably recite the whole Iliad and Odyssey in the original Greek, just from memory. Hell, I'd been taught it by the man who'd composed it!
All right, so it isn't really 'just' a poem since it mainly used rhythmic devices to aid memory.
Most mere mortals never "get" poetry. There are times when I suspect the only people who can "get it" right away are immortals.
People look for "meaning" in poetry when they should be looking for "emotional context". Poetry, I learned too many thousands of years ago, speaks to the heart rather than the head.
Eighteen year olds are not going to get much from poetry. Even twenty year olds aren't likely to do much better.
But, of all the class, I had an unfair advantage, allowing me to do somewhat better than anyone else, not that I tended to agree with the instructor. This reinforced Sandra's decision to pursue me for help in this class.
Now let me tell you that being an immortal has never been a lot of fun or a large supply of laughs. All right, so there are a good number of laughs to be had after dealing with some of the situations I've been through, but oftentimes it feels as unamusing as a job, which can really provide a chilling effect. Some lifetimes are much warmer, too, although this is usually when compared to other lifetimes. Often enough, though, some lifetimes can amount to periods of depression with special little moments of disappointment.
One of our more useful gifts is the "flash", giving us a vision of someone's future, past, or both. Only very occasionally are these visions not overwhelmingly depressing. Even the pleasant ones tend to be mixed.
So getting a flash of Sandra's past was annoying. Joe, it seemed, liked to physically abuse people, leaving behind a scarred young woman.
Not getting a future flash did nothing to raise my mood.
A woman, two years my body's senior, who suddenly looked to me as her savior-- and not just for poetry class.
Lily knew the story of "my life" and knew of Joe, Al, Gary and Roger. I'd even shown her news clippings, which included a photo of me being cut free from my car, so she was concerned over what Sandra might want to do to me. This was ironic because Lily didn't know what I knew and I could not explain what and how I knew differently, so I did not even try to provide any background.
Sandra eventually pursued me until she finally got to meet Lily at the Student Union and saw me cuddled up to my lover. I could feel the sudden deflation in my stalker and knew, at that moment, that Sandra was almost ready to take her own life.
So, at that moment, I knew that Sandra was almost empty enough, feeling both unloved and unlovable, to provide a body that one of my kind could jump in to, if such was allowed so close to each other. I was not eager to allow that to go further but, in all fairness, I was emotionally committed to Lily.
I am not sure know how Lilly worked it out, but she was sharp enough on her own to see "through" Sandra's face and invited her to sit and talk... and shoved me out of the booth, with a directive that I go visit the library before heading home. She also told me that I should not get home for several hours.
I have a lot of faith in Lily.
When I finally got back to our apartment I found Sandra and Lily cuddled together on the couch. Sandra was asleep, her head on Lily's lap. I quietly came up to Lily and gave her a kiss which got a smile out of her.
It was later, when we went to bed together while Sandra laid asleep on the couch, bundled into a blanket, that Lily explained what was going on and that she'd used hypnotism on Sandra. We talked and cuddled before I faded out.
I woke up with a shaved pussy over my face as I felt my pole being vacuumed, so I returned the favor to the woman on top of me, who pulled off of me long enough to moan out my name before diving back to work on my hard dick.
I felt the presence of someone else between my thighs, kissing up from my knees to my balls.
Now this is not really something new to "me"; I've lived enough lives that I have experienced a lot of different sexual acts and combinations. I knew that it was Sandra on top, sixty-nining with me, while Lily made sure I knew this wasn't a problem.
Sandra wasn't very talented at servicing me orally, but, then, that's something that requires regular practice at a level that Lily had an unfair advantage in by being able to keep up her skill levels with me. I had enough practice myself to bring off Sandra twice long before I was ready to deliver my load to her mouth.
Given that Sandra wasn't protected we didn't go all the way but I did, at Lily's urging, get to pound Sandra's pussy with my lover's mouth. Now as a woman I have been in the middle of such an arrangement and enjoyed it but I was still surprised by Lily's imaginative suggestion and enthusiasm.
Shortly after an emotionally recharged Sandra left us, Lily told me that she had always liked girls too, which fit what I'd already known from the flashes I've had already.
Then she told me to expect to see Sandra back again. And again. For a long time, in fact.
It was later that evening that Lily told me that she was tickled by the irony of having me undo the damage that Joe had done to Sandra and hoped that I could keep it up for them both over the long haul.
In the last fifteen years Lily has gotten her MD as a psychiatrist and I've been working as a Professional Engineer for a bit longer, since my specialty didn't require as long a period of schooling. Sandra, given her childhood and emotional damage from Joe, wasn't able to be completely cured but the treatment regimen my wife devised kept her reasonably happy and fulfilled. Sandra wasn't planning on going far and helped us as a home-maker and mommy for all of our children. I knew, by this time, that my earliest flash visions of Lily hadn't completely exposed all of our life together.
So Sandra has stayed with us. She's become a fairly active writer of romance novels and I've helped her with historical background. She is, of course, not fully aware of where some of my stories come from but she can feel the truth of them. The nice thing is that, like a poet, she is "at work" just staring out the window.
You can bet that I like that she has borne three of my five children and, with both Lily and I, cares for them all so well, despite her continuing fears of repeating any of her parents' mistakes. We three spend enough time together that she knows she isn't alone and we're there to help.
You can bet that I don't have any problems handling my role in keeping Sandra-- and Lily-- emotionally satisfied.
Our children are happy and comfortable and able to talk to us about anything.
We also go on cruises as a family, sometimes flying out to charter sailboats for our vacations. Almost everything seems to suggest a story to Sandra which tends to pay off. Someday I have to get her to try writing some real smut.
I'm content with my family and how happy we all are together. I do, albeit only occasionally, worry over my future with my next Jump.
But, then, today is today, and, as I've learned in the lives I've lived, I'm living and enjoying each breath I get to take and each hug I give and get.
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Author: Jack C Lipton Title: A Shadow Knows Part: Universe: Shadows Summary: How do you measure success? Keywords: mF MFF Revision: $Revision: 1.5 $ Archive: http://www.asstr-mirror.org/files/Authors/CupaSoup/www/ Mailing List: FAQ: RCS: $Id: shadows2.x,v 1.5 2006/02/12 01:23:28 jcl Exp $