The Process Forum - New TF Story

Yeesh, two weeks to get over my writer's block. >.<

Well, hope you enjoy! :D
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"Go!" Mary yelled, Katie's tires squealing as she tore out of the parking lot and headed for the freeway.
As Katie sped up the onramp, Mary watched, hunched in the footwells, her arms and legs little more than masses of tentacles filling every nook and cranny under the seats as she "sat" behind the passenger-side seat.
"Mary, what did you do to her?" Katie demanded as she sped home in the left-hand lane.
"She grabbed me!" Mary said, flopping over into the front seat and re-forming her limbs. The nurse was hidden enough, but Mary's forest-green head and dreadlocks was just too noticable. "I didn't even get a chance to argue like I did with you!"
"But how- wait, argue?" Katie asked, stealing a glance as Mary's skin returned to its normal color.
"Er, yeah," Mary said. "I had to convince the Body not to eat you. Wasn't easy."
Katie was silent for a while, save for the click-click of her lane-change indicator. "...Thanks, Mary," She said after a while. "I don't know if I said it already, what with the boobzilla thing, but thanks for going to bat for me. I know it couldn't have been easy. I mean, I don't even know for sure if this 'Body' person...entity... *thing* exists, but if you kept it from killing me, thanks."
"Come on," Mary said, "What choice did I have? I couldn't-"
"Bwurrrrffffpaahhh," the nurse moand from the back seat, causing Katie and Mary to look behind themselves.
"Uh-oh," Mary said.
"Deal with it," Katie said, "this is our exit."
Mary slid into the back seat again, her torso and limbs sliding around more akin to a snake's body than anything with a human skeletal system.
The nurse was beginning to turn green, just like Katie had. More prominent, however, was her stomach, bloating like an inflating balloon under her clothes. Her limbs didn't seem to be affected much, though Mary did notice her hair being absorbed into her scalp, just like Katie. But then a wedge of green flesh started to grow out the back of her head, the wedge splitting into three ropes of green tentacle as the fused braid seemed to spool out the back of the nurses's head and come to rest in the footwell. The nurse's stomach, now a deep forest green, continued to expand, causing her shirt to ride up until it bunched up under her similarly-expanding breasts.
"Buwooooaaaahhh..." The nurse groaned again, squirming in the backseat. Mary bit her lip as she looked out the window and saw Katie was just passing the grocery store down the street from her apartment complex.
"I hope she doesn't wake up..." Mary said.
"What?!" Katie barked, looking into the backseat. "You can't mean-"
"-Until we get home!" Mary clarified. "Good grief, Katie, I'd never wish to kill someone, come on now..."
"...I think it all depends on who's at the wheel," Katie said. "What happens when the Body decides it doesn't want to wait around for you anymore?"
Mary shivered. "Just drive."

The nurse began to stir just as Katie pulled up, her belly huge and gravid, looking like one of those women you see on the news pregnant with sextuplets. Katie jumped out of the car and opened the rear door, looking around.
"Okay, coast is clear," She said. "Now what do we-"
"Move," Mary said, surging towards the opening even as the nurse attempted to sit up, being thwarted by her ponderous front. Mary flopped out of the car, her arms already masses of tentacles as she hit the ground. She rose up on her leg-tentacles, all the ropey appendages not used for support grabbing and pulling the nurse out of the backseat. The nurse began to struggle, but Mary quickly bound her in tentacles, taking special care to wrap one tentacle around her mouth as Mary lifted her bodily out of the backseat.
"Upstairs," Mary said, holding the nurse above her head. As she ascended the steps to what used to be Katie's apartment, Mary distractedly wondered how she was able to lift the struggling nurse so easily. She quickly forced the thoughts out of her mind as she opened the door with one of her tentacles and rushed inside. To her surprise, her lair was waiting for her, more or less, the mat of slimy tentacles huddled in front of the door. Mary let the nurse down on it, leaving her wrapped up in the tentacles. Mary knelt down close to the nurse, severing herself from the tentacles binding the woman and growing a new set of arms.
"Now look," Mary said in as reassuring a voice as she could manage, "I know this is scary, but I'm not going to hurt you. I'm going to let you go now, so please don't scream."
Mary stood up, a mental command causing the tentacles around the nurse to slacken and become re-absorbed into the lair. The nurse looked around fearfully, then slowly got to her feet.
"Are you okay?" Katie asked.
The nurse nodded, then broke for the door, her hand on the knob before anyone could even react.
"Hey!" Mary yelled, whipping a tentacle arm and catching the nurse in at the end of her fleshy braid just as she got the door open.
"Help! Helllp!" The nurse screamed out the door, until another of Mary's tentacles wrapped around her mouth, dragging her back inside as Katie shut the door, this time making sure to latch the deadbolt.
"Are you stupid?!" Mary hissed as she brought the nurse back to the ground again. "Look at you! Look at yourself! You think anyone's going to think you're anything but some kind of monster?" Mary huffed. "Okay, now, I can leave this on here as long as I need to," She said, tightening the tentacle gag just a little, "So either you agree to use your inside voice or I'll leave the gag in. Which do you want?"
The nurse tried to give a muffled response, but Mary couldn't make it out.
"All right, try again," she said. "Nod if you promise to be quiet."
The nurse nodded several times, and Mary stepped back from the nurse again, keeping herself between the nurse and the door.
"...What did you do to me?" the nurse asked as she got into a sitting position, her enormous belly forcing her to plant her hands behind her to keep from falling backwards.
"You've been infected by a semi-sentient parasitic organism from outer space," Mary said. "It landed during the meteor shower a few days ago and infected me. Katie's the second person to get infected, and you're the third."
"That's insane."
"And yet here you are," Mary said wryly. "Look, I don't think we've been properly introdused. My name's Mary. Mary Carver."
"Shandra Watterson," she said, though she didn't extend her hand. She looked down at her stomach again. "What did you do to me?" She repeated.
"I honestly don't know," Mary said. "That prick you felt on your hand was some sort of transformation shot, making you into what you look like now."
"Why did you do it?"
"Well, I didn't, really."
"Yes you did!" Shandra shot back.
"Look, if you hadn't grabbed me none of this would have happened!" Mary snapped. "Couldn't just leave well enough alone, could you? You just had to keep pushing."
"Me?" Shandra said, shocked. "I'm sorry, I don't think grabbing someone's arm is worth a death sentance!"
"Death sentance?" Mary asked.
"You said it yourself, it's a parasite," Shandra said. "Parasites only use their hosts for as long as the parasite benefits from it. Once you've outlived your usefulness, the parasite moves on. Hell, lots of parasites *rely* on the host dying!"
"That's- I don't think I have to worry about that," Mary said. "At least I don't think so."
"Well, that sure comforts me a whole lot," Shandra said, struggling to her feet. "What about me?"
"I don't know," Mary said. "Katie's been infected for the better part of a week, and she's okay so far."
"Her?" Shandra asked, looking at Katie. "How come she's not green?"
"She is," Mary said. "Er, usually."
"So why isn't she now?"
"Because I can give her an injection- of what, I don't know- that will turn her normal again for a few days."
Shandra's mood changed almost instantly, the edge in her voice withering in desperation. "You- you have a cure?"
Mary shook her head. "Not a cure, no," She said. "A treatment, at best. Temporary."
"Well... did you try going to a real doctor?" Shandra asked, the hope already draining out of her voice.
Katie barked out a laugh before catching herself, but Mary didn't find it particularly funny. "It's an alien parasite that came in on a *meteorite*, it's not like you can throw some penecilin in me and be done with it."
"You don't know-"
"I drank bleach yesterday, Shandra," Mary said, thowing her hands up in an exasperated gesture. "Straight-up *bleach*. *Drank* it."
Shandra was silent for a while, lowering her head. "You're... not going to let me leave, are you?"
"Well, I don't want it to sound like I'm kidnapping you or any-"
"But that's exactly what-" Shandra interrupted.
"I *know* what it is!" Mary snapped as she began to pace the room. "I'm a law student, hello? You think I don't know what kidnapping is? You think I don't know what murder is?"
"Murder?" Shandra gasped, and Mary froze mid-step from her pacing, cringing at her slip of the tongue.
"Look," Mary said, "the sort answer is no. No one can know about me- about any of us- until I've got a better handle on what's happening. I don't want it to be like one of those sci-fi movies where the whole town gets quarantined or bombed or something to kill off the alien or whatever."
Now it was shandra's turn to laugh. "Your idea for dealing with a completely new disease is to ignore it an hope it goes away? Are you kidding me?"
"Not when there's a chance I might be able to convince the disease not to spread," Mary said, crossing her arms. "This thing inside me is sentient, and I'm trying to get some control over it, but it's still at the point where it can take me over if it really sets its mind on it. That why you got transformed, you spooked it and it reacted."
"So nobody knows about this besides us three?" Shandra asked.
"Yeah," Mary replied, "And we need to keep it-"
"Then who's that looking through the curtains?"
Mary and Katie spun towards the window, and Shandra was already at the door by the time Mary could look back around, trying to turn the deadbolt.
"Hey!" Mary yelled, whipping her arm forward and grabbing Shandra by the loop in her fleshy braid. Mary gave a hard pull, and was surprised to see Shandra lifted entirely off her feet, landing hard on the floor and rolling backwards, coming to a stop sitting against the wall in the corner. "Sit!" Mary yelled, feeling the tingle on the back of her neck. "Quiet!" she added.

Shandra opened her mouth, but no sound came out. A look of horror dawned on her as she clamped her hands tightly over her mouth like something was trying to invade it.
"All right, I didn't want to have to do this..." Mary started. Shandra pressed herself into the corner, looking terrified. "I was trying to be nice. I'm trying to give you an option here. But as you can see, I have a much simpler way of doing things. Everyone the Body infects is linked to me, somehow. All I have to do is think it, and I can make you do whatever I want." Mary paused to let it sink in a bit. "Let me be perfectly clear: the will *not* be *any* informing *anyone* about what's happened to me, or any of us, until I say so. I *am* sorry you got dragged into this, but I can't let you leave, not yet. So given that you're staying with us, either you can agree to not shout and yell by choice, or..."
Mary let the "or" hang, and Shandra's frantic head-shaking proved she knew perfectly well what the alternative was.
"Fine," Mary said, drawing a long tentacle out of her lair and having it wrap around the end of Shandra's fleshy braid, effectively leashing Shandra to the Lair. "So you'll just stay here for a while and be nice, right?"
Shandra looked over her shoulder at the tentacle connecting her to the Lair. "...This is like rape, you know," She said, her head down. "Worse, somehow- you've violated me down to the cellular level."
"Shandra, this is bigger than you or me, do you understand? I am the only thing standing between this thing and the rest of the entire freaking *planet.* This parasite wants to kill and eat every single bit of organic life on the face of the Earth."
Shandra's head snapped up to look Mary square in the eye. "You think that makes it okay?" She asked, her voice quivering.
"No," Mary said, standing up and heading for the door, "But it makes it *necessary*."