[TF: F -> Ghost]

[CW: Body Possession, Spooky, Physical (non-mental) Death]

[Commissioned by sportscarfan18]

[Author’s Note: This story is a bit more of a direct sequel to “Peaceful Fountain”. Check it out!]

Joanne smiled over at Chris. “Hey, remember when the lab changed me back from being that statue?”

Chris rolled her eyes, leaning back on the couch. “Yeah. You’re still dopey when I touch the bust they left. Why bring it up, that was a while ago?”

Joanne leaned in. “Well, there’s something about it that I never told you. You remember how I mentioned that they ground me up and mixed me up so they could change me back?” Chris nodded. It had been a stressful time, not knowing if Joanne would be safely returned to her. “Well,” Joanne continued watching Chris carefully as she started her story, “let’s just say that plan didn’t work, and I was dead for a while.”

===

Joanne was crushed and tumbled in the machine, everything beneath her breasts destroyed while the rest of her sat to the side as a bust. It was a strange feeling being separated in two places like this, and Joanne made a mental note to find a way to split up in the future again, though with a bit more mobility than some rock. In one spot, her entire being was still frozen in the meditative posture and she felt tranquil and secure. In the other spot - the inside of the machine - her body was being roughly thrown about and broken into little more than dust and small pebbles.

It felt like she was getting an intense body massage all the while not even moving around. It was intense and passive at the same time, and she loved it. She mentally groaned as the machine was shut off, and her broken remnants were poured out into a human shaped mold along with even more filler rocks.

She watched as the scientists poured water into the mold, turning her constituent elements into a wet and muddy paste. They flipped breakers and turned on machines, and the room was filled with a large humming noise. Nothing seemed to happen to her body though, and Joanne watched with detached interest as the people rushed around her and tried to bring her back to a flesh and blood form.

With all the hustle and bustle around her, as well as the interesting sight of the mud she had become on the table as well as the sight of the statue bust that remained of her, it hadn’t occurred to Joanne how she was able to see everything going on. Though, as nothing seemed to be developing, the oddity of the situation grew until Joanne was forced to confront the fact that she was outside of her body.

Joanne was a ghost.

At least, it made the most sense that she would be a ghost. She could still feel her presence in the statue, but she was also a separate entity that no one seemed to be able to notice. If they had, surely they’d stop trying to turn the pile of pebbles into a woman again. The whole “being a ghost” thing had to be tested before she could believe that was what was happening to her.

She floated up toward the ceiling and then back down toward the floor - even through the floor, on accident before drifting back toward normal eye level. That ruled out just being invisible then.

Next, Joanne willed herself toward one of the people in the room and flew through them. It felt strange, not unlike offroading in a car not designed for it and feeling a rough bumpiness. Still, the person only shivered and shuddered before going about their day.

The last thing Joanne could test was to see if she could see her reflection. She zoomed around the laboratory - it was strangely convenient to not have to give mind to stairs or obstacles in her path, using little energy to move around. She finally found a polished piece of stainless steel that was clear enough that she could see the reflection of everything around her… except her.

A hollow sadness seemed to fill Joanne as she drifted back to sit next to the statue of her. She was dead, it seemed. Or at least her body was so destroyed that this is all that was left of her. She sighed and leaned on the statue, frowning. She couldn’t pass through it, strangely. Even as she touched it, she could feel the touch from inside the statue still. Joanne sat, thinking about the implications of how she could feel from the statue as well still. It dawned on her that while she might be dead, her spirit wandering around like a ghost, there must be enough of her left in the statue that this wouldn’t be a permanent affliction.

As though a switch had been flipped Joanne pepped up. The immediate ‘dead and forced to walk the Earth alone forever’ crisis had been resolved, and now she was left to enjoy the situation. Joanne let her body start to vaguely drift around, not paying much attention to where she was going. She seemed to be floating upward while spiralling in a circle around the bust. On a whim once she was already near the top of the room, she decided to ascend as rapidly as possible. She rushed through multiple floors, passing through various pieces of furniture and people as she made her way without much heed to their presence. Finally she rushed past the roof and into the open air.

It was a long way down. Even just to the rooftop she had been at a moment ago seemed distant, let alone the ground around the building. She looked around. From here, she could get a view of the entire town. Out in the distance she could see her house where Chris was presumably waiting for her. She was tempted to rush over there immediately, but hesitated. She didn’t know enough about what was going on yet, and she didn’t want to freak out Chris unnecessarily. It hurt her to resist, but she knew it’d be better if she waited. Instead, she knew the perfect place to go…

===

Joanne drifted her way to the old derelict house that had been in the center of town as long as she had been alive. No one really knew who owned the house. There were no residents, and no one really took care of the property - overgrown grass and weeds made looking into the darkened windows difficult. It was by all accounts, a creepy house that had every expectation of being haunted.

Just, for the first time ever, it actually was.

Joanne floated through the house. She supposed it was actually safer for her to be in here compared to the last time she visited. She had been a teen on a dare to spend a night in the supposed ‘haunted house’, but there wasn’t that much that was spooky other than some cobwebs and some furniture that had been knocked over long ago. Joanne had hoped for some really exciting paranormal activity that night, but nothing ended up happening.

While floating through, she noticed a vase still standing on a table, the flowers long since wilted and dried out. She reached out to it and through it on her first attempt. With a little more focus, she made contact with the porcelain and caused it to rattle about on the table. Feeling pleased with herself, Joanne was about to wander off when she heard someone speak.

“Uh, you guys see that?” Some guy had a whiny voice as he called out to his friends. Joanne whirled around in a startled panic, dust kicking up around her from the sudden movement paired with the energy of her surprise.

“Woah…” A girl in the group - presumably the leader, Joanne figured by the way she stood at the front of the teens leading into the next room - trailed off as she watched the dust move around. Joanne grinned, though no one could see it, and grabbed the vase again to start rattling it again.

“This place really is haunted!” The leader-girl called out, pumping her fist in the air. The rest of the group wasn’t as excited and looked uneasy at the strange happenings around them. One girl looked like she was ready to run away, her body shaking and twitching from the fear. Joanne chuckled and lifted up the vase, giving the appearance that it was floating in midair. The skittish girl wasn’t impressed, and shrieked like a banshee before sprinting off. The sudden shock of the scream made other group members scream as well, and caused Joanne to be suddenly extremely surprised. The sudden change in her emotions caused the vase to shoot out of her hands at the wall next to her, erupting in a small sudden explosion of dust.

Joanne turned to watch the small group, letting the dust pass by her. They stared at her, and Joanne was waiting for someone to do something. “Guys… do you see…” Whiny Voice Guy called out to his friends before Leader Girl shushed him.

“Shut up… we all see her!”

Joanne was baffled what they could be talking about as she was an invisible ghost after all. Then it dawned on her: the dust that had been flying through the air was flying differently through her. She could feel the same rough bumpiness she had felt in the lab, though it was spread out over a much larger area. The dust was still falling through her, just slowly and at strange angles. It created an eerie silhouette of a three dimensional woman, slowly moving as though she were examining herself.

A step forward to the teens caused a fair amount of the dust to fall outside her effect, suddenly drifting back toward the floor at normal speed. Another step caused most of the remaining particles to fall out as well. She now stood nearly in front of them, watching what they would do next. Leader Girl stuck her hand out and waved it through the dust, shuddering from a chill as she did so. She looked back at her friends with panic in her eyes, and then back to Joanne. That was enough indecision for the youths, and they sprinted away out of the house.

Joanne couldn’t help but laugh herself hoarse, floating through her now deserted temporary home. She hadn’t meant to intimidate the teens, but it just sort of happened. She was a little unnerved by the way the vase flew out of her grip. It would take effort to learn how to control her emotions enough to not cause an accident that would potentially hurt someone.

It seemed that the arrival of an actual ghost in the abandoned house stirred the local town’s gossip into full swing. Before long, Joanne had guests almost every night of all ages. Even camera crews came by to see if they could catch a sight of the elusive spectre. Joanne usually laid low when they were recording, not letting them get a good glimpse of anything more than a chair rocking or a door shutting slowly. She saved the more exciting tricks for the people who came to the house with a sense of adventure like she had when she was younger. Joanne used any piles of dust she could find, even floating up through the floorboards to carry dust upward through her body.

She also figured out what the strange agitation was that she felt when something moved through her. If she focused on the sensation while something was in, her phantasmal body would be entirely drawn into the object as though it were her actual physical body now. It felt jarringly uncomfortable, a fact that Joanne attributed to the difference between spending a few minutes in a body as opposed to a lifetime. It allowed for interesting scares though, as she could move and mess around with an object, or cause electronics to go heywire.

After about a year, Joanne drifted to the front of the house and through the wall to look outside. It seemed the hauntings had caught up to her, and the owner of the property had arrived to tear down the property. Mildly upset, Joanne drifted off, unable to watch this scenic home from her childhood and this interesting stage of her life get demolished. With nowhere else to go, Joanne drifted back to her house where Chris was waiting for her.

===

There she was. Joanne took a moment to revel in the beauty of her wife as she sat on the couch. She seemed mellow - not sad or depressed at Joanne’s absence as she knew it to be temporary, but still missing her best friend and lover. Joanne floated closer on emotional instinct, trying to place her head against the surface of Chris’s shoulder. Instead, she ended up slipping into her lover, causing the strange sensation in herself as well as a shudder through Chris’s body.

Joanne let out an inaudible sigh, frustrated at the inability to touch her significant other. She drifted back a bit but then had a moment of inspiration. Chris always wore the special naval piercing that was a replica of the time Joanne became a belly ring! Joanne repositioned herself partially into the floor so that her head was at eye level with the piece of jewelry. There it was, peaking out of the bottom of Chris’s t-shirt. Joanne easily willed herself into the small crystalline version of herself that was wrapped in the ‘ribbons’ of gold and silver. She felt at home - it wasn’t her body, and there was still a sense of discomfort with the acting of possessing it even though this was a form she had spent considerable time in. Still, it felt better than having no body at all.

Each night Joanne would let herself play with and test her form. With enough mental energy - more than just to move her ghostly around - she was able to move the small body of the piercing. Even the metal ribbons waved around her in a faux breeze as she gained enough fine tuned control over the form. She was still adhered to Chris’s naval, but it allowed her to work her arms and legs around, and feel her body. Some mornings would come and she would be in a new pose, but Chris didn’t seem to notice. Most of the time morning would come, and Joanne would vacate the piercing so as not to bother and disturb Chris during the day.

It was one night that Joanne was drifting through the house about to possess the piercing again when Chris suddenly sneezed violently. Chris doubled over, her head intercepting the trajectory Joanne had taken. Before Joanne could react or move out of the way, her entire being was drawn into Chris’s head. For a long moment, neither moved, and with eyes closed it was easy to pretend nothing had happened. Eventually though Joanne had to open her eyes. She was presented with the sight of actual physical hands inches from her face.

Except they weren’t her hands, they were Chris’s. They moved at Joanne’s command, the fingers bending and flexing as though they were her own. She waved them around in front of her face, thinking about the consequences. She willed herself out of Chris’s body and felt a bit of resistance. It made Joanne realize how relaxed she was inside of Chris. Sure, it wasn’t her own body, but the years of close intimacy blurred the lines, and her spirit felt relaxed inside the frame of her lover. Joanne watched as Chris tried to sort out what had happened, ultimately shrugging it off as a weird moment.

As Chris relaxed again, Joanne realized her partner had no memory of being possessed. Temptation overtook her, and she dove back into Chris’s head, taking over her body again. It felt good having a body, being able to walk and see her own reflection. She ate some food and it felt amazing to taste again. She laughed and sang along to the radio, enjoying hearing her voice again, even if it wasn’t strictly her own. As the night wore on she felt tired - a physical exhaustion she hadn’t felt in months! She laid down her body in bed, undressed, and ran her fingers over the delicate skin.

She had spent many nights touching and admiring this body, but this was a whole new perspective. She could feel the fingers against her skin as they touched the breasts of her lover and the soft mound between her legs. She bit her lip - Chris’s lip - and found herself unable to resist sexual contact. She knew Chris wouldn’t mind if she had been aware - their relationship was pretty consenting to spontaneous sexual advances. But there was still the taboo of it, of taking control of her partner’s body and guiding it to self gratification.

Her experience with pleasuring Chris made bringing herself to orgasm easier, though it still took a bit of experimenting. Everything seemed subtly different being so deeply inside her lover. Joanne forced herself back out of Chris’s body reluctantly after finishing, watching as Chris drifted off to sleep none the wiser. The nightly ritual had changed - instead of possessing the small piercing, Joanne would take over Chris’s body every evening and not relinquish control until she had her fill of being alive again, as well as the thrill of sexual discovery.

Until one night when, midway through a passionate session of intimacy, Joanne found herself ripped out of Chris’s body, waking up in her own body across the town in the laboratory.

===

“That was you?!” Chris shouted in surprise, grinning as she threw a pillow at Joanne’s head. Joanne grinned sheepishly as she ducked out of the way. “I was wondering why I just kinda woke up all hot and bothered one night!”

Joanne nodded. “Yeah… I might have had a bit of fun with you. A lot of fun with you.” Joanne bit her lip. “What can I say, I know you inside and out now!”

Chris shook her head. “You’re crazy, you know that?”

“Yeah, of course!”