Enough light remained to read the address. Dusk drained the color from the world, absorbing it into small pools of hue greedily kept by artificial light. 

Light from rooms of The Mansion was infrequent. They were a patina around the edges of Phantom’s vision that seemed to dart away when she focused her eyes on a window or door. Light and color were jealously guarded inside the mansion’s accursed doors and halls.

Rumored curses, of course. Phantom had enough contact with the mystical to understand the capacity for curses, but she was immensely skeptical of a “haunted house.” She wasn’t entirely sure why she’d come, but she thought that seemed like a good reason. 

Phantom wasn’t entirely certain what possessed her, but she’d appeared tonight outside the manor and was excited to explore it.

And so, here she was, haughty and eager, dressed in her purple spy-suit. Skintight smart materials dampened her thermal signature and made her all but invisible to any cameras and sensors there might be. 

Her slightly shiny catsuit was visible to the naked eye, but she had the feeling that she wasn’t going to bumble into a security guard. “Abandoned” manors rarely had night watchmen. 

She hoisted herself onto a second-story windowsill, and, finding it unlocked, slid it upwards, and effortlessly entered the mansion. Talk of spooks and specters didn’t even occur to her. 

However, the swirling mass of rumors and of missing persons who supposedly entered the place only served to intrigue her. Phantom licked her dark lips. 

Whatever she found, she knew she’d like. Maybe once she’d solved the ‘mystery,’ she’d renovate the old house through a shell company and keep it as a lair.

It had all the aura of a haunted manor. Age glazed over every surface. The stairs were alabaster; statues of black stone oozed the smell and style of a bygone era. 

Walls were desaturated in the darkness, their bright colors reduced to dull wooden surfaces broken only by dark wall-sconces. 

The patterns on the rugs were an indecipherable, and somehow intimidating, abstract Persian design.  Aside from an empty desk, the only thing of note was a closed door. 
She flicked on a flashlight, grinning at her new challenge.

Phantom passed from the study, through the door, and into a long corridor. A dozen doors or more lined the walls, with stairs going up and down into darkness. 

She patrolled the halls for a time, staying on what she thought was the second floor. Every wall had more doors of differing sizes. They almost seemed haphazardly placed, or even impossibly sized. 
Like they had been removed from something greater, cut down, and forcibly implanted into a wall that couldn’t support them. Ancient doors and new doors alike, and almost all of them locked.

Time passed. Or maybe it didn’t. She lost track of the rooms she’d been inside. It was easy, considering the “company” that seemed to occupy many of the locked rooms. 

Moans seemed to come from everywhere around her. She ran to a black-painted oak door, found it locked, and heard a slow and rhythmic moan, muffled by wood and tension.

Another door, also locked, seemed to elicit grunts and squeaks in a staccato and unpredictable pattern. Distant howls of both monstrous and sensual quality echoed up the stairs. Imposing squeaks of pleasure or terror and likely both poured from above. 

Light was diffuse around the manor; the moon gave off enough light to let her see, and somehow it seemed to reflect and amplify, even within the manor. 

Under the moonlight, she was able to get a better view at the dozens of voluptuous, feminine statues of ebony that lined the now seemingly endless corridor. Each of them shining as vibrantly as her suit, from their long legs to the tops of their smooth, faceless, obsidian heads.

Perhaps it was the acoustics, or just her mind playing tricks on her, but Phantom could swear that some of the muffled moans were coming from these statues. 

Some of them she suspected were moving or altering their poses when she looked away. Though perhaps she hadn't gotten a decent look at them initially.

Her attempts to look out the window, however, gave her a mild headache. Everything outside was blurry, and all of it blended together - an out-of-focus yard, surrounded by what must surely have been a wall, and countryside. 

She knew what was out there - nothing of interest - even though she somehow couldn’t quite remember actually crossing it
before she entered the manor. 

Returning her attention to the corridor, there was one door that stood out to her; massive, imposing, and white. It was twice as tall as the others, and she found it at the end of a long corridor filled with old maps of places Phantom couldn’t identify. 
She stepped closer, pointing her flashlight at it. 

Not only was it locked, but the handle didn’t even seem to be a handle. She fruitlessly gripped at what must have been a prop, despite what was most assuredly the telltale sound of ecstatic noises gurgling from between gagged lips. 

A huff escaped her lips. She pointed her torch at the handle and reached for a set of lockpicks. By the time she realized there wasn’t even a keyhole, the torch was starting to flicker. 

Phantom shook it, stared at it, and felt the mildest sense of panic as she tried to get her bearings. 

Seconds passed. She shook at the light, applying some percussive maintenance with the palm of her hand. It flickered back on. 

Seconds more passed, and she abandoned trying to open this seemingly decorative door and walked towards the stairs, doing her best to avoid staring at the unsettling long line of ink skinned statues of feminine beauty. 

She took a step down, placing one boot on the dark, carpeted stairs, and the light instantly went back out. 

The dark was oppressive. The air was stuffy, neutral, and painfully still. It contrasted so harshly with the howling wind outside and the groans from behind sealed doors. 

She couldn’t get her bearings, and it was too dark to see where she was going. 

Another three seconds passed. The illumination of the moonlight wasn’t enough to let her keep moving for fear of taking a tumble. 

She slowly started to turn in place, squinting in the dark, until she felt comfortable that she was looking back to the hallway.

She heard it before she saw it. The rumbling sliding of a door in the distance, and the heavy leathery sounds of something with a heavy, definable mass. 

The air changed, drafts blowing through Phantom’s dark hair as an open door changed the air. 

Throwing caution to the wind, she traipsed down the stairs, blindly walking in the dark, entering into a long gallery. She took a few steps into the room, searching for exits. 

A sinister rattling sound, followed by a massive, meaty slither made her slowly turn back, looking up the stairs. 

A tremendous snake of fearsome black rubber loomed before her. The serpent was all sinew and smooth, unblemished-looking skin; nearly twenty feet in length she guessed. 

All muscle and curves, it slithered down the stairs with effortless precision. The visitor took a step back, enthralled by the snake’s brilliant emerald eyes. 

It pounced on her immediately, not waiting for Phantom to react. 

Phantom felt thick, rubbery skin against her body instantly. It started worming around her legs, pinning them together, before coiling around and around and around until it reached her arms and chest. 

She bucked, forcing her arms out to keep it away, but it had no trouble closing tight and trapping her limbs taut against her form.

The pressure was immense. Phantom gasped as the air was forced from her chest, a combination of surprise and the immensely powerful rubbery embrace that now mummified her from the neck down. 
Her flashlight rolled across the gallery floor, and it settled on illuminating the fearsome, terrible visage of the snake. 

Phantom managed a mewling sound as the coils closed taut around her form. The scaly skin brushed against her chin, and she shuddered; the texture was so unique, while also feeling inorganically smooth. 
She tried to get a look at the creature, lit as it was by the flashlight that lay uselessly out of reach. 

Judging by the appearance of the skin, as well as its silhouette, it wasn’t a literal snake at all. 

There was someone inside it - not some devoured victim, but with decidedly female features, it looked more like someone was wearing the suit itself. 

Its upper body had visible curves. The shapely aesthetic of a woman’s hips, for example. The lines of breasts, enclosed behind a thick layer of scaly rubber. A slight bulge behind its neck, where heavily bound arms were kept. 

Phantom struggled. She wasn’t going to simply give in to whatever the whims of this snake - no, this suited up guard - had in mind for her. She pulled and tugged against the body, but its warm and unyielding enclosure seemed to tighten slightly, as if telling her not to resist. 

The serpent’s head reared back, slightly. Phantom could see that the eyes were in fact lenses, behind which, she could make out the bare visage of a woman’s eyes. 

She wasn’t speaking, but the snake-suited servant still held a malign, almost mischievous expression behind them as they grew closer and a slimy forked flicked out of the suit's mouth to taste Phantom's cheek.

The massive, intimidating, fang filled jaw opened; with the help of its prehensile tongue, it grabbed at the zipper to Phantom’s suit. 

Within a minute of squirming, tugging, and the occasional bite with the jaw, the spy-suit was gone, torn to pieces, leaving Phantom utterly nude, pressed within the serpent’s grasp. 

She’d tried to force her way out during the ordeal, but it had been no use. Whoever was wearing the serpentine suit certainly knew just how to use it.

There was a growing tension as the serpent finally reared its head back and unhinged its jaws even wider than before. Sounds of tearing rubber were heard as something started to violently split apart.

Phantom shut her eyes, grimacing. She expected a vicious bite, but was surprised when nothing happened. Phantom opened her eyes.

With the jaws of the suit unhinged and split apart, there was a terrible retching sound as a woman was slimily ejected from the snake-suit's gullet, and landed on the ground. The snake suit seemed to fall limp. 

The woman had fair skin, pale pink-white hair, and was completely nude. She flopped onto her back, sweat glistening on her body. 

As she started wiggling her way out of the thick rubbery coils, Phantom recognized her purple eyes as belonging to her friend, Violi - who had, to Phantom’s knowledge, been missing for quite some time. 

She chuckled to herself, raising up to watch what she knew would come next. Violi wiped sweat from her brow, her lips turning up into a smile. 

"I didn't want to have to do this to you, Phantom. But I've been that things puppet for long enough now..."
Phantom was finally out of the coils, but suddenly froze as she felt the vacant snakeskin start to move.

A surprised gasp escaped her throat as she felt the warm, sticky tongue of the suit suddenly and violently whip around her ankles, and begin to slowly drag her into it's hungry jaws.

"It's better this way. Besides, black's always been more your color." Violi snickered before she turned and bolted down the stairs.

Phantom wasn't even able to respond before she slipped into the maw of the creature, past its mouth and tumbled inside. 
It felt as though it's internal muscles and tongue were trying to make sure she was placed in the right spot within the suit's throat. 

Every inch of her body was being molested and coated by the inside of the latex suit, as she squirmed and struggled and felt herself being properly positioned.

Phantom’s arms were tucked behind her back, sleeved up first in sheathes of thick rubber before being seemingly sealed in place. 

The scales made Phantom shiver from top to bottom. She was still yelling, she realized, moaning and screaming as she desperately tried to wiggle free.

And that was when the thing started to tighten. It started at the top and worked its way down, sealing itself and compressing her body like a vacbed. 

It was snug around her neck, teasing her sensitive gorge with a pleasantly increased pressure. The rubber moulded itself around her breasts, completely coating them and sealing in place. 

Her new skin pushed them up as well, with separate pockets to completely accentuate the look of her curves within this unrelentingly tight, scaly prison.


The tightness extended to her stomach and legs. It was almost as if the suit was wrapping around her, enclosing and morphing to best match her figure. 

She yelled out, but these would be the last human sounds she vocalized, as the suit completed the finishing touches and the mask began to close tightly around her head, rendering her cries mutes.

Inside the mask, a long, fat, protruding plug inserted itself between Phantom’s lips. She tried to resist it, forcing it away with her tongue, at first, but she couldn’t keep it away. 

It continued, going back until it seemed to tickle and expanded around her mouth. Her words were taken away from her, and she was forced to chew on a humiliating phallic object within her maw. 

The tight rubber pressed against her cheeks, nose, and entire head, as well - making sure that every inch of her body was now totally and completely enthralled in the suit.

The sensations that flooded Phantom's mind now that the and the suit were one, were overwhelming. She could both feel her body within the suit, and feel the rubbery, scaly body of the suit as if it were her own.

She could move the entire length of its body, somehow. As though she were born a twenty foot serpent.

The mask's black lenses turned emerald once more, and suddenly, Phantom could see once again. Surprisingly well, despite it being so dark.

However, moving, even slithering, was difficult; she had to weave left and right, using muscles and control over the suit in ways that - before being encased - she simply didn’t imagine possible.

But, here she was. Trapped within the beautiful serpentine form of a strange, living snake suit. 

Already, she could feel her brain drifting. The need to escape started to fade as she basked in the moonlight, immeasurably comfortable within the suit's heavenly embrace.

Phantom squirmed. The oily squeaky sound of her rubber form made her blush underneath countless layers and made her feel warm even in the strange, dark cold of the manor. 

She lightly parted the lips of her snout, and a combination of a low, bestial hiss and a sultry, sensual moan emanated from within.

"Wait... the suit's lips!" Phantom struggled to remind herself. She'd only been clad in it for a minute, and already she couldn't tell the difference between the suit and her own skin.

What was this thing doing to her?

The distant sounds of running feet were picked up by the suit's reptilian ears. Violi was on her feet, jogging along carpeted floors. 

Phantom’s vision felt hazy, but she could smell her, tracing the places where her scent and body had been as she flicked her- the suit's tongue through the mansion's frigid air. 

She tried to mentally parse the situation. Violi was a friend, as well as a rival and sometimes-enemy. If she wasn’t going to help her this time, perhaps she’d escape, and potentially call others for help. 

Somehow, those thoughts trickled away, like sweat off her perfect rubber scales. She wanted to pursue the violet-eyed escapee. She wanted to prey on her, like a predator. 

After all, she was the one wearing this suit now, and Violi had decided to leave her to her fate. 
"black's always been more your color." she'd said. Violi had no idea how right she was about Phantom being a better fit for the living suit.

Maybe she’d teach her a lesson on the way out. Phantom salivated at the thought of wrapping Violi oh-so-tightly within her coils, tonguing her plug-gag and causing her maw to open and quietly hiss.
Inky droplets of some kind of liquid began to dribble from her fangs.

Violi rushed through the manor, stepping through a room filled with exotic, antique carpets - sometimes four layers deep - and managed to throw a door open. 

Phantom was in hot pursuit, her massive form squeaking as she slithered after her prey. Violi heard the approach, turning her head to flash Phantom a wicked grin. 

She attempted to slam the door on the snake, before continuing with her hasty escape. But the heavy door didn't swing shut very quickly. 

Before it could latch back into place, the full weight of the twenty foot rubbery serpent collided with the door, nearly tearing it off its hinges as Phantom rushed by, barely slowed at all by the obstacle.

Violi hadn’t rushed out the front door, but some side exit, and an extremely long path lay before her that stretched out into the woods. It wasn’t quite as comfortable, but it was liberating for her to sprint away, free as a bird. 

The pale-haired escapee tried to lose Phantom, taking a right into the trees. Phantom had trouble keeping up; slow but steady, she couldn’t match Violi’s exuberance with her long body getting occasional caught on the trees. 

Hearing a surprised scream from far ahead, Phantom changed her approach. She may not have been able to sprint, but being sheathed in thick, magical rubber meant that she could slither up the trees with ease.

Coiling her way swiftly up one tree before stretching herself across to the next one, Phantom was feeling the rush of being a monster, and was loving it as she closed in on the location of Violi's scent.
It took her some time to catch up to where Violi was, and the serpent was surprised by what she found.

Hanging roughly twenty five feet from the ground, Violi kicked and squirmed, growling in frustration as she tried to escape
her newest peril.

From the waist down, she was enclosed in a rubbery, spidery body, with long legs. Some of which were holding her in place, while others were pulling what appeared to be the rest of this "suit" over her arms and torso. 

Imposing red markings along her ‘abdomen’ helped the shining latex of her new lower half stand out, even in the darkness of the forest. 

"Please, no!!! Not again!!!" Violi cried. Each of her arms were now trapped within the sleeves of the arachnid suit, her fingers ending in crimson claws.

The torso of the suit began to close, as two rows of jagged teeth lining the opening from her waist to her neck began to slowly interlock tightly together.

Like an organic zipper, cinching up her bare chest and drawing the suit ever tighter and tighter around her, until it locked at her neck, and the line of teeth seemed to vanish into the suit's skin forever.

Violi looked down at her new claws, flexing them as she felt something growing at the neck of the suit and scuttling up the back of her head.

She noticed Phantom's emerald eyes staring up at her from branches below. Violi let a nasty grin creep across her face as the spider-suit's mask climbed over her scalp, surrounding her face with many long, articulated mandibles.

Phantom let a sharp hiss, not liking the look on Violi's face as the mandibles finally snapped shut together, concealing the last of her friend's skin beneath its arthropodan grasp.

Just as she’d been a snake earlier, Violi was now clad in a spider-like suit that sealed her up in glorious, shining black and red rubber. 

Violi wiggled a clawed finger at Phantom. She emitted a gentle clicking, hissing sound. It would normally be utterly inaudible, but the solitude of the forest made it burn into Phantom’s mind. 

Violi’s mouth and head were hooded and coated, with gem-like lenses over her eyes and tiny mandibles around her heavily gagged lips. 

Phantom squinted her eyes, rearing up like a cobra as if to increase her size and intimidate the spider. 
It didn’t work - only giving Violi a bigger target to deploy a series of thick, gossamer webs. 
Heavy strands of rubber shot out from the spinnerets of Violi’s new suit, snatching Phantom right off the ground and hauling her into the air.

The moaning, squeaking, and hissing sounds of Phantom’s struggle filled the trees. She already lacked arms, but she was a bit too mobile. 

Violi made sure that she wouldn’t get any ideas about escaping the Manor or its grounds by carefully manhandling Phantom’s suited body into a ‘crouching’ ball-like position, and cocooning over her with thick rubbery webbing.

It was tremendously tight, and the second layer made Phantom moan and sweat. The knowledge of her situation only made her more excited; already suited, now encased in a thin web of latex. 

What was Violi going to do to her, she wondered? Surely she wouldn’t be used as food…

The first layer was just to keep her in place. The second was for show. Violi knew Phantom’s habits and proclivities and love of thorough encasement, and she made sure that everything but her rubbery, reptilian head was properly webbed. 
Soon, her curves started to reappear under the tightening yoke of Violi’s enclosure. After another minute of careful cocooning, she couldn’t move at all - only squirming, barely able to get enough momentum to swing from the trees. 

The most she could do was hiss angrily and snap her fanged jaws at Violi, until of course she webbed those shut as well.
Violi gently brought Phantom up higher, attaching her to a conveniently placed thick branch and keeping her at eye level, relishing the helpless look on her eyes through those serpentine lenses.

She hissed again, the many rubbery mandibles retracting. The suit itself opened around her mouth, removing a tremendous gag for just a palpable, romantic moment. 

Mouth open, she leaned in, and kissed Phantom on her suit’s snout. Everything faded to a hazy white. 

“It was, but that’s a good thing, when you think about it. We’re lucky that Phantom volunteered. She’s got a naturally predatory personality.”

“True.”

“Without it, we might have had someone simply squirming and writhing around the house.”

Technicians in the MirageCorp lab sipped from cups of coffee, trying to concentrate on dozens of screens at once. 
The many volunteers, “volunteers,” and test subjects currently experiencing the Manor simulation were all recording their sim-stim experiences, but they had to be carefully managed at all times. 

If their experience within the Manor simulation got too intense, they’d need to be shut down or reset; and if things were too easy, adjustments would have to be made.

“Do you think any of them suspect that it’s not real?” said one.
The other shook her head. 

“Well… I’m not sure, but Aria mentioned that there were safeguards in case you tried to leave the map.” Her low voice trailed off as she stepped to one monitor in particular. 

“See here - Violi found a suit just as she was about to exit the grounds. Something to keep her occupied for a while. But more importantly, keep her and others from going beyond the borders of the simulation.”

Phantom’s experience finished resetting. She appeared, still suited and waiting, behind a door in the manor, just as Aria began to spawn in.

“Speaking of ‘a while,’ said the first technician, “Are you worried about Phantom?”

“Nah,” said the second. “She’ll be a perfect monster. A jailer of sorts. I mean, look - she’s already getting acclimated to her new skin. Soon enough, she’ll forget it’s even a suit. She’ll focus on keeping people from escaping, rather than trying to escape herself. Which is, y’know, the goal. To make a simulation that’s believable, based on what you want to happen. Not one that’s believable in every way.”

The first one chuckled. “You think it’s believable? Haunted mansions and living suits?”

The second sipped her coffee and shrugged. 
“I dunno. I've heard a few stories of such a place. Many have gone searching for it, and either find nothing or go missing. Maybe the CEO is willing to entertain fantasies, if she can't have the real thing. Seems like she’s certainly enjoying herself.”
There was a pause.

"You realize she volunteered for an entire month? That means she'll still be in the simulation when it goes live for public use."
"Yeah... I can't imagine what she'll be like after a month of this. I'm a little scared of it... if I'm honest."

***

Phantom awoke inside the mansion with a shrill hiss of yawn from her fanged maw. The massive ivory door to her nest opened, and she slithered out from behind it. 

Her skin was warm, and she felt energized as she slithered up the stairs. Her ‘tongue’ extended, tasting the air around her. 
She sensed a new visitor to the manor, one that was lost, afraid, and a bit too close to escaping. Her eyes glimmered green with anticipation as she gently weaved her way towards fresh prey…