TG STORY - The Dare Of The Defeated (Patreon)

The desolate entrance of the mansion had patches of dust and dirt, plus some cobwebs and evidence of a leaky patch at the back, a damp mouldy black spot up one wall. The quartet picked out a cleaner patch on the grimy cracked tiles, roughly in the middle of it all. Stairs led to the balcony floors and the second floor doors, while other sets of doors on the lower floor led away into the wings of the house.

"Setting up the stove might help a bit. What'd else did they give us?" The Grass Stained One asked.

Frankie was looking through the bags already.

"Well, cup noodles, noodle cups, noodle pots, and trail mix. Though there's a box of something here and another bottle..."

The redhead sighed as he pulled out a large bottle of cherry flavoured lube, and a box of 80 extra-small condoms. Two of the others were not amused. Blake, however, was pleased.

"Jokes on them, Chelsea loves cherry. I'm dibsing that lube."

"Not the condoms, or are they too big?" Max cut in.

"Nah, way too small, they'll go great on your baby dick though!"

"Pfft, sure, Blake, whatever keeps you and The Worm happy."

"Weird nickname for Chelsea," Frankie spoke up.

"Uncool, dude. We're mocking his tiny penis, not his girlfriend," Max sighed.

"Stop mocking any penises you cluster of dickholes, we set this crap up, try not to freeze our asses off, then get this over with quicker," Chris groaned.

"He's got a point. What flavour are those noodle cups? Chicken?" Blake said, ending the bickering for now.

***

An hour passed, and despite a few more outbreaks of ribbing and mockery while consuming a few noodle cups, the four were now bored. Night had fallen and thanks to the dim crescent moon outside and some cloud cover,  the light of an electric lantern was effectively all that illuminated the shadowy hall, the stove off to avoid wasting the gas canister.

"There's four flashlights, right? How about we go exploring?" Max suggested.

"Oh, good plan, explore the house full of rotten timbers," Blake sighed.

"Weird, you ignored the fact there's a cannibal in here, your chicken ass!" Frankie taunted.

"Blake makes a good point.... Buuut he does sound like a giant pussy saying it that way so I say we have a look around. There's two wings and two floors, we explore each direction, and link up again to go check the basement or attic," Chris said, earning a one-fingered salute from Blake.

"Fine, but don't cry to me when you wind up exploring the basement through a hole in the floor. I'll take second floor east side."

"East side on this floor," Max claimed.

"Wherever the dude who built this place hid his weird sixties porn stash! Nah, I'm fine with either floor, Chris, you got a preference?" Frankie spoke.

"...I'll take lower."

"West side second for me then."

***

Four flashlight beams began wandering, the electric lantern off and left by the stove and sleeping bags. Frankie and Blake went upstairs, splitting off to head the other direction from each other.

The mohawked programmer/gamer pushed a door open, the rusty hinges creaking even as the same sounds came from the other three directions. He found himself in a dusty corridor, and despite his mockery of Blake, did take care to check the stability of the ground before walking. Soon enough he reached another door, pushing it open with another set of protesting corroded hinges screeching.

"Huh, library," He noted, his flashlight beam picking out bookshelves and some tables.

The shelves had a few old books, their spines cracked and covers dusty or even mouldy. As he looked around, one of the tables caught his eye, an open book lying covered in dust upon it. Gently, he brushed some away, seeing handwritten text. Feeble moonlight struggled through some grimy windows, making the place a nest of shadows.

"A diary? Guess it belonged to the old creepy dude."

Looking it over, he realised it was a rather odd diary. Maybe more of a ledger. It simply had lists of names. One page was almost full, but the opposite one was empty, and it seemed like about a dozen other pages had been filled in the past.

Frankie read it in confusion.

"Mildred... I can't marry her. Sam.... I can't marry him, I can't marry her. How come Sam gets both?"

He shivered a little, as the room seemed to feel a bit colder as he read. Looking over the list he saw that the more commonly feminine names often just had 'I can't marry her' after them, but the masculine ones had him then her, as did a fair few unisex names.

"I guess eccentric old satanists need weird hobbies too," he concluded, and realised his teeth were chattering.

"H-holy crap, it's cold in here now..."

He noticed his foggy breath coming out of his mouth in the glow of his flashlight, and then saw that one name had a slightly different note. 'She was close but I can't her'. As he began to try and make his way of out the room, his flashlight went dim.

"Wh-what the..." He shivered, trying to get the light to switch back on, as everything got colder and colder, and even the faint light from the dusty windows began fading....

***

On the lower floor's west side, Chris had made his own way along the empty corridors. A door he pushed gently swung open on uncharacteristically quiet hinges... until it fell off with a crash. The Quarterback winced.

"Oops."

The falling door had made some things in the room rattle, and his flashlight showed a set of trophy cabinets. Nothing seemed to have fallen as a result of his mishap, but as he looked around the room, he found a rather strange thing amongst the dusty shelves.

A mannequin stood there, wearing a dust-covered wedding dress.

"Weird place to have this. And how come no one took it? Even moth-eaten like this, surely someone could recycle it?" He wondered.

He looked it over, rather puzzled by the presence of the satin-and-dust garment, and then checked some trophies... but found himself drawn back to the mystery of the dress. As he looked at it a third time he heard a thump from upstairs.

"...Frankie found his own broken door?" He wondered, but felt a little worry as well.

Maybe it was best to explore the rest of this wing fast, get back to the hall, and wait. If Frankie didn't show...

Chris gasped as his flashlight beam hit the doorway. The now closed doorway.

"Wha... It fell off! How'd it..." He stammered, feeling the room growing colder.

He tugged on the handle, but the door that he swore had been off the frame was now stuck fast. He pulled and pulled, dropping his flashlight to yank with both hands, the light rolling away and dimming as the room's temperature kept falling.

Chris pulled and pulled, as he shivered and shivered, and felt his eyes falling shut....

***

Opposite where Chris was looking, Max had encountered his own strange room. Or rather, a small set of linked rooms.

"Well, Frankie, looks like you went the wrong way," the basketballer mused, looking over the photos on the wall.

The room he found seemed to be like a gallery, and oddly lacking any sign of dust or decay. It even seemed to have bulbs in the strip lights still. The oldest pictures seemed to be a red-haired woman in various dresses early on, some images labelled 'Felicia',, but after a few dozen pictures she was gone. Instead, new women appeared, in something of a pattern. Each woman had a nude picture, and many had a second image of them, this time in underwear. About half of those went on to various different dresses. Some of these simply said no. Others had a couple more pictures in the dress, lifting their skirts, exposing legs or even underwear from the previous pictures. But nearly all had a 'No' on a dress picture eventually. However, a rare handful had a wedding dress on in their next picture, a satiny white garment. But whatever was the last (or sole) image of each woman had a hand-written note, a large 'NO!' before the next picture was a new woman, stark naked.

Max frowned as he noted the women didn't seem to have pleasant expressions. Some seemed shocked, some scared, some mortified, some confused. None smiled, seemed happy to be there.

"Great, it really is weird sixties porn, creepy weird sixties porn at that. Did he blackmail these women or something?"

He shivered, not sure if it was the chill or just the fact these photos creeped him out far more than gave him any sense of titillation, even though every single woman was undeniably gorgeous. Their expressions put him well off....

He noticed a small door off to the side, and decided to check there. It creaked open, and he found that it seemed to lead into a studio. A large canvas backing and some old lights sat, looking like the background the women were posed before as soon as the nudes began. His flashlight also went across a number of cameras sitting on a shelf.... Clean ones, not a speck of dust. In fact, the whole room seemed clean. Cold, but clean.

And on closer inspection, the cameras were even more wrong. Some were from the sixties, high-end models that had colour capacity. He recognised some from the seventies, eighties, and grew confused.

"He was meant to have died and the place was pretty much abandoned at least twenty years ago. How come there's almost brand-new cameras here?"

They were all film-based, including some models that were amongst the last film cameras ever made. Cameras that were at least twenty years too late for Gregory to have owned them.

Shaking his head as he felt even colder, he spotted another doorway, and looked inside. A dark room. It too seemed spotless, and if he wasn't mistaken, it seemed like it could be used to develop photographs even now.

He tried to make sense of this perfectly preserved set of rooms, these anachronistic cameras, the strange photos....

He trembled with cold, as his eyes closed and the flashlight dimmed.

***

Blake's explorations had led him to a games room. His flashlight shone on a desolate old pool table, dust covered pinball machines, a grimy cards table, and so on. One table held a game of chess, still set up.

"Huh, Black is in check. Heading for mate in a few turns," He mused.

He then heard a strange noise, and in a panic, grabbed a pool cue while also dropping his light.

"Shit!"

The rotten cue disintegrated in his hands as his source of light went out from the fall. He went onto hands and knees, trembling and scrambling to try find the light. His hands landed on it, and he tried to flick it back on.

"Oh come on!" He hissed as it refused to switch on.

The room was cold, and he trembled, shivered, tried to get the light to work, and then he heard something else. His blood ran at subzero when it reached his ears, a faint whisper.

"I can't marry him..."

"Who- Who's there?" He tried to say, but found himself struggling to keep his eyes open. And then, as he felt the icy chill in his bones, he blacked out.

***

Four voices slowly groaned as they awoke, and four prone figures stumbled onto their feet, confused.  The strip lights above shone bright, baffling the four.

"Wh...Where are we?" Chris wondered, looking around the room full of photographs.

"How come there's a light on?" Frankie wondered.

"Where the hell are our shoes?!" Blake realised as he felt his bare feet on the floor.

"Our jackets are all in the corner too," Chris noted, seeing four sets of shoes and jacket piled away.

"I... I was in here before, I went to another room, I passed out!" Max realised.

Blake tried to speak again, but as he did so, suddenly felt his body move outside his control, flying to the waistband of his grey joggers. The other three had moved as well, and began pulling their clothes off. Chris's cargo pants fell down to show navy blue compression shorts hugging his figure tightly, a prominent bulge. Max's jeans fell to show grey boxers. Frankie's white boxer briefs were exposed, while Blake's own light blue briefs were on show after his trousers fell.

Their out of control bodies pulled off their tops too, Max's basketball shirt and t-shirt tossed away exposing his defined lean chest. Chris's muscular build was almost entirely exposed bar his tight compression shorts now, and Blake tossed his own shirt away exposing his thin frame. Frankie too was stripping to just his underwear.

"What the hell is going on?!" Someone yelled as their hands flew again, this time to their underwear, and the four's bodies were rendered nude against their best efforts.

The four stood, blushing, trying to make their bodies respond to efforts to move, as their rebel arms fell to their sides. And then all four felt a warmth wash over them.

"Gha!" Someone exclaimed, as the sensation struck.

"Wha... My hair is growing?!" Frankie cried, and sure enough, his hair was now shoulder length rather than a faint fuzz and a mohawk, and strangely seemed to be moving by itself into a new style.

"Ugh, my chest hurts," Max moaned, and then cried out in shock as he realised his moan was very high pitched....

Chris meanwhile found himself baffled by the odd feelings, like his muscle mass was fading, like his hair was growing. And then someone screamed.

"Oh shit, what the hell?! Max, you're getting boobs!"

The four looked over each other, and a rabble of screams, curses, and confusion took over. Each of them was growing wider hips, their chests were growing, and their male genitalia seemed to be shrinking away. Chest and leg hairs receded, as their hairstyles became feminine. The four tried to move, tried to figure out what was going on, as the warmth and strange shifting sensations kept flowing over their bodies.

And then it seemed to end. The four now stood, transformed.

Chris now stood, with black hair down to her waist. Her chest held a pair of generously large breasts, and she was clean shaven at her pubic region: not actually a change, for even moments before, Chris had kept his crotch hairless to reduce chafing and sweat issues. She remained somewhat athletic in frame, but nowhere near the muscular build he had.

Frankie now had a ponytail, medium breasts, and her pubic hair shaved into a landing strip. Her frame had gotten a little away from his medium build from before.

Max remained tall and with defined muscles, her hair still shoulder length but neater, with medium breasts and a full but trimmed pubic region, waxed at the bikini line.

Blake had turned entirely blonde, naturally given her neatly trimmed pubic hair had shifted to the fine golden shade too. She had not been given a large chest, two small breasts barely poking off her chest. Her frame wasn't that altered from before, bar a few feminine curves.

"I'm dreaming, I huffed some weird fungus in one of those rooms," Chris said in a feminine voice.

And then the four felt a chill again, finding their mouths unable to move too.... until Max marched into the studio room. Her brown eyes flew around fearfully as she unwillingly stood before a tripod, a camera sitting on it, and the studio lights active. There was a click, and then a strange harsh voice echoed...

"No! This one is no good!"

Max felt her body marching off to the side, terror filling her bones, as she stood stiffly and watched Chris now enter.

The former muscular man turned athletic woman walked in, her eyes wide in confused fear, as the camera clicked. No voice echoed, as suddenly, a glow around her crotch and chest flashed into being, only to fade and show her now wearing a black bra and panties. Another click. She managed to whimper in confusion, as another glow placed her into a sky-blue strapless dress, with a short hem. The dress lifted up a little, showing her leg, and there was a click.... And then the voice spoke.

"No, no! She is no use!"

Chris marched over, standing beside the nude Max, as Blake entered. She passed the nude stage, was given a red bra and panties, and then a green pleated dress that seemed remarkably similar to a cheerleader uniform. She wound up spinning, the hem lifting on its own, flashing legs, exposing her panty-clad rear, until the dress flashed and was replaced by a dusty white satin wedding dress that didn't quite fit. Blake felt an urge to sneeze as the dress glowed again, turning clean, almost new, and shifting to her frame. But one click of the camera led to a frustrated exclamation from the voice.

"Still no good! Not right!"

The wedding dress vanished and Blake, back in the green pseudo-cheerleader dress, stood by Chris.

 Frankie then marched in, and her photo session began.

She passed the nude stage. Her red ponytail bobbed as she was given plain white panties and a bra that matched, then a dress in purple that pushed her cleavage up quite a bit. She stood, flashing leg and underwear for a handful of clicks, until the dress glowed and the wedding dress reappeared, but as it shifted to fit her, she gained white stockings Blake was not given.

'Oh my God. The names in that book. The ghost is real. The ghost is looking for a bride. And I might be it!' She realised to herself, whimpering in terror as she was unable to speak.

She stood there for what felt like forever after a click from the camera, and then felt icy invisible lips kiss hers. She whimpered again, terrified, freezing to her very core as the chill kiss seemed to last hours. And then there was a ghostly groan.

"Even this one is no good," The voice wailed.

And then the four women once more fell into darkness.

***

Feminine groans now slowly stirred, in the now dark gallery. Four female figures stood up, and ran hands, now under their control, over their bodies.

"...Holy shit, we're girls. We're naked girls," Frankie giggled in hysteria.

"Sapphire never said the ghost turned men into girls!" Blake wailed.

Chris blinked in confusion, her foot striking something. She picked it up, switching on the flashlight. The scattered male clothing remained around the room.

"I... I think we should just get dressed and get out of here," She said.

"But we're girls, dude! We've switched genders! I've got tits!" Max almost screamed.

"At least yours are actually a decent size," Blake said, and then gave an eep of confusion.

"...Why the hell did I say that."

Frankie shook her head, ponytail swinging.

"She's right. He's right. Ugh, Chris is right," She managed to say.

"...Yeah. Yeah, I guess so. We, we get dressed, get out, see a doctor or a priest or something..." Max said, scrambling to grab her clothes.

"We're leaving early though," Blake realised.

"To hell with that, Blake! We've got vaginas, we have cute asses, we're wearing clothes that are baggy in some spots and tighter in others! Or will be if I could find my damn shirt..." Frankie hissed.

Eventually, with their clothes somewhat fitting, the four women went back to the hallway, abandoning the stove and other items, to scramble out of the broken window. Max didn't care as her jeans caught on something and ripped, the girl scrambling out hastily.  The four stood on the lawn of the mansion, unsure of the time, and trying to rush for the wall to climb out of this place.

And then they felt a chill. Felt their limbs and eyes grow heavy, and fell down....

***

The sunlight was not much, but to the four shivering men it served as their wake-up call, lying on the cold ground. They awoke with shock, their cold states almost forgotten.

"Wh...What the hell? I'm a dude again?" Chris said, finding himself back to normal.

The others were physically the same now, back to male. But the four exchanged a look, and then Max spoke.

"...I'll grab the stuff in the hall quickly, we get the hell out of here, and we never speak about any of this again, right? It was just a boring cold night. Nothing happened."

Blake and Frankie nodded, as Chris repeated the statement.

"Yeah. Nothing happened..."

***

New photos appeared in the gallery. A nude brunette labelled no. An athletic black haired woman in three pictures, denied in a blue dress. A blonde flashing panties in a green dress before denied in a wedding dress. A redhead making it to the wedding dress too only to have the same scrawl of 'No!'.

In the library, a pen scratched on paper. Four new names emerged, four new additions.

Max: I can't marry him. I can't marry her.

Chris: I can't marry him. I can't marry her.

Blake: I can't marry him. I can't marry her.

Frankie: I can't marry him. She was close, but I can't marry her.

The scratching stopped. And the house once more fell silent, until the next explorer would arrive....

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Entry to flashkill455's TG 'Keyphrase' Writing Contest, story from LZ0291 (posted with permission as a trade for the colors)