#ai assisted

[truthfultales]

-. A little break .-

[nothangingoutheretoday]

A Better Version of Me Already Exists, part 1

Chapter 1

The party was on the roof of the Apex, a building that looked like a jagged shard of glass, and I was standing near the edge because the air there felt slightly less like recycled breath. The wind was cold, sharp with the scent of the ocean and the metallic tang of the city, but it didn't matter. Nobody was looking at me. I was a smudge on a lens, a glitch in the social software of the evening.

I was holding a drink that had cost twenty-two dollars — a gin and something botanical that tasted like a lawnmower’s bag — and I was watching a woman named Beatrice. At least, I think it was Beatrice. She was the kind of woman whose name changed depending on who was paying for her dinner. She was tall, maybe 5'10" in those lethal heels, with pale skin and dark hair that fell in a single, heavy sheet down her back. Her eyes were a predatory shade of grey and they scanned the room constantly as she talked to me, or rather, as she talked in my general direction, using me as a placeholder while she sought someone with more gravitational pull.

I told her I worked in archival digitization, which was a lie. I mostly just moved boxes of paper from one dry room to another until my fingers felt like they were made of dust. I’m 5'8", by the way. Or 5'7" on a bad day when the weight of being ignored starts to compress my spine. My shoulders are soft, sloping things, like a hill that’s given up on being a mountain, and my face is the kind of face that people use to describe someone else. He looks like that guy, they say, and then they can’t remember who the guy is.

Beatrice was saying something about a gallery opening in Chelsea, her mouth moving in a way that suggested she was tasting the words and finding them slightly sour. She looked at me for a fraction of a second, her pupils dilating as she tried to remember why she was wasting oxygen on a man who wore off-the-rack polyester blends.

And then, it happened. It always happens.

A man walked past. He didn't even stop. He was just a smooth blur of linen and golden skin, a scent of sandalwood trailing behind him. He was beautiful in the way a wildfire is beautiful — destructive, effortless, and impossible to look away from. He had that specific kind of blond hair that looked like it had been bleached by the sun of a better Mediterranean than the one the rest of us get to visit.

Beatrice didn't even finish her sentence. She didn't even offer a polite 'excuse me.' She simply turned her entire body toward the wake of this stranger, her neck craning, her eyes locking onto him with a hunger that was almost obscene. She moved toward him like a compass needle swinging north, leaving me standing there with my lawnmower drink and a sentence about digital metadata dying in my throat. I wasn't even a ghost to her. I was just empty space she had to navigate around.

This happens constantly. I am a man who is never there, the background noise in other people’s movies. I stood there for another ten minutes, watching the way the light caught the cheekbones of the beautiful people, cataloging them with a frantic, desperate precision. There was a guy by the bar, maybe twenty-five, with a jawline so sharp it looked like it could draw blood. He was wearing a shirt unbuttoned to his navel, showing off a chest that was hairless and smooth with nipples I wanted to bite. I hated him. I wanted to reach out and smudge him, to rub a thumb across that perfect skin until he looked as blurry as I did.

I finished my drink and left. I didn't say goodbye to the host because I didn't know who the host was, and they certainly didn't know me. I walked down the twelve flights of stairs because the elevator was full of laughing, shimmering things that smelled like success, and I couldn't bear the thought of being trapped in a box with them, feeling my own invisibility reflected in the polished brass doors.

I ended up at the gym. Not my gym — I don't have a gym membership, I can only afford a library card and a sense of impending doom — but the Equinox on 63rd where I sometimes sneak in by tailgating a distracted member through the turnstiles. It’s the only place where I feel like I can study perfect specimens up close. The locker room was thick with the smell of eucalyptus and expensive soap. It was late, nearly midnight, and the place was mostly empty, but the ghosts of the beautiful were everywhere.

I was sitting on a bench in the back corner, near the saunas, pretending to tie my shoes. I was watching a man across the room. He was probably thirty, standing naked by his locker, drying himself with a towel. He was everything I wasn't: over 6', maybe 6'3", with long, lean muscles that rippled under his skin like snakes. His skin was a deep, even tan, and his hands were large, capable, the kind of hands that held things with authority. He didn't look in the mirror to check his reflection; he looked in the mirror to confirm that the world was still worthy of him.

I felt a surge of such intense, vibrating hatred that my hands actually shook. It wasn't just envy. Envy is a small, nibbling thing. This was a frantic, strained adrenaline, a scream in the back of my skull that said Why him and not me? What cosmic ledger decided he gets to live in the sunlight and I get relegated to the damp basement?

He finished dressing — expensive charcoal sweats and a white tee — and left. He forgot something, though. Or maybe he didn't. Maybe he just didn't care.

Perched on the top of the locker next to his, the one that had been left hanging open, was a duffel bag. It was a heavy, matte-black thing, unbranded but obviously high-end. The zipper was slightly ajar.

I looked around. The locker room was silent, save for the hum of the ventilation and the distant hiss of a shower. My heart was hammering against my ribs, a panicked bird in a cage. I shouldn't have done it. I’m not a thief. Or maybe I am, and I just hadn't found anything worth stealing yet. I stood up, my movements stiff and unnatural, and walked over to the locker.

I reached out and grabbed the bag. It was heavier than it looked, but not with the weight of gym clothes or sneakers. It felt dense, like it was filled with wet sand or meat. I didn't open it there. I couldn't. I just slung the strap over my shoulder and walked out, my head down, my breath coming in shallow, jagged hitches. The guy at the front desk didn't even look up from his phone as I passed. Of course he didn't. I was nobody.

I hailed a cab outside, which was a reckless waste of money, but I couldn't take the subway. I felt like the bag was pulsing, like it had a heartbeat that would sync up with mine and expose me to the world.

The cab smelled of stale cigarettes and cherry air freshener. The driver was an old man with a scraggly gray beard and a dog-end sticking out of the corner of his mouth. He didn't speak, and for once, I was grateful for the silence. I gave him my address, leaned back into the cracked vinyl seat, and stared out the window at the city.

We passed a billboard for a luxury watch — a man with golden skin and green eyes looking down at the traffic with a smile that was both inviting and dismissive. He looked like the guy from the party. He looked like the guy from the locker room. They all looked like variations of the same god, and I was watching them from among the marble shavings left after the statue was finished.

I began to catalog the men I saw on the street as we crawled through the late-night traffic. A guy in a leather jacket leaning against a lamppost, his hair a deliberate mess of curls. A businessman in a suit that fit him like a second skin, his posture so straight it looked painful. A runner in neon shorts, his calves bulging with every stride. I memorized the tilt of their heads, the way they held their phones, the exact curve of their smiles, building a library of things I would never have.

The cab pulled up in front of my apartment building, a squat, brick monstrosity that looked like it had been built out of spite. I paid the driver — more than I could afford — and climbed out, clutching the bag to my chest.

The hallway smelled like cabbage and moldy carpet. My neighbor, a man whose name I’d forgotten despite living next to him for three years, was fumbling with his keys. He looked at me, his eyes skating over my face without a hint of recognition. I could have been a delivery man or a burglar; to him, I was just a part of the architecture.

"Evening," he muttered, not looking at me.

"Yeah," I said, my voice sounding thin and tired in the narrow hall.

Chapter 2

The apartment felt smaller than usual, or maybe it was just that I felt larger, more cumbersome, carrying the weight of that stolen bag through the door. The air in my studio always has this stale, defeated quality to it, but as I dropped the black duffel onto the warped hardwood, the room seemed to shrink in judgment. I stood there for a long moment, my breath coming in those thin, whistling hitches that usually signal a panic attack, staring at the zipper. I was still vibrating from the adrenaline of the theft. I felt like a smudge of charcoal on a clean sheet of paper, ready to be blown away by the slightest breeze. Or maybe I felt like a bomb. It’s hard to tell the difference when your heart is trying to kick its way out of your ribs.

I knelt on the floor, the wood groaning under my knees. The IKEA coffee table was peeling at the corners—fake beech laminate flaking off like dead skin to reveal the compressed sawdust underneath. Everything in my life was like that: cheap, fragile, and falling apart. I reached for the zipper. It glided open with a silent, expensive smoothness.

The contents sprang forth. That’s the only way to describe the movement. It didn't fall out like clothes; it unfurled like a person who had been flattened and folded for storage. It sprawled across the floor, and for a terrifying second, I thought I’d brought home a corpse. It looked like a discarded lover, someone who had simply given up on the concept of bones. The skin was a radiant, sun-kissed gold, a color that didn't exist in my world of fluorescent lights and subway tunnels. It had weight — a dense, fleshy heft that made my stomach turn; 6'2" of perfect, unblemished potential. I reached out, my fingers hovering an inch above the chest. The hair on my arms stood up. There was a faint scent clinging to it, something better than perfume.

I started to strip. It was a frantic, ugly process. I kicked off my shoes, which were scuffed and salt-stained from a winter I couldn't forget. I pulled off my polyester shirt, the buttons snagging, and stepped out of my trousers. I stood naked in the center of the room, shivering in the draft from the window. In the reflection of the darkened TV screen, I saw myself: soft shoulders, slight protrusion of a belly fed on cheap carbohydrates, and pale, pasty skin that looked like it had been grown under a rock.

I turned the suit over. The back was a smooth expanse of muscle, but there, running from the base of the neck down to the coccyx, was a line. It wasn't a zipper, it was a hair-thin seam, almost invisible, that seemed to be held together by some kind of magnetic or biological tension. I hooked my fingernails into the top of it and pulled. There was a sound like a wet seal breaking, a soft, gelatinous schlick, and the suit opened up.

The interior was different. It wasn't fabric. It was a dark, iridescent crimson, textured like the underside of a tongue or the lining of a throat. It looked hungry. I felt a surge of pure, unadulterated terror. This wasn't a costume. This was a biological anomaly, a military prototype, or a fever dream. I should have shoved it back in the bag and thrown it into the East River, or maybe called the police. But the memory of the man in the locker room — the way he had dried himself with that effortless, kingly grace — was a knife in my gut. I didn't want to be me anymore. I was finished with being a man who wasn't there.

I sat on the floor and guided my right leg into the opening. The sensation was immediate and overwhelming. The lining didn't just touch my skin; it gripped it. It was warm, uncomfortably so, and it felt like sticking my limb into a pressurized sleeve of heated silk. As my foot reached the bottom, the suit’s toes — perfect, straight, manicured toes — aligned with mine. There was a moment of resistance, and then a sudden, wet suction as the material vacuum-sealed itself against my calf. I gasped, my lungs seizing. It was tight. It was so tight I thought it would crush my bones, but then the pressure shifted from a squeeze to a support.

I stood up, stumbling, and worked my other leg in. The vertigo started then. My perspective was already shifting; I was getting taller, the floor moving further away. I pulled the suit up over my hips in an agonizing, clumsy struggle. I had to wriggle and shove, my real skin sticking and dragging against the crimson lining. I worked my arms into the sleeves, and the suit’s hands — large, powerful hands with elegant fingers — snapped onto mine.

Then came the torso. I had to hunch forward, my spine screaming as I forced my soft frame into the rigid architecture of the chest. The suit didn't just cover me; it reorganized me. I felt my shoulders being pulled back, my ribcage expanding, my posture being corrected by a force that didn't care about my comfort. I was gasping now, the air in the room feeling thin and insufficient.

Finally, I reached for the head. The face hung limp, the eyes closed. I pulled it up and over my skull like a balaclava. For a few seconds, there was total darkness. The smell of the interior was overwhelming now — a metallic, organic tang that tasted like copper on my tongue. The lining pressed against my eyelids, my lips, my nose. I felt a moment of true, suffocating panic. I couldn't breathe. I was going to die in a stolen skin in a shitty apartment, and nobody would even know which body was mine. I clawed at the air, my heart hammering a frantic rhythm against the suit’s unyielding chest.

Then, the seal closed, zipping or clamping or whatever itself shut without my help. The heat intensified, a searing wave that rolled from my heels to my scalp, and then the suit contracted. It didn't just fit; it adhered. Every millimeter of the lining bonded with my skin. The vertigo hit me and I swayed, my hands reaching out to catch the dresser, but the dresser wasn't where it was supposed to be. Everything was lower. My center of gravity had migrated.

I opened my eyes. The light in the room was sharper, more vivid. I could see the individual fibers of the carpet, the microscopic cracks in the paint on the ceiling. I felt a surge of power, a chemical rush that felt like a hit of pure, uncut confidence being injected directly into my carotid artery. I wasn't tired anymore. I wasn't small. I walked to the bathroom. My gait was different. I wasn't shuffling; I was gliding. There was a spring in my step, a coiled energy in my thighs that made me feel like I could leap over the moon. I pushed open the bathroom door — the wood felt light as cardboard — and stood before the mirror.

I didn't scream. I couldn't. I just stared. The man in the mirror was a god. He was 6'2", with shoulders as wide as a door frame and a proud chest that tapered into a lean, hard waist. His skin was flawless, a deep, radiant bronzed tan that seemed to catch and hold the light from the flickering fluorescent bulb. His hair was a thick, golden-blond mane, perfectly messy, falling across a forehead that had never known a worry.

But it was the face that broke me. The jawline was a masterpiece of geometry, sharp and angled; the nose was straight and noble; and the eyes were a deep, piercing green. They weren't my eyes - my eyes were a muddy, nondescript brown, always watery and rimmed with red. These eyes were clear, predatory, and endlessly confident.

I reached up and touched my cheek. The sensation was intensely vivid. The suit didn't dampen my sense of touch; it amplified it. I felt the texture of the skin, the slight stubble along the jaw, the warmth of the blood beneath the surface. It felt more real than my own skin ever had.

"Holy fuck," I whispered.

The voice that came out of my throat wasn't mine. It was a rich, resonant baritone, smooth as bourbon and warm as a fireplace. It had a natural tilt of amusement to it, a built-in charm that made even those two words sound like a promise. I felt the vibration of the vocal cords in my chest and a shiver of pure, erotic pleasure raced down my spine.

I began to explore this new body, my movements slow and deliberate. I was an archivist, after all; I needed to catalog every inch of this miracle. I raised my new hands and watched the way the tendons moved under the golden skin. I turned them over, admiring the palms and the long, elegant fingers. I began to touch myself, not out of vanity, but out of a need to confirm the reality of the illusion.

I slid my right hand down over the expanse of the chest. The pectoral muscle was firm and arched, reacting to my touch with a slight, involuntary twitch. I traced the line of the sternum, my fingertips gliding over the smooth, hairless skin. The sensation was electric; it felt like a thousand tiny needles of pleasure were firing in my brain. The suit’s feedback loop was incredible. Every caress was doubled, tripled, sent back to my nervous system with a clarity that was almost painful.

I moved my hand lower, tracing the ridges of the abdominal muscles. They were hard as stone, a perfect six-pack that rippled as I breathed. I felt the heat of the suit increasing, a localized warmth following my hand as my fingers strayed toward my obliques, prominent ridges of masculine grace.

I was becoming aroused, and the suit reacted. It was as if the material was attuned to my pulse, my hormones. I felt a surge of blood, a heavy, throbbing weight that felt entirely too large for the space I usually occupied. I groaned, the sound vibrating in my new, beautiful throat. I leaned my forehead against the cool glass of the mirror, watching my astonishing new face as I continued the exploration.

I wrapped my hand around the base of my throat, feeling the pulse jumping there. I squeezed slightly, and the sensation of being choked was transformed into a thrill of dominance. I was the master of this body, but I was also its prisoner. I slid my hand back down, my palm flat against my stomach, and then lower still. I began to stroke myself with a rhythmic, demanding intensity.

The specific actions were a blur of heightened sensation. I gripped my newly heavy shaft, which seemed to have replaced my own unimpressive equipment, and felt the heft as if it were my own. I increased the pressure, my breath coming in ragged, baritone gasps. I watched the way my muscles tensed in the mirror, the way the golden skin flushed with a deeper red. I used my left hand to reach behind, my fingers digging into the firm, rounded muscle of my left glute, pulling myself forward into the touch. I was a participant in my own seduction. I flicked my thumb over the head of my cock, and the spark of pleasure was so intense I nearly lost my footing.

I was standing in a dingy bathroom in a failing apartment, but I felt like I was at the center of the universe. I continued the motion, my hand moving faster, the friction generating a heat that seemed to melt the boundary between the suit and my soul. When I finally came, it wasn't the pathetic, lonely release I was used to. It was a violent, full-body convulsion. My head snapped back, a moan ripped from my lungs, and I felt semen — real or simulated, I couldn't tell — erupt with a force that made my vision white out. The suit seemed to pulse in time with my contractions, amplifying the climax until I was sobbing with the sheer, overwhelming beauty of it.

I slumped against the sink, my chest heaving, sweat — real, salty sweat — beading on my forehead. I was hyper-aware, listening to the buzzing of the light and the distant sound of a siren on the street below, noting my heartbeat slowly coming back down in frequency. I felt empty, but it was a good emptiness. The hollow space where my self-loathing used to live had been burned clean by the fire of whatever, whoever I had just become.

I pushed myself away from the mirror and walked back into the main room. I felt heavy, but it was a heavy with purpose. I spotted the duffel bag again, discarded near the door, and saw the light glinting off something inside. I reached in and pulled out a Pro model iPhone, gray, sleek and expensive. I held it up to my new face and FaceID unlocked it instantly.

It took me a minute to orient myself to the apps on the home screen, but one thing that stood out immediately was the chaotic mess of notifications. Angry red bubbles on every app with notification numbers in the hundreds or thousands. Instagram, WhatsApp, Tinder, Bumble, Hinge. Unread messages, likes, emoji… a digital life that was as crowded and vibrant as mine was barren. I scrolled through the photo library. There were hundreds of them — this body at the beach, at a club, laughing with men who looked like movie stars, waking up in rumpled sheets with a smile that suggested he had just conquered the world.

There were videos, too. I tapped on one. It was a short clip of this body standing on a balcony overlooking the city at night. He was holding a glass of wine, looking into the camera with those emerald eyes. "Don't wait up," he said, his voice — my voice, now — dropping into a conspiratorial whisper. "I’m going to be late. Very, very late." He winked, and the video ended.

I felt a cold shiver of dread compete with the heat of the suit. Who was this man? Where was he? And why had he left this bag in a gym locker for a nobody like me to find? I told myself it was performance art. Or a prank. Or a drug-induced hallucination. I looked down at my hands. They were still perfect, long-fingered, and golden tan. I flexed them, feeling the immense, borrowed power in the fingers.

I looked at the clock on the wall. It was nearly 1 a.m. The city was still awake, full of people who were looking for whomever I was now. And for the first time in my thirty-two years of miserable, invisible existence, I had the keys to the kingdom.

I knew, even then, I could never take it off. I walked to the closet and pulled out the best thing I owned — a black slim-fit suit that I’d bought for a funeral and never wore because I couldn't stand the way it made me look like a child playing dress-up. On my old body, it was baggy in the shoulders and tight in the waist, a pathetic admission of defeat.

I stepped into the trousers. They fit this new body perfectly, the fabric straining against the hard muscle of my thighs, the legs too short but in an artful modern way. I pulled on the jacket, and for the first time, my shoulders didn't slouch. They filled the space, the seams holding firm against the breadth of my new frame. I looked in the mirror one last time.

I picked up the phone and slipped it into my pocket. I didn't need my keys or my wallet - this new existence was everything I needed. I walked to the door, my hand on the knob, and paused. I looked back at the apartment. It looked like a tomb - the place where the old me had died - and I felt no grief for the departed. I felt only a frantic, strained adrenaline, a need to get out into the light and see what this new skin could do.

I stepped out into the hallway. The smell of cabbage was still there, but it didn't bother me. I was above it. I was beyond it. I walked toward the elevator, my heart drumming a steady, confident beat. As the doors slid open, I saw my reflection in the polished metal. I smiled, and the man in the mirror smiled back—a warm, amused, predatory expression that felt like a sunrise.

[charliechampers]

[deepdreamnights]

Bio-Booster Armor Garfield: Extended Opener, 1989

In the late 80s, anime was hyper-violent, and licensing was out of control.

Based on this. Made with Vidu, with editing and supplemental animation by myself.

[jerisch]

The Cap of Silence

The lighting in "The Iron Pit" was terrible for selfies, a fact that Justin found endlessly frustrating. He was twenty-two, wearing a neon stringer that barely covered his nipples, and possessed the kind of smooth, aesthetic build that looked good on Instagram but vanished under a loose T-shirt.

​"Garbage lighting," he muttered, tilting his chin to catch the shadow of a jawline that wasn't quite sharp enough.

​He didn't hear the heavy boots approaching on the rubber mats behind him. He didn't smell the sudden shift in the air—from the sharp tang of cleaning chemicals to the heavy, earthy scent of oxidized iron and old musk.

​A hand reached out from the gloom. It was thick, the skin weathered like old leather, veins traversing the back of it like map lines. It held a camouflage baseball cap, the brim curved and frayed.

​Before Justin could turn, the cap was jammed onto his head.

​"Wha—"

​A heavy palm slammed down on the crown, crushing the cap low.

​The Shutdown.

​The brim was pulled down aggressively, casting a pitch-black shadow that severed his vision at the nose. Justin's world instantly shrank. He could no longer see the gym, the phone, or the other patrons. He could only see his own chest and the floor.

​He opened his mouth to scream, but the air inside that cap silenced him. It was a dense, suffocating cloud of pheromones—dominance distilled into a scent. It flooded his brain, numbing the panic, replacing it with a strange, heavy lethargy.

​Then, the Tightening began.

​It wasn't the bloating sensation he might have expected. It was the opposite. He felt as if the air was being sucked out of his body, vacuum-sealing his skin directly onto the muscle fibers.

​Sizzle.

​The sound of burning fat. The softness of his youth—that thin layer of subcutaneous water and fat that made him look "pretty"—evaporated in seconds. His skin became paper-thin, dry, and hot to the touch.

​Underneath, the muscles didn't just grow; they hardened.

​Justin gasped, looking down at his torso. The neon stringer shredded and fell away, unable to contain the sudden expansion of width. But what revealed itself wasn't soft bulk.

​It was armor.

​His chest split into two massive, striated slabs of meat, hard as breastplates, separated by a canyon of bone-dry skin. Veins the size of drinking straws erupted across his deltoids and snaked down his biceps, pulsing with a thick, sludge-like testosterone.

​And his stomach...

​It wasn't a gut. It was a fortress. The smooth, flat abs of the boy were carved out, deepened, and solidified into a thick, blocky six-pack. They were etched deep, like cobblestones, protruding with a rock-hard density that looked impervious to a sledgehammer.

​"Hnnng..."

​The groan tore from his throat, no longer high and whiny, but deep, gravelly, and resonant. His shoulders widened, locking into a permanent, dominant slouch. He felt a sudden, desperate need to cover the raw power of his new torso, but not with the rags of his old shirt.

​His hands—now thick, calloused, and heavy—reached out and grabbed a navy-blue and white zip-up track jacket from a nearby bench. He pulled it on but didn't zip it. He left it wide open, framing the granite landscape of his torso.

​He looked in the mirror.

​He couldn't see his eyes. The camo brim hid them in absolute darkness. He could only see a jaw that had widened into a square block of bone, covered in a rough grit of dark stubble, and a mouth set in a permanent, stoic grimace.

​His hands, acting on a new instinct, shoved deep into the pockets of his loose black sweatpants.

​The motion drove the waistband down low, dangerously low.

​The fabric pulled tight across his hips, revealing the deep, razor-sharp cuts of his Adonis belt—the V-taper that pointed down like an arrow. And there, pressed against the lowered waistband, was the heavy, undeniable weight of his new reality. It wasn't just a bulge; it was a center of gravity, a dense, pulsating anchor that grounded him to the earth.

​A young kid, maybe eighteen, walked past and accidentally bumped into him.

​"Yo, watch it, old ma—" the kid started.

​The camo cap tilted. The stubbled jaw clenched.

​The kid froze. He couldn't see the eyes, but he felt the heat radiating off the man's dry, shredded skin. He saw the vascularity on the chest, the blocky abs that looked like carved rock, and the sheer, silent intimidation of the figure.

​"S-sorry, sir," the kid stammered, shrinking away.

​The man didn't respond with words. He didn't need to. Justin was gone, evaporated like the water under his skin.

​Hank simply shifted his weight, felt the satisfying heaviness of his body, and let out a single, dismissive sound from the bottom of his granite chest:

​"Hmph."

​He turned and walked toward the squat rack. The weights were waiting. And they needed to be heavy.

[irohanouta]

[lauracdlikes]

I used AI to virtually fit a dress which I intend to buy..

Body, legs, arms and head are mine, the dress was added from the shop picture and the background was changed to fit the dress..as was the color of the shoes

Incredible what AI can do..