Limewah's Hypnovember 2025
Day 26 - Possession (RMED)

"My last roomies LOVED to let me go for joyrides in them."

Carmine only opened the fridge part-way. The large, yellow, red-maned dragon already felt some sticky give to it, and when he was able to pry it open, the long sticky strands of lilac ectoplasm confirmed it. It was even worse inside; goo was covering every inch of the fridge - the jugs of milk and juice, the shrink-wrapped leftovers, the no-longer fresh vegetables… He couldn't close the door in time to stop some of the stuff spilling onto his toes. He wiped his toes on the floor, resting his head on the top of the fridge and letting out a long, exasperated groan.
"Echooooo…" He said, almost plaintively.
…"Echo~" the voice sounded distant, but Carmine already knew that it was a thrown voice, and that Echo was right beneath his nose. 
"Come on, don't do that, please," Carmine said. "Come on out."
"Fiiiine." 

The grey, black-eared fennec fox stuck her head out from the top of the fridge, phasing through it - as ghosts tend to do. When her head touched Carmine's chin, he felt a bone-deep chill that made him wince and stumble back. The fuzzy red dragon tried not to knock anything off the counter behind him - hard to do with a massive body in such a small kitchen. He heard the sound of the spice rack falling to the floor, and the telltale scent of spilled pepper and cayenne.

"In my defense," Echo said, "It's boiling out here… this's about the only place I can actually get comfy!"
"…Isn't there a way you can get comfy without covering my food in slime?"
"C'mon, that stuff melts, like, right away!" Echo gestured to the already-evaporating smear of ectoplasm on the floor. "You don't have to worry!"
"That's not the point," Carmine grumbled, rubbing the bridge of his snout. "When you were alive, would you've eaten something someone else manhandled?"
"I dunno. Can't remember!" 

Echo emerged from the fridge at last - leaving a huge dollop of the ectoplasm in her wake, from her gooey ectoplasmic tail. Carmine groaned and turned to slip out of the kitchen, back towards the living room. Echo floated alongside him, at his shoulder.
"Carmine, I'm sorry, really!" Echo said. "I can't help it! Ghosts can't handle heat all that good!"
"I know," the dragon said, trying not to sound too harsh. "We're… still getting used to this. It's fine."
"No, it's okay…" Echo scrunched her snout to the side, looking contemplative and sorry. "… I remember I didn't get along with my last roommates either…"

Why was she still thinking of this as a roommates situation? Carmine had no such illusions. His apartment - his studio apartment, he might add - was haunted. This ghost fox had just shown up, swanned in, made herself at home… and he could feel himself approaching the limits of his patience. The last thing he wanted to was to blow his lid at her. He was a nice guy, and he felt awful about raising his voice even slightly at the best of times.

"Echo…" Carmine said, putting his big hands together. "I really don't think this is working. There's gotta be some empty apartments in this building…"
"What?" Echo scoffed. "Ghosts need somebody to haunt - I mean, to interact with! Otherwise we can get a bit, uh… loopy… so I've heard."

Carmine knew that when Echo appended a sentence with "So I've heard," she was bluffing. He didn't pull her up on it, as much as he wanted to -what if he was the only person who could see and hear her, and his neighbours heard him arguing with someone who wasn't there...?
He needed to get some air. And food.
And he definitely wasn't keen on touching what was in the fridge.

"I'm gonna go get some takeout for dinner." Carmine said, turning away and pinching the bridge of his nose.
"…ooh, yeah, good idea!"
Echo orbited around Carmine to get in his way. There was a glint in her slightly translucent eyes. 
"What were you thinking?" she continued. "Is that one diner still open, you know, the one…"
"No, that one closed down decades ago, I showed you online remember?"
"Oh… yeah, that's right." Echo giggled.
"Besides! You can't even eat! Can you even leave the building?" Carmine asked. "Aren't ghosts stuck to haunting the places they died in?"
"Well, there's an easy way around that!" Echo was floating belly-up in the air, her ectoplasm tail swinging back and forth and wicking droplets of purple ooze all over the carpet. Carmine grimaced. "All I gotta do is possess somebody…"

"Ohhhh no, you're not possessing me!" Carmine shook his head quickly. 
"C'maaaaahn, I promise you'll enjoy it!" Echo said. "My last roomies LOVED to let me go for joyrides in them."

"Really?"
"Cross my heart, hope to… die again?" The fox grinned sheepishly. But Carmine seemed even more awkward. There was a blush coming over his yellow cheeks. 
"I'll, uh… take their word for it."
"You suuuure~?" The fennec ghost giggled.
"Yeah, hah, very sure…" Carmine sounded hoarse all of a sudden. He cleared his throat.
"Apropos of nothing…" Echo revolved slowly as she glided past Carmine, her tail very pointedly floating into his field of vision. "Did you know ectoplasm works great on dry throats?"

"You say a lot of things about ectoplasm," Carmine croaked. "I dunno how many of em are true-!"
The gooey tail tip was almost directly in his face all of a sudden, and he only barely managed to close his mouth in time. It had the opacity of a piece of hard candy, but the inside was shifting like the syrup inside a cough drop.
"Try a bit, go on…~" Echo wriggled her tail like a stuck-out tongue. "It'll go down smoooth~"
Carmine opened his mouth - most likely to protest - but the goo-tail rammed inside before he could get a word out. It pushed him back and took up as much room as it could.
"GLLP!" he waved at the air, his hands going right through Echo's incorporeal form.

The texture of the tail wasn't as thick as he expected. It was like water with a noticeable amount of sugar syrup in it, just a little thicker than it would have been unadulterated. It had a subtly sweet, herbal taste to it too… As he inadvertently suckled on the tail, the juices squeezed out and slid comfortably down his throat, leaving a coating of that numbing taste as it went. It was cold, refreshingly so, and it drew Carmine's attention to just how warm it was inside… 

"Mglk…?" Carmine's panicked expression softened with each gulp. His brow smoothed out, his throat unclenched, and his eyes fluttered.
"Theeeere we go~!" Echo plopped her ghostly haunches on top of Carmine's head. Her tail pushed a little further into Carmine's mouth. It took on a slushier texture like a melting ice pop, and the taste grew stronger… distractingly delicious. So delicious that his taste buds were overpowering his other senses…

And with each gulp, his mind quietened. The overwhelming taste coated his throat, then his mind… blanketing him in bliss.. 

Echo pushed in further, tail first, but Carmine didn't choke or gag. He simply gulped and pulled and sucked, unconsciously helping the fennec ghost just slide right inside. His head tilted back, and Echo closed her eyes and let herself disappear right down his throat.
As soon as Carmine's mouth closed, his head dipped forward and he stood there, stock still, eyes closed. Like he was sleeping standing up.

The new consciousness wove into every nerve and synapse in the head, then began its journey downwards, like it was stepping into a new outfit. The consciousness spread down the arms, the trunk of his torso, and his legs. You would have to look very closely to track that journey - you'd have to squint to follow the very subtle tensing and twitching of the muscles all the way down. 
The process was slow and subtle.

Echo…?
Echo~!
Wh…at's happening…
Mmmh, wow, there's lots of room in here. How're you feeling?
I'm… nnh….uh…
You're having trouble thinking? Sleeeepy? Yeah, that's the main effect of my ectoplasm. But hey, your throat's soothed now, right?
Unh…huh….
Alrighty, let's see if I can figure out the controls of this thing… it couldn't be that hard to pick it back up right?

Gradually, Carmine's paws began to move, pressing into his belly and gently kneading it with his blunt claws.
"Mmmh, you are cosy… warm, but not too warm! I like it in here…"
Carmine's lips were moving along with Echo's voice, like he was mouthing along to a song he knew. When Echo giggled, Carmine giggled too, though his face was still slack and his head still limp, like he was a costume that Echo hadn't quite put her head into yet.
His head finally jerked upright. He blinked slowly. The eyes had turned a lavender colour, with gradient shades oozing and ebbing around. A pale, ghostly light flickered behind his eyes.
When he began to move, his leg buckled and he stumbled over, unable to catch himself before he fellt o the ground.
"Wh-whoooa! Hah, oops…" the voice that came from Carmine's throat wasn't his anymore. It was more feminine, more foxlike. Gradually, Carmine's two hands found the floor and pressed down hard to push the body up to standing position.
"Oh boy… you are heavy!" Echo laughed, crawling for a table and using that to get Carmine's body back up to standing. "Yeah, I forgot you're like… three times my size. Is this what it's like to be tall-?"
Echo coughed and thumped Carmine's chest a few times. "Ooh… weird having vocal chords again, I forgot how much they vibrate…"
She steadied Carmine against a wall, slowly stretching out his legs and warming herself up… reminding herself how to walk. She roved along the curvature of Carmine's body, playing with his stomach and swinging his tail back and forth. She giggled with each new sensation she felt.
"I feel pins n' needles all over! All these little nerves… it's so much to take in, hah…!"
Mmhmn….
"Not that I'm gonna stay like this forever, mind you. I definitely would rather be a ghost, but… this's fuuun too~"

One hesitant step, then another, then another… then Echo felt confident enough to that Carmine's paw away from the wall. 
"Wow, Echo, you were so right," Echo said, using Carmine's voice. "Being possessed does feel good~!"
Carmine couldn't disagree. Even though it wasn't his choice to say those words in the first place… He was floating in an ectoplasm-drunk fugue, passively observing and feeling the awkward swaying bounce of his body, a giggling backseat passenger on this joyride.
"Okay, Roomie… let's go get something to snack on~!"

Echo piloted Carmine towards the front door. Each time the dragon's foot rose off the ground, a thick stringy blob of lilac ectoplasm was left behind. They lingered all the way to the door. Echo was used to phasing through things, or manipulating door handles by possessing them. Having to use palms and digits was… very awkward. It wasn't intuitive to her anymore. 

"Hooh… how do you even live like this?" Echo panted. "Guh… did gravity get heavier since I died?"
No…'S'always been like this…
"Dang. Okay."

If Echo was trying to blend in as Carmine, she was not doing a very good job. She was swinging his arms like a powerwalker, and the gait she'd managed to get into involved a lot of awkward stomping. Plus Carmine's eyes were wide open, so it was very easy to see the purple glow behind them.
And when 'he' waved at people and said "Hiya!" the voice that came out of him was… not the voice most people had heard him use.

 When Carmine's stomach growled, Echo groaned. 
"….Oh yeah, where were we going in the first place?" Echo wondered aloud, making passersby glance at Carmine confusedly. "What did you wanna eat, Carmine…?"

Huh…?
"What do you eat nowadays? What're we having for dinner?"
I… whuh…?
"Ah. Right." Echo rolled Carmine's eyes. "I should've thought of that before I possessed you, shouldn't I…"