She was beautiful. Her skin was silky smooth, her hair a shiny and perfect black, in flowing locks. Her dazzling hazel eyes pierced your soul, and her lips were pouty without overdoing it. Having gotten to know her online before knowing what she looked like, I was glad; for truly, her beauty would have rendered me mute. It rendered me mute now, but since we'd agreed to meet here, she laughed - a sound like tinkling wind chimes - and spoke to me, shaking me out of my muteness.

On our third date, she was distracted all night, and seemed worried. "What's wrong?" I asked her.

She bit her lip, looking around. "I can't say. You won't understand."

"I'm very open minded," I told her. "Not a lot can shock me."

She nodded. "Yes, I know, from the months we've been IM'ing. But still I worry this is too much."

"Try me."

"I'm scared."

"Yes, but if it's important, I'll find out eventually. Better to get it over with now, and know for sure, than worry for however long."

She laughed again. "True. Okay, here goes: I'm not human."

"Yes, you told me you're Otherkin. So am I."

"No, it's not that. I'm really not human. I know it sounds crazy, but I can prove it. I'm just worried you'll panic if I show you."

I was intrigued now. I had looked into her eyes, and she was telling the truth. "Maybe if you gave me some idea what to expect, that would help."

"Well, to be honest ... it's not a simple thing. You see, I'm a monster, and I hunt humans. I was hunting you when we first met online, and I would have suggested we meet sooner than we are now, if you hadn't mentioned being Otherkin, and explained it. Hearing that, I began to have hope that I didn't have to be alone. I decided to spare you, no matter how this turns out. But I worry, of course. I fear rejection. I've never had a lover before. My kind ... we are hermaphrodites, and we fertilize our own eggs."

"What is it you want to show me? Do you have a vagina dentata? Or a mouth in your stomach?"

"I ... I don't really look like this at all. I'm a shape-shifter, and I also have a glamour on."

"I believe you. Should we go somewhere private? Too many mundanes here."

She blinked in surprise. "You'd do that? You'd meet me in private when I told you I eat humans? Aren't you afraid I'll eat you?"

I smiled. "If you were going to do that, you wouldn't have told me all this. And besides, I'll take that risk."

She shrugged, and stood up, her long sexy legs in her short skirt moving gracefully. I wondered what was going on, and I started to imagine what she could really look like. I wondered how I'd react. My heart beat began to quicken. She looked at me, something in her gaze telling me she'd sensed my raising pulse from across the table.

We called a cab, and took it to a sleazy little hotel that I'm sure was where she took her prey, because the guy at the front desk didn't comment on the fact that my date was clearly out of my league, not even with his eyes; like he'd seen this kind of thing countless times.

I opened the door for her and went in before her, my heart still racing. She closed the door behind us and sat down on the bed. I was suddenly glad we weren't going to have sex in here, because I didn't need blacklights to see the gross stains on the covers and the walls. The place was filthy, and probably hadn't been cleaned in several days.

I turned the lights on, and she looked more nervous than ever. I saw her more clearly than I had before, in her little black dress, looking almost like a supermodel, except that she was clearly not missing any meals. She looked good; she looked healthy and normal, aside from being a 15 on a scale of beauty from 1 to 10.

"I uh," she said, standing up. "I'll need to get nude to do this, because the dress is real, and I don't want to ruin it."

I nodded. "Okay. Should I look away?"

She shook her head. "No, I want you to look. I want you to see how normal I look before I change."

With the fluid, rapid movement of someone who was used to doing it, she unzipped herself and slid the dress off, standing there in her bra and panties. She kicked her shoes off, then slipped out of her underwear as well. I gaped; I couldn't help it. She was even lovelier nude than I had imagined. I began to see what she meant about a glamour; the perfection of her curves and her skin was unnatural. When people moved, things changed shape and even the prettiest features could look ugly in the wrong position or the wrong light. And the light in the hotel, while strong, was not good light. Yet she still looked amazing.

And her skin, it was unnaturally perfect as well. No moles, no blemishes, not even any hair anywhere but the top of her head, her eyelashes, and her eyebrows. It was, frankly, unnerving.

"Okay," she said at last, "I'm ready. Are you?"

"Yes."

"Good. Try not to panic."

Without even moving, suddenly everything about her changed. She was still beautiful, but she no longer looked alive; she looked artificial, like a Real Doll, but moving. And there was something moving under her skin, slithering in a way that was fascinating and lovely to me, but would probably have been grotesque to most people. I leaned closer to get a better look at these sub-surface undulations, for they were hypnotic in a beautiful way.

A ripping noise startled me out of my reverie, and there was blood as the skin over her belly ripped open. I expected guts to fall out, but instead a pale, blind, eyeless head on a very long neck poked out. It was covered in blood and gore, with a mouth like a lamprey's mouth, but different. Its teeth were much longer, and there were twice as many of them. A tongue slid out of the hole in the middle, and it was barbed.

The hole in her skin widened, and four arms – long and skinny but looking very strong – came out of the hole, followed by two long, snakelike tails with pale white skin, a bit like some monstrous version of the Starbuck's mermaid. Her fingers had dangerous looking black claws at their terminus.

Using her legs like multi-jointed tails, she stood up. I don't know how she'd done it, but she was taller in this form than she had been in her human form. I stared in awe as hundreds of slit-pupil eyes opened all along her torso, looking at me.

Maybe she was showing off, I don't know, but her eyeless head flipped upside down, and a second mouth – wide and toothy like certain deep-sea fishes – opened up, revealing dripping fangs. I thought that the fangs were dripping saliva at first, but as the drops hit the floor, I saw it was acid instead.

"You are gorgeous," I said, genuinely. For I had truly never seen anything so beautiful in all my life. I wondered, though, if she would be able to speak in this form. This was answered when a small humanoid head – like an infant's head but red as blood – formed in her chest, looked at me, and spoke.

"Thank you," she said. "I can tell you mean it. You are a strange human, and for that I am glad."

"May I touch you?"

"Oh ... okay, sure."

I walked up to her, avoiding the dripping acid until she closed that mouth and flipped her first head rightside up. I barely noticed the lamprey-like mouth as I touched the slick skin of one of her four arms. I had expected it to be slimy, but it was dry and scaly, covered as it was in millions of tiny half-sphere shaped scales.

Letting my hands explore other parts of her, I found that some parts – like her 'legs' were more scaly, while others were less so. In fact, the skin under her first head was soft and felt amazing. It felt so good, I pictured her rubbing it over my nude body, and felt myself become aroused.

I happened to glance between her tail-legs, and saw what looked like an enormous prehensile penis, black and slick and throbbing. I had noticed it because it had suddenly appeared and gotten harder in response to my touching the soft parts of her skin.

"Oh my," I said, all aflutter. "So does this mean you're as excited as I am?"

She chuckled. "Yes. And honestly, that isn't the question I expected."

"Oh come now, dear; I'm not put off by you being so utterly inhuman, why would I be put off by you having a dick?"

"Well, it's not a penis, actually. It's an ovipositor."

"Oh wow," I said, taking a better look. "May I touch it?"

"Please do."

With her permission, I held it with my hand. It was just thick enough that I couldn't get my whole hand around it; if my fingers were an inch longer, I would have managed it. "Does it, er ... respond like a penis, though?"

"Mostly. But it cums eggs instead of semen. So, uh ... if you want to do anything ... but if you don't want to, I understand."

"Oh, so you don't mind if I play with it? Well that's good, because I want to. But first, can we lay down?"