A government experiment to create intelligent microbial life fails, but a small sample is taken home and is eaten by an unsuspecting civilian. Story concept blatantly stolen from When The Yoghurt Took Over.

I want to believe that it’s not my fault. It is - it totally is - but I didn’t do it on purpose. And while, if you had asked anyone ten years ago, “Hey, would you like your body and civilization to be hijacked by this psychic hivemind of hyper-intelligent yoghurt?” they would have obviously said no, there’s nobody alive today that would ever want things to go back to the way they were.   But I’ve skipped ahead, so let’s rewind for a second.   It started in a lab, in a country, funded by a government. Not that any of them exist anymore. I’d managed to sneak my way into a high pay, low responsibility position thanks to a doctored resume and a friend of a friend shuffling some files around. The team I was assigned to had just completed phase one of their latest project: Genetically engineer intelligent life. And by complete phase one, I mean get greenlit and funded to actually start work. I couldn’t tell you the exact science going on behind the scenes - like I said, high pay, low responsibility - but what I did understand was that they wanted to start with a microbe that was easy to cultivate in an environment hospitable to humans and didn’t pose any poison or toxicity risks. Why microbes? Well, the plan was to have each cell be part of a larger network, kind of like how a single ant is pretty stupid but an entire nest is apparently much smarter. At least that’s how it was explained to me, and I was willing to take their word for it. Anyway, we started with lactobacillus; the yoghurt bacteria. Yes, just like in that one episode of that streaming anthology. And frankly, compared to how things went …

A newly married couple find their lives upended when the wife goes to work for a company where all is not as it seems. 

Riley Harper was between jobs when she saw the ad. The 21 year old blonde had recently quit as a waitress at a local restaurant. She usually got great tips that she knew was more thanks to her curves than her service, but despised being hit on all the time, especially now that she was newly married. But it wasn’t okay for her to be without a job. Yesterday her husband Ben came home early from his factory. Apparently he’d been furloughed for at least 3 weeks. They didn’t have any sort of savings that would keep them in the black longer than a couple of weeks, so Riley stepped up.   She got on her phone and began job hunting, but quickly grew frustrated by how similar they were to every job she’d had before. Cashier, hostess, server, retail sales specialist. She wasn’t qualified for much else, but just once she’d like to do something that didn’t involve wearing a name tag. That’s when she came across the ad for Del Corp.    Riley clicked on it, and read about a company that was a bit of a drive away. An hour. But it paid eighty thousand dollars a year. That was four times what her last job paid! Del Corp was looking for people who could do simple data entry, and no degree was required. Then the best yet. They would let you work from home 4 of the 5 days a week! This suddenly seemed too good to be true, but what the hell. For the hope of that much money, she’d take her chances.    Riley looked for a place to begin filling out her application online, but then read that the application and interview process would only be done in person, and that candidates would …

Aisha volunteers for an unspecified medical research project, only to be left alone in a waiting room where absolutely nothing of interest happens to her. A fire in the building forces her to go home before she has a chance to participate in the experiment. At least that's how it seems at first.

Aisha sat impatiently in the bland, sterile room. Not literally sterile, but the spartan lack of decor and drab colouring made her feel like she was waiting in an unfurnished hospital ward. Admittedly, this was hardly surprising - she’d signed up to join some kind of mysterious medical experiment at uni after all - but it wouldn’t kill them to put in a pot plant or something. The door opened, and Aisha gratefully rose from the sole chair in the room, only to sink back down in disappointment when she was told they would be ready for her soon. Not soon enough, she thought to herself. Her leg bounced restlessly, and she began to question whether it had been worth signing up at all. Fifty bucks was fifty bucks, but if she wound up waiting here for hours she may as well have just worked a shift at some shitty little fast food place for all the good it would do her. She shivered. This wasn’t a good attitude to have. She closed her eyes, breathed in deeply and steadied herself. How did the saying go? “Patience is a virtue: Possess it if you can. Very rare in women and never in a man.” Her grandmother had taught her that. A bit mean, but she grew up in mean times. Instead of getting frustrated, Aisha decided to challenge herself to see how long she could stay perfectly still. Like a Buddhist meditation kind of thing. Just sit still, stare straight ahead and focus on her breathing. She was so focused that she almost jumped when the door opened again. Someone in scrubs poked their head in and asked how she was feeling. “Fine,” she lied, though admittedly the attempted meditation had seemed to be working for a moment. Scrubs seemed …

I thought that having my body possessed, my life stolen and my evenings spent tangled in a carnal carousel of degenerate sex was the worst thing that could happen to me. I was wrong.

It had been three months since I had felt the presence slither out of my mind. Three months since I had been trapped as a helpless passenger in my own body, watching it gleefully debase itself in ways I had never dared imagine. There had been no warning: One moment I had been waiting in line to audition for some minor speaking role, when a sudden shiver ran through me. The person sitting next to me had asked if I was okay, and I’d tried to make a joke about how nervous I was. Instead, my body silently stood up and began to walk briskly towards the exit. I had tried to cry out. I tried to stop myself. I tried to trip myself up, swivel my eyes or even blink in a way that might signal to someone that something was terribly wrong, but I completely lost control of my own faculties. Some outside force had seized control of my body and walked it smartly into the elevator, taking us down to the lobby, out the studio doors and into the city’s seedy underbelly. Well, perhaps not exactly. As my body began to pilot itself towards what I recognised as the red light district, I felt myself almost blacking out in panic - the thought of being trapped as my body handed out back-alley blowjobs filling me with a sense of sickness beyond simple nausea. To my bitter relief, I watched myself sashay into the most salubrious venue in the city: More a luxury hotel than a whorehouse, but everyone knew that the turndown service included some very intimate extras. I felt my face flex into a charming smile to the bouncer and saw his look of amused recognition. I’d never seen the brute in my life, but I …

It's not easy to bargain with demons, which Eddie discovers the hard way after he escapes death by trading his soul to the demon Azir, a handsome and charming resident of Hell. Azir promises to return Eddie's soul in exchange for allowing demons the use of his body for their own amusement. It's the last deal he wants to make, but if he wants to save his soul, it may be his only choice.

There are many common-sense rules to live by, and I just managed to break three of them in one go: never wear black when walking at night, never cross against a red light, and never make a deal with the devil. So, there I am, lying in the street, the taste of blood in my mouth as I struggle to draw breath, and this guy walks up and looks down at me. He seemed like a normal guy, except for the absolute lack of any kind of human compassion in his eyes. He stared at me like I was some bug he couldn’t care less about stepping on.   “Boy, are you in a pickle or what?” he said, crouching down beside me. “That is a lot of blood. And I’m no expert on human anatomy, but I don’t think your arms and legs are supposed to bend like that. But I guess bouncing off a windshield, a telephone pole, and the street will do that to you.” He leaned closer, a flickering light dancing in the depths of his dark eyes. “You’re dying, Eddie. Can you feel it? Your life fading with each desperate beat of your heart?”   I wasn’t sure which was more frightening, that I could feel it, or that he knew my name.   “Are you ready to die, Eddie?” he asked. “In about two minutes, your heart will stop and your brain will cease to function, and you will find out what, if anything, waits for you on the other side. Are you ready for that? Or do you want to live?”   I tried to answer, but it came out as a sob, bloody bubbles flecking my lips.   “I can save you,” the strange man whispered, holding his hand out to me. …

Gemma signs up to be a test subject in a ‘Temporary Human Neuroengineering Trial’ that’s a little bit hazy on the details. It turns out a new neural transmitter and receiver pair are being tested, which allows somebody to experience all the sensations from, and control all the inputs to, somebody else’s body. Unfortunately for Gemma, she’s the receiver, and it really does feel like she’s still the one in control…

“Test Number One, beginning!”The voice came out of a small loudspeaker on the wall across from me. I didn’t know exactly what was being tested, but I figured it had something to do with the injection they’d given me when I first arrived.My name is Gemma, and I’m just broke enough that getting paid $500 to be a subject in a ‘Temporary Human Neuroengineering Trial’ was pretty damn appealing.I’d followed a listing on the student board all the way to this dingy room in the back of the nanotech building, where some excited postgraduates had made me sign a consent form and explained that they couldn’t explain anything before the experiment started. Then they stabbed me in the arm with a needle and left. Really helpful.I deduced it had something to do with the new nanobots the faculty had been working on. These microscopic machines could be put into a syringe and injected into mice, where their nervous system could be stimulated directly by a human wearing an EEG or something. I’d seen videos on instagram of the mice being made to run around mazes and do things they couldn’t have figured out so quickly on their own. I found that stuff super fascinating. Were they going to get me to control a mouse with my own set of nanobots? Or would they try to get my arm to jerk under somebody else's control, like that BrainNet/TMS experiment back in 2019? That would be kinda hot. I shivered and felt myself get a little bit aroused.I looked down and briefly cupped my boobs with my hands, a little gasp coming out of my mouth. Then I snapped my head up and stared at the wall across from me, throwing my hands down to the sides. …