Com-Bin-Her - Part One

As I stumble into my apartment I quickly try to shake the rain from my lanky form. It had only been drizzling when I had left to go get my weekly groceries, but the wintery weather had soon turned violent and soaked me to my core on the way back.

Dropping the sodden bags to the floor by the door I quickly try to disrobe, my loose woolen sweater feeling five times as heavy thanks to all the water soaked into the usually warm material.

Piece after piece of clothing is tossed to the wooden floor with a series of loud wet slaps, a grown pool of water leaking out from underneath them. Before long I'm left shivering in my boxers, rubbing at my slender arms with my hands as I try to warm up.

I quickly begin to move to my bedroom, eager to fetch some dry clothes. However, as I step over the dripping set of black jeans my eyes go wide.

"My phone!" I cry, realizing I had left the worryingly delicate device in my pocket despite the heavy downpour outside.

With no small amount of haste I quickly paw through the pockets of my now rather heavy set of pants, fishing out my wallet and keys before finding my moistened but thankfully functional phone from within.

With a sigh of relief I turn the phone on, unlocking it as I wipe away the few stray droplets clinging to the screen. My eyes narrow as I see a notification, a download bar just finishing as my phone chirps.

 

Download Complete: Installing - Com-Bin-Her

The app 'Com-Bin-Her' was not one to be found on any app store or website, the malicious little program acting more like a virus to propagate itself between devices.

It was also unlike any other application, being a mixture of technology and unknown magics to make its effects transcend the digital realm and shift reality around it.

Who made the application was still unknown, the strange application having just appeared one day on a person's phone and letting loose the chaos within. It was likely the creator was still around somewhere, watching as the app was used and reveling in the show it and the users put on. However, that assumption was also predicated on the creator having not fallen victim to the application themselves.

On the surface Com-Bin-Her merely looked like a picture fusion application, allowing the user to mash two pictures together with a particular focus on certain body parts.

The strangeness started with the pictures however, with a series of them being auto-populated on startup based on whoever was nearby. Candid pictures of these people would be available for combination, eerie shots of individuals going about their day as if being stalked by some malevolent force.

A similar picture of the user would be front and center of the screen, with the options for combination floating about them like eager flies in search of a place to land.

All that was required to combine the pictures were two simple taps, one to select the picture/person and one to select the trait to combine.

Once the action had been selected however there was no going back, the application quickly freezing up as it worked its devilish sorcery on the target and the world at large. No one on the outside knew what happened in this intervening time, all that was known was that once all was said and done the target would be no more and the user would have a brand new body part.

Reality itself would alter itself, adjusting to the absence of the target person as well as making sure that the world would see the user as always having been the way they appear.

Surely there was more to this, but without a copy of the evasive little application there was little the magical community could do to investigate.

While I had been out shopping the application had jumped over to my phone from a towering athletic young woman, her own phone soon being scrubbed of the application for the most part until only a largely inert shell remained.

"The hell is..." I mutter to myself, watching as a little icon pops into my home screen. The little gray square showing an image of a blue and pink body partially overlapping each other.

With my curiosity surrounding the application soon beating out my desire to warm up I quickly tap at the errant little shortcut. The screen itself suddenly goes black, for a moment making me think I had just bricked my phone. However, after a few seconds I watch as the device flickers back to life.

I whip my head around as I see the image on my phone, a picture of my almost naked self taking up the whole of the screen. It wasn't a selfie by any means, the picture including my phone in it as well as my whole freezing body is covered.

I stare over at the kitchen, the only space that makes sense for the mysterious photographer to have been to get the side angle of my hunched form. Yet no one is there, my apartment being empty beyond myself and the sound of the hammering rain outside.

A subtle chime emanates from my phone, the sound soon repeating as more pictures begin to float around the screen. Glancing down I'm met with the sight of my neighbors, at least some of them, all apparently having been visited by the same ominous spectral photographer as myself.

Kelly Richards, the young college girl down the hall, lays on her bed with her legs kicking in the air behind her. She rests on her front, reading a thick and boring-looking book as the image shows her from a top-down perspective. Her lithe yet unimpressive body is dressed simply in a red sweater that drapes over her frame more like pajamas than anything else.

Margret Richards, the newly minted stepmother, stands over the stovetop as she prepares dinner for her new family. The plump and doughy yet curvaceous woman with wild and wiry hair is dressed in rough and dirty jeans along with a cleaner white t-shirt, a green apron with her flower shop's logo covering much of her front.

Haley Jennings, the young mother across the hall, appears frozen mid cleaning. The Thai woman in her early thirties is bent over picking up various toys littering the floor, her wide hips and firm yet excessively thick behind straining at her simply pair of 'mom jeans'.

Gracie Douglas, the goth barista upstairs, appears to have been caught out in the rain as well. Dressed in a tight black skirt and white button-up shirt, the photo shows her climbing up the stairs out to her apartment as she seems to be soaked down to the bone. Her face is rather red, the various pieces of metal piercing her flesh acting to chill her further in the icy winter weather.

I pause for a moment, staring in disbelief at the images before being snapped back to reality by the sound of heavy footfall echoing up the stairwell at the end of the hall.

"These were..." I mutter, glancing to the picture of Gracie as she plods up the stairs outside. "These were just taken..."

With a slight amount of tentative hesitation I tap at image of Gracie, watching in confusion as various small interconnected windows span out from the single picture.

They all list various body parts or even slightly more metaphysical traits, the various tiny windows floating around along with a new and larger button appearing at the bottom of the screen.

[Combine]

My eyes dart over the options, drinking in the options as the purpose of the app becomes more and more clear. From options like eyes and arms to face and pussy, the type and number of options leave me sighing a little.

"It's just a stupid image editing app" I huff, my mind still struggling to work out how the pictures had been taken.

I go to close it, eager to go get changed, but as I linger on the screen can't help but wonder just how good the app was at what it offered to do. There were just so many options, with so many traits that the pictures didn't even capture. How would the app show combinations of parts that weren't in the pictures either through not being in the angle or through being completely covered?

Rolling my eyes a little I make a quick selection before pressing

[Combine]

The screen itself quickly locks up, a spinning wheel covering my own image as new text lips up beneath it.

 

 Combining

Jordan Hughes
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