Orc Baseball. The diamond and the team insignia are both delineated with blood and/or viscera, and a war club takes the place of a bat. Just be careful not to bean the batter, or you may get two huge green fists upside your jaw. Part of my ongoing commissioned Orc series.

Most Improved Player

(Commission Story)

Donning the oddly clunky VR helmet, Graham felt one of his “knowledge drop” moments coming on. He knew he shouldn’t speak his mind, at least not until later. Especially when Kelvin was trying to do something nice for him. But goddamn it, he just couldn’t help it. Life was short. Was it wrong that he wanted to be sure this whole thing wasn’t a massive waste of his time?

He tapped his friend on the back. Through the smoked glass visor, he could barely discern the shape of Kelvin turning away from his custom gaming set-up to look over his shoulder at him.

The helmet’s speakers registered Kelvin’s exasperated sigh. “What now?”

Graham felt like he was being put on the defensive. He hated feeling that way. He plowed ahead. “I’m sorry, man, it’s just… these things are ginormous. You said this was cutting-edge tech but they look ancient. I mean, why do they have to cover our entire heads?”

Kelvin’s silhouette shrugged. “They’re big because they’re prototypes, I guess. They’re supposed to have sensors that stimulate areas of the brain, so you’ll feel stuff, like wind and rain actually touching your skin. I think it can even affect your olfactory senses.”

“Smell-o-vision, huh? Sure. I don’t know… The only thing I’m sensing right now is the sneaking suspicion you got ripped off. I read an article on the future of VR tech, and nothing even close to this was even mentioned. I think I still have the link on my phone… Hang on, I’ll pull it up for…”

Kelvin interrupted him. “I swear to fucking GOD, if you look up one more thing on the internet to prove a point, I will smack that helmet right off of you with your head still inside it!”

Reluctantly, Graham shut his mouth. At least the gloves seemed legit, although they were a little tight for his hands. He flexed his fingers to test his range of movement. They would do.

While Kelvin scrabbled away at a keyboard, Graham mulled the whole thing over in his mind. He realized that the experience could at least be interesting, if not mind-blowing. And to be fair, his friend was doing him a favor by even including him. Kelvin could have hacked into this unreleased VR program by himself and bragged about it later. Not many people had the balls to even attempt something of that complexity, much less wrangle a couple of proprietary helmets from an “inside man” with the developer. The in-game environment could be some blocky, PS1-level shitshow and it wouldn’t matter. They’d still be getting away with something pretty damned cool.

Kelvin’s voice rattled through the speakers once more. “We’re clear. Even if we’re detected by any admins or security algorithms, we’ll read as authorized playtesters. You ready?”

“Yeah, I’m ready. Let’s do this thing!”

A moment later, strobing bursts of color assaulted his eyes. A low hum escalated into screeching white noise. With blessed speed, the chaos resolved itself into something approaching calm.

And he was somewhere else.

He was surrounded by rippling, saffron-colored sands, under a turquoise sky. The wind was warm, and carried the scent of spices. His cheeks were warm from a late afternoon sun. No, make that hot. Like he was sunburned. The wind picked up, whispering in his ears and tousling his hair. He cleared his throat. Amazingly, he was thirsty. Licking his lips, he found that they were dry and cracked. It was all so real, his hands involuntarily felt for the helmet, to make sure it was still on his head. It was.

On the horizon was an oasis. Beyond a forest of palm trees, a city lurked. Or at least, he assumed it was a city. It was a vast, cube-like structure, with various sections shifting and retracting like a Hellraiser cube. The whole thing, in fact, appeared to be rotating. Above this architectural oddity, a tremendous red thundercloud billowed.

To his side was Kelvin. The words “PLAYER 1” floated above his head, accompanied by a completely unnecessary arrow pointing straight down. His friend looked just as dumpy here as did in the real world. It was such a waste. Kelvin wasn’t a bad looking guy, but he never took care of himself. He’d acquired a beer belly pretty early on in their college days, and now he was just straight-up pudgy. The bushy beard and ponytail hadn’t helped. Graham had told him for years that he would never score any pussy, looking that way, but Kelvin never listened to him. Not until a few months ago. And even then, he overdid it.

Kelvin’s uncle was some ex-military guy, and he had apparently adopted Graham’s crusade to get Kelvin to clean himself up a little. But with the military influence, things went too far in the other direction. The ponytail was history, but in its place was something Kelvin called a “high-and-tight with a landing strip”: a flattop so severe, it left bare skin on the top of the head. And sure, he shaved off his beard, but he left a big chevron mustache that covered his upper lip. With that and the cargo shorts and the “Tommy Bahama” shirts, It made him look like he was fifty. And he was still chubby.

And now every sad detail was recreated in the game. It seemed like a missed opportunity. Why even enter another world if you still looked as fugly as you did in the first one?

He knew that he, at least, would present a formidable figure. He was tall and tautly muscled, with a square jaw and pale blue eyes. His auburn locks were expertly groomed into a stylish, yet conservative cut that told his superiors at the p.r. firm that he was serious about rising to the top ranks there.

With a triumphant grin, Kelvin spread his arms wide and said, expectantly, “Well…?”

“Holy shit,” Graham breathed. “I take it all back. This is incredible.” His voice sounded ragged, as though he really was parched. “Oh, shit… the game is making me thirsty! This is bananas!”

“Thirsty…?! You know what… that’s probably a prompt from the game, like a clue. I’m sure there’s water at that oasis up ahead. Let’s go that way!”

“Wait, aren’t you thirsty?”

“Yeah, I’m a little parched, I guess. Sounds like you got it bad, though.” He laughed, which for him always came out as a nasal honking.

Graham could feel his feet sinking into the dunes. Quickly, his legs were aching from the exertion. He supposed that indicated that his character had been walking for quite some time. He knew that he would never tire that easily in the real world.

As they neared the city, he could see that it was constructed mainly of a shiny black stone, inlaid with bronze and other warmly colored metals. It had numerous medieval Islamic architectural elements, like minarets and onion domes and horseshoe arches. Still, all of the buildings and avenues and pavilions had been crammed together into a confusing M.C. Escher-esque clump. Glistening canals ran along the vertical surfaces of the place, brazenly defying all laws of gravity.

He felt twitchy. His nerves were jangled, like he’d had too many espressos. He wanted to dive into things. “So fill me in! Are we talking an open-world sim here, or a platformer, or what? I’m getting definite ‘Prince of Persia’ vibes from that weird city. I could see myself doing some sick double backflips all up in there.”

“From what I understand, it’s an MMORPG. You have character classes and shit like that, but it also gives you the option to just explore and solve puzzles. Y’know, if you’re not into fighting or stealth missions or whatever. I think right now the city’s the only environment. When it’s released they’ll have a ton more places to go. And the whole thing is inspired by ‘One-Thousand-and-One Nights’, which I love. My guy at the developer knew I was really into that book. I even did my thesis on it for my minor. That’s why he clued me into this game. He wanted me to get an early peek at what they were working on.”

“’1,001 Arabian Nights,’ huh? Like Disney’s ‘Aladdin?’ Oof.”

Kelvin’s body sagged. “Okay, out with it. Don’t keep me in suspense.”

“What? I’m just saying, it had better not be some half-assed ‘I Dream of Jeannie’ cliché. Because Twitter will roast their asses alive.”

“It’s a fantasy world, based on concepts from stories that were gathered from a whole bunch of cultures, from Egypt to India to China. I think they’ll be fine. It’s not like that one ‘Call of Duty’ where they put the Karachi street signs in Arabic instead of Urdu.”

“I’m just saying. Anyhow, you’re Lebanese or something on your dad’s side, right? So I’d think you’d understand my concern, y’know, for your people.”

“For the last time, fuckwad, my dad is Persian.”

“Well, that’s LIKE Lebanese.”

“It’s so NOT. God! Okay, I’m gonna do my thing here and you can follow or not or whatever. Just… just try not shitting all over something I like for once.” He stomped on ahead of him, shaking his head.

Graham followed, keeping a modest distance, reasoning that Kelvin would agree with him, once he had explained it well enough. He hated the silence, though.

Not really meaning it, he called out, “I’m sorry!”

Kelvin didn’t bother to look at him. “Let’s just get this over with,” he grumbled.

The oasis was a blessedly cool world of greenish shadows surrounding a clear spring. They scooped up the water with their hands and drank. Graham was stunned by the realism of it. He could feel the water hitting his face and trickling down his throat.

At once, steam arose from the center of the spring, manifesting into a tall, spectral figure. It appeared as a voluminous cloak made of steam, with nobody inside. “I am the guardian of the City of Justice,” it intoned in a voice like a gurgling drain. “You may not enter until you have confessed your true soul.” With a wave of its empty sleeve, a crumbling tome appeared before them. It opened, and the pages flipped by themselves, revealing illustrations of various personages. The images were titled, but every facing page bore placeholder junk text in lieu of actual information.

The spirit gestured to the book with a voluminous sleeve. “Who do you know yourself to be?”

“Character class selection,” Kelvin said to Graham.

They allowed the spirit to cycle through the options a couple of times. Soldier, Prince, Assassin, Nomad, Thief, Ghoul, Astronomer, Poet, Mathematician. Most of those titles made sense to him, except for the last three. He guessed they would open up various puzzle settings. But then there were other classes that would seem to offer nothing in the way of enjoyment at all, like Slave and Beast of Burden.

He decided to ask the spirit to explain the natures of the various classes. The spirit said nothing, just floating there, running through an occasionally flickering idle animation.

“I don’t think they have that part programmed in yet,” Kelvin said.

“God. Okay. I guess I’ll go with ‘Assassin.’”

“Because you’re murdering my fun,” Kelvin smirked. Then to the spirit, he said, “I’m a Thief.”

“So it has been revealed,” the thing announced, dispassionately.

With a sound like a flock of birds flapping their wings, something heavy was dropped over Graham’s body, blurring his vision for a moment. When he could see once more, he realized that his clothing had changed. He was wearing black silk robes, with a charcoal-grey cape wrapped around his shoulders and secured with a small clasp. Tucked into a belt was a small, curving knife and a pouch containing small metal coins and some mysterious glass bottles. His tennis shoes had been replaced with leather sandals.

He saw that his friend was dressed in a belted white tunic, over cream-colored baggy trousers which were cinched at the ankles, and soft leather boots. A large satchel was slung over one arm. His hair was long again, hanging down to his shoulders, secured with a sliver of rawhide that looped around his head, a few inches above his eyes. It looked very “Renaissance Faire” to him, and he said as much. “Shouldn’t you be wearing one of those Saudi hats, y’know, the white towel with the gold belt on it? I thought this was supposed to be Arabia.”

“Classy, Graham. The first English translation of the book was titled ‘The Arabian Nights’ Entertainment’ because the original text was in Arabian. And ‘Arabian Nights’ just kinda stuck. But the stories are set all over. I think these clothes are all Sassanian. That’s the last Persian empire before the rise of Islam. That tracks, because the king in the framing story of the ‘One-Thousand-and-One Nights’ tales is Sassanian. I guess that’s what they were going for.”

“I don’t know… That doesn’t sound right to me. Hang on, let me check.”

“You are not going to sign out from this thing just to look at your goddamn phone. Tell you what, make a mental list and when we’re through here, you can fact-check me to your heart’s desire.”

Graham felt that was fair. As they advanced towards the city, he let his friend ramble on about the Arabian Nights tales. About how they encompassed so many genres. Horror, crime stories, comedy, even an anatomy lesson and what some considered to be early sci-fi. He raved about the various story techniques. Foreshadowing, twist endings, unreliable narrators. He sounded positively rapturous. Graham was struck by the mental image of Kelvin jacking off to a hundred-year-old, leather-bound book of fairy tales, and shooting a load all over it, just as a schoolmarm librarian walked in on him. Despite himself, he laughed out loud.

Kelvin asked him what he was laughing about. So he told him.

Kelvin failed to see the humor in it. “You could have kept that to yourself, y’know,” he noted, sourly.

“Just being my brutally honest self, buddy,” Graham said with a grin.

They were greeted at the city gates by a pair of hulking men in armor that looked like overlapping scales, with Roman gladiator-type strappy leather kilts and masked helmets. The word “GUARD” floated over each one’s head. “Welcome to the City of Justice, strangers,” they said in unison. “Do as you will, but take care to follow the rules, or face the wrath of the Djinn!” With that, they stepped aside to let the two friends pass.

“Hold up,” Graham cried. “What are the rules, anyway?”

Silence.

“Let me guess. That part hasn’t been programmed in, either. Christ, Kelvin, you couldn’t have downloaded an instruction manual or something?”

“I dunno. Who cares? We’re just exploring, remember?”

The gate opened up on a long hallway with a barrel ceiling. Right away, Graham felt disoriented. The hallway’s floor and walls seemed to be moving independently of each other, like he was in a funhouse. They turned a corner and were confronted by a dead end. There was no ceiling above them in this part. Looking up, they could see that the wall went on for miles, and was studded with buildings and bridges and gardens, all busily emerging and receding, connecting and disconnecting.

“It’s not a wall,” Kelvin breathed. “It’s a street! Aw, yeah!” He placed one foot on the vertical surface and then, with a hop, the other. He was standing on it. Smiling like a maniac, he said to Graham, “This rocks! You try!”

As he did, an entirely new vista rotated into view. It was exhilarating, but a challenge to navigate. They found that if they stopped moving, the shifting tiles of the street would move them in opposite directions. The entire place was bathed in a roiling pink light.

It was a challenge to stay together, but they managed it. Aside from a variety of merchants lining the walkways, the city’s population was sparse. The solemn NPC’s trudged along, some of them labeled things like “VIZIER” and “MISER” and “PHYSICIAN.” Most, however, only had question marks floating over their heads. He supposed he would have to engage them in conversation and try to drum up some business, unless the game nudged him toward a preordained quest. It might be difficult to keep one’s attention for long, though, he realized. The people blinked in and out of existence like ghosts. A crowd of them would look like overlapping TV channels.

Before he had the chance to interact with anyone, Kelvin grabbed his arm. Actually, it felt like a couple of people were grabbing him for a moment. Just for a split-second. It was an odd sensation. He felt sluggish and sleepy, and it was hard to move. The feeling passed quickly. Some glitch in the program, he assumed.

Kelvin dragged him toward an arched opening that was busily lowering itself into the pavement. “I think I see something good in here, but hurry!” Kelvin crouched and bumbled through, and then the opening was too small for Graham to follow him. He followed the line of the wall, searching for another passage. No such luck. He kept having to fight the stone pavers themselves, which kept dragging him towards the middle of the street. He decided to try talking to Kelvin over the helmet’s com system.

“Look for wall tiles like the ones I stepped on at the entrance,” Kelvin said. “You should be able to walk on those.”

At last, he found a tile like the one Kelvin had described. Tentatively, he pressed one foot against it, and then tried to hop onto the wall. He fell backwards and tripped up a passing NPC, sending her sprawling to the ground. Ashamed, he jumped up and apologized. The NPC, a tiny old woman, lay in the street next to a shattered vase. “My leg,” she murmured. “My leg…!”

Graham panicked. Some of the NPC’s had noticed and were slowly advancing on him. He searched for the “physician” one he’d spied earlier, but he was nowhere to be found. The rosy storm light that washed over the city intensified to a murderous red. “Kelvin,” he cried, “It didn’t work and now there’s a mob! Am I allowed to kill these fuckers in self-defense, or is that gonna bring on the Djinn?”

“I’m kind of in the middle of something right now. Can you just deal with it until I can get back to you?”

Several of the question marks over the NPC’s were vanishing and being replaced with “VIGILANTE.” A few of them brandished knives. The old woman was crying now.

“It was an accident, lady,” Graham yelped. “I’ll find you a doctor, just, just… don’t try to move, okay?”

He didn’t get far. He tried dodging the slowly moving mob of NPC’s but the moving tiles just swept him into their arms. He was held tight. Their lips moved, but words only came out sporadically. Thunder crackled in his ears. With a flash, a nude crimson giant stood before him, looking at least sixteen feet tall. His hair and beard seemed to be composed of clouds of orange smoke. He was scowling. Above his head was the word, “DJINN.” The NPC’s stopped in their tracks and knelt down.

With the Djinn’s appearance, the city was awash in sunlight. Of course, Graham thought. The red thundercloud WAS the Djinn. He wondered if he could garner a wish from the Djinn. Maybe he could heal the old lady’s leg. That had to be worth some points. If this game even had points.

In a low, buzzing voice that hurt Graham’s ears, the Djinn said, “You have assaulted this helpless woman. What is your defense?”

“I didn’t mean to,” Graham said, softly. “I just fell.”

“Clumsy fool,” the Djinn roared at him. “Justice must be served. If you are as reckless as a beast, you will look the part!”

His face felt warm, and tight. His ears were stretching outward, and upward. Fearfully, he grasped for them. His hands only came up against the helmet. But he could feel his cursed ears moving a the base of their sockets at the top of his head. The breeze touched them, letting him know that they were long and covered in hair. His nose and mouth felt odd, like they were set just a bit further away from his eyes than they should be. In fact, his whole mouth felt slightly swollen, and when he ran his tongue against his teeth, he discovered to his horror that they were long and flat. His hands were the next to change. Involuntarily, they clenched into fists, and then they hardened into dull black hooves.

The angry crowd pointed at him and jeered.

“You have behaved as an ass,” the Djinn declared. “Now, live as one. And be sure you do not offend these gentle people again, or it will be worse for you.” With a blast of heat, the Djinn rocketed up into the sky and dissipated into the titanic thundercloud again.

On cue, the physician NPC he’d seen earlier was by the old woman’s side, applying some kind of lotion to her ankle. Noticing Graham, he said to the crowd, “Someone, get that smelly animal out of here.”

From behind him, a familiar voice said, “On it.”

It was Kelvin. A crude leash made from rope was in his hands. Before Graham could do anything, his friend looped the thing over his neck and started dragging him forward.

He was livid. “Whuh the fug, duge!” It was even worse than he’d thought. The ridiculous donkey teeth were making it hard for him to talk.

“I could ask you the same thing, genius,” Kelvin laughed, nasally. “Keep trying to communicate, though; you sound like a fucking tool.”

His voice shaking from humiliation and anger, Graham forged ahead. “Haw-fugging-haw, wishe guy. You geh thish leash offa me thish fugging inshtan’!”

“No way, bro. I mean, clearly, you can’t be trusted on your own.”

“Can too,” he shot back. It wasn’t the type of clever retort he could normally be counted on to deliver, but it would have to do. He was furious with Kelvin for embarrassing him like this, but a small part of him was actually hurt that Kelvin didn’t trust him. “Loog, jush paushe the game an’ lemme shtar’ oafer. I’ll be damn’ if I’m shtayin’ lige thish. I mean, thish ish bullshih!”

“I’m sure it’s just a temporary handicap. And no, I’m not stopping the game to reset your character. I told you before, this is a one-time deal. I’m not gonna have thousands of dollars of computer equipment confiscated by the FBI because we got caught.”

“Whuh the fug effer, den! Ad leashe tage thish robe offa me!”

“No can do, pal. I have the feeling a donkey-man doesn’t fare too well in this burg. I’ve seen some NPC’s that you haven’t. You’ll have to watch out for animal traders, not to mention animal FUCKERS…! Naw, you’re better off if everybody thinks I’m your owner.”

Graham groaned. “Fuggersh? Jesush Chrishe!”

Kelvin was almost doubled over with laughter at this point. “Look at the bright side. You’re in demand! I should probably see how much I can get for you.”

“Don’ you fugging dare, mudderfugger!”

“Stop…! Oh, God! You’re killing me!” His friend wiped virtual tears from his eyes.

It was too real. It wasn’t as though his speech into the microphone was being altered by the program before it was transmitted to the speakers. No, he could feel his fat tongue slapping against his giant teeth. He was starting to despise this game.

He especially hated having that damned leash around his neck, and he could only imagine how stupid he looked to everybody else. He had to remind himself the NPC’s were fake. It was only Kelvin and himself there, after all. But the disdainful looks from the crowd seemed so real. Worse than those, were the hungry expressions in a few of them which suggested a naked venality or even lust. He pulled his hooves inside the sleeves of his robe as far as they would go, and walked hunched over with his deformed chin on his chest. With nothing else to do, he quietly plotted how he was going to kick Kelvin’s ass once the game was over. High above, the red Djinn rumbled ominously.

Kelvin was babbling something about getting a lead on some treasure from some NPC bandit, but Graham found it hard to concentrate on what he was saying. They strolled along a canal. The water, pink from the storm light, was clear and barely moving. He was transfixed by his reflection. His nose and mouth had indeed bulged outward into the briefest of muzzles. His teeth were like piano keys, protruding from his big, gaping mouth. And except for a darkening of his complexion in the area of his nose, the entire lower half of his face was covered in short white fur. By way of contrast, the humiliating ears bore a carpet of brown fur. Even his beautifully styled auburn hair had turned brown and taken on a choppy, mane-like texture.

They came to a building with a series of narrow ladders running in all directions over the façade. They were various lengths and usually were missing numerous rungs, and they floated all about in a confusing pattern, vanishing where they hit the ground or the overhanging roof.

“It’s on the top floor,” Kelvin confided. “Of course. Dang it, I’m going to have to leave you down here for a minute. Don’t take that leash off! You need to look owned. And maybe, I dunno, face away from the street? We don’t want to scar any children for life.” With that, he began to make his way up the side of the building.

“Shcrew you,” Graham mumbled, mostly to himself.

Once left alone though, Graham could feel his confidence start to erode. He wondered if Kelvin had only been joking about animal traders and animal rapists. If true, it would be too bizarre. What the hell kind of rating were the developers expecting for this game? Although he had played plenty of entries in the GTA series in his day, and he’d done some fucking in those, so maybe it was possible. For that matter, he had to admit that this particular game was an unreleased prototype. Maybe some of the coders were sickos who included those options for themselves only, before it went to beta testing. It could happen.

He knew if he huddled up and hid his face, he could pass for normal here. Except for those fucking ears. He dared to look around and search for a hiding place.

A bent old man with a dingy beard and red-rimmed eyes turned to stare at him. The question mark over his head blinked off, to be replaced with “PERVERT.” Stroking his filthy whiskers, he strolled in Graham’s direction.

Graham tried to wave him off, but the oily bastard kept coming. After greeting him with an elaborate bow, he smirked, “Such a beautiful young man. But something new has been added!”

Graham knew he would have kicked the perv’s ass if they were in a bar in the real world, but something had dampened his courage a bit. He blamed it on the Djinn’s curse. Whatever the reason, he found himself gasping wordlessly and slowly backing away as the pervert reached up to stroke his ears with a palsied hand.

“So much handsomer this way, my fine lad,” he purred. “Have you any similarly bestial features further down?” His hands slid down Graham’s chest, in the general direction of his crotch.

That was enough to help him find his voice. “Ish a temporary curshe, ol’ timer… Don’ geh anneh ideash…!”

“You say that now, my beautiful bestial boy. I’ve a feeling, though, that your attitude may change. We’ll see each other again, after you’ve had time to… develop.” Licking his lips, the horrible old man backed into the shifting, flickering crowd, and disappeared.

After some time had passed with no further sign of Kelvin, Graham started to get a hollow feeling in his stomach. With envy, he watched the NPC citizens buy virtual food from the virtual vendors. He wondered if his game character would die without food. He wouldn’t mind it, except that he genuinely felt hungry. What was he supposed to do? He had no hands, and he was afraid to let somebody root around in his pouch for fear they would steal everything. He was screwed until Kelvin returned.

His mutated nostrils twitched. Something nearby smelled awfully good. It wasn’t the traditional food he’d seen the NPC’s eating. It was something else.

A plant. Snuffling at the air, he traced the delicious scent to a nearby flower bed. It was overflowing with all manner of blooms. Poppies, carnations, irises and more. His tongue, all by itself, plopped out of his muzzle and licked his lips. He knew it was wrong; it was something an animal would do, but a baser instinct was overtaking his mind. With one last glance over his shoulder to be sure nobody was watching, he lowered himself onto all fours and gobbled down everything he could get into his mouth.

A shriek pierced his ears. Another old woman was staring at him through a window. She was identical to the one with the hurt leg, except for the color of her garment. Looking utterly appalled, she squealed, “What are you doing to my garden?”

“It washn’t me,” Graham protested, orchid petals falling from his mouth. He figured denial was worth a shot.

“Oh, you wicked beast! The Djinn will know what to do with you!”

Graham felt very cold, all of a sudden. Gesturing futilely with his hooves, he cried, “Hey, now! Lesh naw looshe our mindsh oafer dish…!”

It was too late. With the sound of thunder, the light shifted from pink to blue-white, and the dreadful Djinn was staring scornfully down at him.

The monster was outraged. “So,” the Djinn raged, “it’s YOU again! Up to more mischief, I see.”

“I wash hungreh,” Graham whined.

“I warned you of what the consequences would be if you brought down my wrath again. So it must be done!”

At the bottom edge of his vision, he could see his white-furred muzzle creep outwards a few more inches. His neck changed, too, growing a touch longer and quite a bit more muscular. He could feel the front halves of his feet growing fatter, bursting the straps of the sandals as they hardened into another pair of hooves.

“Gaw damn ih,” he growled. “Thish ish sho unfa-AWW!”

He froze. He had brayed, actually brayed, like a donkey. He opened his mouth to protest again, but the only sound he could make was a comical braying noise. He could feel it inside his lungs, forcing him to open his furry mouth wide, the noise vibrating through his huge, jacked-up teeth.

He clamped his hooves over his muzzle and gazed fearfully up at the Djinn.

“You are done speaking the human tongue, wastrel,” the giant said. “I should think it no waste. You had yet to express any intelligent thoughts.”

With that, the Djinn zoomed into the stratosphere and became a thundercloud again.

Graham stumbled about in shock for a minute before losing his balance and falling backwards onto his rump. He couldn’t stop thinking about what the Djinn had said. Damn it, he was smart. He was very knowledgeable. He made intelligent comments all the time. Didn’t he?

But the idea that he was stupid… it resonated with a part of him. It lodged in his psyche, making a home there. Sending out roots. “If you’re so smart, why do you need to consult your phone all the time,” it asked, slyly.

He didn’t have a good answer for that.

The tents of the food vendors collapsed into one another like a line of dominos . Everything beneath them just vanished, including the NPC’s. A few moments later, Kelvin crawled out from beneath the one at the far end.

“Well,” he sighed, “I got skunked. Picked up a few coins but that was it, so… HOLY CRAP.” Laughing uproariously, he rushed over to where Graham was sitting. “Are you kidding me? The Djinn nailed your ass again? What the hell did you do this time?”

Graham, staring at the ground, just shook his head.

“Aw, hell. I’m not mad, pal. I mean, yeah, you can be a real dumbass sometimes but I still like you.”

He was a dumbass? No, he thought, that couldn’t be right. He was always the one who had to correct Kelvin. Not that Kelvin ever appreciated it. But… what if that was because Kelvin was actually smarter than him…?

“C’mon,” Kelvin prompted. “What’s the matter? Can’t you talk…?”

Graham shook his head again.

“Shit. Let me guess. It’s just donkey noises now? Well, you’re pretty much useless here. I’m sorry I can’t log you out, but it’s too dangerous. But I won’t be too much longer, promise. Stick with me and I’ll watch out for you.”

That small, hypercritical part of himself had to agree with Kelvin. He WAS useless.

They walked in silence for a while, with Kelvin leading him with the leash. Graham felt wretched. He wondered what adventures he could be having right now. He hadn’t read the book, “One-Thousand-and-One Nights” but he still remembered some of those stories from cartoons and movies. He felt like he should be dispatching brigands or fighting a giant bird, not getting dragged around by the neck.

They marched atop a precipitous bridge that twisted itself into a spiral. They descended into a dark, dripping cistern that had a secret door that opened up onto the roof of a tall tower. They threaded the needle through a series of arched portals, and he saw multiple versions of himself entering and exiting the openings ahead of him. Christ, he thought, did he really look like that? The huge flat teeth protruding from a furry muzzle, the twitching donkey ears dancing atop his head, the hunched and stumbling gait, the clumsy hooves. The dull, confused eyes.

The sense of lethargy, of being restrained and heavy-limbed, returned. He found himself slowing down. Kelvin yanked on the rope. “Wake up,” Kelvin snapped at him. “We need to keep moving.”

Graham brayed softly and picked his back hooves up higher.

Kelvin broke into a mocking laughter. “Brilliantly put, dude. Can you even understand what I’m saying? Are you IN THERE?” He rapped on Graham’s forehead with his knuckles. There was an odd, unpleasant look on his face. Graham didn’t know what to make of it. He didn’t know what to make of a lot of things, suddenly. His thoughts were all jumbled.

They stopped at an immense marble wall that was perforated with openings shaped like eight-pointed stars, allowing passers-by a view of a luxurious garden. The openings were slowly moving about in a complicated pattern. Graham nervously looked around for a “pervert” and an “animal trader” but he couldn’t see any. It was a small comfort.

He scraped at the leash on his neck with his hooves. He hoped Kelvin would figure out that he wanted it off of him.

Kelvin sucked on his teeth for a second, and frowned. “No can do, pal. I have some business on the other side of that wall. And you sure as hell can’t follow. Not in your condition. Just stay here and try not to get in trouble.”

Graham bowed his head. Fear simmered in his blood. He needed Kelvin there. He wasn’t sure how he ever got along without him.

Meekly, he allowed Kelvin to tie him up to a small fig tree. Then, he watched as Kelvin used the shifting openings in the wall as handholds, and expertly navigated his way over the top of it.

The Djinn’s red thundercloud rumbled softly overhead. Shafts of clear sunlight broke through it in places, and glided over the avenue. The largest one settled over Graham and stayed there. A spotlight.

As the NPC’s walked past him, they regarded him with contempt. A child giggled derisively and tugged at the sleeve of her grandmother, who gave him a death glare and then spit on the ground. A trio of older men stopped to exchange some obscene comments about him. His own thoughts were so frantic at this point that he could barely follow the conversation. Still, he could glean that it had to do with the supposed relative sizes of his cock and his brain. The section of the street the men were standing on abruptly sunk downward, with the men still talking like nothing was wrong. When it rose up again, nobody was there. Nearby, another part of the street sunk down and reappeared shortly afterwards bearing a familiar figure. The pervert from before. Spotting Graham, he grabbed his crotch and gave it a squeeze.

That galvanized Graham’s nerves. Screw Kelvin, he thought. He wasn’t about to wait around and take a virtual ass-ramming just so his friend could have fun. He moved to take the helmet off. All he could feel was his hooves clacking against the sides. The gloves had his fingers curled up into his palms. Not that he could even feel his fingers. He was helpless.

The pervert made a beeline for him, licking his lips. Graham flailed his arms around, hoping to dislodge the cords from the helmet, or to pummel Real World Kelvin until he noticed his distress, or something, anything. But as soon as he started, all the strength fled his body, and he felt heavier and more tired than ever.

The pervert was on him then, stroking his enervated limbs, talking to him in a soothing voice. His breath stank. “Easy, donkey-boy,” he cooed. “You’re looking so much more fetching, I just have to find out what you’re hiding under those robes.” He put a grimy hand on Graham’s crotch and started stroking it, through the fabric.

Graham had the notion that in a real world scenario, he would have kicked the fucker’s ass. In this VR world, though, he was gripped by an overwhelming, animal terror. And he was tired, so very tired. He closed his eyes, wishing he was anywhere else.

There were whispers. Not the pervert’s voice. Other people. He opened his eyes again, but he didn’t see anybody else around. The voices had stopped. The pervert was still rubbing his dick, and he was getting results. Despite himself, his cock was responding. It seemed larger than it should have been somehow, and insanely sensitive. He was a respectable eleven inches in the real world, but here it seemed more like fourteen or fifteen, and a good deal thicker. And more curved. He couldn’t stand to look at the pervert forcibly pleasuring him. He closed his eyes, and the whispers returned.

He strained to make out what they were saying, but all he could catch were snatches of dialogue:

“…dehydrated again. That was unacceptable, do you…”

“…worry, I got it handled. The saline drip…”

“…not so smug now, is…”

“…beautiful, blank stupid face… fucktoy for…”

A jolt of pleasure banished the whispers and made his eyes pop open. The goddamn pervert had actually gotten him to shoot a load, right into his robes. A big, sticky stain appeared on the front of them. The pervert hiked the robes up and reached his hand underneath, wiping the cum off the head of Graham’s cock. He used this to lube up his own hard shaft as he furiously jacked off in front of him. Ceremoniously, he oozed his own load into the remains of Graham’s own, and then he wiped it onto Graham’s hair. “You’re mine now, gorgeous donkey-boy,” he panted. “I’ll go now, but I’ll see you again when you’re even closer to perfection.”

With that, he skittered down the avenue and around a corner.

Graham was furious. Or at least, he wanted to be. But mostly, he just felt scared and alone. He missed Kelvin terribly. He didn’t know what to do without him. He was so much smarter than he was. At least, that’s how he remembered it. And maybe Kelvin could figure out how to undo this dreadful curse…

He caught himself. He was getting too involved in the game. It wasn’t a “curse,” it was a ridiculous punishment doled out to his avatar by the Djinn, who himself was just the game’s enemy AI, or maybe even a human admin. And Kelvin sure as hell wasn’t smarter. He didn’t even know how that idea got into his head.

And what the hell kind of game had cumshots? He began to suspect this program was some kind of Second Life ripoff for bestiality fans. The sooner Kelvin got back, the sooner he could disengage from the whole sick thing.

Something was happening to the wall that Kelvin had scaled earlier. The small star-shaped holes were converging into a large, single star that rotated once and then began to contract. Kelvin dove through it, landing on his fat belly. He bustled over to Graham, sneering, “Way to be inconspicuous, fucktard.” As he untied him from the tree, he took note of Graham’s disheveled state and demanded to know what happened.

All he could do was bray.

Kelvin broke into gales of laughter. “Right. Forget I asked. But seriously… some guy jizzed all over you? That is messed up, man, messed up…!” He paused, cocking his head, listening for something. “Crap on a cross…! Here, hold these for a second.” He emptied the contents of his satchel into Graham’s arms, who held the loot as best he could.

Just then, an imperious-looking gentleman in a gold crown topped with peacock feathers emerged through a new opening that had appeared in the wall. The label “PRINCE” floated above his head. He was quickly followed by a quartet of armored guards. “Spread out and search every house in the city,” the man bellowed. “Do not rest until you have found the person who stole my precious roses!”

The next thing Graham knew, Kelvin had placed a fat foot on his ass and kicked him, hard, flinging him and the loot out onto the avenue. He landed painfully on his knees and watched as the stolen items crashed down onto the pavement. They were silver flowers, stems and leaves and all, inlaid with precious jewels.

Graham brayed in confusion. He tried to get up, but two of the guards shoved him back down to the ground.

The prince looked somewhat amused by this. “So, this is the fiend who has desecrated my garden! I know not what to make of you. Perhaps our Guardian Djinn will know what justice to mete out.”

In an instant, the horrible red giant reappeared before him. He was not happy to see Graham again.

“Troublemaking fool,” the Djinn roared. “This is three times, now! What knavery is this, to help yourself to the Garden of Gems? Did you think them food, soft-headed one?”

Graham looked over his shoulder, hoping to see Kelvin, but his friend had vanished.

The Djinn rubbed his smoky orange beard. “That is the most likely solution,” he said to the prince. “At least the ne’er-do-well was betrayed by his own oafish blundering. I warned him that further misdeeds would bring an even worse punishment. And so I must bestow this malediction.”

As Graham watched in horror, his legs kicked, hiking up the robes. The transformation that had taken place in his feet now traveled steadily upwards, as his bones painfully fractured and reformed themselves, and a thick coat of brown hair sprouted all over his lower body, until he had the legs of a donkey. His cock turned a dark grey-brown, and strained upward, until it was perhaps two feet long and sensitive to the slightest breeze. No donkey on earth had a rod like that, he knew. What he had been cursed with was a parody of the metaphorical “donkey dick.” And now he would be forced to parade about town with that embarrassing hard-on until the curse was removed.

No, that wasn’t right. It would be over when Kelvin disconnected them from the VR world. And yet, the outside world seemed far flimsier and less real than all the glittering wonders here.

The Djinn departed, leaving the city shrouded in a dim magenta light. The guards grabbed his arms and brought him roughly to his feet. Or hooves. Graham found he could still walk upright, although it took some effort.

He didn’t understand why Kelvin had played that trick on him. Maybe, he thought, maybe he knew that if he was struck with the same donkey curse as himself, he wouldn’t be able to bring them out of the VR world right away. That made sense. And after all, Kelvin would know best. Kelvin was so clever and sensible and wise, and he, he was just a stupid horny donkey…

Damn it, he was doing it again. He wasn’t a donkey, he told himself. He was a public relations consultant, who… who… He tried to recall what his duties were at the firm. The details escaped him.

It was his nerves, he knew. This fantastical world, this technology, it was so advanced. It was almost too real. It was getting him all worked up. Making it hard for him to think. The occasional glitches he’d encountered didn’t help, either. The whispers like the audio of a private call bleeding into the helmets, the terrifying sense of being immobilized. It was disorienting.

He was sure he had been correct about one thing, though. Kelvin. His friend was smarter than he was. Much more clever, too. He had always relied on him for advice. For guidance.

At least, that’s how he remembered it.

He shambled aimlessly down the shifting boulevard, but his clumsiness meant that the stone tiles took him where they wanted to go more often than not. NPC’s constantly materialized near him and every single one had a derogatory comment about his appearance. More than one told him that he smelled awful. In disbelief he stuck his muzzle beneath a furry armpit and took a good, long whiff. The scent was one of musky sweat, like he had been laboring for days without his owner bathing him.

No, damn it. He wasn’t a donkey. He had to remind himself of that.

In despair, he collapsed onto the street. The tiles continued to slide him about as he attempted to wipe the tears from his eyes with a hoof. A figure emerged from the ephemeral crowd, hopping from tile to tile, gradually gaining on him. The man was built like an NFL fullback and carried an ominous bundle of leather straps in one hand. The label over his head: “ANIMAL TRADER.”

Graham bounded off of his own tile, his hooves clattering loudly against the stone. It was easier, he found, to travel on all fours. His gait was weirdly ape-like, and it was hard not to get tangled up in his robes, but it got the job done. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw that he was starting to maintain a distance from the trader. The trader cursed him and began to run even faster.

Blind panic grappled with Graham’s mind. He miscalculated the distance of a jump and wound up on a tile moving in the trader’s direction. This frightened him even more, and he made another mistake, and another, until the trader pounced on him and pinned him to the street. In short order, he had hauled Graham to a relatively stable park where only the trees moved, up and down like pistons. The trader took Graham’s own knife and used it to cut the robes off of him. Immediately, his mammoth donkey dick stiffened up and began to leak precum. The warm, spicy breezes were driving it crazy.

You really are just like an animal now, Graham thought to himself. Part of him saw something strangely liberating in the simplicity of it. Of just being a wild, natural body, acting on instinct. He knew that line of thinking was dangerous. He pushed it aside, as far as he was able. Which wasn’t far.

The trader was binding his chest now. What Graham had assumed to be individual straps turned out to be one big harness. It was made of soft, broken-in leather, adorned with pyramid studs. Graham was so worn out by the chase, both physically and mentally, he couldn’t put up much of a fight. By the time the trader put the spiked collar on his neck and the bridle on his head, he could barely stay awake.

“That’s my good lad,” the trader said. “Be as docile as this and I’ll have a home for you in no time. In fact, there’s a local gentleman with unusual tastes, who will make you feel very nice, indeed…!”

His voice faded as Graham’s eyes flickered shut. In the welcoming darkness, the whispers echoed.

“…so far gone most of the time, he’s not good for much else besides…”

“…find him something to keep him occupied while I’m at…”

“…janitor, although I doubt he’ll even be able to handle…”

The darkness relented, just enough for him to make out shapes. It seemed like he was laying down, and two figures were looming over him. There was a strong odor of cigar smoke. The voices continued.

“…paddle? No, the flogger…”

“…three fingers last time, but I think a fist…”

“…me turn him over…”

The strangers, reeking of sweat and piss and leather, seized him with their leather-gloved hands.

No, it was the pervert, roughly moving him around in a leather sling, until he was belly-down in it. His oversized cock slipped neatly through a hole in the leather. The sling, suspended by chains, swayed him gently back and forth, back and forth. His mouth ached, and there was a sour, musky taste on his tongue. He could only imagine what he had just been doing.

He didn’t know where he was. From the few glimpses he had gotten, it seemed to be some sort of villa. A large, spacious one. It was clean and expensive and dark. Just a few oil lanterns suspended from the high ceilings. Blush-pink light filtered through gauzy curtains.

The sound of spit hocking into a palm. The pervert jammed his bony fingers into Graham’s hole, and did a nominal lube job before violating him with a surprisingly large dick. It hurt, just like everything else, and it was humiliating, just like everything else. But then, he had always been into this.

At least, that’s how he remembered it.

“You magnificent, filthy beast,” the pervert grunted. He had his long, dirty fingernails dug into Graham’s hairy back, tearing at it. Tears came to his eyes, but his own cock only got harder. It slapped against the underside of the sling, insistently.

He loved it. Didn’t he? He wasn’t sure. But he couldn’t imagine feeling any other way about it. This is what he deserved. He had been a bad… donkey. And bad donkeys got punished. This explanation seemed as good as anything else. He let his animal brain go blank. With nothing else to worry about, he stared at the intricately inlaid tile floor. The patterns were pretty.

Once the pervert had shot his feeble load into Graham’s ass, he hoisted him out of the sling and led him to a small gilded cage. It was too short to stand upright in, so Graham had to stay on all fours. He didn’t mind. It felt more comfortable that way.

From the ceiling, something snaked its way down and coiled up on the floor. It was a rope, although there didn’t seem to be a hole for it to have emerged from. Silently, a shadowed figure shimmied down it. Kelvin. Thank God.

Shaking his head, Kelvin released him from the cage and removed the bridle from his head. Graham almost didn’t want to leave; it felt so cozy and safe in there, but he knew that Kelvin was his real owner, and…

Wait. Kelvin was his… He wanted to think “friend” but that didn’t make any sense. People weren’t friends with donkeys.

Freed from the cage, Graham threw himself on Kelvin, hugging him as best he could with his hairy, hoofed arms.

His owner responded by pushing him away. “Jesus, I leave you alone for a minute and look at the trouble you get yourself into. God, you’re pathetic. I thought you were supposed to be a Beast of Burden, but right now you’re just a goddamn boat anchor.”

Abashed, Graham stared at the floor.

“Don’t worry. I won’t leave you here. I need you.”

Attaching a long leash to his studded collar, Kelvin dragged Graham with him as he slipped out of the villa.

There were other palatial homes in the neighborhood. As Graham waited, getting increasingly parched, his owner strapped a couple of packs onto his back and filled them with valuables.

Graham didn’t know how to communicate his thirst to Kelvin. Finally, he was left with gasping and pawing at his muzzle. He tried to trot over to a canal, but his owner became furious and smacked him on the nose.

“What the fuck, donkey? You thirsty? Is that it? Here, this is what you get.” Fumbling momentarily with his trousers, Kelvin hauled out his cock and unleashed a great stinking jet of piss right in Graham’s face. Graham winced, but he was so thirsty, he found himself lapping at the stream of urine and getting as much of it down his throat as he was able. It was salty, but otherwise not too bad. He could even get used to it, he thought.

“Yeah, fucker,” Kelvin growled at him. “That’s what you deserve. That’s all you are, just a smelly, piss-drinking donkey-boy. Isn’t it?” He smacked him again on the muzzle for emphasis. “ISN’T IT?!”

Graham nodded.

The hit another house, and then disaster struck. Kelvin was caught and turned over to the city guard. Graham waited for the Djinn to be called down. He was fearful to see what sort of punishment his owner would be made to suffer.

But instead of invoking the Djinn, the soldiers merely carted Kelvin off to jail. His owner shouted to him as he was carried off, “I’m gonna go all ‘Metal Gear’ on these bitches and escape. SOLID SNAKE, motherfuckers!”

The stolen goods were taken from Graham’s back, and then he was left to his own devices. He wandered down a ditch and drank some water from a canal. It didn’t taste as good to him as the piss. As he stood on the bank, trying to think about anything at all, the water shifted in color. From pink to blue. The light all around him was blue as well. His knees shook. He knew the Djinn was near.

“Graham,” the Djinn said, softly. His voice was warm. Fatherly, even.

In terror, he looked up and saw the Djinn gazing down at him. The look on his face was hard to parse. It might have been pity.

“You’re alone and confused, aren’t you? My poor, mischievous little donkey. You want to be free of this awful place, is that right?”

Sullenly, Graham nodded.

“You want to be with your owner and people like him. People who will treat you the way you deserve.”

Graham nodded again. He wasn’t sure if the Djinn was guessing his desires or creating them. He was so confused all the time. He didn’t know anything. But the Djinn was so strong and authoritative, he felt a natural instinct to agree.

The Djinn said, “To earn your freedom, you must do two things. First, you must come fully into yourself. No more pretensions to humanity. You are a donkey. That is all.”

Graham breathed deeply, as the final changes came to him. His muzzle extended to its full length. His chest and belly expanded and grew a coat of white fur, while his back became more muscular. He could feel the fur growing in there, too. It would be brown, no doubt. His arms rearranged themselves into hairy front legs. Finally, a tail wriggled out from above his rump. It flicked back and forth, slapping at the flies that had already gathered on his smelly ass.

He did feel a little better, he had to confess to himself.

“Secondly,” the Djinn intoned, “you must follow this canal to the Pavilion of Mirrors. There, you will be given a riddle to answer. Guess correctly, and you will find yourself home.”

With a last benevolent glance, the Djinn burst into a tower of flame that reached into the sky, setting the air ablaze. The world had become a lantern.

In the shimmering orange light, Graham dutifully followed the canal. He was exhausted, but he kept at it. A few times, he collapsed onto the bank and rolled into the water. It was no longer clean. Green slime floated on the top, and the water was brown and smelled like shit. But Graham pulled himself up, thinking of a future where he could be alone with his owner, in peace.

The canal ended in a pool that flowed through a series of mirrored columns at the front of a vast structure. Graham waded between the columns and up a ramp onto a tiled floor in a vast room. All about him were additional mirrored columns, rotating and moving about in a complicated dance.

Graham kept his head down, trying to avoid seeing his own reflection. But mirrored tiles studded the floor in regular intervals, too, and he couldn’t help but see his dirty animal face looking back at him. He was a bedraggled, pathetic thing, spattered in mud and shit, smelling of piss, with eyes that were dull and lacking in intelligence. At the base of the mirrored columns, he could see human feet tracking him, stepping in time with his hooves. Startled, he brayed and jumped back. Instead of his own reflection, the image of a human stared morosely at him. He was a handsome man. Tall, clean-shaven with short auburn hair and pale blue eyes. His straight, proud body was garbed in fine black robes. Sadly, the man shook his head and turned away, trudging through the mirror image of the pavilion until he had vanished from sight. Graham wondered who he was.

As he moved on, it was only his reflection he saw in the columns. For a while. Then something else appeared. A shadowy shape, floating over him. In successive columns, it spread and grew, accruing color and detail until it solidified into the image of the Djinn. The horrific giant was striding alongside him, waving his arms as though he were performing a magic spell. In the next column, the giant was gone, replaced by the brutish donkey trader, pulling Graham along by a bridle that he knew was no longer there. In the column after that, his place was taken by the grizzled pervert, his gnarled fingers stroking Graham’s neck. The next column showed Kelvin, his owner, his eyes cold and hard as he brandished a whip.

He couldn’t begin to guess what it all meant. He was enervated and he could barely put a thought together. But the Djinn had said he had to solve the riddle if he was going to be free.

The Djinn’s voice rattled through his skull. “I made you. Who am I?”

The donkey trader’s voice joined in. “I captured you. Who am I?”

The pervert’s oily tones were the next to echo in his brain. “I corrupted you. Who am I?”

And then Kelvin’s voice. His strong, confident voice, so commanding and sexy. “I own you. Who am I?”

“I don’t know,” he wanted to cry, but it emerged from his mouth as a pitiful bleat.

Who were they? What connected them? Anything? They were never even around at the same time.

There was one thing… they all focused on him. The skies were clear and blue, throughout the city, whenever the Djinn descended from the skies to pass judgment on someone. But the only times the skies were clear were when the Djinn was punishing him. Which meant that he was the only one the Djinn ever punished. Kelvin was his owner, of course. The other two wanted him for profit and for pleasure. And they never left him alone. None of them. As soon as one left him, another would appear. It was like they were all in it together. Or else, somehow…

His muzzle opened. Miraculously, human words emerged from it. They came slowly, but they were definite words nonetheless. “You’re all the same person. That’s the answer to the riddle.”

The pavilion faded into darkness as a hissing sound, sibilant, insistent, rushed into his mind. The whispers. Surely they weren’t a part of this. He wished he had hands, like a person, so he could cover his ears. It was no use.

“…final remaining area of high-level cognition located.”

“Good. Destroy it.”

“On it.”

Graham squinted up at his masters through the smoked-glass visor, perfectly content and perfectly complete. He didn’t know why he was strapped to a table, and he didn’t care. He enjoyed being strapped down. What else had he been made for, except to be used by these men?

He counted himself very lucky. Kelvin and his uncle were so good to him; better than he deserved, honestly. They knew exactly what he liked, and they were always ready to play. Grinning moronically, he grunted and gestured at the leather donkey mask and hoof-shaped leather mittens on a nearby shelf. He wanted to look his best. Kelvin raised an eyebrow at his uncle and got them down for him, along with the rubber donkey-tail buttplug. Graham’s hands were already clenched into fists in anticipation. He clapped them together like hooves and brayed softly. He wanted to be a good donkey. And he knew that good donkeys misbehaved sometimes, so their masters would have an excuse to punish them. His dull animal brain had a few ideas of how to do this. He never thought of any new ideas, and he wasn’t sure he was the one who had come up with the original ones, but it didn’t matter. It was enough for his masters. So it was enough for him.

Kelvin smiled cruelly at the donkey-boy he had created. It had taken countless sessions over nearly eight months, although Graham’s perception of time within the mind alteration program perceived his training as a continuous few hours. But in the end, Kelvin had gotten what he’d wanted. A soft, compliant idiot who worshipped him. It was just like his uncle had said. Graham even lived with them now, and would be available to them as a fucktoy whenever they wanted. All it took was a few narrative “twists” in Graham’s life story.

Between training sessions, they had induced Graham to perform a few scenarios with his coworkers and family and girlfriend. There was a “mental breakdown,” necessitating a resignation from the public relations firm. Graham “soothed his agitated nerves” with lots of food and alcohol and rest, which made him fat and lazy, straining his relationship with his uptight family. After a series of “hurtful arguments” with them, they were barely in contact with him now. Then Graham “discovered” he was into guys, which caused a breakup with his girlfriend. By this time, he was in severe debt and could no longer afford the swanky apartment he lived in. So naturally, his good friend Kelvin took him in. Kelvin had even found him a new job as a janitor, at the software firm where, it turned out, his uncle worked. Graham assured his few remaining friends that he was “much happier” with this arrangement.

The new, improved Graham was a pudgy, dim-witted slob, with lank, greasy hair that he combed with his fingers. His formerly rugged features had been rounded off by a layer of fat and a bushy beard. No longer long-winded and pompous, his personality had been whittled down, freed of insecurity and pride, until he was merely a quietly amiable simpleton. He was so much easier to get along with now. His uncle’s coworkers at the software firm often commented that they liked Graham. If they had one complaint, it was only the way he smelled.

New Graham was not into bathing, washing his hair, or brushing his teeth. He would allow himself to be quickly rinsed off in the mornings, but deodorant was out of the question. And so, the more he worked in a day, the more he sweated, and the more he stank. By the time he had been driven home by Kelvin’s uncle, he had developed a delicious musk. It was hard, sometimes, for Kelvin to keep from jumping his bones right then and there.

The donkey-boy had been made to understand that in the outside world, he would play-act the part of a human. He would walk upright, use eating utensils, do his business in a restroom, and answer to the name “Graham.”

But at home, he was his true self. A beast. They called him by his donkey name, “Graham Crackers.” This was later shortened to “Crackers.”

Crackers slept on a fresh bed of hay in a well-ventilated shed in the backyard. The lawnmower and garden implements were there too. It’s where all the tools were kept. The donkey-boy drank from a metal tub and ate from a trough. He had no control over his bodily functions so he wore no clothing. Except for harnesses and bridles of course.

As Kelvin strapped Crackers into the Saint Andrew’s Cross, he caught his uncle smiling at them. He was very lucky, he knew, to have someone who understood him. Before he moved in with his uncle, he hadn’t even known he was gay, much less into bondage and discipline. He’d taken to his uncle’s world like a fish to water. He’d even gotten the idea, all on his own, to get the high-and-tight haircut and to shave his massive beard down to a bushy, manly mustache. Even the cigar smoking and and the tattoos and the genital piercings had been Kelvin’s ideas. It had all been his plan to copy his uncle – his benefactor, his daddy, his master.

At least, that’s how he remembered it.

Farmer Orc is ready to plant his seed.

Business Orc has a big, juicy deal for you.

Blow the Man Down

Commissioned by Karwood Bear

Alone on the port deck, young Lemuel Pye puffed thoughtfully on his pipe and tried to recall the last time he’d seen daylight. This same night had been bearing down on him for… how long? Days? Weeks? It had been April, when he had set out on this voyage. For all he knew now, the calendar had turned over to a new year; it could be 1843 already, and he’d be none the wiser.

He would pass the time on these lonely watches examining the heavens, picking out his favorite constellations. The chill air of the North Atlantic was even better for this game than the countryside atmosphere back home. Every pattern was bright and sharp, even the hard-to-see ones, like Aries and Indus. But after a while, the glittering figures he had known as a boy had begun to warp out of shape, their signature stars edging closer to or further away from one another, until they had twisted into things that were unrecognizable. They weren’t alone in that, he thought, idly scratching behind one of his small, furry ears. He chuffed smoke into the frigid air, and wondered when he would finally see the “land of plenty” the captain had promised him.

The commotion below decks grew louder. Shouts and thumps and moans. Soon they’d be dragging Mr. Milken’s ever-expanding bulk to his new place up top. It would be easier to pleasure him to completion there, where his gallons of spunk could spill safely and cleanly into the sea. Assuming there even was a sea, anymore. There was nothing to be seen below except that damned eternal, filthy fog. And the sea was the only thing he’d ever wanted.

He had always felt like something was pulling him towards a sailor’s life. As a boy, he had dreamed of a rollicking adventure as the captain of his own ship, far away from his family’s farm in the Massachusetts hills. His uninformed imagination had fancied a life aboard a fancifully inaccurate vessel, festooned with a hundred colorful sails and an even dozen figureheads. In his mind, he had ventured into exotic, unknown waters. He had dispatched enemy ships with bloody efficiency. To his hypothetical crew, he had been a terror, whipping them for the slightest offenses, and in whatever made-up country he landed, he had brutally dominated the natives and established himself as a universally adored god-king. But of course, he had been just a wee lad, small even for his age, and his parents had laughed at the sight of this miniature Magellan, shouting and leaping and slicing through invisible foes with a wooden spoon.

His Uncle Erasmus had laughed as well, but it had been a gentler sort of laughter. For Erasmus was a sailing man himself, far more apt than the others to show pride towards his wild nephew. Many times, Lemuel had noticed his uncle beaming at him from his chair beside the fireplace. Erasmus was a broad-shouldered, hearty fellow with a thick black beard and a stout, firm belly. As Lemuel played, he would stroke his whiskers and puff thoughtfully on his pipe, and fix his nephew with a keen, penetrating look. Then, he would say to his brother,”It seems to me, our Lemuel was designed to go upon the sea!”

His father, a shorter, slimmer man with a naturally sour countenance, had quickly put down the whole notion. But Lemuel had continued to nurture the hope that his father would relent.

His uncle’s yearly visits became his only real happiness. Erasmus had always returned with exciting new tales to tell, and Lemuel had hung on Erasmus’ every word. His uncle, grateful to have an audience for his rambling stories, had happily kept Lemuel company while the lad did his chores and practiced his lessons upon the chalkboard. As he grew older, Lemuel had found himself transfixed not just by his uncle’s words, but his very appearance. Something about the burly, hairy Erasmus had just fascinated him.

When he was thirteen, he had whittled a scrap of wood into an approximation of a pipe, drawn a sailor’s beard on his face using a piece of charcoal, and stuffed a pillow beneath his shirt. Then, behind the hay shed, he had practiced an imitation of his uncle. He gave an accurate portrait, he had felt. From the merry laughter to the growling voice. All of it. He had even copied how his uncle would act while deeply asleep and lost in dreams. Laying face-down in the grass, he had thrust his crotch into the dirt, over and over, and muttered, “Jonah, my love, Jonah…!”

From behind him, there had come a strangled cry. His mother. He had assumed she would be as amused by his performance as he had been. She hadn’t been.

That night, he had overheard his parents arguing about the matter. Their words had been so vague, he hadn’t been able to follow any of it. But the result had been plain. From that point on, his uncle had been forbidden from visiting them.

He had been inconsolable. He and his mother had quarreled quite often since then. Between these spats were long periods of frigid silence. A few years later, word came to Lemuel’s family that his uncle had been lost at sea.

And now, Lemuel’s father was dead. Trampled by a snake-bitten plow horse. Lemuel had dutifully attended the funeral. That night, he and his mother had fought bitterly, almost to the point of violence, and in front of his visiting aunts. It was agreed by all present that Lemuel separate from his family and not return. The next morning, he fled to the nearest sea port.

Marrow Bay was nothing like Nantucket or the other great port cities his uncle had spoken of. Still, it was strange and overwhelming to him. He was scared.

He was a grown man, as far as he was concerned, but he also knew he didn’t look the part. His body had remained small and slight, no matter how hard he labored. “Like your grandfather,” his mother had explained, unhelpfully. Looking like that on the farm or in his familiar little town was one thing. Among strangers, it put him at a definite disadvantage. Eyeing all the husky, grizzled sailors with their mighty beards and mustaches, he nervously fingered the sparse patches of black fuzz on his cheeks and neck, and hoped it would convey something of his years.

The sailors and townsfolk alike intimidated him. Rather than make inquiries and expose himself for a rube, he decided the thing to do was keep quiet and observe. At least for a little while. It’s what his uncle always did in a foreign port.

More than once, strange men motioned angrily at him and shouted, “You! Boy!” Something in his gut told him that no good could come of answering these calls. Ignoring them worked most of the time, and the rest of the time, he was obliged to run and hide. He had seen another young lad get roughed up and robbed by a mob of drunkards. Lemuel was terrified of meeting the same fate.

The docks were bustling with people. Sailors bidding stoic goodbyes to their wives and children, captains negotiating with merchants for their wares, pack animals burdened with crates and burlap sacks. He was dazzled by the tall ships. Glorious, monumental things, so much larger than he ever could have guessed. But he was fascinated by what he would soon know as the “Hy-Brasil.” It barely resembled a ship at all.

Lemuel knew that technically, it was a brig. Two masts, square-rigged. Whaleboats hanging from the davits, two on the port side, one on the starboard side. It was bedecked all over with huge slices of whalebone, marking a successful voyage. A group of sailors were busy taking them down, having apparently sold them. In contrast to the pale, clean whiteness of the bone, the ship itself was filthy. The masts and sails were caked in soot, probably from clouds of oily smoke given off while rendering the whale oil. The planks of the hull were rough and almost swollen, and bore long, vine-like growths that variously tunneled through and curled about them. Like veins. They even took the place of the traditional “oakum” yarn that went between the planks. All of these growths radiated from one item: the figurehead.

By far the ship’s most confounding feature, the figurehead looked like a blocky, savage wooden idol that had been unceremoniously lashed to the prow. Indeed, ropes, or the representation of them, criss-crossed its chest, but where they touched the ship, they had lost all semblance of woven hemp and became the same sort of growth that ran riot over the rest of the vessel. The thing’s mouth was wide and grimacing, and adorned by two great tusks. Lemuel had never seen anything like it. Despite himself, he could feel his legs moving him forward, so he could get a better look at it.

First came a man Lemuel assumed to be the captain, based on the relative luxury of his dress. He boasted a stovepipe hat with a silk band, a full-length overcoat with expansive beaver-fur lapels, and a gold pocket watch the size of Lemuel’s fist. All of his garments had certainly been quite expensive at one point, but, like the ship he had stepped off of, they were filthy and showed signs of neglect. Even the gold watch was tarnished.

This hypothetical captain was a husky sort, with massive limbs that suggested a formidable musculature beneath his clothing. Rather than the traditional “sailor’s beard” that wrapped around the chin and left the upper lip untouched, his round, tan face displayed just the opposite. There was only the bristling shadow of a heavy beard on his cheeks and chin, while a mammoth grey mustache dominated the lower half of his face. It was magnificent, Lemuel thought. The density alone was otherworldly, causing it to protrude nearly three inches from his face at the thickest point. It hung low enough to more than cover his lower lip, with tips that were level with his (first) chin. And the thing boasted a wingspan wider than the length of Lemuel’s hand. Oddly, the man had no eyebrows to speak of. Beneath his beetling, hairless brows, small, dark eyes glared out from inside folds of wrinkled flesh.

He was a startlingly ugly man, without question, but that did nothing to diminish the sense of command he radiated. His stride was slow but determined; his movements as crisp and efficient as a soldier’s. He wielded a large, fancy-looking full-bent pipe, the kind with a hinged silver cap atop the bowl. Occasionally, he would take the thing from his lips and use it to gesture to certain merchants or warehouses in the distance while he conversed with his companion.

This second man walked always one step behind him. His iron-grey beard was a great curling mass, and it seemed to have been oiled, although with a hair tonic or just the general filth of his ship, Lemuel couldn’t say. His upper lip was clean-shaven, allowing Lemuel an ample view of his thick lips, which were constantly twisted in a smirk. He nodded to the first man frequently. Once, he held up a small black leather satchel he carried, shaking it as though to make a point.

A half-dozen uniformly shabby, glowering crew members followed glumly behind the pair, toting large trunks or with duffel bags slung over their shoulders. Although their heights varied wildly, all of them were broadly built and heavily muscled, if a tad on the plump side. Most displayed far more skin than two gentlemen leading the group. Lemuel was dazzled by their brawn, by the variety of hair and scars and tattoos on their arms and chests, and by their bushy, untrimmed beards. Each of one had a small clay or corncob pipe in his mouth.

Lemuel had been so taken by the menacing masculinity of the crew, he hadn’t noticed the captain getting near. He jumped as the large man’s shadow fell over him. Besides the fragrant pipe smoke, the captain bore a collection of other heady odors: a salty, fishy smell; the acrid scent of rendered fat; and a heady combination of bay rum and the natural, musky sweat of an unwashed man. Lemuel found himself inhaling it all with gusto, smiling with some satisfaction before he realized what he was doing.

The captain swiveled his head for the first time since exiting his ship and appraised Lemuel. Behind him, the curly-bearded man sighed and shook his head.

Still looking silently down at Lemuel, the captain drew on his pipe. A cloud of milky white smoke bellowed out from his great mustache and floated gently upward, catching beneath the brim of his stovepipe hat before dissipating. In a low, rumbling voice, he said, “Have you any parents, lad?”

Lemuel shook his head.

The captain grunted. “I’ll be needing new deck boys. That’s the lowest position on a ship, but we all start there, and the worthy can climb quite high.”

“I understand, sir,” Lemuel replied. “I grew up on a farm, so I’m used to hard work. I want to advance to able seaman as quick as I can. I hope to be a boatsteerer someday, and bring down a whale. And when I have learned all I can, I should like to be a captain, like yourself.”

The captain’s gaze intensified. His dark eyes squinted at him, twinkling, suggesting a smile. “And where would a farm boy have heard about boatsteerers?”

“My uncle, sir. He was a sailor. A fine man, may God strike me dead if I’m lying. He told me everything he knew about a sailor’s life. That’s why I’m here. I want to be like him.”

The captain stroked his formidable mustache with a leathery hand. Finally, he clicked his tongue, and said, “My ship is the ‘Hy-Brasil.’ We’ll remain here for a handful of days, while we restock and refurbish the ship. After that, we depart for the waters beneath a foreign sky, where the whales are plentiful. The voyage will be a difficult one, but the rewards at the end are greater than you could ever imagine. Should you be up for that, report to my ship tomorrow morning. My first mate, Mr. Turner… he’ll get you sorted out.”

Lemuel’s mouth was dry, as he voiced his reply: “Aye, aye, Captain.”

With a grunt, the captain turned and continued on his way.

His small frame now feeling light enough to float away, Lemuel booked a room for the night in the most reputable inn he could find, and then he set out to explore the town. He saw the monstrous ship’s crew everywhere. They spent their money with abandon, but no apparent joy. The only townsfolk who seemed glad to see them were the “fancy ladies” his uncle had warned him of years before. These brightly-painted women flirted with the sailors from windows and beside street lamps. The ragtag sailors mostly ignored them. One, a tall, stocky fellow with large, leprous-looking spots lurking on his forearms, threw a few coins at them as he shuffled past.

Lemuel had trouble sleeping that night. Half from excitement, and half from fear that brigands would bust down his door and rob him. Or worse. He could hear inebriated sailors continuously tramping up and down the hall, talking too loudly, crying too loudly, singing too loudly. Once, he heard a terrible scuffle, a few rooms down. This was followed by an ominous silence. Then, something large and heavy was dragged past his door.

As soon as the sun was up, he escaped the inn, grateful for the comparative security of the “Hy-Brasil.”

Mr. Turner, the first mate, was a stern brute of a man with a sickly, almost grey complexion. He ushered Lemuel aboard the ship, where the second mate, Mister Lowe, had him wait in a large group with the day’s other applicants. They were mostly eager-to-please “greenhands” like himself, with a few slightly older seasoned seamen mixed in. Lowe, a barrel-chested, bow-legged little stump of a man, sorted them by physique and experience. With little to offer in either category, Lemuel found himself standing at the far end of the line.

Around them, various members of the crew were doggedly at work. They seemed far more relaxed on board their own ship than they had in town. Directly in front of him, the sailor with the ghastly spots on his forearms was climbing a rope ladder, or “ratline” as his uncle had called them, to the fore mast. He was bare from the waist up, affording Lemuel a view of his muscular torso. His upper back and shoulders were covered in a mass of fine grey hairs, so thick as to almost hide the skin. The dark spots appeared here, too, in the form of charcoal-black hairs standing out among the grey. Lemuel had never seen anything like it. He didn’t know a man could have anything approaching an animal’s hide. He wondered if many other men had these fur-like patches of hair. He wondered what it felt like. He longed to find out.

At last, Captain Hollander arrived on deck. He immediately scolded Turner and Lowe for putting Lemuel in with the others. “He’s hired already,” he growled, and ordered Lemuel to stand by himself on the other side of the deck. Over the next hour, the captain interrogated the others, and sent six young men to stand alongside Lemuel. The first was a tall, good-looking fellow named “Goodwin”, with an exquisitely groomed strawberry-blonde mustache and side-whiskers, smelling strongly of cologne. He had been hired as the ship’s new cooper, tasked with making barrels for the whale oil. The next was a scruffy, self-satisfied man who had been brought on as the ship’s cook. He had carried with him two letters of recommendation, which the captain had evidently been impressed by. He offered his hand to Lemuel like he was doing him a favor. “Jimmy Blevins,” he announced. “Personal chef to Sir Thomas Symonds aboard the HMS Rover. You’ll be enjoying better food on this wreck than you ever did at home.” The last four were as beginners, like Lemuel.

Lowe produced a comically large ledger and had them all sign their names in it, while Turner explained what meager percentages of their profits they could expect upon their return home. With that bit of business out of the way, Captain Hollander addressed them.

“I am a man of the sea,” he began. From the first and second mates came soft, throaty laughter. Clearly, they had heard him make this speech before.

He continued: “However, I was once like you. Green. Scared, perhaps. Definitely thin and weak, although one wouldn’t think so, to look at me now. I swallowed my fear, and I set out from my home, to the unknown. To a sailor’s life. I swallowed my pride as well, and I put my trust and my life in the arms of the sea himself, and let him wash over me, enter me, make me a part of him. I ask you to do the same. You will find life here hard, but there is a reward for you at the end.

“The ‘Hy-Brasil’ does not travel the normal routes. Know that now. We will sail to unfamiliar waters, where there is more for a man to gain than mere oil and bone, silver and gold. We will partake of these riches together. All of us, old and new, are brothers now. Embrace that fact, as we will embrace you, and together, we will bask in a glory beyond any known on land!”

All around them, the crew broke into shouts and cheers, and Lemuel’s little group felt obliged to join in. But something about the crew’s hoarse, braying voices made him uneasy. It sounded an awful lot to him like the howling of a pack of wild beasts.

Mr. Lowe gave them a lengthy tour of the ship, during which they were introduced to the more important personages among the brig’s crew. There were the three boatsteerers or “harpoon men,” all foreign. Two were hulking, tattooed “Kanakas” from tropical islands in the North Pacific. The taller one with the broken nose was named “Paoa”, while the shorter, lantern-jawed one (who, it turned out, had broken Paoa’s nose) was named “Kaleho.” The third was a beefy, thickly-muscled Russian named Turgenev. He was an older man with a snub nose and severely arched eyebrows, making him look like he was forever on the verge of sneezing. Beneath his pale blond beard, his lips were as red as cherries.

There was the smirking man Lemuel had seen exit the ship just behind Captain Hollander, who turned out to be Dr. Merkel, the ship’s surgeon. There was Mr. Wrightson, the blacksmith, a pot-bellied fellow with mammoth arms, although he was no taller than Lemuel himself. The ship’s steward was another Russian, named Ershov. He was a slightly smaller imitation of the captain, with a bushy red mustache that tried and failed to attain the grandeur of Hollander’s own. They happened upon him in the captain’s quarters, while he was cleaning several of the captain’s expensive-looking pipes. He shot Lemuel a supremely disapproving look before turning again to his work. The captain himself, consulting a chart nearby, took no notice of this.

Lemuel saw that the pipes were the only items in the cabin that had been maintained. The rest of it was in an advanced state of disrepair. The curtains about the bed were tattered and faded. Books showed severe water damage and were shelved haphazardly. A silver pitcher next to a basin was so tarnished, it was nearly black.

“I do not have cabin boys on this ship,” the captain told them. “I do not have ‘boys’ at all. They could not comprehend the wonders that you young men will experience. Not that I will fault any of you for being physically below the average. The ‘Hy-Brasil’ will soon cause you to develop. Mr. Ershov, here, was no bigger than Mr. Pye, when I first took him on.”

The steward nodded, his gaze lingering on Lemuel. His expression was inscrutable.

Hollander continued the tour by introducing them to the ship’s carpenter. This turned out to be the spotted man. His name was Plummer, and he made an embarrassing fuss over how thin Lemuel was. “You infernal bastard, Lowe,” he whooped. “You’ve sent us a scarecrow!” Lemuel’s cheeks were on fire as the group moved on. Plummer latched onto his arm and pulled him aside for a moment. “No hard feelings, lad. Jokes and japes are how we pass the time here. Don’t you fret. Spend enough time aboard the ‘Hy-Brasil’ and you’ll grow as big and stout as me. Count on it.” He winked, and sent Lemuel on his way with a hearty slap on his ass.

Lowe concluded his tour by indicating the door to the hold. “You new men are not to enter the hold at the present. As to why not…? We have with us a civilian passenger, one Mr. Milken. Your captain is his cousin and only living relative, and he has been obliged to care for him. He is soft in the head, I’m afraid, and your captain thinks it best if he has minimal relations with the rest of the crew. The hold is his home for now. Many of you may not set eyes on him until we have arrived at our destination.” And with that, Mr. Lowe led his new charges wonderingly to the top deck.

Lemuel and the rest of the greenhands spent several days cleaning the ship and learning the basics of sailing. Mr Ershov was his harshest critic, reprimanding him for his performance almost constantly. Lemuel noticed that Ershov was much harder on him than on the other newcomers. He didn’t know the reason, but he lived in terror that the steward would convince the captain to throw him off the ship before it had even left port.

Methodically, the rest of the whalebone and a great many casks of oil were sold and transferred off the ship, and stores of new supplies were carried aboard. Coffee, biscuits, flour, corn meal, dried beef. Lemons and limes. Casks of fresh water. His uncle had mentioned that ships always carried live chickens, for the eggs, and later for the meat. But he saw no live animals aboard the “Hy-Brasil.”

“There is only so much I can make with bloody dried beef,” Mr. Blevins complained to the steward. “We need eggs.”

Mr. Ershov was unsympathetic. “No live animals aboard the ship,” he shrugged. “Captain’s orders. If you don’t care for his way of running things, I suggest you return to the ‘HMS Rover.’ That’s assuming you ever actually served on her.”

Mr. Blevins began to say something in protest, but Ershov shut him down once more, saying, “It would be best for you to spend more time on your work and less time trying to burnish your reputation with bald-faced lies.” He swept out of the galley before Blevins could say another word.

The cook’s eyes fell on Lemuel, who had been set to work, slicing potatoes. “I really did prepare meals for Sir Symonds, I’ll have you know,” he sulked. “Blasted Ershov…!”

Lemuel glanced at the shapely backside of the imperious steward as he vanished around a corner. “He doesn’t like me, either,” he said, softly.

In those first days, he saw plenty of the experienced crew members with their shirts off. Roughly half of them had prodigious hair growth on their upper back and shoulders, just like he had seen with Mr. Plummer. The color and thickness of the hair varied. Often, it was a different hue than their beards or the hair on their heads, which Lemuel found strange. Still, he reasoned that he had only seen a handful of adult men without shirts back home, so he didn’t have any sort of standard to judge by.

A few times, he overheard the captain and Dr. Merkel discuss the unseen Mr. Milken. The cousin was “blessedly docile” and his “daily output” (whatever that was) now necessitated a third bucket.

As the captain had cautioned him, the work was hard. He ached dreadfully whenever he was he was sent below for a four-hour rest period. The hammocks in his berth were uncommonly large, which Mr. Goodwin pointed out with some amusement. Lemuel was glad of it. He hated to think of how much worse his aches would be if he’d had to sleep in a cramped position. Thankfully, his muscles did seem to be responding to the intense labor. He could see a marked improvement in his build after only a few days.

Likewise, the gently rolling motion of the ship was strange and unpleasant to him at first. But in the same brief span, he got used to it, and was proud to think he had gotten his “sea legs.”

Of course he hadn’t, really. Once the ship was at sea, the choppiness of the waves made Lemuel and the other greenhands violently ill. They were sent to recuperate in their berth in the lower deck. Five of the veteran crew were there already, resting in their hammocks along one wall before their turn to work on the top deck. In the flickering lantern-light, he could see that they were all awake, and they all were smoking their pipes. And although it was cold, none of them were covered from the waist up. Their torsos, looking somehow furrier than before, presumably gave ample protection against the chill sea air.

There were the two Kanakas, Mr. Wrightson, Mr. Plummer, and an able seaman he’d never yet spoken with. For some reason, the five old salts were occupying a total of three hammocks. The Kanakas shared one, Paoa wrapping his limbs about the slightly smaller Kaleho, while in another hammock the able seaman was cradling the stumpy little blacksmith. Mr. Plummer reclined in solitude, thoughtfully fingering his crotch.

The newcomers’ hammocks were on the opposite wall. Feeling absolutely wretched, Lemuel and his compatriots crawled into their swinging beds and pulled their blankets over their heads. The air stank of pipe smoke and a stale, musky sweat, along with the fishy sea odor that pervaded the vessel. His stomach fluttered, but he managed to keep himself from vomiting. Around him, he could hear occasional dry heaves emanate from the other new hires. From across the small room, there was mocking laughter and low whispers.

He felt the ship hoist itself atop a great wave and make a steep dive downward. He moaned. Behind him, someone made a gurgling noise. He could hear Kaleho say, “Put out that lantern.” In the darkness, wet smacking noises, gruff moans and labored breathing teased his ears. Lemuel didn’t understand what the older crew was doing, but it nevertheless petrified him.

More whispers. The creaking of the hammocks on the opposite side of the berth. Heavy footfalls. Yelps from the other greenhands. Shushed admonitions, not unfriendly. Someone was climbing into his hammock. And then a familiar voice. Mr. Plummer, saying, “Easy boy. I’m going to help you get through this.”

The blanket was drawn off of Lemuel’s body, and he was pulled to a sitting position. Too terrified to resist, Lemuel let his body go limp as his shirt was hurriedly pulled off and his smooth, trembling back was pulled tightly against the carpenter’s broad, furry chest. It was surprisingly comfortable. He could feel the heat of the older man’s pipe near his cheek as Mr. Plummer spoke around it. “You’re fighting the sea,” he breathed. “Relax your muscles, the way you did with me just now, as I manhandled you. Surrender to the motion. The great ocean is not a brigand, pummeling you, or a wild horse, trying to buck you off of him. He loves you. Feel him. You’re a newborn babe; the sea, your doting pa, rocking you. Gently, safely tossing you in the air, to delight you. He has your safety in mind. No matter how high he throws you, he will catch you, every time. Calm your thoughts, relax your body, and just… feel.”

Lemuel wondered why the crew of the “Hy-Brasil” always insisted on referring to the ocean in masculine terms when his uncle talked of it as a woman, but he kept this question to himself and did as he was told. It helped. It took some time, but the churning in his gut began to ease. He felt strangely safe in Mr. Plummer’s arms. It felt natural, somehow. The pair of them were riding the rough seas together, moving as a single body.

Around them, the other older sailors had been speaking paternally to their new charges. He guessed they had given similar speeches. The rest of the deck boys had grown quiet, like he had, and the only thing he could hear was the gentle creaking of the hammocks.

A welcome lethargy seeped into his muscles. He could feel himself sinking backwards, his body pressing deeper against Plummer’s, like he was melting into him. Plummer’s calloused fingers stroked Lemuel’s hair. “That’s a good lad,” the carpenter purred. “The sea will take care of you. He will mold you into what you need to be.” One hand moved downwards, to Lemuel’s cheek, caressing the dense growth of beard there.

That was enough to bring Lemuel out of his reverie. He brought his hands to his face. His formerly sparse whiskers had indeed developed, and at an unnatural pace. They were now a full beard, short but quite lush, extending high up on his cheeks and down his neck to his collar bone. How had he never noticed it before? He had washed up a few times since going aboard, although personal hygiene was seemingly not a high priority for the crew. There was only one mirror he had ever seen on the ship, outside of Captain Hollander’s quarters, and that was a small, handheld thing belonging to Mr. Goodwin.

Whatever the cause of his newly improved beard, it was thrilling. At last, others would see him as he had seen himself. A man. A hardworking, dependable man. Someone with experience, authority. Someone others would obey. Well, “listen to,” anyway. But “obey” had a better sound to it, he mused.

“Does that feel good?” Plummer’s voice was soft and coaxing. It made Lemuel want to agree with him.

“Yes, sir,” Lemuel breathed.

“Save the ‘sir’ for the officers, lad. We’re all brothers in here.” His stout arms squeezed Lemuel in a hug, and then his rough hands began to massage the young sailor’s sore arms, easing the tension in his muscles. “I know a trick that can relax you even more so,” he said. “We able seamen help one another out like this often. I’ll teach you, although I suspect a lusty farm boy like yourself may already know the fundamentals. Open your mouth.”

Lemuel obliged him, but was not expecting him to stick his calloused, unwashed thumb inside. “Suck on it,” the carpenter said. “Like a toddling little babe. That part’s not the trick, by the by.”

While Lemuel did so, feeling terribly confused, Plummer undid Lemuel’s belt. Then, hocking a great deal of spittle into the palm of his free hand, he began to work Lemuel’s cock.

Lemuel had played with himself a few times in the past, but he was amazed to realize how different, how much better it felt, for another man to be doing it for him. After a bit, he became aware that Plummer’s hand was sliding up and down his cock in the same rhythm of Lemuel’s mouth sucking on the sailor’s thumb. As an experiment, he slowed his sucking, and found that Plummer’s hand followed suit.

“That’s good,” Plummer said. “Change up your speed. Fast, slow, fast, slow. Draw it out for a bit.” Many times, Lemuel could feel himself about to climax. In response to his rapidly increased breathing, the carpenter would slow his pace, then slowly build up steam once more. Lemuel noticed that he kept his hand moist the whole time, and that he finished Lemuel off at a furious pace. When Lemuel came, it was in a virtual geyser. He cried out, but Plummer covered his mouth in a flash. “I appreciate the compliment, lad, he chuckled. “But the rule of the ship is to not make a commotion. Some other time, your brothers may actually be asleep in here.”

Lemuel’s cock was still pumping out spunk. He could feel Plummer’s fingers working the tip, collecting it in his hand. “Another rule,” Plummer said. “We don’t want to make a mess. ‘Waste not, want not,’ I believe the adage goes.”

In the darkness, the carpenter made a slurping noise. “Your turn,“ he said, and then he stuck his stinking hand into Lemuel’s mouth, feeding him a gob of his own cum. “Swallow,” Plummer told him.

He did.

“What did you think?”

Lemuel considered for a moment, then answered, “It didn’t taste like I expected. It wasn’t bad. Just… salty.”

Wryly, Plummer noted, “That is the taste of the sea, my boy. And now that I’ve helped you out, it’s your turn to do me a favor.” He paused for a moment, then landed the punchline: “Only you’re going to use your mouth.”

And that’s why his thumb was in my mouth, Lemuel thought as he climbed off of the hammock. Plummer swung his legs over the side and directed Lemuel’s mouth onto his waiting cock.

It wasn’t as bad as he’d feared. Far from it, even though he still needed some coaching in how to breathe while receiving the carpenter’s thick, musky dick. Plummer’s hands were about his head once more, guiding it. Controlling it. Lemuel entertained a fantasy where he was in Plummer’s position, getting head from a man who admired him. In his mind, Lemuel was a tall, brawny, rugged brute, with a terrifying gaze and a beard that hung to his waist. He got hard again as he was submerged in this daydream, and he nearly came when his tutor did. But he was stern with himself, and forced his burgeoning rod to soften once more.

The lantern was lit once more. Sure enough, every old salt was cuddling one of the deck boys. Plummer produced additional pipes and tobacco for the novices. Lemuel savored the rich tobacco as he lazily regarded his fellow sailors. The newcomers were definitely filling out, as he had, getting hairier, their beards coming in heavier. He considered how much more masculine he must appear with the pipe in his mouth. It was no wonder, he thought, why the able seamen were rarely seen without theirs.

The older men playfully stroked and petted the younger ones, and teased their nipples and balls with the bowls of their hot pipes. He and the others softly cried out in surprise and delight. Their voices sounded a bit deeper than he could remember. He fell asleep in the carpenter’s powerful arms, grateful for a few hours rest as the ship was tossed about by a tempestuous sea.

After the deck boy’s initiation into the able seamen’s lives, Lemuel found the crew much friendlier and more lighthearted than they had seemed before. Not just with them, but with one another as well. The embraces he’d seen in the berth now took place above decks. Sailors walking together were now likely to tickle one another’s arms or squeeze their shipmates’ bums as they went. It was like Lemuel and the others had been let in on a secret, and he was witnessing something that had always happened before they had boarded.

He knew he should find it odd, this level of familiarity. Even Erasmus had never mentioned anything like this to him. But everyone was so jolly, and it all felt so right. So he put these worries aside.

Between the constantly changing four-hour sleeping shifts, and the absurdly long summer days of the northern waters, Lemuel found himself having trouble determining how much time had passed. Compounding this was the seeming speed with which his body was changing. In less than a month, he had packed on a good fifty pounds of muscle, and his formerly wispy beard had exploded into a monstrous thing, a good five inches long and as dense as a horse’s mane.

And it wasn’t just him. All of the young men who had come aboard the “Hy-Brasil” appeared now to be close to thirty years old. Some had become brawny, like Lemuel, while others were closer to “husky”, with a layer of flab covering their burly arms and their rock-hard stomachs. Like the rest of the crew, they smoked their pipes constantly, and they rarely bothered with washing themselves or trimming their hair and beards.

Even Mr. Goodwin, the peacock, had fallen victim to this communal slovenliness. His colognes became swamped in a miasma of pipe smoke and body odor, until he finally gave up on them entirely. His attempts at keeping his rapidly growing beard in order met with only modest success. He diligently scraped off the heavy growth of hair that appeared on his cheeks and chin every day. His mustache grew like a weed and drooped severely, like a vanishing smile, no matter how much wax he applied to it. But for some reason, he never thought of shaving the thing clean off and starting afresh. Even his lovingly styled hair devolved into an unkempt mop. One evening, Lemuel found him in his berth, cursing his little mirror. Then, stuffing it in his trouser pocket, he ran up to the top deck and all the way to the prow of the ship and hurled the thing overboard. “And see that you don’t return,” he raged, shaking his fist at the churning sea.

He spun ‘round then, to find Lemuel grinning at him. The cooper sighed, and then he smiled as well. He tugged softly on the immense beard that had taken over his face and said, “I’m a hopeless case, Lemmy-boy. I look as savage as the rest of these rotters.”

Lemuel slapped him on a hairy arm. “I like you much better this way. You shouldn’t be pretty. After all, you’re a man!”

“Am I? Are any of us, here?”

When Lemuel only stared at him in confusion, Goodwin continued, “My eyes, lad. They were blue. I know they were blue. Now they’re black, dead black, like a beast’s. Your eyes have changed, too. I recall that they were grey. This damned ship, it’s…!” He paused, his mouth still open, as though he was trying to finish his thought, and couldn’t.

He patted Lemuel’s shoulder as he loped away, absently filling a fresh pipe.

Lemuel wondered what on earth he had meant, his eyes being grey. Everyone knew that all men’s eyes were black. He couldn’t remember it being any other way.

Mr. Blevins, the arrogant cook, had by this time given up his pretensions and could be found moping in his berth when not at his duties. “I pressed the first mate about the captain’s aversion to livestock,” he confessed to Lemuel. “He said it was the timbers of the ship. They’re some strange tropical wood, and they possess a quality harmful to most animals. Not even rats or beetles can abide it, and those nasty things infest every other ship under the sun. At any rate, thank heaven you and I are immune, eh?” He smiled wanly, as he scratched at the brown fur on his shoulders.

Blevins had definitely changed, Lemuel observed, and not just in how hairy he had gotten. He seemed to be getting shorter. Whereas Lemuel was a good deal smaller than him when they had first met, they were now about the same height. But then, Lemuel also seemed to be getting taller. For now, the two of them were meeting in the middle. He pondered how much shorter the cook might become. He liked the notion of himself dominating the man, physically, of wrestling him to the ground and having his way with him. Savagely.

Lemuel gazed down at the deck, picturing it in his mind. The floorboards were as swollen and as uneven as the hull, he saw. It made for difficult travel when the ship was in rough seas. The vine-like growths he’d first seen on the hull were woven throughout the decks as well. If Lemuel looked at them for long enough, they almost seemed to be moving.

A grey tinge took hold of the waters, and small slivers of ice appeared, getting more numerous by the day. The elder sailors were, by now, either so hairy or so fortified with blubber that they began to go about almost in the nude, wearing only boots and hats. It made them seem even more naked than if they had worn nothing at all. Lemuel and his fellow deck boys, not as developed as their seniors, still clung to tradition and wore trousers and suspenders.

Lemuel was proud of how muscular and hairy he was getting. Even his modest cock and balls were growing. Becoming more potent. Then there were the changes that he knew, in the back of his mind, should worry him. Once, when stroking his beard, he realized that his ears weren’t where they were supposed to be. They were sitting higher on his head, and seemed to be smaller and rounder. And hairier. Rubbing his teeth, he found that they were getting sharper. So sharp, he nearly cut his fingers on one of them. Just nearly, because the skin of his fingertips and palms were rapidly growing calloused.

Among the veteran sailors, the tall men were getting even taller, and the short men were getting shorter. Not everyone was becoming hairier, though, or, at least, not all over. Some of them, like the first mate, Mr. Turner, experienced a rapid onset of baldness that left their scalps utterly smooth within a few weeks. Great furry patches of body hair remained on their calves, forearms, chests, and crotches, and of course they still retained their mighty whiskers. The skin exposed to the elements, however, grew smooth and slick. Color drained from their complexions, to be replaced with stark white or an alarming shade of gray. Or, in Kaleho and Turgenev’s case, a pattern of both white and black. Even the Russian’s lips lost their startling rosy hue and had gone dead white. The new members of the crew, harboring a vague suspicion that this was unnatural, sought advice from the ever-smirking Dr. Merkel. They were fed some nonsense about the “ocean atmosphere” and sent on their way with a bottle of rum instead of medicine.

Lemuel’s testes, like everyone’s, continued to swell, hanging lower every day. He was horny almost all of the time. This condition afflicted the whole crew. They were given frequent breaks to relieve themselves into the sea or into another sailor. Lemuel learned which ones enjoyed being bossed around, and he happily took the upper hand with them, especially in his berth, when he had the time to really indulge himself. Two of the deck boys now fought over whom would get to give his feet a tongue bath. He made a point of placing his free foot atop the boy’s head, and pressing down as hard as the lad could take without damaging him. The loser for the night would be made to clean the bowls of Lemuel’s pipes with his tongue. He discovered that Mr. Wrightson, the blacksmith, loved being berated while he sucked Lemuel off. The other veteran seamen, Mr. Plummer especially, were helpful in teaching Lemuel several salty insults that got Wrightson’s burgeoning rod as stiff as an Arctic breeze. Mr. Blevins revealed to him a fondness for being pissed on. He preferred Lemuel be drunk when he urinated on him, as it made the resulting smell that much worse.

Mr. Milken continued to be an enigma. Lemuel saw an ever-increasing number of empty buckets being taken to the hold, and full ones being brought out of it to be dumped into the sea. He hoped never to meet the man.

The deck boys, Lemuel included, were apprenticed out to the boatsteerers and the other specialists, to get a sense of every job on the ship, so they could pitch in when needed. One clear, cloudless morning, Lemuel went out on a whaleboat with Paoa. The sunlight reflected off of the ocean, sparkling. It made the pale blonde fur of the boatsteerer’s chest and legs look whiter than snow. The round, furry ears atop his head twitched, seemingly listening for something.

Lemuel listened with rapt attention as the Kanaka talked at length of how to harpoon a whale, and how to haul it back to the ship for processing. Then the boatsteerer waxed philosophical, as a good many of the veteran sailors on the “Hy-Brasil” tended to do.

“A good hunter respects his prey,” he said. “Not out of fear, like the harpoon men of other ships do. On the ‘Hy-Brasil,’ a hunter respects a whale because the whale is his brother. We love our brothers, and we honor their sacrifice. We know that we must give up something of ourselves, just as they do.”

Lemuel wanted to ask what the crew was sacrificing, but just as he began to speak, Paoa shushed him. Lemuel saw that his dark, wet nose was twitching, scenting the air. The boatsteerer swung a massive arm outward, pointing to a spot in the ocean. There, Lemuel saw a pod of whales cresting the water, sporting in the blue. He grabbed the oars and asked the if it was possible the two of them could bring down a whale by themselves.

Paoa’s black eyes glittered. “Those aren’t the ones we’re after, boy. You’ll have to wait until the end.”

“The end of what?”

“I’m sure the captain can explain it better than I. And soon, I would wager.”

The captain made the announcement that night.

“As the experienced men of my crew know,” the great man bellowed, “we sail to a land of plenty. There will be whales in abundance there. The sea himself has been preparing you for it, making you stronger, hardier, and altogether more suited to its unique conditions. You know this, and you have not shown fear, and I am proud of you.”

A cheer rose up from the crew, Lemuel included, although he hesitated at first. He looked at his shipmates, dimly aware that there was something terribly wrong about how they all looked.

“Tomorrow, I navigate past an obscure meridian. We will say farewell to the sun for some time, and enter a period of eternal night, before arriving in…?”

The veteran crew shouted the answer: “The twilight waters of the Heavenly Sea!”

“Well done,” cried Hollander. “You continue to do me proud! To our newcomers, I say, have courage, and look to your brother sailors for strength. Learn all you can from them. At the end of our journey, some of them will be called home, and the ‘Hy-Brasil’ will need you to continue in their stead.”

Mr. Plummer’s furry, spotted arm was about Lemuel’s shoulders. “Perhaps you’ll take over for me,” he mused. Taking the pipe from his mouth, he gave Lemuel a long, smoky kiss.

Lemuel was on watch the next morning when the meridian was crossed. The ship was enveloped by a foul-smelling fog, and when it had mostly subsided, mere minutes later, the sun had vanished. And yet, although the sky was full of stars, the moon was nowhere to be seen.

The fog had left a sooty, oily residue on the ship, and on everyone exposed to it. The other sailors sniffed their soiled arms and chests and even their armpits, snorting and hollering, as though it invigorated them. It blackened Lemuel’s fingers where he touched it. Although he had developed a taste for the unclean, the blasphemous stench of the stuff made him retch.

Mr. Turgenev came up from behind him and slapped him on his ass, startling him. When the boatsteerer saw Lemuel’s expression, he laughed. “Why do you look inconvenienced, Mr. Pye? You have been annointed! A sign of good fortune.” He swept some of the residue off of his smooth hide and rubbed it into Lemuel’s furry chest. “Enjoy it, lad. It is not unhealthy for you.”

Lemuel regarded the Russian, at how his ice-blonde beard contrasted with his black-and-white skin. He wasn’t sure of the difference between “healthy” and “unhealthy” anymore.

“You know,” Turgenev added, “I almost mistook you for Mr. Plummer at first. From behind, the two of you are most similar.”

Lemuel realized, then, that he wasn’t wearing any trousers. He couldn’t even remember giving up the affectation. Looking quickly about him, he saw that the other deck boys had done the same. But it wasn’t just that, making him resemble Mr. Plummer. It was the spots. Somewhere along the line, his densely-furred arms and legs had developed the same gray, spotted coat as the carpenter.

“On our next rest period, you will plow my ass,” Turgenev said, playfully. “Correct, farm boy?”

Lemuel’s tremendous cock, spotted like the rest of him, perked up at the command.

As the night went on, unabated, Lemuel rotated through his shifts. There were stars to greet him as he climbed the masts, and stars to send him to his rest as he descended to the lower decks. The routine became monotonous. The only thing that changed from day to day was the crew. Kaleho and Turgenev were becoming nearly identical creatures – their necks growing ever more thick and muscular, their chests more barrel-like, to support their intimidatingly large heads and his wide, fang-studded mouths. From each of their hunched backs, a black fin emerged.

Paoa’s poetic soul became hidden beneath a similarly fearsome exterior. The lower half of his face extended outward into a white-furred, sharp-toothed muzzle. His muscular legs became bowed, and considerably shorter than his powerful arms. The unfortunate Mr. Blevins, meanwhile, dwindled to a mere four feet in height, grew a coat of short brown fur that covered him head-to-toe, and even sported a stubby tail. He shared this fate with Dr. Merkel. The devil-may-care surgeon carried it all off with considerably more aplomb.

Captain Hollander, like the rest of his men, had altered considerably from the first time Lemuel had laid eyes on him. Not only was he a great deal taller and bulkier than before, but his skin had slowly darkened several shades and bristled with short black hairs. The once-modest gut he had boasted had bloomed into a round, firm, bulbous affair, two feet deep. His titanic member had kept pace with his stomach, and hung to his knees. His magnificent mustache utterly dominated the lower half of his face, covering even his chin. His nose, meanwhile, seemed somehow smaller and more pert, allowing the mustache to occupy even more of his face. From this, two curving tusks emerged. Although it was unspoken, Lemuel and his fellow sailors recognized this as a mark of superior rank.

To Lemuel’s delight, Hollander invited him into his cabin, to try his favorite pipe. It was an enormous thing, in a case. Full bent, it was perhaps four feet long, designed to be enjoyed from a prolonged sitting position. “A gift from Dr. Merkel,” he explained.

The draw was exceptionally cool, allowing Lemuel to taste the full flavor of the expensive tobacco the captain preferred. He fancied how he must look, a grimy, furry beast-man, sitting on an upholstered chair, his calloused fingers grasping an item meant for high-born men in silk and satin. “I’m sure I must seem ridiculous,” he confessed to the captain.

“You do, lad, and why not? You’re not wearing the hat.” A flat-sided, brimless cap with a tassel was placed on Lemuel’s shaggy head. He wasn’t sure it helped.

The captain seemed amused enough, though, and Lemuel was glad for it.

“A pipe is not my only form of relaxation, of course,” Hollander intoned.

Lemuel took the cue. He quickly stood up and was about to hand the pipe back to the captain and ask how he should service him that evening. Instead, the larger man firmly pressed him back down into the seat.

Hollander’s fat fingers disappeared beneath his mustache for a moment, and appeared again, sopping wet with spit. Spreading the lad’s legs apart, he slowly, gently, worked them into his hole. With his thumb, he reached up and started tickling Lemuel’s ball sack.

“A reward,” the captain explained. “For your hard work and your diligence. I believe an officer should never be afraid to show his appreciation. Within limits. For instance, one should never use one’s mouth on a man of lower status. It sends the wrong message. Do you understand, boy?”

Lemuel thought about all the able seamen he had sucked off. He didn’t think about any of them being higher or lower than him. There were men who fell into a subservient position with him, sexually, but there never seemed to be any worry about whether or not they were able seamen or just deck boys, like himself. It was very confusing. Still, he nodded and answered, “Aye, Captain.”

“I do not speak of rank, of course,” the captain added. “The lower men know they are low, and you will know them even if they don’t speak your language. You may, one day, find yourself mounting an admiral or even a prince, and they will thank you for it. I can say this from experience.”

“Aye, Captain.” He relished the thought of dominating royalty. He would redden their buttocks with his great, calloused palms. He might even take after them with a switch. Or a paddle. Naturally, they would not want to be left with marks where their subjects could see them. But then, the nobility seemed to be always covered up from the neck down, so he could violate them almost anywhere he liked. He saw himself with a prince: a thin, beautiful young man with pink cheeks and a delicate, curling beard. He would have a private audience in the prince’s chambers, to discuss trade routes or something equally frivolous. There would be tea, then cordials. And then, before the prince could even register what was happening, he would have the young man on the bed, forcing his beautiful face into an embroidered pillow, so that he could barely breathe. His large, hairy hand would be on the back of his neck, his knee in the small of his back. The spoiled, weak-willed prince would submit to him at once. And then, his enormous body would flatten the smaller man as he drove his cock into his royal ass, violating it repeatedly. He might even bite him on the shoulders. Hard.

The old seaman worked Lemuel’s hole for a long time, stretching it to its limit. Flashes of painful heat swept over his body, alternating with a sublime bliss. The captain had stopped talking. The two men rocked together, alone in the dark, dilapidated beauty of the cabin, moving in time with the sea. Hollander’s gaze bored into his, terrifyingly, and thrillingly. Lemuel’s own powerful rod surged upward, precum steadily leaking from the tip. When he came at last, the captain caught all of Lemuel’s spunk in his broad hands, and brought them up to his mouth, as if to drink from them.

Instead, with a wink, he wiped them on Lemuel’s luxurious whiskers.

“What did I say before, Mr. Pye? No bodily part and no emissions from a man of lower status should go in your mouth.” His mustache waggled as he laughed at his own prank.

He rose to his full height and stepped a few paces back, quietly appraising the lad. Stroking his beautiful mustache, he said, “Now tell me… how do you find the life of a sailor? Is it how you imagined?”

He answered at once, so quickly and naturally that it surprised even himself. “Not exactly, Captain. It’s wonderful, but nothing like I imagined.”

“No other souls could imagine how we live here, Mr. Pye. And you’ve no complaints…?”

There was one. It had been nagging him for quite a while, now. Best to be out with it, he thought. “It’s just that… we haven’t gone after any whales, yet. We haven’t even seen any, since we crossed that meridian you spoke of.”

“Whales are hard to come by, where we are. You will see your fill of them at the end of the journey, which is soon. You may even see one before then. Just one. Let me think on the matter.”

“Aye, Captain.” It wasn’t the answer he wanted, but he knew better than to argue.

Studying Lemuel for a few seconds longer, Hollander added, “You’re a handsome blighter, but I can’t help thinking how much finer you would look with some fat on those muscles, and, of course, with a mustache as grand as my own. Ah, well! I’ll get you there. Someday.”

A soft rapping on the door. Mr. Ershov ducked his head in, his second-place mustache leading the way. He had grown to look similar to Lemuel, but without the mysterious spots. To Hollander, he said, “I beg your pardon, but Mr. Turner is having trouble reading one of the charts. It sustained some damage in the last storm.”

Hollander grunted irritably. “I’d better see to it. Mr. Pye, you may show yourself to your own berth.”

Lemuel allowed himself one last draw on the captain’s pipe. When he looked at the doorway again, the captain was gone, and Mr. Ershov was still standing there, glaring balefully at him.

“Get out,” the steward said, flatly.

The lack of sun and the monotonous routine of the ship began to wear on the younger members of the crew. Mr. Goodwin, his face now typically obscured by the forelocks of his lank, shoulder-length hair, would pass the time by hammering out jig-like melodies on a wooden flute he had crafted, to the annoyance of all present. When he attempted to serenade a deck crew with the same half-formed songs, Mr. Lowe, the second mate, was obliged to snatch the instrument out of his hands.

“Allow a virtuoso to ply his craft,” Lowe said. He teased a sprightly tune from the flute, so masterfully that even a few men below decks were drawn to the top to listen. Mr. Goodwin’s claws tapped at the rail, out of rhythm with Lowe’s tune, betraying his irritation. Mr. Wrightson hurried over to him and stroked his hairy cock with a playful paw, to cheer him up.

Mr. Lowe’s jaunty song was still in Lemuel’s head as he retired to his berth. But just as he was about to go through the door, the captain appeared, holding a lantern. “I need you in the hold, Mr. Pye. The doctor and I require your assistance in draining Mr. Milken.”

Lemuel grew a bit cold at the thought. But he did his best to remain professional, and asked, “How many buckets are we using?”

“No buckets,” Hollander replied. “Casks, now.”

As soon as they passed through the opening, Lemuel’s body was hit by a steady, pulsing vibration. The place thrummed, humming in his ears, shaking his bones. The planks writhed beneath his feet. “This is the heart of the ship,” the captain said to him, as they descended the steps. The vibration was so loud, he was obliged to speak over it, nearly shouting. “It beats in rhythm with our own.” He removed the ever-present pipe from his mouth and waved it in the air, like a conductor.

Dr. Merkel was waiting for them. Although he had lost an alarming amount of height, he was still broad-shouldered and brawny, and looked somehow more imposing than when Lemuel had first laid eyes on him. His beard, a mass of grey curls, lent an air of wisdom to his brown-furred face. From his black bag, he produced two long-stemmed pipes, already filled with a strong-smelling, dark tobacco. He offered one to Lemuel. “You’ll need this,” he said, grimly. “We may be down here for a great while.”

Captain Hollander extended his lantern outwards, to illuminate a massive form in a darkened corner. “Your whale, Mr. Pye.”

In the dim lantern-light, he could see the air rippling, like the ocean. Slumped down into a mountain of pillows was a huge, pale figure, taller and fatter than anything Lemuel had dreamed possible. Its skin was dead white, its fingers sausage-like, its hands almost subsumed by the rolls of fat on its arms. Its feet were practically globular, with only the barest suggestion of toes visible. Its nose was no larger than the tip of Lemuel’s pinky finger, its mouth even wider than Paoa’s and Tergenev’s terrifying maws. Its forehead bulged outward, casting its eyes in shadow. The only hair on its body was a dark, mammoth beard that hung down past its drooping tits. An immense phallus and ball sack protruded from beneath its ponderous gut, delicately suspended in a web of silk cords that spanned the width of the hold. Steadily, precum dripped into a barrel.

Something, maybe the ship itself, had dulled Lemuel’s horror and confusion at the parade of grotesqueries he had witnessed since boarding the “Hy-Brasil.” This, however, was too much. His pipe dropped from his lips, still unlit. His breath grew quick and short, and he spun around, ready to flee. The captain and the doctor caught his arms and sat him down on the steps.

“I don’t know what that thing is,” Lemuel managed to stammer, between breaths, “but it is no whale.”

Although the other two men held Lemuel tight, their voices were friendly, without a trace of anger or impatience.

“Mr. Milken is a man, true,” Dr. Merkel told him. “As are we all. But now, he is also a whale. Just as our captain is also a walrus, and you are also a leopard seal. The idol that attached itself to our prow gathers the spirits of mammalian sea creatures, and merges them with our own. Their influence ebbs and flows. The nearer we are to land, the more human we appear. As for myself, I have become joined with a sea otter. When my time comes, I will retire to the Heavenly Sea and spend the majority of my days floating on my back and eating oysters. It is not what I imagined my life to be when I was studying physiology at the University of Freiburg, true. That said, I am not saddened by this. There are fates far more disagreeable.” As he spoke, he gathered up Lemuel’s fallen pipe and lit it for him.

Lemuel allowed him to place it in his mouth. He drew deeply from it, and exhaled a considerable amount of smoke before speaking again. “What about Mr. Milken’s fate? We arrive at this Heavenly Sea, he becomes a whale, completely, and we… dear God! We harpoon him? Slice him open, render him down into oil?”

Hollander kept one hand firmly on Lemuel’s shoulder, but began to stroke his hair, soothingly. Lovingly. “That’s not how life is arranged in the Heavenly Sea. The whales are the kings of that realm, ancient and wise. They sing to some of us. They teach us. They have told me that they have come from all around the globe to live out their last years in peace. And when they are about to perish, they offer themselves up to us. In our turn, we have learned to send them to their final reward with a minimum of suffering.

“On land, we receive money for our efforts, but you must have seen how little we care for it. Our true reward is to partake of life in the Heavenly Sea for a little while during each journey. Eventually, our residency there becomes permanent. Now, come help us service my poor cousin. You may ask me further questions while we do our work.”

Lemuel helped them apply a generous coating of grease to Mr. Milken’s titanic rod, and then the three of them set about stroking him off. Lemuel kept glancing up to the man’s face. With his vision adjusted to the darkness, he could at last make out Milken’s eyes. They were cast up to the heavens, rolling about in their sockets seemingly at random. He wondered if he even knew they were there. “I understand this is all for the best,” Lemuel opined, “even if I don’t yet understand how. And yet, I must admit that I feel sorry for the man. If only he’d had some other recourse…!”

“He will have a pleasant life in the Heavenly Sea,” the doctor said. “The alternative is an asylum. Have you ever visited an asylum? Abysmal things.” He shuddered.

Milken’s gargantuan member strained slowly upward. Grunts of pleasure rumbled through his body, shaking his multitude of fat rolls.

“It’s not often,” Hollander noted, “that a member of the crew becomes a whale of this size. Although I have seen plenty of smaller whales. We had a deck boy once, who ended as a narwhal. One of his lower incisors grew into a long, spiraling thing that finally drilled right through the top of his head. Like a unicorn.” He illustrated this with a twirling gesture from his free hand.

The doctor directed Lemuel to place a palm on Mr. Milken’s swollen testes. “How does it feel?”

Beneath Lemuel’s touch, the skin was vibrating, even more intensely than the air. He could feel the spunk surging beneath the skin, like a restless sea. Squirming. When he described the sensation, the captain said, “I’m afraid we may be in for a soaking.”

“You know, dear friend, I’ve never had a problem with that,” Dr. Merkel said, winking.

“No, indeed,” Hollander chuckled. He eyed the door to the hold. “We will have to move him above decks soon. His output is becoming unwieldy.”

With a sudden thrusting, a fountain of cum erupted from Mr. Milken’s cock. Captain Hollander had Lemuel help him in catching what they could in the cask, but it was no use. The three of them were drenched. The thick, creamy cum coated them, catching in their fur before seeping downward into their skin. The vibrating air was ripe with the odor of it. Their surprised silence was broken by a wheezing laughter tumbling from Milken’s impossibly wide mouth.

“At least it didn’t get into my pipe,” the captain said, puffing jovially while he wiped what spunk he could off of his arms and legs.

A substantial amount of it had fallen onto Lemuel’s stomach and crotch. The doctor eased his paw between Lemuel’s thigh and ball sack, scooping some of the cum into his palm. Then, gazing coquettishly at Lemuel, he sucked it into his furry mouth and purred, “Better than custard.”

“I’m just glad it’s over and done,” Lemuel sighed. From behind him, Mr. Milken groaned. Lemuel turned to see the whale-man’s pale cock arcing upwards once more.

“Your optimism is charming, Mr. Pye,” Hollander said, playfully twisting one of Lemuel’s nipples.

Over an hour later, Lemuel returned, exhausted, to his berth. He and the other two had rinsed off as best they could, but there were still gobs of cum lodged in various crevices. Mr. Wrightson and a couple of deck boys eagerly licked him the rest of the way clean.

The next night, Lemuel was placed on watch while the first mate engaged more of the crew to pleasure Mr. Milken. The noise of it was almost deafening, even with multiple decks between them. Lemuel knew the whale-man would need to be moved soon. He had expected they would get Mr. Plummer to enlarge the opening to the hold. But no, it was somehow getting more expansive on its own. The ship was cooperating. It was a living thing, he had come to realize. Hell, it was more a member of the crew than Mr. Milken.

While Lemuel was lost in thought, Captain Hollander sidled up to him and stood there at the rail, silently smoking his pipe while Lemuel smoked his. Then, taking the pipe form Lemuel’s mouth, he planted a powerful, dominating kiss on his lips, shotgunning smoke down his throat and violating every inch of his mouth with his tongue. Lemuel could smell the mingled smoke and musk in the captain’s massive mustache, and savored the feel of the rough bristles against his lightly-furred cheeks.

When Lemuel was finally allowed to breathe again, he could only murmur, “Thank you, Captain.”

“You did splendidly last night,” Hollander began. “I wanted to see how you would manage an encounter with something wholly unexpected. After the initial shock, you put your fears aside and did the work that was asked of you. I am very proud of you, Mr. Pye.”

Lemuel had no words, so he just nodded.

“In a few days, a week at most, we will be home, in the Heavenly Sea. If one of our officers is called to a permanent spot there, I want you to replace him.”

“Thank you, Captain!” He couldn’t seem to stop smiling.

“And I know you worry about Mr. Ershov. Don’t. He knows I see potential in you. If he seems to be more strict with you than with the other boys, it’s only because he knows you are bound for greater things than they, and he wants to be sure you measure up.”

“Yes, Captain.” He grinned.

Five days later, Mr. Goodwin shook him from his sleep. “Come and see, Mr. Pye! We’re arriving! It’s a glorious thing! Absolutely glorious!” He actually was weeping, the tears darkening the gray fur of his muzzle.

He followed the cooper above decks to find the eternal night shot through with fissures of orange, pink, and purple light. It looked to him like the shell of an egg getting cracked open. The lines originated at a shimmering glow on the horizon. Where a patch of night sky was completely bound by the lines, the darkness faded like a morning mist, revealing an enchanting twilight atmosphere containing gauzy yellow clouds. The entire crew was there on the top deck, laughing and shouting and hugging one another.

Lemuel joined Mr. Plummer and Mr. Blevins on the starboard side, looking over the rail. The grimy fog was vanishing, revealing a translucent blue ocean, teeming with fish, and at the bottom, clean white sands. Ahead lay mountainous islands, covered in vegetation, a hundred shades of green. As the ship neared them, Lemuel could spy more idols like the one on the prow of the ship, and around them, hulking beast-men like themselves.

“The Heavenly Sea welcomes our Mr. Milken,” the captain shouted, “but he will need our assistance.” Lemuel and a half-dozen other sailors were directed to roll Milken’s titanic body overboard. He saw that the railing in front of him had been removed, or perhaps the ship itself had just made it disappear. On Hollander’s command, they heaved Mr. Milken off into the waters. He sank below the waves, leaving a thin scum of spunk floating on the water where he had hit it. Then, a mammoth white tail broke the waves. In a moment, the enormous white whale that used to be Milken crested the waters and let loose with a great spout of water from his blowhole. The crew whooped in celebration.

They dropped anchor near the largest isle. They were close enough now for Lemuel to see that the beast-men there were all screwing, mostly in pairs or threesomes, although there were a handful just masturbating. “Land is for fucking,” Dr. Merkel explained, sagely. “It may be a form of worship, perhaps. But the Sea will provide all of our food, and most of our pleasure. You will understand in a few minutes.”

By now, the crew of the “Hy-Brasil” was abandoning ship in droves, diving overboard in a great mass. Where they hit the water, they were transformed utterly. He saw the tragic Mr. Blevins collapse into himself until he was a merry little sea otter, floating on his back in the warm twilight air. Turgenev and Kaleho became magnificent orcas, diving and leaping through the water like acrobats. When it was Lemuel’s turn, he watched in amazement as his legs fused together into a tail-like appendage, while his arms shrunk down and his hands flattened out into powerful flippers. He had been shown engravings of leopard seals by his Uncle Erasmus, but he had never understood how fast they were. How fast HE was, now. He shot through the ocean like a meteor, more rapidly than a wild stallion. He was overcome by a sense of elation, and peace. Around him were fish, scores of them. Stupid things, just there for the taking. He ate his fill. After an unknowable period of play in the water, he dragged himself onto a beach. His body immediately adapted itself to a humanoid form once more. Lazily, he sat down on the moist sands and stretched out his powerful, spotted legs. The salt air was clean and refreshing.

A walrus flopped onto the beach and resolved itself into the form of Captain Hollander. His dark eyes sparkling like the sea, he strode to where Lemuel was sitting and knelt in front of him. “Lemmy, my dear, sweet boy,” he breathed. “Can you hear them? The whales? They are singing to me.”

“I can’t hear anything, Captain,” he confessed.

Hollander scoffed. “Don’t call me Captain, Lemuel. I’m not that man, anymore.”

“I don’t understand…!”

“I’m done, lad. The whales are welcoming me here for the final time. As for ‘Captain Hollander,’ that is the last secret for you to learn. There were others who took on that role before me. And now, you must be him. You have to carry on our mission, to gather up more sailors. To show them the way to the Heavenly Sea.”

For the first time since he had spied Mr. Milken, Lemuel was struck by genuine panic. “I can’t,” he protested. “I’m not ready, I barely know anything at all about running a ship…!”

“You will. It will all become clear, shortly. And now, I offer myself to you, whose rank is high above mine.”

Before Lemuel could stop him, his captain had taken his cock in his mouth. His great brush of a mustache tickled and teased it, while the tip was expertly worked by his tongue. Overcome, Lemuel let himself fall back against the welcoming sands. He felt dizzy. As his muscles tensed and unclenched, battered by a torrent of pleasure, he could feel himself somehow getting larger, and huskier. His bones were growing denser, his body fat multiplying, accumulating in his stomach and coating his arms and legs in a heavy layer of blubber. New memories winked into existence within his brain. He saw himself in countless ports, all around the Americas, from the Arctic Ocean to Cape Horn. With fatherly persuasion, he shepherded countless new sailors onto the ‘Hy-Brasil.’ He was assisted, over the years, by various mates and surgeons and carpenters and cooks. But the ship’s captain, somehow, was always him. It was part of a bargain that had been struck.

He saw a fully-clothed, very human-seeming Captain Hollander step from a whaleboat onto the island’s beach. From his dress, this seemed to have taken place some seventy years back. This original Hollander was a spare, stern gentleman with a powdered wig and a pert, carefully waxed mustache. He was greeted by a fierce, nude walrus man, who led him to the towering idol that now adorned their ship. They appeared to be negotiating something, but the walrus man found the terms evidently disagreeable, because he physically overpowered the captain, and forced himself on him. As the captain screamed for his life, his mates attempted to come to his aid, but they were held back by the other natives. The walrus man thrust his monstrous cock into the captain’s ass, brutally. And then the captain began to change. His bristling limbs burst through his clothes as he acquired more than two hundred pounds of muscle and fat. His grimly handsome features curdled into a bestial visage, while his manicured mustache bloomed into something grandiose. Thus changed, the captain turned his gaze onto his cowering subordinates. They would be the next to become like him, and he would be the man to initiate their transformations.

The memories crowded into his brain, coming faster and faster. Lemuel was gaining the knowledge of generations of mariners. There would be no sailor in the world with anything close to his level of experience.

He screamed as he shot his load. It was a triumphant, primordial roar, echoing throughout the island. His former captain guzzled every drop of his cum down his throat. Lemuel rested a broad, hairy hand atop the walrus man’s head, shivering as the transformation completed itself. He raised his other hand to his face, feeling the gigantic mustache and tusks that he had been gifted with. It was just as he had been told. He was still Lemuel Pye, but that was just a small part of him, now. For all intents and purposes, he was Captain Hollander, and the ‘Hy-Brasil’ was his ship, for as long as the kings of the Heavenly Sea willed it so. With a last kiss, the former captain leaped into the waves, becoming a walrus again.

Just then, a sea lion man approached him, and bowed, deeply. Mr. Ershov. “I await your orders, Captain Hollander,” he said, with a knowing grin.

Lemuel knew now that Ershov had only his best interests at heart. Still, he had long resented the steward’s attitude toward him, and he had harbored some creative fantasies about how he might punish him for it. He’d wipe that stupid conspiratorial smile off of his face and replace it with something more servile. “You will find me a stern master, I’m afraid,” he said, his voice devoid of levity.

“It will be nothing I can’t handle, I’m sure, Captain.” The steward’s tone remained light, but Lemuel could see his face tighten, just a bit. It was a start. His eyes were still too lively. Too wily. He wanted to see the man’s gaze fade into a dull, dead thing that focused only on him. And when he wasn’t there, on nothing at all.

He clamped his hands onto his new plaything’s shoulders and forced him down onto his knees. “I highly doubt that, my dear Ershov,” he growled. “And now, let us begin.”

Hey there! It’s me, your writer/artist, just letting you know I still have some writing and art slots left for the end of the month. Write me at awesomeviking76@gmail.com or just message me here on Tumblr for a quote! I take payments via PayPal so it’s super-easy and I can even get you a receipt if you’d like. You don’t even need a PayPal account. How simple is that?

I’m working diligently away on all sorts of cool stuff, including a Furry seagoing adventure tale, a strip about a sports celebrity transforming into a pipebear, a whacked-out VR donkey transformation story and more! Now, what can I do for you?

I just started a Patreon for my art and writing! For $5/month, I’ll send you an exclusive transformation story. For $10/month, I’ll send you an exclusive Bear pin-up illustration. My theme this year is folklore and mythology. Check it out!

Also, I still have some commission slots open for the end of July. I was going to reserve them for writing jobs but I've had no takers so far, so I'll just call it a "first come, first serve" thing and leave it open for art, too. Which I probably should have done in the first place before I made it all confusing. Live and learn! So email me at awesomeviking76@gmail.com for a price quote if you're interested. Either way, have an amazing weekend, pals!

Thank you!

Thanks to everyone who was able to help me out with my financial difficulties. I have lots of fun projects to work on now. My art commission slots are full for July. If anyone would like any writing done, I do have a couple of slots left there for the end of the month (projected completion: last week of July). So email me at awesomeviking76@gmail.com if you have any ideas you would like to discuss. Cheers!

This beefy, creamy hunk is a commission I did last Spring but never published before. Of course, the image file my client received was quite a bit larger, suitable for printing, framing, and probably some other things as well. Art commission slots for July are still open, so if YOU have a fantasy you’d like visualized, drop me a line at awesomeviking76@gmail.com and we can chat. I’m offering discounted rates now through 7/5/17.

So, I got myself in some serious financial trouble recently. I'm finishing up my current commission commitments in the next week but unfortunately I can't wait that long for new work. I need to line up new jobs, fast, or else I'm going to be in big trouble. I always give discounts to returning art customers. I can do that for new customers now, too, through 7/5/17. If you're interested, contact me at awesomeviking76@gmail.com and let's see what you have in mind! My specialties are bears, furries, and (now) Orcs but of course I could draw anything. Let's chat!

He's Orc-y with the good hair! After working through some personal stuff, I'm now getting caught up on commissions. So there should be some more content like this real soon, including some nicely twisted transformation stories, heh-heh! It's good to be back!

The Intervention

Hoyt squeezed his gym bag to himself, rocking back and forth and tapping his foot while he glared back at the annoyed, judgmental bus passengers. Hell yes, he stank. He fucking reeked, really; he perspired way more than most people, it was a medical thing, and so what? It wasn’t his idea to get on the bus without showering. He hadn’t planned to bolt from the gym in the middle of a workout. But really, Cheever had left him no choice.

They weren’t the best of friends. They had met at the gym, and had gotten along well enough to agree to be each other’s exercise partners. Beyond that, they hadn’t interacted much. A few “guys’ nights” away from their girlfriends, going to sports bars and strip clubs. A movie or a lunch, here and there. When Cheever stopped showing up at the gym or even answering Hoyt’s phone calls and texts, Hoyt was annoyed, but he didn’t think about it beyond that. They were both young men, with plans that changed day to day. For all Hoyt knew, Cheever could even have just gotten a better job out of state and left Kentucky for good.

But as time passed, Cheever’s unexplained absence had started to worry him. Earlier that week, he had tried calling the company where Cheever worked as a software engineer. It turned out, he’d stopped showing up for work on the same day he’d first missed one of their weightlifting sessions. He hadn’t called in sick or given notice. He had just vanished.

Hoyt had dimly recalled Cheever mentioning something about taking antidepressants. He wondered if his friend had gone off his meds. Maybe he’d been hospitalized. Or worse. So naturally Hoyt had stopped everything when he had seen Cheever’s name on the caller i.d.

Cheever had sounded strange on the phone. Not suicidal, but certainly desperate. He had pleaded with Hoyt to come to his apartment. Immediately. He didn’t want to be alone, he’d said. His speech was slurred, his words a stream of syrupy mush, and difficult to discern above the blaring music in the background.

Once Hoyt had boarded the bus, his phone had rung again. It was Cheever. This time, there was no reply from the other end. But he could vaguely detect people talking in the background. Then the moaning started. Cheever was either fucking somebody or getting stabbed to death. Not sure whether to be alarmed or embarrassed, Hoyt had quickly hung up.

He wondered if he should call the police. Just in case. But he told himself the noises were probably from some movie Cheever was watching. Some porno. Or slasher film. And besides, he’d read plenty of articles about police interventions for clinically depressed people which ended in the depressed person getting shot to death. He was going to have to check things out himself.

Twilight had painted the Louisville skyline a dull, ashen lavender by the time Hoyt arrived at Cheever’s apartment building. The few people still loitering outside were a mix of chattering young hipsters and harried dog owners. A skate punk in full regalia was doggedly practicing his tricks on the wheelchair ramp.

His phone rang again. Another butt dial. More moaning. Now he was sure it was Cheever’s voice. The unhinged fucker was definitely getting his rocks off. Hoyt spoke louder, trying to get Cheever’s attention, until finally he was yelling Cheever’s name and using every curse word he could think of. Nothing worked. Sputtering a final, admittedly lame “asswipe” at him, he hung up. People were staring. He stared back.

It took three attempts, buzzing Cheever’s apartment on the intercom, before he would unlock the door to the building. It was a ritzy place, apparently. As he took the elevator to Cheever’s apartment on the fifth floor, he tried to finalize a game plan. He was no counselor, but maybe he could get Cheever to open up to him about his troubles. And if drugs were involved, maybe he could convince him to check himself into a treatment center. If Cheever refused, he would just wash his hands of the whole thing.

A thumping bass rhythm could be heard through Cheever’s door. And there was a smell. Just a whiff of one. Something sour and mephitic.

Hoyt raised his hand to knock, but then the door just opened. Standing there was a tall, almost unbearably handsome Indian man, looking like he’d just stepped off the catwalk at a fashion show. His long hair was pulled back into a messy bun, and he had a boxy, well-groomed beard ornamented by a dapper handlebar mustache. He wore a chartreuse silk jacket with a large yellow carnation in the lapel, over a charcoal-colored, scoop-necked T-shirt. He smiled charmingly. “You must be Hoyt,” he said, in a Southern California drawl complete with Keanu Reeves-ian vocal fry. “Come on in, buddy!”

The apartment was dark and hot and noisy, and it stank. Hoyt wanted to make his stay there as brief as possible. Peering around the large man in search of Cheever, he said, “I’m sorry, but this is a little confusing. Cheever told me he didn’t want to be alone. I didn’t know there was somebody else here.”

“Well, I’m helping him recover. He’s been sick for a long time. But I needed some backup.” Along with the vocal fry, the notorious SoCal “uptalking” now reared its ugly, bleached-blonde head.

“I’m not sure what I can do, but okay. And you are…?”

“Aw, fuck! Sorry. You can call me Anand. Anand Kumar.” He extended his hand.

Hoyt took it. “Nice to meet you. So are you like a friend of his or a therapist or what? I’m sorry if that’s rude. It’s just, he never mentioned anybody named ‘Anand.’”

The man chuckled. “I didn’t say ‘Anand Kumar’ was my name. I would just really love for you to call me that.”

Hoyt made an attempt at laughter, and waited for the man to move out of the way. When he instead just stood there with that ingratiating smile still plastered to his handsome face, Hoyt took the initiative and ducked around him. Cheever’s place was obviously very expensive, but it was also an unholy mess. Pizza boxes, two-liter pop bottles, smashed beer cans and more littered the hardwood floors. In every corner, shipping boxes of all sizes competed for space with piles of filthy underwear and tennis shoes. Landfills of the Rich and Famous.

The stranger, walking alongside Hoyt, added, “You could also call me ‘Andy’ if you want. That’s what Cheever calls me.”

Hoyt had a feeling that this joker was going to get very tiresome, very quickly. “But that’s not your name, either. So are you going to tell me your name?”

“Nope!” ‘Andy Kumar’ laughed again. An oddly friendly laugh, free of sarcasm or spite.

The ear-splitting music was Cheever’s beloved “vaporwave”: electronic instrumental shit with vocal sampling and a lot of reverb and echo to it. It seemed to be coming from everywhere. Looking around, Hoyt could see why. There were small speakers mounted near the ceiling in almost every corner. He could also see several security cameras.

Beneath the omnipresent music, he could hear another melody: a tinny, computerized version of “The Can-Can.” It seemed to be emanating from just one direction. On a hunch, he followed it to its source, heading through a living room and a formal dining area into a spacious den. There, on an enormous flat screen television on the far wall, a sixteen-bit video game was being played. It showed a diminutive figure in a clown costume, pursued by equally tiny monsters. They were surrounded by colossal cherries.

The foul smells were strongest here. Body odor, sour milk, beer farts and stale cigar smoke all jockeyed for his attention. A U-shaped sectional sofa faced the television. There was a figure slumped down in the center sofa. He could just see the top of the person’s head, bobbing erratically as the little clown moved up and down, left and right.

It had to be Cheever. Hoyt greeted him, but the figure only held up a hand in a vague gesture, presumably meaning “Wait a minute.” Although it was dark, the hand looked odd to him. It looked swollen. Hoyt walked around the couches so he could face him.

It was Cheever, alright, but he was vastly changed. He was fat, for one thing. He’d been missing for less than a month, but somehow all of his muscles were just… gone. The definition in his body had been replaced by the soft curves of at least one hundred pounds of extra flab. His pecs had begun to sag into pendulous tits, and his six-pack was covered by a massive beer gut. He was dressed in a too-small t-shirt and a yellowing jock. Oddly, although he wasn’t wearing pants, he had on a pair of leather work boots over thick, woolen socks. He had always waxed his body before, the better to show off his muscles, but now he was extremely hairy, all over. Even the backs of his hands bore a light dusting of hair. Somehow, he had already acquired a double chin, which Hoyt could see waggling beneath a bushy growth of neck beard. His upper lip was the only clean-shaven spot on his face. And his formerly short hair had grown out with impossible speed, hanging over his ears and one eye in a lank mop, rudely hand-combed in a side part. A streak of pure white shot down the center of his bangs. From stress, Hoyt assumed.

The sectional was covered in more dirty clothes, paper wrappers from fast food joints, and crumpled beer cans. A half dozen soda pop two-liters were at Cheever’s feet. All of them the same supermarket knock-off of a heavily caffeinated citrus drink. Cigar butts were piled high in a large ashtray on the glass-top coffee table in front of him.

The video game noises abruptly ceased. Cheever set his wireless controller on the coffee table. Then he gulped down the last dregs from a can of beer, crumpled it, and threw it over his shoulder. He grinned up at Hoyt and opened his mouth. What came out was a belch, loud and long. “Get over here, you son-of-a-bitch,” he slurred, sweeping some of the trash off the cushion next to him.

Hoyt took a step forward, then realized he was still holding the gym bag. He held it up, saying, “I, uh, don’t know where I should put this thing.”

“On the couch is fine.”

Hoyt tossed it on the left wing of the big U-shaped sofa. Andy was already settling into a seat on the right wing of it. The mysterious man stretched his long legs, resting his large feet on an ottoman. Hoyt saw that he was wearing suede boots in an intense shade of forest green.

As Hoyt gingerly sat down next to the strangely altered Cheever, he started to make an apology for how bad he stank. He stopped himself, though, realizing that his personal stench was most likely unnoticeable in the far fouler air of the apartment.

Cheever slumped further down in his own seat and lolled drunkenly against Hoyt’s side. “Thank you for coming, buddy… you’re a real pal, you know that?”

Hoyt, battling the urge to gag from Cheever’s relentless funk, managed a few words about “being there” for him, and added that he was happy to listen to Cheever talk about whatever was bothering him.

“I know that,” Cheever said. “Maybe later. Right now, I just need a friend.”

“Sure thing, uh, pal.” He felt a tad self-conscious, being singled out like that. “But what about Andy over there? Isn’t he your friend?”

“That doesn’t count. He’s everybody’s friend. I want MY friend. You’re MY friend.”

“It’s true,” Andy said. “I am everybody’s friend.”

Hoyt was gripped by the depressing suspicion that Andy was a drug dealer. It would certainly explain the clothes. “I’m sorry,” he said to Cheever, “but I don’t understand what he has to do with all of this.”

“He’s helping me. Can’t you tell?”

“Honestly? No, not really.”

“You should have seen him before,” Andy said, flashing his winning smile once again.

Hoyt acknowledged Andy’s interruption with a grunt, but kept his eyes on Cheever. “I’m not going to pretend I know what’s going on with you. But whatever it is, you know you can’t keep living like this, right? You at least need to get up off your ass and start cleaning this dump. Sooner or later, your neighbors will start complaining about the smell, or you’ll start an infestation of cockroaches or bedbugs or who knows what, and then the apartment manager will kick your ass out.”

Cheever snorted at that. “The apartment manager won’t be a problem. Andy took care of HIM.”

“I did,” Andy said, happily.

Hoyt knew his temper was flaring up, but he tamped it down as best as he could. “I’m sorry, Andy, but would you mind leaving me alone with my friend for a minute? I need to have a private talk with him.”

Looking absolutely guileless, the stranger rose from his seat and strode casually out of the room.

Hoyt spoke as quietly as he could over the thumping music, hoping the stranger couldn’t hear him. “I’m not trying to be a dick here, okay? I’m just worried about you. You’re not… you’re not yourself. And who the fuck IS that guy? I’m sorry, but something about him gives me the creeps. Is Andy like, a drug dealer? Or is he scamming you out of your money some other way, like a cult thing, or what? If you’re in trouble and you need to get rid of him but you’re afraid of confronting him for some reason, just let me know. I can call the cops for you, or whatever you want.”

Cheever pulled himself up. The exertion released an explosive, sulfurous fart, which Cheever inhaled with relish. His eyes were suddenly alert, and peculiarly defiant, although his speech was still indistinct. “You think I’m a real idiot, don’t you? No, Andy’s not taking my money. I’m not giving him anything. He doesn’t want anything, except for me to be my best self. I’m sorry if you don’t GET that. And NO, I’m not off my meds. I’m not a moron. What I AM is happy, Hoyt. Happier than I’ve ever been. Things are almost perfect now. They could be just a little bit better, that’s all.” He stood there, trembling, his fat legs swaying precariously.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake…! Wake up, Cheever. Nothing about this situation is healthy. Just… just promise me, you’ll get some honest-to-God professional help before it’s too late.”

“I’m getting help! ANDY is helping me. And I’m almost all the way cured. Look at YOU. You don’t even know who the hell you ARE.”

The beginnings of a migraine needled into Hoyt’s skull. He jumped to his feet and made a terse goodbye.

Cheever went pale. “Shit! No, wait, don’t go! I’m sorry…!”

But Hoyt was already stomping through the hellish apartment towards the exit, passing Andy in the living room. Before he could get to the foyer, Andy placed a hand on his right shoulder and stopped him in his tracks. “Easy there, friend,” he purred. “Calm down.”

A strange heat vibrated through Hoyt’s spine. He did feel calmer, all at once. Even his headache evaporated.

"Cheever is your pal,” Andy said, gently. “You don’t want to leave your pal, do you?”

“No, I guess not.” He did feel a bit guilty, rushing off like that. If nothing else, he had to go back to fetch his gym bag.

Andy was still standing right behind him. Hoyt could feel the man’s breath, tickling his ear. It smelled good. Fresh. Keeping the one hand on Hoyt’s right shoulder, the man placed his other hand on Hoyt’s left shoulder, and then he began to massage his back.

“You are fucking tense, my man,” Andy said. “Seriously, your muscles are like rocks.” His fresh scent grew stronger. It wasn’t mouthwash or cologne or even soap. It was an outdoorsy smell. Like a garden, after a rain. “Tell me what’s got you so worked up.”

“A lot… a lot of things,” Hoyt said, softly. “This is all so strange. I don’t understand…!”

“All you have to do is hang out with us for a little while longer, and it will all become clear.” He moved closer. His taut, hairy arms wrapped around Hoyt’s waist and snaked up beneath his t-shirt. Pulling Hoyt against his body, he began to delicately kiss his neck, brushing his flesh with his thick, soft beard. It felt wonderful. With his fingers, he began to rub Hoyt’s nipples. “Come with me back to the den.”

“Okay,” Hoyt whimpered. He let Andy take his hand and lead him back to where they had left Cheever. He felt dizzy. The rancid air, the pounding vaporwave, the impossibly fat and long-haired state he’d found Cheever in… it was all making him feel like he was hallucinating. And now, the most beautiful man he’d ever seen was leading him by the hand, like he was a child, or worse. Like a woman. He sort of hated himself for it. It was a sign of weakness. He had to say something. He cleared his throat.

Andy glanced back at him, one eyebrow raised, his lips curled in that familiar smile.

“I’m straight,” Hoyt gulped. For some reason, he felt compelled to add, “Sorry.”

“I don’t think that’s true,” Andy grinned. “Not one-hundred-percent, anyhow. No biggie. We’re cool.”

They reentered the den to find Cheever with one boot off, the laces untied, and his face smashed into it, inhaling the stink out of it with the determination of a man who had narrowly escaped drowning. His other hand, he had jammed beneath the jock, kneading his balls.

Hoyt’s knees buckled. Andy caught him and guided him even closer to the couch. Motioning for Cheever to move over a bit, he sat Hoyt down on the center cushion next to Cheever, and sat himself down on the other side. With Cheever’s newfound girth and Andy’s tendency to man-spread, it was a tight fit for all of them.

“I got him to settle down,” Andy explained to Cheever, as though Hoyt wasn’t even there. And Hoyt himself was starting to wonder if he was there. “Now,” he continued, “the three of us can discuss the situation like adults. Cheever, I think you should explain to your friend what a sorry condition you were in when I found you? And Hoyt, I think you should show some generosity towards Cheever by taking your shirt off. Cheever’s been wanting you to do that ever since you got here. Be honest, now, Cheever. That why you called him when you did. You wanted to interrupt his workout so you could get him over here and smell him. You told me before how you missed his smell.”

Hoyt gazed numbly at his friend, who was nodding sheepishly. He dreaded what might come next, but for some reason he didn’t want to disappoint the stranger. Slowly, he unbuttoned his pit-stained dress shirt while Cheever’s eyes roved over his body.

Andy slapped Hoyt jovially on the knee. “A strip tease! That is very thoughtful of you.”

Cheever’s gaze had fallen onto the dress shirt, which was crumpled up between the couch and Hoyt’s back. “May I…?”

Before Hoyt could answer, Cheever had pulled it out from behind him and plunged his nose into it, snorting and huffing. “Oh, Christ! This is fucking choice! Oh God!”

“Your story, Cheever,” Andy prompted.

“Sorry,” Cheever grunted. He kept his face buried in the shirt, but kept talking in a muffled voice peppered by deep inhalations. “I know I put up a good front when we met, but I was really miserable and I didn’t know why. I acted out. I was dismissive of people. I wasn’t emotionally available for my girlfriend. I hated my own body and tried to force it into an unnatural shape through abusive exercise routines. But Andy here, he took one look at me and saw I needed fixing. He’s helped me find my bliss, and now he’s helping me figure out how to build a new life around it.”

Hoyt was falling into a daze, but something Cheever said roused him out of it, slightly. “Wait a minute. You were unhappy when we met, and NOW you’re better? How long has Andy been helping you?”

“It’s been about a month. I have plenty of savings, so the first thing he had me do was quit my job, so we could concentrate full-time on my recovery. I had my breakthrough a few days later. I know I probably shouldn’t have walked out like that, but I just couldn’t wait to get better.”

Andy had rested his hand on Hoyt’s knee, and now was massaging the inside of his thigh. Cheever, meanwhile, had finished with his shirt and had raised up Hoyt’s arm, so he could snuffle at his hairy, sweat-soaked pit. “Just say the word and we’ll stop,” Andy told him.

Hoyt knew he had to get out of there, before he completely lost his mind. But his body felt so relaxed, it seemed like a real hassle even to stand. He turned his head to look at Andy, and it limply fell against the couch. “This is crazy,” he gulped. “You… you ruined him…!”.

“I know this is a new concept to you, Hoyt,” Andy said. “And new ideas can be scary.” He reached over with his free hand and started petting Hoyt’s chest, like he was a dog. Turning his hand over, he stroked Hoyt’s mat of chest hair with his knuckles. Hoyt shuddered and sank deeper into the couch. “I’ll try to explain it as simply as I can. There’s a spirit deep within all men. An animal spirit. Some of us are more in touch with it than others. When you fight it, when you act in opposition to your nature, well, that’s when things go south. Cheever, here, was never meant for his old way of living. The hard-driving work ethic, the militant exercise regime, climbing the corporate ladder and all that. Deep down, he’s a sensualist, a very specific class of one. The inner conflict was killing him. But now, I’ve made him one with his animal spirit, and he’s a million times happier. Tell Hoyt what you are, Cheever.”

Cheever, his beard glistening with drool, poked his head up from beneath Hoyt’s armpit. “I’m a skunk,” he said, proudly.

“He’s a skunk! And good for him. But every man is different. I met a guy in Utah, big as a house, diabetic, wheezing, the whole nine yards, and he hated himself. You know why? Because deep down, he was really a leopard. He runs marathons now. That’s what I’m talking about. I make men whole.”

“The gym bag,” Cheever said to the stranger. “Gym bag, gym bag!” His hands made little grabbing motions in the air.

Andy reached over and grabbed the bag, and tossed it to Cheever. Cheever excitedly unzipped it, and breathed in the ripe aroma that erupted from it. “The mother load,” he moaned.

“Cheever, would you like to tell Hoyt about your business plan, or should I?”

“You do it,” Cheever mumbled. He already had Hoyt’s shorts on his head, sucking the stink out of the crotch while he furiously rubbed his enormous belly.

Andy’s hand cupped Hoyt’s junk, through his trousers. He massaged it, delicately. “Cheever is finally embracing his obsessions, but he has to live on something. The problem is, most places won’t hire him, the way he is now. So we figured, why not take his love of grunge, and monetize it? There are cameras all around. He has his own live-streaming channel on the web. Guys can jack off, watching Cheever slob it up. He even has guys mail him their old nasty boxers and socks and shoes and things, and they can watch him stroke off while he sniffs them. Isn’t that clever of him? You wouldn’t believe how many paying followers he has already.”

Hoyt didn’t want to know that. He wished he had never come to the apartment, never answered the phone, never become acquainted with Cheever in the first place. He wanted to scream. But that would be rude, he realized, and Andy was being so kind and helpful. It would be impolite to make a fuss…

Andy’s hand was on his belt now, unbuckling it. He could hear the buzzing sound of his fly being unzipped, and then Andy’s strong, warm hands were pulling down his boxers. He was still talking, in that easy-going drawl of his. “Cheever can’t do all this by himself, though; that’s the problem we’re having. That’s where you come in. He told me a lot about you, see. I guess you spill a lot of personal shit when you get plastered. Even if you don’t remember doing it, later. And hey! Don’t we all? But yeah, you told him about when you were thirteen, and your sweating problem really kicked into high gear, and you developed a thing for jacking it while you sniffed your own gym socks. And about how your dad caught you, and beat the ever-loving shit out of you. How he made you clean the whole house top-to-bottom as a punishment, and how even that wasn’t enough for him, because he started doing ‘sniff tests’ after every time you took a shower.”

Hoyt, humiliated by the memory, rocked his head back and forth, as though denying it would make it go away. Meanwhile, Andy was tickling his balls and teasing his cock, running his fingernails up and down the shaft. And still he kept talking. “Your own father,” Andy said, his voice oppressively empathetic, “would make you stand naked in front of him while he smelled you. He ran his fat, hairy finger down your crack, in case you had missed a spot there, and if he could smell any shit on it at all, it was another beating for you. It’s no wonder you turned into a neat freak. But I don’t say that with judgment. An obsession with cleanliness is perfectly appropriate for some guys. Just not for you. That’s not what you are, deep inside. I need to open you up, find your spirit, and bring it to the surface, so it can merge with your body, make you whole. You won’t just be helping yourself. You’ll be helping Cheever, too. He told me how the two of you have those long talks in the locker room before you shower. Even if you guys are just shooting the shit, you’ll sit on a bench in there, in the steamy air, for a half goddamn hour or more, so close you’re almost touching. And why? Because you enjoy smelling his nasty-ass stank, and he enjoys smelling yours. Own up to it now, buddy. It’s the only possible reason. What I’m offering is a chance to be with somebody who really, truly understands you. You guys could make each other so happy, and the sex would be off the fucking hook. It’s a win-win! Will you let me do that for you?”

Andy, so kind and helpful and fatherly and dominating, smiled expectantly at him, his dark eyes merry and shining.

Hoyt didn’t know what to say. He just stared back, half-terrified.

Looking thoughtful for a moment, Andy grabbed Cheever’s odiferous boot. “How about a free preview? Take a nice, deep whiff of this, and just… see how you feel.”

The next thing he knew, the boot was pressed against his face, surrounding his mouth and nose. Instinctively, he tried to pull away, but it was just pressed into him harder. He held his breath as long as he could, but finally he had to gasp and breathe in the warm, moist, musky air. It was spicy, sweaty, salty, and even sweet. So many aromas. He had never really noticed that before. His hands, trembling, reached for his junk. At his touch, Andy’s hands moved away. He explored himself. The moist crevices between his balls and his thighs. His furry ball sack, with its veins and hard ridges. His thick, stumpy little cock, which was already leaking precum. He tried to picture himself living with Cheever, smelling him every day. Smelling the awful things other men sent him. The two of them, internet famous for being perverted slobs. The idea was too big. He couldn’t fathom it. He narrowed the scope, concentrating on just Cheever himself. Laying with him in the dark, sniffing him, licking him. Running his finger down his filthy crack. They could snort each other’s work boots while jacking each other off. Yes, that was better. Using the sweat on his hands as lubricant, he started to pump his cock while he breathed in the funk of Cheever’s boot, deeper and deeper, faster and faster.

“I’m going to take that as a ‘yes,’” Andy laughed. “Now, I should warn you, what I’m about to do will break down the walls of your perception, forever. You’ll see and feel things most other people can’t. You’ll be able to see the animal in yourself, and in Cheever, and everybody else I’ve helped.”

Hoyt knew he had no choice. He couldn’t keep living a lie. If that’s what he had to do, to be with Cheever, then so be it. He thought about his girlfriend. How could he ever sleep with her again, knowing what he knew about himself? Moving the boot away from his face, he said, firmly, “Do it.”

"Thank you, Hoyt. You won’t regret this, I promise. Now, stand up.” As Hoyt did so, Andy put his hands on either side of his face. Sparks of, golden-white light floated in the stale air, rapidly growing brighter and more plentiful until Hoyt couldn’t see anything but Andy and himself. They were both standing, naked, in a warm void. Andy’s body began to glow with the same golden light, and then it expanded, billowing outward and upward, changing into something otherworldly. His hands closed around Hoyt as he grew, lifting him up to see every part of his colossal body. Andy’s great legs were bestial, hoofed, and covered in a soft, shaggy fur. A rack of velvet-covered antlers sprouted from his forehead, and his ears grew long and hairy and pointed, like a deer’s. His hair spilled down about his shoulders, and his beard grew down to the waist. His cock and balls grew out of proportion with the rest of his titanic body, until his sack was halfway down to his knees and his phallus reached almost to his chest. Huge, colorful flowers, many kinds, emerged from his long, shining hair and beard, and from the animal fur on his legs and crotch. He was terrifying and beautiful, all at once. And Hoyt himself was so small, with the gargantuan Andy cradling him in his hands like he was a kitten, still smiling that wise, benevolent smile.

Hoyt’s words came out as a small, choked sound: “What are you?”

Andy’s voice reverberated through him. “I’m just a guy, like you, Hoyt. But I learned to open my spirit up, to serve an ancient, masculine force, and become his avatar of Springtime. To be his Flower Prince.” He had raised him up until his mouth was near the tip of his cock. A syrupy, sweet-smelling cum, gold and sparkling, flowed from the tip like a fountain. “Now, drink my nectar. Know yourself at last, and be reborn.”

Obediently, Hoyt planted his mouth on the end of the monstrous cock and took the thick, gooey liquid into his mouth. It trickled down his throat, and then it became a torrent, soaking into him, infusing him with magic. His body spasmed, changing, becoming something strange and new. He could feel his ears shifting, getting bigger and rounder, migrating further up on his head. His muscles grew even larger and denser, but they also gained a layer of fat, making him stockier, including a hard gut where his abs once showed. His feet grew bigger and longer, the heels rising off the ground. His toes sprouted claws and became longer as well, the outer two on each foot splaying outward like thumbs, the better for gripping and climbing. A tail snaked out from his lower back. A tail as long as he was tall, and evidently hairless. Thick gray fur appeared on his legs and belly, with a lighter covering on his torso and arms. And face. His cock and balls doubled in size, then tripled. His nose, wiggling, swelled up at the tip. It felt a cold and moist. An itching on his upper lip indicated whiskers growing in. His could feel the hair on his head growing out, too. Quite a bit, really, along with a great deal of fur on his cheeks and chin. A new clarity came to his mind. He was filled with energy. He felt alert, active, and clever. New schemes and plans crackled through his brain. It was a nervous, twitchy sensation, like he had after drinking too much coffee. But it felt right. It felt correct. Too soon, it seemed, Andy guided Hoyt’s mouth off of his cock. The intense glow winked out, and then they were both standing there in the darkened apartment, with Andy fully dressed, looking human again.

But Hoyt didn’t look human anymore. His eyes weren’t adjusted to the dark, yet, so he felt his way around his new, furry body. He could feel the warm, stagnant air on his hairless tail as it lashed about behind him. He asked, “What am I? What kind of animal?” He had a sneaking feeling, but he needed to hear it from somebody else.

“What you are, buddy, is intelligent, energetic, and determined. And you have no aversion to filth when it suits your needs. You’re a member of the rodent class. A Norway rat. Commonly known as a sewer rat.”

“Sewer rat,” Cheever repeated, from the couch. “Called it!”

Hoyt looked over at him. What he saw wasn’t human. Cheever had claimed to be a skunk. He hadn’t been kidding. A weird amalgamation of a human being and a skunk sat on the couch, masturbating as best as it could, under its furry belly. From the waist down, it resembled the animal, tail and all. The genitals were mammoth, with a fat, eighteen-inch long cock and testes like cantaloupes. The upper body was human, mostly, but covered in fur, save for the hair and beard Cheever had displayed before. Near the top of the head, two small, round ears emerged, and the nose was black and wet. Skunk Cheever noticed him looking, and smiled lustily back at him.

It was startling, but once that initial shock passed, Hoyt realized it somehow made Cheever even hotter. He wanted to bury himself in all that fur. He wanted to dig his nose into that furry ass. Near the stink glands.

Then a crushing realization occurred to him. “Wait, how am I going to leave the apartment, looking like this? I mean, I have a fucking tail now…!”

Smiling, Andy shook his head. “No worries, bud. I told you, it’s your perception. Your hybrid body doesn’t exist here, in this reality, except for you and me and the other guys I’ve helped. Think of it like a phantom limb. You can feel your tail swish around and knock into a beer can, but the can won’t move an inch. You could squeeze those rat legs into a pair of pants right now if you wanted. They’ll feel a bit squished, like they’re stuffed animal legs, but it won’t hurt. And all everyone else will see is a human man. In pants. Not that your human self looks the same as before. Mirrors will show you how you appear to the rest of the world. There’s a nice big one in the dining room. C’mon with me and take a look.”

Hoyt followed him into the next room. He discovered that his posture had become hunched, and he couldn’t seem to stop rubbing his hands together.

Andy flicked on the lights in the dining room, so he could see himself better. The new human version of Hoyt wore an expression of nervous intensity, his eyes shifty and bulging. His wavy hair had grown out past his shoulders. Long, shaggy sideburns adorned his cheeks, while a bushy goatee and heavy stubble everywhere else served for the rest of his facial hair. All of it was a filthy iron-gray. His bulky arms and chest looked like the results of hard physical labor, not a fancy gym. His claws showed up in the mirror as long, dirt-caked nails. His skin was grimy, scarred, and decorated with cheap-looking tattoos. Prison tats. Spider webs, pot leaves, praying hands with cash money between the palms, disembodied eyeballs, a cat with a noose around its neck. He looked like a criminal. A low-level one. He could feel a fresh boner coming on, just from seeing himself.

He realized that Cheever must have changed instantly, as well, to become so fat, so quickly. To look more like his spirit animal. A human skunk to his human rat.

Cheever. He had to be with him. Now. He had a lot of ideas on how to run things. He’d get the food wrappers and beer cans cleaned out of there on a regular basis. It was no good, attracting bugs. The dirty clothes the pervs sent him would need to be sealed in plastic bags, to preserve their stink. He’d let the fat, lazy skunk perform for the cameras, but he would direct everything himself. Cheever needed somebody to be in charge. He needed a Daddy. But first, he was going to fuck his Boy eight ways to Sunday.

He charged into the den and pounced on Cheever, who responded with drunken yelps and giggles. He squeezed Cheever to himself, tightly. The sensation of Cheever’s oily fur was better than he could have hoped. He pressed his wet nose to one of Cheever’s pits and snorted the musk from it like his life depended on it. Grappling and petting each other, the two of them rolled off of the couch, onto the floor. They exploded into gales of laughter.

“I think you can take charge of Cheever from this point, Hoyt,” Andy announced, smiling broadly. “You two boys have fun. I’ll let myself out.”

From on top of Cheever, Hoyt thanked him, then went back to mauling his Boy’s neck.

They rolled around the garbage-strewn floors, snuffling and nipping at each other, raking their claws along each other’s hairy backs. Hoyt clamped Cheever’s head between his fat, furry thighs, letting him inhale the funk from his sweaty crotch for a while, before guiding his mouth onto his long, meaty cock.

After shooting his load down his Boy’s throat, the two of them cuddled on the messy couch for a while. Hoyt puffed on one of Cheever’s cigars while Cheever slugged down more flat soda from one of his two-liters. Then Cheever’s paw was around Hoyt’s dick again. Slowly, he pleasured Hoyt while he smoked. As Cheever’s strokes grew more rapid, Hoyt’s breathing followed suit. The smoke billowed around him, soaking into his fur, adding its intoxicatingly masculine scent to the other smells that lurked there. He could feel the overheated smoke burning his throat, making it rougher. He wanted a low, rough, sandpapery voice. A voice like a beast.

When he came this time, he smeared some of his cum on his Boy’s face, and the rest on the fur at his own crotch. He wanted them both to be crusted with it. The very idea made him horny all over again.

“Take me to the bedroom, Boy,” he growled.

Cheever’s spacious bedroom was as wonderfully rank as the rest of the place. The sheets had been marinated in his richly foul scent. “On your belly,” Hoyt commanded. Cheever did as he was told, and then Hoyt lifted Cheever’s tail out of the way and started spanking his fat ass.

Laughing, Cheever squealed, “Christ, what are you doing?”

“I want you to spray for me, Skunk. Work them glands!”

“I don’t think it works like that, Daddy, I don’t think they’re really there…!”

Hoyt didn’t let up. He smacked his Boy’s furry behind even harder. “For me, they are. Just do it, or I’ll spank your ass raw.”

Cheever whined, but Hoyt could see his Boy’s ass cheeks tighten up and flex. He didn’t stop walloping him, though, until a cloud of acrid, oily liquid blasted him in the face. He roared with pleasure, and then he dove face-first between the furry ass-cheeks, sniffing and licking at Cheever’s hole, getting every last drop of the secretions in his mouth before probing deeper with his tongue. His long tail thumped against the bed.

They screwed in Cheever’s stinking, sweat-stained bed until dawn. When Cheever seemed to be weakening, Hoyt fed him some cold pizza and fried chicken from the kitchen. Even when Cheever claimed to be full, Hoyt didn’t stop. He told him that only his Daddy Rat knew what was best for him. He wanted to see how fat his Skunk could grow. Cheever, solemnly obedient, wolfed down whatever Hoyt sat in front of him. When he confessed to Hoyt that his belly hurt, Cheever tenderly massaged it for him. They talked about the future, about how Hoyt would handle things for him. Finally, Hoyt excused himself, to piss out all the beers he’d been drinking all night.

Cheever scoffed. “Where the hell do you think you’re going?”

“To the toilet, dumbass!”

Cheever pointed to his own mouth. “Here it is, Daddy Rat.”

“Holy shit. All those two-liters… that wasn’t pop in there, was it?”

Cheever shook his head, a drunken grin on his face.

Happily scrambling back onto the bed, Hoyt gripped his outsized cock in a furry, taloned hand and splashed his hot, stinking piss into his Skunk Boy’s mouth.

Barely audible above the pulsing music, the cameras whirred, swiveling about, directed by motion sensors. Hoyt knew what their viewers would see. A chunky biker daddy engaged in water sports with his fat, nerdy boy.

If only they knew, he thought. If only their eyes were open.

Hey, who’s this mischievous-looking fellow? What does he want to do to you? Could it be I’m writing a story about him? We’ll find out his deal in a week or so.

Disappearing Act, part 3 of 3

He decided to confront him. His plump fists balled up as he stomped towards the shop, but they just as quickly relaxed again. Yes, he wanted to be angry with Ambrose. He just couldn’t, though. It wasn’t just the false sense of merriment that Ambrose had forced on him, that held him back. It was just that the whole thing seemed so silly. It just didn’t make any sense to be mad about it. What was this, after all, but a mischievous prank? Hell, maybe he even deserved it. Well, soon enough it would be over, and then they could part as friends. He would like that.

As he approached the shop’s door, however, Ambrose turned the tables by suddenly hurtling outward and seizing his wrist in a white-gloved hand. Smoothly, Ambrose swung him around and pulled him through an adjacent door that led to a flight of stairs, until they were in the hallway to a series of apartments above the shop.

Now, Freddie really felt anger, or at least as much anger as he could muster. It came out as bemused exasperation. “’Ere now, Ambrose,” he cried. “What’s this all about, then?” By now, Ambrose had gotten him into a small, dark room, occupied chiefly by a bed.

Grinning devilishly, the great, hairy man practically threw Freddie onto it. “Oh, you’re coming along splendidly,” he growled.

Freddie rolled his eyes. “Yes indeed, guv’nor, you’ve got me speaking like a Cockney. A fair trick. I suppose congratulations are in order.” He realized that he had instinctively started to disrobe, although he hadn’t intended to, and he couldn’t seem to stop himself.

“It’s more than that, Freddie, as you well know.” As he spoke, Ambrose casually pulled off his gloves, revealing his almost furry hands with their long, dark, and curiously sharp nails. “I mean the rest of it. Your stature and your weight, for example.”

Pulling his roomy trousers off and letting them puddle in a heap by the bed, Freddie said, “Too right, your little trick o’ perception. Makin’ me think I’m gettin’ shorter and fatter. And hairier, like you, old son. Very cute, that.”

His eyes seeming to flicker orange in the dim light, Ambrose paused and regarded him, stroking his long, forked beard sagely. “Come now, Freddie. I know you don’t think much of my skills as a magician, but you know nothing of my abilities as a sorcerer. This isn’t some flimsy, hypnotic illusion. It’s all quite true and very much real. Even you can’t be so dense as to think otherwise. I’m doing something I should have done a long time ago. I’m making you into a proper Englishman, and what’s more, I’m making you enjoy it.”

At his core, Freddie realized it was true. He’d read accounts of trances, but they were all brief, dream-like affairs. Nothing at all like what he had experienced that morning. No wonder nobody else was staring at him. He wasn’t a slim man of average height in baggy pants rolled up to his knees. He was well and truly a short, portly gentleman who’d found the need to cuff his pants, slightly. It was unreal. He didn’t know what to think. What concerns he had were driven from his brain by his admiration for Ambrose.

His lover could be an infuriating man at times, Freddie thought, but he also had to admit he was a magnificent specimen, like an ancient rustic god. He knew that beneath the tuxedo lurked a brawny, muscular body covered in a luxurious black pelt, like a panther’s. His face, by contrast, was beautiful, with its gleaming amber eyes, the fine, straight nose, the wily smirk. Not to mention the perfectly groomed beard and the carefully oiled mane of raven hair. Ambrose was truly an awesome sight to behold. And if what he had claimed was true, if he really had the power to transform men, then he was intimidating as well. Not in a fearful way, though. The revelation made him mysterious and thrilling. An unknown, untamed force.

“Will I keep changing?” Freddie’s voice was hushed, his tone awestruck and childlike. “Will I change back?”

“You will, and you won’t, my love. I can’t put any more spells on you, for the same reason I don’t dare use my abilities on stage. We’ll get into all that later. And it doesn’t matter. This is better for you than how you were before, and I think you agree. I saw you fondling yourself in that alley.”

Freddie sat on the bed, naked from the waist down, his coat, vest and shirt laid beside him, with himself wearing only a half-buttoned undergarment and his low topper. He gazed at Ambrose helplessly, not sure of what to say.

“I know you, Freddie,” Ambrose purred. “You may have prided yourself on being a lovely-looking young man, all smooth and hairless with pink cheeks and golden locks, but you’ve always had a thing for the ursine, mature types, haven’t you? Hairy men, men with some character to them. Well, so have I. And now we can both have access to that, whenever we want. Rubbing your furry belly, there, it excited you, didn’t it? It should. That’s where hair belongs, for a sturdy little man like yourself.” He plucked Freddie’s low topper off his head and lightly tossed it over his shoulder. It caught on the doorknob and hung there. Then, he lifted Freddie’s hand and placed it on his forehead. “Not here.” Indeed, his pate was smooth as silk, all the way to the crown. Freddie gasped and put his other hand to his head. A generous bald spot had appeared on the back. The hair that remained was short and curly, not the longer, wavy stuff he’d been known for. Patting his temples, he discovered a set of bushy sideburns that extended halfway down to his jawline. They were thick and furry, and very soft. Marvelous. He could feel his cock grow warm and hard.

Ambrose chuckled. “Please, be my guest. Explore.”

Unbuttoning his underclothes all the way, Freddie marveled at the firm, hairy gut he’d acquired, some six or seven inches deep. As he’d suspected, his crotch had also gone from near-hairlessness to being covered in a tremendous bush of dense hairs, a mix of brown, gray, and white. His balls had expanded to the size of fists, and while his eight-inch cock wasn’t any longer, it had thickened up to a good four inches wide, with a foreskin that was long and drooping. Although it was still only at half-mast, a great amount of precum was already leaking from the tip. His hands, so much thicker and with stumper fingers than before, went to work on his cock, quickly bringing it to full attention. At some point, his soft, smooth fingertips had acquired rough callouses. The sensation of them on his cock felt wonderful.

He played with himself for a while, occasionally grinning up at Ambrose, who was smiling down at him with what looked like genuine pride. As he finally shot his load, in a creamy, ropy blast that arced across the room, his trembling ecstasy was joined by the odd fizziness that he’d felt so many other times that day. It concentrated on his chest. As he watched, the thick coat of fur on his belly surged upward, covering his chest in a mat of hairs. His areola went from nickel-sized to being larger than half-dollars, and his nipples blew up to the size of thimbles. He could feel his whole body spasm from the intensity of the combined pleasures, and then he fell limply back onto the bed once more.

Lazily, he extended a hand towards his lover. “Join me, luv! I want your big, beastly body smashin’ me down into the bed.”

Ambrose only shook his head. “Tonight we’ll rut like deer, I promise, but you need to get back out there for now. Mix with your people, acclimate. You have more changing to do, yet, before you’re a complete Brit. And don’t forget about the music hall. You’re due there at 3 o’clock.”

He was disappointed, but he clambered off of the bed and submitted to being dressed. He seemed to have gotten shorter, still, but he found he enjoyed having a boyfriend who towered over him. His arms had become quite muscular and stout, although with a thick layer of fat over them. It made him look pugnacious. Scrappy. He found he enjoyed that, too. His clothes fit him far better than before, although he decided to keep his shirt sleeves rolled up. He noticed that both his shirt and vest were still extremely loose in the belly area. He had a pretty good idea, now, of what that foretold. His garments were becoming more colorful, too, somehow. His charcoal gray trousers had a bluish cast, while his matching coat had deepened into a red-wine hue. The fabric on it had thickened up into a felt-like wool, and the rolled-up cuffs had become a permanent fixture and were adorned with great brass buttons. The back had extended into a long, forked tail. It was in the midst of transforming into a relic from the Regency era, it seemed. It was far too warm to wear it, blessedly, so he kept it draped over one burly arm.

Downstairs, Ambrose kept to the doorway but ushered Freddie out onto the streets with a slap on his rump. He felt refreshed, and certainly more at home amongst the bustling, working-class people than he ever had before. He grinned at the faces he saw, and they grinned back. He tipped his low topper to many a lady and gent. To beggars, he offered donations of a half-crown or more, and dutifully took whatever pitiful wares they happened to be proffering as part of the exchange. As he slipped an old woman’s wilted violets into his vest pocket, she murmured, “You’re a good man, Johnny.”

“Go on with ya,” he laughed. Many strangers were addressing him as Johnny, and although it perplexed him, he had stopped bothering to question it. It seemed to fit this new body of his.

He found himself falling into conversations with men he’d passed on the streets of Shoreditch dozens of times in the last year but had never thought to speak with before. Suddenly, he had a sense of what to talk about with them. He had the compulsion to offer opinions on subjects he’d never even thought about previously, and the opinions appeared to be learned ones, because the other conversant would nod his head and agree with him on the spot. He’d developed a great sympathy for the working class and the poor of London. The Royal Family, which he had previously admired, had become a subject of derision for him. He dismissed King Edward VII as an unrepentant playboy and a cheat at cards.

Lunch was a heaping portion of fish and chips, and then he wound up at a pub. His old inclination for wine had all but disappeared. Instead, he downed countless mugs of warm, dark beer, with his stocky body barely feeling the effects even after two hours. A group of men pulled him into a game of darts. He had never played the game before, but he found that if he relaxed his mind and acted on the impulses that Ambrose had placed there, that he could at least fake it and not do half bad.

It was hot and quite humid from the mass of bodies in the small, dark tavern. He doffed his low topper and wiped his forehead. More of his hair had gone missing, he found. With a calloused hand, he felt about his scalp and discovered that his hairline had retreated entirely to the back of his head. His sideburns, meanwhile, had grown down to his jawline and were approaching the sides of his mouth. The curling hairs were probably an inch-and-a-half long now.

The other men had gathered around him at a table, and were smoking stubby little pipes while regaling him with their troubles. As he breathed the highly spiced smoke, Freddie began to feel a bit left out. He was used to smoking silk-cut cigarettes, on occasion, mostly for how fashionable it made him appear. Now, though, he had a genuine longing for a pipe. He thought the rough, working-class blokes in his group looked incomplete without a pipe jutting from their mustachioed lips, the dense, curling smoke drifting from their mouths. His hands, on their own, had picked up his coat, which was now a deep crimson color. One hand darted into an inner pocket and produced a very old-fashioned looking pipe with a foot-long stem, a leather tobacco pouch, and a small metal tamper.

Acquiring a light from one of his companions, Freddie leaned back in his chair and exhaled a billowing cloud of smoke through his nostrils.

“I ain’t seen an instrument like that since the Crimean War,” one of the older men quipped, nodding towards the pipe.

Taking the pipe from his mouth, Freddie exhaled more smoke and said, “What’s good enough for me granddad is good enough for me.”

The other men broke into barking laughter. “Old Johnny Bolland knows the score,” one of them roared.

Again that name. Freddie wondered if that’s who he was, now. It made a kind of sense. Freddie Standish was a young, slim, American tosser. Johnny Bolland was a stout, middle-aged Cockney bloke. It was getting harder to even think of himself as Freddie. The more that people called him Johnny, the deeper the name burrowed into his consciousness. Freddie, that shallow, scheming, social climber, had become the volunteer in a disappearing act. Nobody would miss him. The few that might claim to, only wanted his body. And not even the whole body. Just a few parts, which they could find on countless other beautiful young boys.

He knew its was time to just give in. If everybody else thought he was Johnny Bolland, then that’s who he would be.

At the front of the pub, a trio of sailors had broken into some patriotic ballad. The song rolled through the pub, getting picked up by every patron in turn, until finally his own group at the back of the pub were singing it. He wanted to join in, but he didn’t know the words. And yet, snatches of this unknown melody were bubbling up in his mind. Relax, he told himself. Let it happen. He took a long draw from his pipe, rubbed his great belly, which by now had doubled in size, and let his mind go blank. The next thing he knew, he had leapt to his feet and was waving the pipe like a baton while he led his group in the chorus:

Sons of the sea, all British born Sailing every ocean, laughing foes to scorn They may build their ships, my lads And they think they know the game But they can’t build boys of the bulldog breed Who made old England’s name

That earned him another several beers, all from other pub patrons. It was getting near to three o’clock. With regret, he made his exit, and was sent off by dozens of admirers, all of them laughing and cheering.

Johnny Bolland, in a jolly mood and pleasantly drunk, walked out of the pub and into a rare afternoon of bright sun. He could see now that the thick growth of hairs on his belly and chest had spread all the way down his arms, onto the backs of his hands. His coat, still slung over one of these fat, furry arms, had gone redder than a tomato. His trousers were the intense shade of a bluebird’s wing. Only his vest was still a dark gray, and it looked terribly out of place. It was a bit annoying, but it didn’t dampen his mood. He felt wonderful. He loved everybody he saw. They were his people. And they loved him, too. “Good old Johnny Bolland,” people cried out as he passed them. More than once, he heard one person remark to another, “It’s that Johnny Bolland, off to the music hall.” Although how they knew where he was going, he couldn’t say.

Distantly, he was aware that pictures of him were everywhere, especially on adverts. Well, not him, precisely, but men who resembled him, coat and belly and whiskers and all. Or maybe Johnny Bolland had taken pains to resemble these men, for some reason. Whatever the case, it appeared his friends and neighbors loved him for it.

Rather than march through the entrance with the rest of the crowd, Johnny’s legs took him down a side street towards the stage door. A man with a clipboard motioned him through. Surrendering to his impulses, Johnny darted through smoky hallways, past stretching contortionists and a fat Pearly Queen tippling from a little flask, up into the wings of the stage itself.

Ambrose was waiting for him. “My fine, stout lad,” he whispered. “You’re perfect now. Get ready. You’re on. This is your job, after all.”

Johnny wasn’t sure. He was troubled by something, still. His vest. He looked down at the dismal gray fabric, then pleadingly up at Ambrose.

“I know, Johnny,” he said. “I was saving this part for last.” He placed a broad hand on Johnny’s tremendous gut. Rapidly, stripes of red, blue and white shot out from beneath his palm, until the entire vest front was emblazoned in England’s proud flag. The Union Jack.

Onstage, a man in an exaggerated golfing outfit with an oversized club over his shoulder basked in the applause from some awful joke he’d just made, and then he said, “Next on the bill, we have a real treat! It’s your friend and mine, good old Johnny Bolland, as that rough and ready, bold and true, upright vanguard of Old Blighty, Mister! John! Bull!”

The roar of the crowd was still echoing in Johnny’s ears that night as Ambrose sported with him. As his beastly lover snuffled at his calloused, hairy flesh, gave little love bites and licked him all over with a wonderfully long tongue, Johnny could still picture himself walking timidly to the center of the stage and asking the conductor to play “There’ll Always Be An England.” His voice, high and thin, almost like a flute, ripened into something deeper and richer as he sang. A booming, sandy baritone, loud enough to carry throughout the theater and into the streets. He had the crowd on their feet, then, swinging their mugs of beer and their glasses of gin, swaying in time to the music, stomping their feet, waving their caps in the air. He followed up with “All the Nice Girls Love a Sailor,” then “Green Grow the Rushes O” and finally “Jerusalem.” By now, the crowd was audience’s energy had grown to a fever. He could feel it moving through him, more intensely than even Ambrose’s magic had done. He felt as though it was lifting him off of his feet, like the crowd had made him ethereal and yet enormous, a ghost, a cosmic spirit, bigger than the world and clutching them all to his chest, like an angel. When it was over, he was spent, and yet he’d never felt better in all his life. Practically stumbling back into the wings, he fell exhausted into Ambrose’s arms.

"Steady, old boy,” Ambrose exclaimed, as the other performers had a sympathetic laugh at the sight. Then, Ambrose leaned in closer. He whispered something in his ear, and they were the best two words in the world.

“Welcome home.”

Disappearing Act, part 2 of 3

Freddie Standish awoke from the best night's sleep he’d ever had, which had immediately followed the best fuck he’d ever had. It seemed Ambrose had forgiven him for his little indiscretion at the party the other night. It was a relief. He wasn’t sorry he’d said those things, but he did regret the way he’d said them, and where. He knew Ambrose was a mature, reasonable man. Surely he, too, had sensed that it was time for the two of them to part company. Not immediately, but definitely soon. He had to find a new job, first. Something closer to the nicer parts of town, ideally, where he could meet wealthier men. He’d already encountered a few older gents who had seemed on the verge of making some very attractive offers, but back then he had been deeply in love with Ambrose, and he had rebuffed them right away. He’d already taken pains to see that wouldn’t happen again. He could hear the clattering of pots in the next, and only, room. Ambrose was making breakfast on the little pot-bellied stove near their one window. Their one, tiny, narrow little window. He had never pictured himself living in such confined quarters. The two-room apartment (a “bed-sit”, Ambrose had called it) had seemed welcoming to him eight months ago, when things looked bleak. Now, though…! It was like living in a shoebox. He longed to be in a mansion again. Even if he only worked there, even if he had only one room to himself, at least he would get to walk around the rest of it, most of the time. Ah, well. His plan was in motion. It would happen, sooner or later. He hopped out of bed and splashed some water on his face at the wash stand. He studied his countenance in the little mirror there. It seemed a bit round and plump to him, but he chalked that up to bloating from the two bottles of wine Ambrose had shared with him prior to their romp. He brushed his great thatch of golden hair. He did a double-take at the brush after setting it back down. More hairs than usual seemed to have come out this time. Well, he was so distracted by how contented he felt, he perhaps had brushed a little more forcefully and carelessly than usual. For that matter, he couldn’t remember if he had cleaned the old hairs from the brush the previous morning. Probably that was it. Ambrose’s silky bass-baritone voice called to him from the sitting room. “Are you up and about, lad? Come, have breakfast with me!” It was an irresistibly sexy voice, Freddie had to admit. Such beautiful round tones, the precise use of vibrato in certain syllables to maximize their effect. The crisp perfection of that purloined upper-class accent. Ambrose really could pass for a member of the gentry, Freddie mused, as long as one didn’t spend too much time with him. He looked and sounded the part, but sooner or later he betrayed hints of his low-class upbringing. Certain bits of etiquette still escaped him. And his invented history was deliberately formless. He’d apparently been more comfortable with steering conversations away from himself, with classic magician’s misdirection and patter, rather than bother to learn anything about the best boarding schools or the difference between a Marquess and a Marquis, or even something simple like the Table of Precedence. Perhaps it was just as well. Ambrose could never be admitted to the rarified air of the upper class. The striations of London society were far more rigid than those in New York. Even if you had money in London, you could be barred from certain clubs just by dint of having attended the wrong school. Freddie had learned that as an American, he occupied a unique position here. His family connections across the water ensured that he could at least be tolerated as an exotic guest in places that would have slammed their doors in Ambrose’s face. No, Ambrose was a dear friend, but their union was a mere stepping stone for Freddie, not anything approaching “a romance for the ages.” His mind brimming with plans, he pulled on his pajama bottoms and practically skipped into the sitting room. And nearly tripped over himself, his toes catching in the fabric at the hem. The damned thing seemed to have been stretched out. The laundress had really botched her job with them this time. He hiked the pajamas up higher. He felt a bit foolish and out-of-sorts, but drove the feelings from his mind. He still felt too good for any minor irritation to ruin his day. Ambrose, the handsome beast, was decked out for the morning in his scarlet pajama bottoms and his purple brocade lounge robe. The robe was tied loosely at the waist, exposing a great deal of his furry chest. His intensely groomed beard and mustache were only slightly mussed from being smashed into a pillow all night, but his great head of wavy hair was a mess, protruding in all directions, gathering in pointed tufts that almost looked like a crown of thorns. He had their little table set for breakfast, and was doling out portions of sausages and mashed potatoes onto the plates. “Oh, dear,” he cried. “I seem to have forgotten to purchase your usual assortment of cheeses and fruit. I do hope bangers and mash will suffice.” Freddie’s stomach rumbled its approval. Normally he wouldn’t have touched the stuff, since he dreaded what the grease would do to his figure, but for some reason it looked positively mouthwatering. “Bangers and mash is my new favorite,” he replied. He paused. The word “mash” had come out sounding funny, more like “mosh.” Like how one of their Cockney neighbors would have pronounced it. “Mosh,” he repeated. “Mosh, mosh.” For the life of him, he couldn't seem to say it properly. Ambrose’s bright hazel eyes were glowing with amusement. “Are we feeling quite well, dearest?” Freddie smiled through his confusion. “It seems as though you have literally fucked my brains out!” They both laughed at that, but a vague worry had taken root in his mind. His thoughts actually were a touch fuzzy. And yet, he was gripped by an overwhelming sense of cheerfulness and optimism. His body felt lighter than it had in ages. They discussed their plans for the day, as they ate. Freddie had secretly spoken with some men in their circle who were sympathetic to his plight. They were to provide him with letters of introduction that would practically guarantee him work and lodging with some well-to-do merchant family, as a tutor, a secretary, or librarian. These men also clearly expected something in return… a clandestine tumble, or at the very least, a quick hand job. It seemed like a fair transaction. This was the day he would visit with them and obtain the letters. To Ambrose, he merely said he was “paying social calls to some acquaintances” and gave out a few general locations he would be traveling to. “I see. Please, don’t forget that you need to keep up your search for employment. If you could make a few inquiries while you’re knocking about town, it would be most helpful.” Freddie nodded. He hoped his face didn’t betray his guilt. Ambrose went on to tell him that he had a series of errands to run about town, most of them pertaining to his magic act. Visiting prop houses, costumers, and so on. Somehow, they managed to be near all the places Freddie would visit. “Perhaps I’ll run into you, now and then,” Ambrose said, with a typically impish grin. “I could fondle you between tea times.” Freddie washed and dressed first. It took him a while to find an outfit that was even halfway suitable. There was something wrong with all of his clothes. Everything seemed just a bit too large for him. Still, he had to wear something, so he put on the suit that was the least baggy and called it good. He wondered if Ambrose was playing a trick on him. Maybe he hadn’t forgiven him for his remarks, after all. It was best to approach the subject from an oblique angle, he decided. He complained that his clothes were all stretched out, and asked Ambrose if he knew anything about it. "Perhaps you are shrinking, Freddie,” he quipped. “Have you ever considered that?” Freddie smirked. “Very funny, you silly sausage.” Again, he was confused by the words issuing from his lips. He’d only intended to say “Very funny,” but he’d been struck by the compulsion to add “you silly sausage,” a phrase he’d only heard from Cockneys. And to top it off, he’d adopted a Cockney accent when he’d said it. "I’d no idea you did impressions," Ambrose rejoined. "You should go on the stage. Speaking of which, you must visit me at the music hall this afternoon. Three o’clock, at the latest. We have a new act coming on that I insist you see.” “The music hall…?” Freddie strained not to roll his eyes, but his feelings were written on his face. “Now, now, lad. None of your impudence. Not today. We’ll see about getting your things to a tailor tomorrow. The clothes you’re in now will do very well for the friends we have. Out you go, and be quick about it. But first, give us a kiss.” His robe had come open even more, exposing one of his meaty nipples. Which he scratched with a long, dark nail, absently. Freddie dutifully stood there while Ambrose crouched down and planted a long, wet, furry kiss on his mouth. Then Ambrose rose back up and clutched Freddie close to himself. He sighed contentedly. Freddie, however, couldn’t help but notice something very off about their relative heights. Ambrose had always been a lot taller than him, but he could clearly recall Ambrose’s fat nipples being level with his mouth. He knew that because of all the times he had sucked on them. Now, Ambrose’s nipples were at the same height as Freddie’s nose. He had to say something; it was just too odd. “I’m sorry, but it really does seem like I’m getting shorter. Unless you’re getting taller.” “Why not both?” Ambrose smiled winning down at him, his glistening white incisors looking almost like fangs. “That’s not funny, Ambrose. Maybe I’m ill. Something with my spine, maybe. I had an uncle who contracted a bone disease. His spine got all twisted and hunched. Maybe that’s what this is.” “You’re imagining things. What you need is fresh air, lad. One more hug, and then it’s out the door for you.” Reluctantly, Freddie submitted to another embrace. “Wait, wait,” Ambrose murmured. Placing a broad, hairy hand atop Freddie’s head, he pushed him downward six more inches, so that his mouth was touching Ambrose’s navel. “Yes, that will be better,” he added. "We ain't amused,” Freddie grumbled. Again, his words were coming out wrong, and the blasted Cockney accent had reasserted itself. “Fresh air, lad,” Ambrose said, his voice almost stern. “Now.” He placed Freddie’s bowler hat on his head and hustled him out the door. Twice, he almost tripped on his cuffs again, just walking down the narrow set of stairs in their building. How he hated that dark, narrow stairwell, and the cheap, crumbling building in general! Everything in Shoreditch was dark, and narrow, and cheap. The streets, the shops, the people. He put these gloomy thoughts away, and allowed himself to dream of the future, when he’d be in a bright, open, airy mansion again. Someplace with tall windows, and vaulted ceilings, where the woodwork and the marble floors were glistening and clean. A place that shined. He still wasn’t sure if he should keep his appointments in that baggy suit. He marked time for a bit, wandering the streets, ducking in and out of shops. He picked up bits of merchandise and set them back down without really looking at them. Ambrose’s joke about his getting shorter had touched a nerve. He truly didn’t feel quite like himself. And yet, he was strangely jolly. He couldn’t help it. Every now and then, a peculiar fizziness seemed to wash over his skin, like he was being splashed with champagne. His heavy breakfast somehow hadn’t satiated him. He found a vendor selling meat pies, ordered three, and devoured them on the spot. The pie seller, a burly, balding, mustachioed gent in a striped apron, talked him up. Freddie did his best to converse between bites. The pie seller asked, no, almost demanded to know, where Freddie was from. Freddie figured the man wouldn’t know Long Island from a hole in the ground, so he decided to be more general in his reply. “New York City, mate,” he answered, wincing both at his unbidden choice of the word “mate” and how he pronounced it: “mite,” just like a Cockney. The pie seller snorted. “Thought as much. You ain’t foolin’ me with that cod accent, guv’nor. What’s yer game, anyhow?” Freddie forced himself to measure his words, speak clearly and properly, with the upper crust Yankee accent of his youth. The compulsion to slip into Cockney was strong, though. “I honestly can’t help it, ma--, er, my good man. I moved here nearly a year ago. I guess you lot are rubbin’ off on me!” He pronounced the last word “may”, and hated himself for it. The pie seller guffawed at that. “Ain’t a thing wrong with that, sir. I say welcome, then, and we’re glad to have ya. Another pie?” The fizziness swarmed over Freddie’s body once more, lingering longer than before. He could feel his flat stomach bulge out slightly, pressing against his baggy vest. Although he was convinced he could eat another dozen pies, he forced himself to withdraw. “Sorry, mate,” he chuckled. “Three’s me limit.” Looking him up and down, the pie seller thumped at his own stomach and winked. “You’re a damned liar, sir, but a gentleman nonetheless. A very good day to you!” Freddie’s heels dragged on his pants cuffs as he stumbled away, feeling very full, if somewhat confused. He took advantage of an alley’s privacy to adjust his suspenders and hike up his pants. There, he discovered something alarming. His stomach wasn’t just bloated from food. It had somehow become an actual gut, as though he had gained twenty-five pounds since he’d awakened that morning. Scarcely believing it, he unbuttoned his vest, shirt, and underclothes to get a direct look at his burgeoning stomach. Not only was it real and solid, but stranger still, the gut had acquired a coating of short, fine hairs. Unlike the delicate puff of golden hair that floated above his cock as his only example of pubes, these hairs were mostly brown, with a few gray ones sprinkled throughout. Freddie had always prided himself on being the very picture of Youth in Flower. This new development was as mortifying as it was uncanny. He poked the gut, watching in amazement as his fingertips sank into the soft, spongy flesh. Gingerly, he placed his palms on his stomach. The sensation was surprisingly pleasant. The hairs were soft against his skin. He found himself rubbing his gut, massaging it, slowly, for quite a long time. He thought about how much better it would feel if the hairs were thicker, and longer. He closed his eyes, picturing himself with a large belly, covered in a pelt as thick as Ambrose’s. He could almost feel the hairs growing between his fingers as he rubbed at them. When he opened his eyes again, he saw that they had. He yanked his hands away, gasping. His stomach had grown once more, and was adorned with a curling, gray-brown fur. It stopped below his chest, which was still as smooth and hairless as before. Hurriedly, he buttoned up. Despite the unexplainable transformation of his midsection, his clothes were not strained at all by it. Quite the opposite, in fact. There was plenty of room left. The same could be said for his sleeves, which had almost swallowed his hands whole. Wearily, rolled up the cuffs of his coat, three, four, then five inches. Deciding that wouldn’t do at all, he doffed his coat and slung it over one arm, while he rolled up his shirt sleeves. If he hadn’t looked fit to meet with any gentlemen before, he certainly didn’t now. “I look a bloody fool,” he muttered to himself. No, that wasn’t how he talked. He made himself say the sentence over. “I look like a damned fool.” That was better. Even if the accent persisted. His plans for the day were shot, then. And yet, he dreaded going home. He didn’t want to be alone. The Shoreditch natives, for all their annoying quirks and eccentricities, were at least a welcoming bunch, he thought. More so than the Long Island toffs… no, that wasn’t right. “Toffs” was an English term. “Snobs.” That was what he had meant to think. Hadn't it? Something was wrong with him. He knew he should be more scared, or angry, or even sad about it. More anything. Anything other than this buoyant, idiotic jollity that had overtaken him. But how, and why? It was Ambrose, he realized, who had done this to him. Through hypnosis, of course. Nobody could really change like he had. But Ambrose was a passable mentalist. Apparently he had gotten his revenge on him for the incident at the party, by making him think he was becoming a short, hairy Cockney. In other words, somebody with no more chance of escaping Shoreditch than Ambrose himself had. Well, it would pass. It would have to. And in the meantime, who cared if he made an ass of himself in Shoreditch? Nobody of importance lived there. The wind was warm and growing stronger, carrying with it that particular London stench that he still hadn’t gotten used to. There were the odors of refuse, of rotting meats and vegetables. There was offal from the butcher shops and shit from the horses. Threaded among these scents were hints of sweetness and spice. Pastries and puddings and heavily perfumed soaps, and intriguing curries and sauces. He inhaled it all, giddily, letting Ambrose’s hypnotic spell have its way with his senses. He laughed at himself, at the sensation that he was getting shorter and fatter still, feeling the itchiness of newly growing hairs crawl down onto his groin and tickle his balls. He stopped more than a few times to adjust the cuffs of his pants, pulling them up higher and higher. He was plainly aware that he must look a fool, that the hems that seemed to be dragging on the ground were really up around his knees, but he honestly didn’t care anymore. Nobody else did, either. Nobody gave him a second glance. In Bethnal Green Road, a passing stranger called out to him. “As I live and breathe,” the man cried. “Johnny! Johnny Bolland!” Freddie looked around, not sure at first that the man was addressing him, but the stranger kept drawing closer and closer, until the encounter couldn’t be avoided. He was a squat, roly-poly gent with a ruddy, shiny-cheeked face and sideburns that were a bit too long for the current fashion. His gait was rolling and his route to Freddie was a winding one. Plainly, the man was soused. “Good old Johnny Bolland,” the stranger said again. “You old rascal! Where have ya been keepin’ yerself?” “I beg yer pardon, mate,” Freddie answered, not bothering to fight the Cockney voice anymore. “I’m afraid ye’ve confused me with another. Freddie’s the name. Freddie Standish.” The stranger drew back in consternation and regarded Freddie through a squint. “Get over! No tricks, now, Johnny, I know it’s you!” “We’ve ain’t never met, guv, I swear on me mother’s grave. I guess I’m cursed with ‘one of them faces,’ as they say.” “If you’re cursed, then so am I, Johnny. Come off it, now! Unless… hold on.” He leaned in closer, his breath blasting Freddie’s nostrils with the sharp scent of ale. “Are ye hidin’ out from creditors? Are they about? Is that why you’re actin’ so strange-like?” Freddie didn’t bother to answer this, because his thoughts were still plagued by something the drunkard had said just before. He had to ask about it. “What did ye mean, if I’m cursed with this face, then so are you?” The man snorted, slapping Freddie sharply on the arm. “The Black Lion, Johnny! Remember what they used to call us there? The Twins? Don’t flatter yerself, boyo, you ain’t got no handsomer since then, nor any thinner!” He tapped his fingers on Freddie’s belly, playfully. “Never mind all that. I’ll leave ye be. Ye get one o’ them creditor bastards alone, you give ‘em a kick in the teeth for me, eh? Now, give us a hug.” As Freddie awkwardly accepted the fat little man’s embrace, the stranger whispered in his ear, “If you’re still up for a bit of slap and tickle, ye know where to find me.” Before he could even respond, the wind lifted Freddie’s bowler hat off of his head and sent it skidding down the street. The stranger trotted after it, scooping it up and dusting it off for him. He wasn't sure it was his hat, actually, or even a hat at all. The felt had gone loose, almost shapeless. But as the drunkard brushed his hands against it, it seemed to firm up once more. Strangely, though, it had become another style altogether. A “low topper”, a very old-fashioned-looking style of top hat with an abbreviated crown. With great ceremony, he presented it to Freddie, who accepted it wordlessly. “Good old Johnny Bolland,” the drunk grinned. The drunk went on his merry, circuitous way, leaving Freddie frozen to the spot. “The Twins,” he thought, feeling a razor-thin edge of terror carve into his carefree mood. The stumpy fellow had inferred that they looked alike, meaning… what? That he really was turning into somebody else? The thought was startling, but even now his brief moment of fright had given way to that insidious, bubbly joy. Another possibility occurred to him. Ambrose had paid an actor to accost him in the street and bolster the hypnotic illusion he had created in his mind. Of course, that had to be it. Sure enough, he could glimpse an enormous figure in an opera cape and top hat peeping at him from the doorway of a boot shop, before hurriedly withdrawing into the shop’s dark interior.

Disappearing Act, part 1 of 3

Foreplay that night was brief, which suited them both. There were strokes and tickles, and Ambrose spent some time pinning the smaller Freddie to the bed while he nibbled and licked at his smooth, creamy skin. Ambrose knew that his stiffly waxed handlebar mustache and French Fork beard would scrub Freddie’s pale flesh raw. He also knew that the lad loved it, no matter how much he complained. What he planned to do to Freddie tonight, though, would be far more permanent.

Ambrose could feel his lover’s muscles relax even more as he maneuvered him face-down, flat on his stomach. The kid just wanted to be fucked. That was where their relationship stood at this point. Freddie probably thought they had no future together. Ambrose knew otherwise. Because he was going to give them one. A better one. His mouth curled into a wily smirk as he slicked his fingers with spit and probed Freddie’s hole, preparing it to receive his monstrous cock.

As he pumped his beefy shaft in and out of his boy’s ass, Ambrose pressed his hairy, brawny body into his. He slid his strong, hairy hands between Freddie’s chest and the bed. He massaged the firm flesh of Freddie’s pectorals, and worked his stiffening nipples with his thumbs. He could feel his power spark to life within him, sending crackles of electricity through his muscles. As the power surged through his body, he leaned harder into the boy, wrapping his great arms around his torso, holding him tightly. The boy was his. He had to be made to understand that.

The previous night, he had taken pains to precisely compose his intentions for Freddie. He had written it down several times, over and over, from the time Freddie had gone to bed until he had awakened in the morning. He had reworded it, crossing out lines, tweaking the adjectives, working to get it exactly right. And then he had memorized it, just as he would memorize any monologue for his act. It couldn’t be just a hazy wish. No, he had to be very specific. He couldn’t risk any more magic after tonight. Already, it was leaving its mark. With his hands clasped together beneath Freddie’s slight frame, he could feel his nails lengthening into talons, digging into his own knuckles. Well, that’s what the metal file was for, he told himself. Ignore it. Concentrating, he recited his wish for Freddie to himself, silently. The energy bled into his veins, raced into his heart, his brain.

The feeble candlelight shifted from buttermilk yellow to a rosy pink, and then to a searing, bloody red. It was only his power, Ambrose knew, affecting his eyesight, like it always did. His whole body trembled. He had never used so much of his power before, and it seemed to be boiling inside of him, shaking his body like a tree in a thunderstorm. Orgiastic pulses of enchantment rolled down his limbs, and through his cock. The energy seemed to be gathering below his waist, in his great, furry bull balls. He was a locomotive, a roaring cannon. He shot his spell and his load into Freddie with such force, it actually seemed to push him forward a few inches. The boy whooped, as much from alarm as from pleasure, it seemed, and then his cries dissolved into a breathy, high-pitched laughter.

There was no obvious change to Freddie’s body, not yet. Good, Ambrose thought. He had wanted the transformation to be slow, to ease him into it.

The candlelight was a soft yellow once more. Before Freddie could fully turn his head about and look at Ambrose, Ambrose leaned into him and shoved him down into the flannel sheets. “You rest now, lad,” he’d purred. Freddie mumbled something into the pillow and sighed contentedly.

With the deed accomplished, Ambrose slipped off of the bed and padded into the sitting room, to assess the damage to himself. There was a fairly large mirror there. Nothing like the fine full-length one in the bedroom, but it would have to do. He needed to examine himself in peace. And fix whatever he needed to, before Freddie got up.

He had gotten even hairier, predictably. A bit taller and more muscular, perhaps. But not so much that the casual observer would notice. He’d have to get his suits and costumes altered again. And of course, he would need new shoes. His feet were larger, and naturally, the claws had grown back on them as well. He'd had one larger tuxedo made up beforehand, as a precaution. He hoped now it fit.

His hazel eyes were nearly orange now, but at least they had refrained from turning red. Running his tongue over his teeth, he could tell his canines had gotten a bit longer and sharper, once again. His molars had acquired a jagged quality as well, which was disturbing, but at least they were in the back of his mouth where nobody would notice.

His tongue. It had changed, too. That hadn’t happened before. It was quite a bit longer and flatter, and the tip was almost pointed. Intending to lick his lips, he instead poked himself in the eye with it. That would be a problem. He’d just have to discipline himself to keep it within his mouth at all times. Although, it would be a definite boon when he and Freddie screwed again. He experimented with talking, repeating a snippet of a favorite poem, quietly enough that it wouldn’t rouse Freddie. His speech wasn’t affected, thankfully. And his voice, already an asset to him, had gotten even deeper and fuller. Perfect for a showman.

He ran his long, taloned fingers through his tousled mane of raven-black hair, smoothing it down. Another problem revealed itself. The tips of his ears had grown just the slightest bit pointed. But his ears were normally covered by his hair, anyway, so it wasn’t so bad.

Contentedly, he prepared a pipe for himself, and stretched his long, naked body on the fainting couch to smoke it. His ploy had definitely been worth the cost, he thought. He hadn’t transformed in any way that couldn’t be modified or disguised. He hadn’t grown a tail or sprouted horns. And thank God for that. He preferred to earn his bread as an illusionist, not cavorting within a cage in a freak show. And there was only so much one could hide beneath a tuxedo and a top hat.

He had only learned of his infernal heritage a few years back, in 1902. After a middling performance with a good deal of flubbed patter, he had holed up in his tiny private dressing room in the music hall to sulk. He had sat slumped down in his chair, still dressed in his Chinese robe and turban, drinking gin from a bottle while silently berating his reflection in the makeup mirror. There had been a thunderous rapping at his door. A loud, gravely male voice demanded entrance. Ambrose had refused, vigorously, and with more than a few choice curse words.

His visitor wouldn’t take “Sod off” for an answer, though. The image of a man rose up behind Ambrose’s reflection, causing Ambrose to look behind himself in alarm, only to see no one else in the room. He had looked back at the mirror to see the intruder, a very tall older gentleman sporting the largest, most glorious handlebar mustache in existence, crawl awkwardly out of the glass itself and scramble over the makeup table, sending bottles of greasepaint and hair fixatives flying off to their doom. Ambrose had instinctively jumped back, but had succeeded only in tipping the chair over with himself still in it. His dexterous hands and quick wits had managed to keep the gin bottle perpendicular with the floor the whole time. Not a drop had been spilled. He had been rather proud of that.

The strange old man had loomed over Ambrose. Rather than offer to help him to his feet, he had presented a calling card. Ambrose, not daring to move from his present position, had accepted it. “Sir Charles Magnus-Drake,” the card had read, before abruptly catching fire and vanishing. Ambrose had sucked on his blackened fingertips while the gentleman had rather curtly warned Ambrose against continuing to practice magic. He had gone on to explain that he referred not to the prestidigitation and mentalism of Ambrose’s stage act, but to the genuine manipulation of reality.

Ambrose had fearfully protested that he’d never believed there was such a thing as real magic, much less known that he could perform it. The gentleman had pointed out a certain peculiar phenomenon that Ambrose had experienced, but had never shared with another living soul: the Crimson Blessing, as he liked to think of it. There had been moments when his magic act had hit upon some serious stumbles. Props had malfunctioned. Audience volunteers had proven to be too nervous to cooperate the way they should, or had even intentionally tried to sabotage him, perhaps out of a perverse sense of humor. At these times, Ambrose’s mind would concentrate on how things should have been. Then, his body would shudder with an orgasmic tingling, the world would seem to be suffused with a red glow for a moment, and hey-presto! The prop would miraculously function as it should. The volunteer would suddenly become docile and calm. The performance would be a raging success.

That was magic, the gentleman had informed him.

And it was dangerous. Because it was a wild, elemental type of magic, instinctive to Ambrose because his true father was a demon. An incubus, to be precise, who had romanced his true mother, a little-discussed “aunt” in a madhouse in Manchester. (Poor Ambrose had been rather dazed by the relentless parade of shocking revelations at this point.)

The more Ambrose used his “gift”, the gentleman explained, the more he would change to resemble his hell-spawned sire. Already, Ambrose’s chestnut brown locks had darkened to a glossy ebony, and his hairline had developed a pronounced widow’s peak. He had gained a few extra inches in height, and he had become much hairier, all over. His cock, formerly below average, had grown quite long and stout, and his balls had become as large as peaches. The most obvious changes had been in his face. His previously chubby, mild countenance was starting to take on the angular, sardonic quality of a bust of Pan from the British Museum. His thin eyebrows were coming in much heavier, and were growing arched. And his lips had acquired a mischievous smirk that he couldn’t seem to shake. Even his eye color had altered. From soft green, they had ripened into a warm hazel. “Tending towards blood-red,” the gentleman had pointed out, sourly.

Ambrose hadn’t been oblivious to these changes. Still, he had been just twenty-one at the time, and he had told himself that it wasn’t so very out of the ordinary for a man his age to still be developing. For example, he had attributed his transforming face to a normal loss of baby fat. Even if it was truly strange, he had reasoned, it was best to view his singular transfiguration as a blessing.

Certainly, it was in his own interest to be a new person. His family in Birmingham had thrown him out of the house after he was found screwing a peddler in the alley. Ambrose, not sure what to do next, had ultimately decided to make a clean break with his past life. And so he had departed for London, changed his name, and had invented a vague, romantic past for himself. He had got his hands on nicer clothes however he could, even stooping to stealing them from coat racks and wash lines. He had taught himself to speak with a posh accent. Drawn to the world of the theater, he had fallen in with an aging, degenerate wreck of a magician, working as his assistant. Within a month, his former master was dead of laudanum poisoning and Ambrose was getting booked into music halls as “Ambrosius the Uncanny.” His act was nothing revolutionary, but he got by on pure charm, on stage and off. He gained a reputation for being at once playful, mysterious, and wise. He had remade himself in every possible way. It had just made good sense that his body was doing its part by remodeling itself.

God helps those who help themselves, Ambrose’s (foster) mother had been fond of saying, and it had seemed to apply in this case. But Ambrose’s transforming body wasn’t a blessing at all, the gentleman had told him. It was a curse. “Keep going down this path,” he had intoned, “and you will end up looking like something from a Hieronymus Bosch painting. Your mind will have been completely deranged long before that, of course. At that point, I, or another mage, will be obliged to send you to the chaotic void where your kind belongs.”

Still on his back in the tipped-over chair, Ambrose had made a solemn vow never again to use his strange abilities. The gentleman had seemed warily satisfied by this display of contrition, and had exited. Through the door, this time.

Ambrose had waited a few minutes before daring to get up again. He had giggled. Then he had unleashed a torrent of laughter at his situation. It had sounded only a touch manic to his ears.

The idea that he could do whatever he wished was intoxicating. He just had to be careful. That was all. He had wondered how much more he could exercise his gift without irrevocably ruining his good looks. It was simply a matter of resource management, he had told himself. He had always been good at that. The fact of his unholy parentage wasn’t so very depressing, when one looked at it practically.

He had stayed true to his vow of magical chastity for nearly one whole year. Then, in a fit of anger at a faithless lover, he had wooed the young man into a last coupling, and then he had shrunk his cock down to a nub. The price was another inch in height (and length), a bit more body hair, particularly on his ass, and thicker, darker nails that grew to alarmingly sharp points. It had seemed a fair trade-off. And the rush he had felt, working his magic in the middle of a screw, was transcendent. The sensation had haunted him for a long time, no matter how hard he’d tried to forget it. But again, he had vowed to control himself.

The next time had been accidental. He’d idly wondered how the brawny athlete sucking him off would look with a bald head. Before he could stop himself, his hands had grasped the man’s scalp. The coarse hairs shrank from his touch, retracting into the skin, leaving his partner with a close-shorn horseshoe of hair, making him look a decade older. Ambrose hadn’t been able to tell, afterward, if the athlete was fully aware of what had happened. He had seemed confused, more than anything else.

Ambrose, too, had changed. Now, the hair on his calves and forearms was so thick, it nearly hid the skin. His pubic hair had gained a strangely bestial quality, growing out in very thick tufts that were quite coarse, and quite straight. And quite long. A good six inches, at least, making it look and feel like the scruff on the back of a wolf. His amber eyes were more intense than ever, and glittered brightly when struck by candlelight. His canines had lengthened, ever so slightly.

That would be the last of it, he had told himself. He had resolved to live out the rest of his life as a normal man.

When Ambrose had met Freddie Standish, the spark between them had been immediate. They both loved the theater. And they had both been put out of their family homes.

Of course, their circumstances had been quite different. Ambrose had grown up strictly working-class, raised by a cab-driver. Freddie had come from an old monied family in America. It was money he didn’t have anymore, though, since his father had seen fit to disinherit him once it had become plain he would never “settle down” and produce an heir.

Freddie’s sister Cornelia had sailed from New York to London to seek out a poor but titled husband. It was the typical arrangement. She would further increase her social standing back home by linking her bloodline to a European one with a storied heritage. Her nobleman spouse would enjoy limited access to her fortune and finally get to indulge in the kind of extravagant debauchery previously enjoyed by his ancestors. Freddie had accompanied Cornelia across the ocean as a chaperone. With his sister married off, however, Freddie’s services were no longer required. Cornelia sailed triumphantly home in the arms of a syphilitic Duke, leaving Freddie stranded in England. A castaway on a particularly large, fog-bound island.

Freddie should have done well for himself. He was a fit, handsome young man. His hair was thick and wavy, in a pleasingly golden blonde hue with hints of copper at his temples. His skin was smooth and unblemished and always clean-shaven, lending him a freshness that many found appealing. He was educated and cultured. If he had known how to navigate the secret circles of like-minded men in London, or even that these clandestine societies had existed in the first place, Freddie very well may have found a place in a mansion in Piccadilly Circus, perhaps as a private secretary. But that wasn’t to be. Within a month of being left to his own devices, he had made few local friends and had gone through almost all of the money he’d had. Expelled from his hotel, he’d decided to spend the few coins he’d had left at the music hall where Ambrose performed. He’d had a vague plan of jumping into the Thames after that. When Ambrose had selected him as a volunteer, he had been able to tell that the young man was in distress. He’d invited him to his dressing room afterward. And from there, into his flat in Shoreditch. As Ambrose had suspected, he was a skilled cocksucker, and an eager one.

Freddie was as considerate a houseguest as he was a bedmate. He took Ambrose’s charity with reluctance, at first. When he wasn’t searching for employment, he took care to clean the apartment, often pausing to peruse a book on housecleaning, which Ambrose had thought endearing. He often expressed a desire to stand on his own two feet. Ambrose appreciated that. Sadly, though, Freddie was painfully new to the concept of work. His quarrelsome nature and pampered upbringing led him to clash with his superiors. In the eight months they had been together, Freddie had gone through five different occupations and was currently unemployed.

Still, Ambrose felt more affection for Freddie than he’d had for any other man. Freddie could be an industrious worker when he set his mind to it, even if he bridled against supervision. Besides that, he was clever, generous and empathetic. There were the makings of a fine man beneath the childish exterior. Ambrose knew he could improve him.

At twenty-three, Ambrose was just one year older than Freddie. However, his commanding personality and his dark, roguish looks made him seem very much Freddie’s senior. He had immediately fallen into a fatherly role with his lover, full of advice and gentle-yet-firm admonitions. Other times, the admonitions were a bit harsher, physically. Freddie took the kisses and punishments with admirable humility.

As Freddie grew more accustomed to his new country, though, there were signs he was growing tired of Ambrose. These were most apparent at the private, men’s-only parties Ambrose would escort him to. Ambrose would send the lad to fetch him a fresh glass of port or a slice of cake. When Freddie failed to return promptly, Ambrose would seek him out and find him speaking to another man with a joy and excitement that he’d not seen in him in weeks. At the sound of Ambrose’s voice, Freddie would exhale, and his body would sag. Just a bit. Ambrose had been disappointed, of course, but he hadn’t been angry. Not until two nights ago, when Freddie had done something truly unforgivable. He had insulted Ambrose’s profession.

Ambrose had been conversing with a Covent Garden set painter, describing a new magic cabinet he’d designed. “It operates flawlessly,” he had enthused. “The effect is breathtaking.” For corroboration, he had turned to Freddie, who had been standing off to the side, staring brazenly at a tailor in form-fitting trousers.

Freddie had coughed politely and nodded. Not quite under his breath, he had muttered, “Of course, when you’ve seen Caruso sing 'Rigoletto' at the Met, music hall nonsense can’t quite compare…!”

The set painter had been intrigued by this aside. “You enjoy opera, then? Perhaps I can arrange for tickets.” He had glanced nervously at Ambrose’s unsmiling face. “For both of you,” the set painter had hastily added.

“I saw opera singers often in New York,” Freddie said. “Now the best I can manage is a music hall performer… a music hall, I mean.” A shushing noise had invaded the “s” in “music. Freddie had been hitting the wine quite hard that night, Ambrose had realized.

“I thought you loved the music hall,” Ambrose had said, quietly. “You told me it was grander than you had expected. All the carvings. The gold paint.”

“Indeed, gold paint. Not gold leaf. It’s vulgar. Oh, I’m sorry, Ambrose. It’s fine, really. It’s just not a real theater, is all. And what’s on the stage, there? Not real singers. Not quality ones, anyway. Just a lot of fat Cockneys in those awful pearl-button suits, bellowing patriotic claptrap in straight tone, as though they’d never even heard of vibrato. And then there are the ones who don’t even try to sing. The circus riffraff, the clowns and jugglers and the men coaxing dogs to jump through hoops.”

“And me.”

“And you are wonderful, Ambrose, really you are. Your act is… is… it’s adorable. Just like it’s adorable how you dress for a full performance, opera cape and top hat and all, even when you’re just running down the street to buy a pickled herring. You’re a character. A neighborhood character, beloved by one and all. And I’m sure you’ll be beloved there for a long, long time.”

Ambrose had known it would be better to just let the matter drop, to just admit to himself that things between them were finished, but he hadn’t been able to help himself. He had asked Freddie to explain himself.

This, at last, had given Freddie pause. His voice had faltered, and his eyes had darted about the room. “Could we not… here…? Maybe in private, later…?” The other men were already retreating to the far corners of the room.

“We’ve solitude enough,” Ambrose had growled. “Out with it.”

“You’ve been wonderful to me, Ambrose, and I love you, I do. And yet, what kind of future do we have, with you hellbent on a career as a magician? I need to get back to New York, or at least to a better part of London. I’m sorry, but I don’t think you can take me there. You’ll be in that same music hall until you die of old age.”

“I’m not even twenty-four, Freddie. Are you telling me you think the act’s no good, that I’ll never do any better for myself?”

“You’re… you’re okay, but let’s be honest. You’re not exactly Maskelyne, are you? I can’t see you making it to Egyptian Hall, much less Paris or New York. Oh, Lord. I’m sorry, Ambrose. It’s just… you wanted the truth, right?”

There was nothing more to say. Furious, Ambrose had stormed out of the room, twirling his opera cape dramatically. But then the cape’s lining had snagged on some blasted bit of architectural frippery protruding from the wall and ripped open, spilling trick coins in his wake. He hadn’t stopped to pick them up. Out on the street, he had stomped wrathfully through puddles and over piles of horse shit, feeling suddenly ridiculous in his magician’s clothes. He had realized his idea of “improving” Freddie was a foolish one. Freddie didn’t really want to be improved. He just wanted a return to the lavish lifestyle he’d had before.

He would be improved, though. Just not in any way he had ever dreamed.

The idea was almost perverse: Ambrose would indulge in his magical powers one last time, to remake Freddie from top to bottom. He’d be a better partner. A better man. A British man, for starters.

The idea of how he wanted Freddie to act and look had popped into Ambrose’s mind immediately, and fully formed. He was stunned by this. Certainly, there was a similarity to his very first fuck. The peddler. Short, stocky, middle-aged. But there was more to it. The merry, larger-than-life, pugnacious personality. And the clothes. He’d seen a man like that somewhere before. But where?

When he finally lifted his eyes off of the muddy cobblestones, multiple visions of a transformed Freddie were all around him. They stared at him from advertisements for soap and ginger beer and pram tires, from a tavern sign and the covers of political journals in a bookseller’s window.

But of course.

Freddie would be the most English Englishman in the world.

Hyper-realistic version of the coyote fursona ("Turbo") I designed for Chicagiensis. I wanted to experiment with colored line work.