Cluck's Ticking, Part 1 (Patreon)

Story Tier Prompt for Spacebanana

John is a lazy, procrastinating student who is sent to the prestigious Gallus Dee College, an institution on a remote island off the East Coast. It is hoped that his education will improve there, but John quickly starts to notice strange changes among the staff and student body, changes only he can notice. Can he solve the mystery of Galluss Dee before it is too late?

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Cluck's Ticking, Part 1

I couldn’t believe it when I got the letter of acceptance. I thought for sure that I was destined to be little more than a failure in life; I’d barely managed to skate through high school, and I’d already flunked out of the local college. It was my fault; I was always an introvert. I liked to live in the world of imagination, reading books and playing video games, but that meant I was incapable of getting work in on time.

“You better shape up and get your marks in order John,” my old teacher Mr Lowry had said, “or else you’ll end up stuck working at a farm in the middle of nowhere for the rest of your life.”

For a while, I’d thought he might be right, but then after weeks of applications, and weeks of disappointing looks from my Mom and Dad, finally a letter arrived.

Congratulations, you have been accepted to a placement in Gallus Dee College. We are excited to have you join our young but esteemed institute.

The letter went on, giving more specific details: my dormitory room was prepared already, and the semester would begin in just a week. I couldn’t believe it, and neither could my parents, who had longed to be rid of me, much as they loved me. Gallus Dee College had been a hail mary; a place I’d never heard of on the east coast, a new but apparently prestigious university that existed on a secluded island, fully stocked and equipped. It had stormy weather, but the facilities were second-to-none. I had to go.

And so, a week later, I was on the ferry over.

“You’re well packed for the journey,” the ferryman said. He indicated to my luggage, and I was a little sheepish in response.

“Oh, yeah. I brought a few game consoles. And books. And movies. For relaxation!”

The old man grinned. “Had a bit of trouble keeping up where you were previously?”

I was shocked he could discern that so quickly. “Yeah, I was a little lazy. But I’m going to be a lot more productive from now.”

He smiled, and something about the smile was unsettling.

“Oh, you will be,” he said. “Gallus Dee will make sure of it.”

Finally, we arrived at the island, and I departed onto the dock, where a representative of the school was already waiting for me. She was a slim woman, roughly fifty years of age, with silver hair and thick-rim glasses. She seemed almost to be inspecting me as I approached, looking me up and down. Finally, she smiled.

“Welcome to our little isle, John! I am Dr Elizabeth M. Roe.”

I shook her hand. “Excellent to meet you, Elizabeth.”

“My word, you don’t look a day over eighteen!”

I laughed. “I get that all the time. I promise you, I’m twenty-two years old.”

“And looking to be involved in sustainability practices.”

I smiled. It was lovely that the school staff had such fine attention to details.

“Indeed,” I replied, “agricultural engineering needs to account for a population boom, and the numerous challenges of climate change.”

Her smile lingered. “Fascinating. Well, I promise you that we here at Gallus Dee are committed to making that happen. Let me give you a tour of our island and facilities. Your bags will be taken care of.”

Indeed, they were. A large individual who looked like something out of a Hammer Horror film took my suitcases silently and carted them away. Doctor Roe explained that his name was Mr Ling, and that he was born with a genetic condition that led to his freakishly large stature, hence his robe.

From there, she gave me a tour of the island, which was named Highborn Isle. It was a beautiful location, albeit one used to the storm and the sea. It was surrounded on all sides by cliff-face, bare the docks I had arrived at on the western edge of the island. Great gardens as well as fields covered the northern stretch, protected by cliff-faces that deflected much of the easterly rains. The college itself was large, and incredibly modern. It had all the facilities and more that one could want at an institute of learning: a large dormitory split into male and female wings, a mess hall, a swimming pool, a student gym, a large staff quarters, a stocked cafeteria, a running track, reading nooks, a library, and so forth. It was astonishing, and even more so that the college was able to function where it was, and with so few students; Dr Roe informed me that there were less than four hundred currently.

“Oh, but there will be hundreds more to come,” she said, “as we build our reputation and produce.”

“Produce?”

She turned to me. “Why, the produce of fine minds such as yourself, of course. Here at Gallus Dee, we are believers in the function of individuals that other colleges have been ignorant in refusing. We don’t demand that you strictly attend classes or obey the rules. Our curricula is flexible, allowing each student to reach their zenith in their own fashion.”

I had to admit, it sounded right up my alley. A good excuse to play videogames and read when I wanted, and not have to socially interact all the time.

“Now, let me show you to your dorms,” she said.

I was introduced to the overseer of the male wing: Mr Hardy. I was utterly astonished: by pure coincidence, Mr Hardy was my old geography teacher. I remembered him as lazy and barely qualified, often handing out worksheets rather than planning lessons. But he’d always been sharp-witted and likeable, so I shook his hand.

“Mr Hardy!””

“My word, if it isn’t John Teeran. What a serendipitous moment! Looks like we both found a place more suited to our own choice of speed in life, huh?”

I smiled. “Look like, sir.”

“Thatta boy. Let me show you to your room.”

He and I waved farewell to Dr Roe, who it turned out was the head of the college, and who greeted each and every student personally. Mr Hardy explained to me that he had arrived here only a few weeks before - most of the lower staff had.

“The good doctor got rid of a heap of them. Apparently they were ‘better suited elsewhere.’ No idea what it means, but she seems to like me a lot.”

He showed me my room, and introduced me to my roommate. His name was Irvine, and he was obviously athletic, with a square jaw and close-cut brown hair. He was a young man from the far west who’d spent far too much time drinking and partying and not enough studying. Truth be told, after Mr Hardy left, he revealed that he was still mostly interested in that.

“Some of the girls here are damn fine,” he whispered conspiratorially to me, as if I were a fellow player, “I’m talking hot as hell. I’ve already had a few hookups, but if you play your cards right with me John, then I’ll make sure to play a good wingman for you. Trust me, that Hardy fella is so bad at his job already I can’t imagine how easy it will be to sneak out when we’re a couple of weeks in.”

I didn’t exactly like Irvine, but he didn’t seem a bad guy, and he let me have top bunk. Still, I was surprised a place as prestigious as this took him.

***

The semester began a week later, and I was getting into the swing of things. I had made one other friend; a nerdy girl by the name of Ellie. I had thought maybe she was interested in me, but it turns out she was strictly ‘batting for her own team’, but we still caught up to chat about our favourite books and games, since we were both fairly nerdy. She was a thin, olive-skinned woman with purple-dyed hair and a cute nose ring, and had a real rebellious streak. She liked to break things, and challenge teachers, and generally be contrarian. Evidently, she liked me because I was so easygoing and lazy, that I had no intentions of trying to put her in a box. She was one of my few human contacts outside of my teachers, Mr Hardy, and Irvine, who was still sleeping his way across the dorms. We mainly caught up for lunch, and sometimes in classes, and occasionally Irvine joined us, bragging about his latest exploits, even as Ellie rolled her eyes. She had rebuffed him twice already, but he was adamant he could ‘change her.’ We’d both come to the conclusion he wasn’t too bright.

When I wasn’t catching up with Ellie or putting up with Irvine, I pretty much entirely kept to myself. I occasionally visited the pool or outside gardens - when it wasn’t raining - but for the most part I enjoyed staying in my dorm and reading, or playing videogames. Irvine enjoyed a good shooter, and we stayed up late many a night killing digital zombies, totally aware that it was okay for us to skip class.

It was funny, it was like we were doing everything that would normally get us flunked, but the teachers didn’t care, and some of them seemed just as lazy as us: Miss Harvey taught food science by literally just putting on documentaries each lesson, and asking questions when it was over. It made some of the more invested students a little angry, but the way Irvine, myself, and Ellie saw it, we weren’t being told what to do, and were learning at our own pace. Whenever Mom and Dad got a letter out to me - the internet had a funny interaction with the mainland so we had to rely on paper - I always replied that things were going well, and that I was finally being ‘productive.’

And that went well for another few weeks, until the weirdness really started.

It began when I woke up feeling a little strange. A little bloated. Sure enough, as I examined myself in the mirror, I couldn’t help but notice that my skin seemed a little softer, and my hips and thighs a little flabbier.

“Man, I’ve been putting on weight,” I muttered to myself, “I should start using that gym.”

I quickly put on my clothing, cringing a little at how they stretched in a way they certainly hadn’t that previous night. Maybe I was sick? I decided to actually attend my classes that day, and see how the situation developed. I caught up with Ellie and Irvine for our biology class. It was, seemingly, the only class in which we were utterly expected to turn up to, and the teacher took it seriously.

“Now class, today we are going to look at reproductive cycles in egg-laying species,” Mr Yarrow said. The thin man indicated to the board, where several complex diagrams of chickens, owls, lizards, and so on had been drawn. “It is very important for the subject that you understand the role of oviposition - egg-laying - in the natural world, and how egg production can be used to aid human protein needs.”

He continued to blab, even as I was distracted a little by Ellie’s form. She too seemed a bit . . . bigger than the previous day. Her thighs - normally thin - had bulked up a little, pressing against the fabric. Moreover, her bare midriff seemed a little . . . pudgier thant it was meant to be. I turned to her.

“Hey, Ellie, do you feel any different this morning?”

“Yeah, I feel bored.”

“No, I mean, do you feel like you’ve put on weight this morning?”

She looked at me like I’d just stabbed her in the gut. “The fuck do you mean by that? I’ve always been this weight. Is that a problem?”

I held up my hands, feeling incredibly embarrassed. “No, no! I’m sorry. It’s just, I feel like I’m bigger this morning. Around my thighs. And my hips. My clothes are stretching.”

She scoffed. “Pretty sure your clothes have always been like that, John. It’s all that pizza and videogaming.”

I retreated into silence, listening more to the lecture, which now began to discuss the role of the cloaca in such species; one tunnel for everything. Ellie made a gross face at that. But part of me remained troubled.

***

Over the next few days, my fears were confirmed. I was gaining weight, there was no doubt about it. My hunger had surged, and I was eating more pizza and devouring food like mad. It was impossible to describe; it was like my body needed three, maybe even four times as much calories as before. I tried more than once to cut back, and even go to the gym, but as always, my more introverted and lazy nature ran out, and I found myself back in the room, only leaving to grab cafeteria items. By this point, having only been at Highborn Isle for a bit of a month, my stomach was already pushing out from all of my shirts, and spilling over my shorts. My ass was becoming embarrassingly large, and my thighs had begun jiggling as I walked. And still my hunger was growing. When I looked down while I peed, I could not longer see my own penis, and strangely enough, it was beginning to feel as if it was smaller, but I chalked that up to my growing stomach.

I was not alone in this change. The entire student body was gaining weight. Every last one of them. Not just them either, the rank and file staff were affected too; Mr Hardy in particular had once been a fit man, but now had a bulging stomach and fat ass that barely fit into his uniform. The only ones that remained thin and lithe were Dr Roe and her senior staff, including Mister Yarrow. We were all getting fatter, no matter how much we worked out, or tried to avoid eating; we had become pigs, and the cafeteria was increasingly the place to be. Irvine, my roommate who was so proud of his athletic body and attraction to women, was gaining weight as fast as any of us; he looked like a fat gamer stereotype now, and was increasingly more interested in that hobby than the various pretty girls in the women’s dorm, who themselves were blowing up like blimps. Ellie, my thin friend who was just as often sneaking into the boy’s dorm as not, was nearly equal in weight to me, and where she had a flat ass before, now I couldn’t avoid looking at the peachy thing she’d developed, even as it was still getting larger.

Worst of all, however, was that no one recognised this as strange.

“What are you talking about, man?” Irvine said, “I’ve always been a little pudgy. Nothing wrong with that. Chicks dig some ‘love handles’.”

“Ugh! Why do I have to keep telling you, I’ve always been a big girl!” Ellie said. “Jeez, what a way to talk to a woman.”

“John, even when you were my student back in the day you were a bit on the porky side,” Mr Hardy chuckled, “and hell, I was too! Nothing wrong with that.”

Even Dr Roe dismissed my concerns, though she seemed surprised when I voiced them: “Oh John, I think you’re just under a bit of stress as you adjust to our unique curriculum. Why don’t you have a nice Twinkie Bar or three and relax in your room? You can knuckle down next week and be more productive then.”

But still I put on weight, and still my hunger grew. I was utterly insatiable; when I didn’t eat my stomach groaned and whined, and when I finally gave in I couldn’t stop stuffing myself with pizza, and calories, and milkshakes, and chicken, and mashed potato and gravy, and so much more, stopping only to water down the food in preparation for more, or to defend my hoard of food from Irvine, who himself was devouring as much as he could also. Finally, when I was finished with my food, I would lie there, clutching my tight stomach, grunting as my body absorbed it. I would clench my eyes, trying to breath regularly, so overstuff I felt like I could burst, yet knowing the hunger, the need to get fatter, would return. And still, no one but me recognised how strange this was.

I felt like I was going mad. Something was off about Highborn Isle, and it was only getting worse. Either I was going mad, or somehow I was the only person who was sane. Several times I tried to book the ferry to head back to the mainland, but the stormy weather made it impossible. I tried to call my folks, but I was informed that the cable had been cut, likely by sea debris, and would take time to be repaired. Even our internet was busted, though Dr Roe announced it would be fixed “soon.”

Always soon.

And in the meantime, we grew, even while something else shrank. It was two and a half months into the first semester when I realised how small my dick had become. Beneath my enlarged stomach - I now appeared severely overweight, as did we all - it was little more than a nub, one that I could almost feel shrink with each passing moment. It itched, and I was deeply afraid of what was happening down there. The fact that my hips had widened considerably, and my own face softened, my chest losing all its body hair, put some very frightening possibilities in mind.

“We’re losing our fucking penises!” I yelled to a number of my dorm associates, but each ignored me. “Why don’t you notice this? We’re becoming obese? Our dicks are disappearing! We’re becoming obese women, or - or something worse!”

“Go away, weirdo!”

“Yeah, no need to mock our size bro. We’re growers, not showers!”

There was nothing I could say to reach them. Even Irvine was starting to joke about always having had to make do with a micropenis, and that ‘women never minded.’ Ellie I didn’t even try to tell; I saw less and less of her these days, as she stayed in her room, eating with her girlfriends, the same ones she’d hated not too long ago.

I returned to my room that day, and continued to eat, this time trying to eat only what was necessary, only to fail pretty much instantly. It was as if my body craved more food, burning it as I consumed it, fuelling further changes. I didn’t even make it to the top bunk that night; I was too heavy, and my penis burned. My ass was sore and instead I collapsed into the beanbag, lying back as I clutched the rounded mound that was my stomach, trying to breath. I fell unconscious more in response to the awful pressure than any peace.

The next day I woke, my behind still sore, my stomach still full. The early pangs of hunger were already returning, but something was a little different. A little stranger yet still. I managed to pull myself up onto my feet - God, my feet ached for some reasons, especially my toes - and turned to inspect myself. Something brown flicked in my peripheral vision, and I became fully awake.

There was no way. There couldn’t be.

Slowly, carefully, I twisted my body, trying not to wake the sleeping Irvine as I inspected myself. There, on the side of my hip, and over the top of my ass, a patch of large brown feathers had developed. The quills belonged to my body; they literally pushed through the skin, and sat largely flat against it. They looked exactly like bird feathers.

“B’Gawk!” I gasped, and immediately clutched my throat.

“What the CLUCK!?”

To Be Continued . . .