Pick A Card, Any Card (Patreon)

This 2,007 word story was based on a six word request by patron Maketaori, who gave the prompt "What a bad card to draw". I hope you enjoy!

Kyle normally didn’t mind sharing a flat with Louis. The other was a pretty down to earth guy and he made a mean grilled cheese that had become a staple of their Sunday mornings. While they didn’t have all that much in common - Kyle being a sports journalist who spent at least ninety minutes a day in the gym and Louis as a video game programmer who had a self-confessed lazy streak the size of all fifty states combined - it was rare for them to ever disagree, and even rarer for them to be violently opposed to the other. In fact there was only one thing about living with Louis that Kyle detested, and it wasn’t even anything about the other.

No, the worst thing about sharing a living space was Louis was the other’s best friend. Wayne was a total weirdo who made Kyle’s skin crawl whenever he visited their apartment, which was far too often for Kyle’s liking. Although Louis was notoriously lazy, Wayne was downright slobbish. He never seemed to stop eating, he had no concept of personal space, and worst of all, he leered at Kyle as if he was the prize hog at a competition. Now, Kyle was no stranger to being checked out on the regular and as a red-blooded single gay man himself, he rather enjoyed it, but it felt severely different when he was caught in Wayne’s sights. Every time he caught sight of the other man’s gaze locked on the strong muscles of his chest, or the goods further south, a shiver ran down the sports journalist’s spine. He would never confess to being scared of the attention Wayne gave him, but he was certainly unnerved by it.

Unfortunately it was just another evening where Louis had seen fit to invite his friend over after work (Wayne worked in the same department as him and, according to Louis, was apparently a programming superstar) and that meant Kyle was forced to endure the other hovering around and ruining his plans for a quiet evening. To make matters even worse, Wayne had all but demanded to show off a “highly exclusive” deck of cards he had supposedly purchased off of the dark web. Through gritted teeth Kyle had agreed to check them out, if only to stop Louis from thinking he was a total asshole, and was surprised to find that the cards in question were not regular playing cards but rather more like tarot cards in their size. The backs of the cards featured various symbols that Kyle guessed to be celtic, but when he asked what was on the other side of them, Wayne sternly refused to turn them over.

“These cards are special, you see,” he insisted in his nasally voice. Kyle did his best to stop himself from rolling his eyes, although that was quite the tough task. “They have the ability to transform the user: physically, mentally, emotionally. It even reshapes reality to adjust to their new selves!” The sheer insanity of Wayne’s words was simply too much for Kyle to bear and he burst out laughing, a loud and booming laugh that seemed to echo around the apartment. Wayne looked unbothered by the response, but Louis appeared to be rather irritated with his flatmate’s lack of tact, and fired a glare in Kyle’s direction.

“I believe you, man,” Louis announced, focusing back on his best friend. “Can I try it out?” Oh, you’ve gotta be kidding me, Kyle thought to himself, Stop feeding into this ridiculousness! He simply couldn’t understand how and why Louis actually accepted Wayne’s various quirks, which seemed to range from mildly annoying to downright infuriating. When was Louis going to wake up and realise that Wayne was holding him back from making something of himself?

“Sure!” Wayne confirmed, shuffling the cards and then offering them out to Louis in a spread. “Just take whichever card calls to you most, but before you turn it over you’ve got to say the following words: I wholeheartedly accept the fate this card has chosen for me. Only then will its magic work.” Kyle could only roll his eyes. Why did Louis encourage such ridiculous behaviour from a grown man? It was straight up embarrassing! Instead of doing as such though, his flatmate followed Wayne’s suggestions, right down to carefully repeating those ‘magic words’ before flipping his card over.

The image on the front of the card was an acutely detailed painting of an older gentleman in a suit that appeared to be struggling to contain the man’s muscular bulk. His hair and thick beard were silver, and he wore a confident smirk on his handsome face. At the bottom of the card was the caption “The CEO”, written beautifully in golden ink.

Even though it was nothing more than a painted image, there was something so captivating about the man. Talk about radiating daddy energy, Kyle’s horny mind supplied. Simply put, the man on the card was worlds away from the man that Louis actually was, and in the best of ways! Kyle opened his mouth to remark on as such, but when he turned his gaze towards the other to make his jest it was plain to see that his auburn hair was lightening until it settled into the same silver of the card’s image. Louis’ unimpressive body rapidly changed over the next thirty seconds to match the rest of the image too: his whole frame inflated like a balloon until he was taller, broader and packed with dense muscle that had his clothes tearing at the seams, while his ghostly pale skin adopted a slightly darker shade and lines of wisdom settled across his older face.

As if the changes to his physical self hadn’t been shocking enough for Kyle, the ill-fitting clothes reshaped themselves until they were a full three-piece suit that, when coupled with his new physical appearance, gave the new Louis an intimidating presence. He was dripping in masculinity to such an extent that Kyle was even beginning to feel somewhat jealous. He watched as the new Louis rolled his broad shoulders, grinned and let out a single remark in a deep bassy voice: “Oh, fuck yeah!” The words seemed to reverberate around the walls of their small apartment and sent a ripple down Kyle’s spine. His flatmate had just turned into a total silver fox daddy!

“Let me go next,” Kyle demanded, once he had finally managed to pull his attention away from the mature hunk sat across from him. Going from such a picturesque beauty to the slobbish Wayne was a definite downgrade, but now that he had seen the magic of the cards with his own eyes, Kyle simply couldn’t resist their lure. He could only wonder what other transformations they could provoke!

“I should warn you that not all of the cards have such… gorgeous results,” Wayne replied snootily, as he began to shuffle the deck of cards once again. It was only then that Kyle noticed the card Louis had picked out had completely vanished from his hands, and Wayne certainly hadn’t accepted it back. “The card fades out of existence once all of its magic has been consumed,” the undesirable slob explained, picking up on Kyle’s visible confusion. “Now, are you willing to run the risk?” He spread the cards out once again, this time towards Kyle, who did his best to ignore the cheshire grin spread across the other’s face.

Instead of replying, Kyle plucked out one of the cards from the middle of the spread and repeated the words that had triggered Louis’ own transformation: “I wholeheartedly accept the fate this card has chosen for me.” Then, he turned the card over.

His heart sunk. The image on his card wasn’t anywhere nearly as beautiful as on Louis’ card. Instead, Kyle was presented with the image of an overweight man splayed out on a sofa with numerous stains down the white shirt that was stretched out over a huge gut. The man’s shoulder-length hair was greasy, and a thin moustache sat upon his upper lip. At the bottom of the card, in the same golden lettering that had told Louis his superior new role, were the words to seal Kyle’s doom: “The Slacker”.

The laughter from the two other men in the room when they saw his card felt like daggers being thrust directly into his gut. The world seemed to spin and bile rose up Kyle’s throat as he desperately told himself this was all some big joke or a dream, but that was difficult to believe when he felt an intense rumbling in his gut. He stared down at the culprit and could only observe in horror as his flat torso began to expand as if being pumped full of air. His neatly defined abs were gone in mere seconds, hidden behind a layer of fat that seemed to be eternally expanding. The hard muscles of his arms and legs were written out of existence to be replaced by sagging excess flesh, and his naturally bronzed skin faded into a pinkish hue, as if he was permanently flushed in embarrassment. Given how dramatic Kyle’s changes had been, that wasn’t far from the truth for the (now former) sports journalist. He had ended up even larger than Wayne, and with much poorer hygiene to boot!

Indeed, while Kyle didn’t lose the memories of his real life, they were instead joined by an entire history that belonged to his new identity. He had been bullied through high school, had flunked out of college, and now made just enough money for his rent by livestreaming his eating sessions and getting donations from rich viewers who relished in his consistent humiliation. Chief among those donors was Wayne himself, and Kyle was disheartened to discover in his new memories that he had led the other top him a number of times, and that his only other sexual explorations had been with guys who got off on humiliating him, or with escorts he had to pay for.

Kyle’s athletic gear shifted to the same stain-tainted garments from the image on the card, although as with Louis before him, it had now vanished into thin air with its work complete. He felt so disgusting, and it didn’t help that he stunk too! When was the last time he’d had a shower? Several days ago?

“The only people who will ever remember the guy you used to be were the ones to witness your transformation,” Wayne explained as he shuffled the deck of cards for the first time. “And, I can’t speak for Louis, but I don’t plan on ever letting anyone know you used to be a hotshot journalist who thought he was too good for me just because he’d played sports in college!” Kyle burned with rage, but there was still a slight chance that he could get back-- “Oh, and it’s a one way trip,” the other added, interrupting his thoughts with a crushing truth. “Even if you picked out another card, you wouldn’t experience any changes.” Beside him, Louis smirked and nodded. That traitor!

“Now, would you mind holding these cards for me, daddy?” Wayne handed the deck of cards out to his best friend, who accepted them and spread them out. The only unchanged man in the room considered them carefully for a moment, before picking one out. He held the card face down within his hands for a few moments as he spoke those fateful words, then turned the card over for the three of them to see.

As if Kyle’s day wasn’t bad enough, he burned with envy at the card’s caption: The Football Superstar.

Reality once again began to shift around the three men, and it wasn’t long before Kyle was having both of his holes filled by a pair of dominant hunks who were all too happy to treat him like dirt for being such a lazy pig. As loathe as he was to admit it, the humiliation actually turned Kyle on by a surprising amount! They were even kind enough to drop a couple hundred dollar bills on him once they’d had their fun, but Kyle was once again left desperately jealous as they left the apartment to start their new lives as successful men, while he was left trapped in a life that he didn’t have the energy or willpower to even attempt to change...