Fir Hollow, ch. 3: Caught at the Edges (Patreon)

“Did we really just see what I think we saw?  What the fuck was that?”  Isaac’s toned chest heaved as he bent forward and put his hands on his knees, struggling to catch his breath. The adrenaline-fueled scramble down the mountainside had pushed the lean young man to his limit.  Given his light, wiry frame he fared better than the bulky man who’d barreled in after him, but not by much.  He reached up and wicked a layer of sweat from his thick, chocolate hair, his eyes darting around Nick’s darkened home.  “Did we lose ‘em?”

“I think so,” Nick panted.  His shirt was soaked with sweat, accentuating the stocky man’s hairy, ample muscle as it clung like a second skin.  He hurried around his small, single story house, closing each of the blinds tight and checking the back door to make sure it was locked.

A third young man, taller than Nick but more built than Isaac, and significantly less winded than either, peeked out through a mini blind.  “I didn’t see ‘em once we were outta the trees,” Tom said, his statuesque frame on alert as he eyed the empty, moonlit street.  It was well after midnight, leaving only a few porch lights and the occasional window lamp to light the quiet evening.  Their frantic footfalls on the cracked sidewalk had sounded like gunshots in the still air, but they hadn’t heard any following, and Tom didn’t see any movement in the deep pools of shadow outside.  After a few tense moments he finally turned away, his broad shoulders dropping as he let out a long sigh.  His lantern-jawed face split in a broad grin as he reached over and tousled the shorter Nick’s raven hair.  “Didn’t think those stubby legs could move that fast,” he laughed.

Nick shook his head, rubbing his stubble-covered cheeks with his wide hands.  “Fuck, dude, I didn’t either,” he said, pulling away and dropping into a nearby chair.  He let out a similar sigh of relief, but his stunned expression remained.  “You guys saw that too, right?”

“I wish I hadn’t,” Isaac said, crossing his wiry arms as he leaned against the doorframe between the living room and the hallway.  His legs were weak and shaky, but he still had too much adrenaline coursing through him to sit.  His tight frame hummed with energy, and he eyed the other two, suddenly wary now that the immediate threat seemed to have passed.  “Was this just some prank on the city boy?  Were those your friends back there?”

“Dude, come on,” Tom said, his expression softening.  “You really think that’s the kinda thing we’d pull?  How in the fuck would we even make that…that…whatever that thing was?”

Isaac sighed and nodded.  His friend was right.  It wasn’t the kind of prank he’d pull, and there was no way anyone in town could make such a convincing fake to chase them out of the woods like that.  Isaac had heard some odd stories since moving to town, but nothing could have prepared him for what they’d just experienced.

Until now, his time in Fir Hollow had been nothing but positive.  He’d moved down from Pikesburg after getting his Bachelor’s in business a few months earlier, having taken a job in the offices at Sawyer’s Lumber.  It’s where he’d met Tom, who worked the floor, and he’d hit it off with the handsome, chestnut-haired hunk right away.  They both especially loved the outdoors, which is what had attracted Isaac to the small town in the first place, and Tom seemed eager to show the newcomer the ropes.

He’d introduced Isaac to his childhood buddy, Nick.  The stocky meathead worked in the kitchen at Kathy’s, the town’s preferred spot for a greasy breakfast, and the duo quickly turned into a trio.  Isaac had spent the waning weeks of summer following his new friends through the mountains, to hidden waterfalls, the best swimming holes, and prime rock climbing terrain.  Fir Hollow may not have seemed like the most exciting town for a man in his early twenties to land, but to someone like Isaac, who preferred fresh air to a crowded bar, it was perfect.

Nick had been the one to finally suggest that they make it “official.”  After a few months in town, though the handsome brunette was fitting in well, Isaac wouldn’t be a true Hollow boy until he’d been up to Castle Hill at night, the stocky stud had insisted.  It was a rite of passage that most young men in town completed during adolescence, but in Isaac’s case they’d make an exception.  Tom and Nick said they’d made their initial pilgrimage together during high school, weaving a tale of ominous stone columns lurking like broken parapets in the moonlight.  Their manufactured appearance is what gave the patch of woods its name, and though no one knew where the stones had come from, the most popular legend was that they belonged to a castle buried under the mountain itself.

Isaac didn’t believe any of it, and he knew a hazing when he saw one, but he played along.  He trusted that his new friends wouldn’t do anything actually harmful, and if nothing else it was an excuse to go for a midnight hike.  Humoring their tales of cults and monsters and human sacrifices, Isaac followed the pair deep into the forest, the towering fir’s quickly obscuring the bright moon that hung just above the peaks.  A low fog clung to the ground, obscuring the thick bed of pine needles that muffled their steps, and while Isaac was on alert for mundane threats like black bears or coyotes, the wiry young man didn’t expect to run into anything supernatural.

The stunned looks on his friends’ faces when they stumbled across the oddly dressed group told him that Nick and Tom hadn’t expected to either.  They’d just rounded a group of towering boulders when they heard the chanting that, despite the quiet of the darkened woods, came on them without warning.  They had just enough time to cut off their flashlight and drop to the ground before inadvertently giving themselves away.  Isaac had started to ask what was going on but Tom cut him off with a sharp gesture, giving him a wide-eyed look that made it clear staying silent was very, very important.  They were stuck.  It was only through blind luck that they hadn’t been seen in the first place, and any attempts at fleeing were sure to draw attention.  All they could do was wait it out, trying to remain as flat and still as possible as they watched the bizarre events unfold.

No more than a dozen yards ahead of them, they could see six figures standing in a cluster of the stones, their dark robes blending with the shadows while a series of floating globules moved around the group in random patterns, bathing the clearing in a pale haze of verdant illumination.  Reflected in the flickering green witchlights, the three horrified young men could see a series of swirling patterns adorning the backs of the cloaks, but their attention was pulled to the swaying shape in the middle of the gathering before they could try and make out what any of the symbols were.  At first glance the spiky, conical shape looked like a small pine tree, but as the chanting reached a fever pitch it began to rise, stretching up until it towered several feet above the heads of the cloaked individuals, like watching a time lapse of a growing tree.  Whatever it was, it began to sway and rustle in time with the chanting, and as it moved to give the trio an unobstructed view, revealing its massive, arachnid lower half, the emerald globules flared in a blinding flash.

The entire forest floor rumbled, but not loud enough to drown out Nick’s horrified shriek at the monstrous entity, all six heads swiveling in their direction as the chanting abruptly cut off.  The deep, shadowed hoods obscured the faces of the people who wore them, but the trio wasn’t interested in sticking around to see if they recognized anyone.  They were on their feet in an uncoordinated flurry, barreling down the mountain as a heavy crashing was swift on their heels behind them.  None of them were brave enough to turn around and see exactly what was chasing them, choosing instead to focus on the more human sounding voices barking out to not let them get away.

“That…thing…couldn’t have been real, right?  That was just some trick of the light, wasn’t it?”  Nick winced as he shifted on the chair, seeming to notice his sopping t-shirt for the first time.  He peeled out of it, exposing the sweat-matted hair that coated his slab of a chest and trailed down his firm muscle gut.  “Actually, let’s not talk about the lights either.”

Isaac looked away from Nick’s broad torso.  “Do you think they saw us?  Our faces, I mean,” he asked, a fresh wave of fear hitting him at the thought.

“Oh, shit,” Nick gasped.  “I hadn’t thought of that.  What if they stopped chasing us ‘cause they didn’t need to?  This town ain’t that big…not hard to figure out who we are.”

Tom shook his head and folded his chiseled arms over his chest.  “We don’t know that they were local.  No sense worrying ourselves over that until we see what they…uh…” The athletic man trailed off, raising an eyebrow and nodding at Nick.  “You, uh, alright over there?”

“What’re you…oh!  Uh…sorry ‘bout that.”  Nick’s face went purple when he looked down and saw that the loose mesh shorts he liked to hike in were prominently tented.  He shifted awkwardly in the chair, unable to do much to cover himself.  “Must be all the excitement catching up with me,” he said with an embarrassed laugh.  “Not like the night can get any…weirder…” it was his turn to trail off as he watched his cock twitch and continue to swell in his shorts, pushing the straining material out well past the point it should.  “That’s…that’s not right…” His concern outweighing his modesty, Nick pushed his shorts and boxers down, his wide jaw dropping at the fat log that sprung free.

The changes were fast and simultaneous.  Nick’s aching log erupted as soon as it was exposed, each spurt of the strangely iridescent liquid seeming to pull the girthy monster along with it.  At the same time, while Nick’s cock grew, the rest of his beefy frame shrank.  As if to compensate for his growing member, the stocky bulldog’s legs drew upwards, lifting from the floor at the exact same time that his burly arms pulled away from the armrests.  Instead of leaning against the top of the chair, Nick’s head now rested firmly in the middle, and where once sat a stocky ball of muscle just under six-feet tall, there was now a furry meatball.  Nick couldn’t have been more than three feet, with stubby arms and legs, and a monstrous cock well over a third of that length.  He looked like putty when it was smashed, his proportions now warped and mismatched.

“WHAT THE FUCK JUST HAPPENED?!” He shrieked, his voice a helium squeak.  A shiver ran through him when his leaking, bulbous head brushed against his scratchy chin, and he instinctively grabbed the hulking organ with his stubby new fingers.

Isaac didn’t know what to say.  He looked back and forth between Tom and the altered Nick, a wave of dizziness hitting him before he could take a single step.  “NNNGGGG!”  He grunted when his own cock rocketed to life and began spraying, but unlike Nick, Isaac’s stomach dropped when he realized how much room he had in his otherwise fitted pants.  He tore open his jeans, shoving them down along with his boxer briefs just in time to see the spraying mushroom head recede into his abdomen.  Before the stunned young man could process what he’d just witnessed, the small hole left in its wake began to grow and shift until he was left looking at an impossibly familiar slit steadily leaking the same iridescent liquid as Nick.  Isaac only had a momentary glimpse, though, as a sudden tightness at his chest and rear was abruptly relieved.  There was a loud tearing sound, his tight t-shirt exploding off his body as his pecs ballooned into a shelf of obscuring muscle.  The same growth happened at his once-perky bubble, leaving Isaac’s lean, runner’s frame now sporting the heaping, granite pecs and ass of a bodybuilder, along with a throbbing, hungry hole where his package should have been.

It was too much for Tom.  The handsome hunk turned to run, but only doubled over in pain instead.  Feeling a growing pressure at his abs, he tore off his shirt to see two small mounds forming on either side of his navel, throwing off his carefully sculpted six-pack.  As the mounds began to grow taller and push out from his stomach, his toro suddenly stretched, adding just over a foot of height to his already imposing frame.  Tom gasped at the change in perspective, but he was quickly brought down to his standard vantage point when his back suddenly arched.  He thought for a moment that he was falling over, until he felt his bare feet impact with the floor.  It didn’t make sense. Tom could still feel the sneakers on his feet, but at the exact same time, he wiggled exposed toes.  The rush of air on his bare rear told him he’d lost his pants somewhere in the process, but he was afraid to look down and see why.  The cock that pumped out load after load felt far too large, which was all the more confusing when Tom finally looked down and didn’t see it.  All he saw were his exposed abs and naked thighs, and at first he didn’t registering the strange gap between them.  When he did, he nearly blacked out.  Tom clutched the window frame, his stomach turning when he shifted his weight and felt not one set of legs, but two.  The mounds he’d seen on his stomach were his new limbs growing, while his existing pair, along with his plump rear and spurting equipment, had been thrust about a foot behind him.  He blushed at the odd sensation.  Tom felt like he was bent over, exposing his muscled cheeks and hole to everyone, but at the same time, he still felt like he was standing upright.  He swayed on his multiple feet as he let go of the window frame and twisted, trying in vain to get his hands around the throbbing monster and heavy balls he could feel dangling between his original thighs behind him.

“Guhh…guys…what just happened…” Isaac grunted.  One hand drifted continually between his oversized muscle tits and his mountainous new cheeks, while the other hovered just above his leaking slit.

“This can’t be real!” Nick squeaked, kicking his shortened legs.  He looked like an obscene teddy bear someone had left in the chair as he clung to his enlarged rod.  “People don’t just…shrink…” he said, his voice choking off in his throat.

“I’m…I'm a fucking freak,” Tom stammered quietly, his handsome face pale.  He’d never been overly vain, but he still enjoyed his position as one of Fir Hollow’s most active ladies men.  Now, he knew those days were clearly behind him, both because of his drastic appearance, and the way his inflated log throbbed when he looked at his naked friends.

“That’s a bit harsh.”  The three of them jumped at the unexpected voice, freezing as a robed figure emerged from the kitchen.  “Figured it’d be best to go in the back door,” the person said, pulling back their hood to reveal a set of handsome features offset by a thick head of salt-and-pepper hair.  The man appeared to be in his early fifties, with a surprisingly sympathetic expression as he stared at the altered trio.

“Ted?!  What the hell is going on?!”  Nick found his helium voice once again when he recognized the owner of Canal Books.  The burly younger man wasn’t much of a reader, but Ted was a regular fixture at Kathy’s.  He was well liked by just about everyone around town, and nothing about his behavior had ever struck Nick as out of the ordinary.

“Bit of an accident, by the look of it,” Ted said, walking over and reaching down to stroke a hand through the shortened man’s hair.  “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry you three got caught up in this.  You weren’t supposed to be out there.”

Nick’s oversized cock started oozing again at the older man’s touch.  “But…but what’d you do to us,” he gasped, suddenly wanting nothing more than for Ted’s strong hand to drift south.

The robed man pulled his hand away and shrugged.  “Without going into all the details, I’m much older than I look.  Every now and then I need to…refresh…things.  As I’m sure you saw, it involves some pretty potent forces.  Inside the circle we were protected…we could control it…but unfortunately for you three, it’s pure chaos outside.  You were just close enough to get caught in the edges.”  Ted walked over and eyed Isaac, running a hand up the waterfall running down the panting man’s toned thigh.  “Fortunately, it’s not a total loss,” he said, holding up a finger coated in the sparkling liquid.  “Do you know how much even a single vial of this stuff goes for on the open market?  How much power is in a single drop?  We were going to barter with that friendly fellow you saw for a jug of it, but now it looks like we have our own source to pull from.”

“You can put us back though, right,” Tom asked, shifting his weight awkwardly between his four feet.  He gasped when Ted gave his rear a slap, a bolt of pleasure running up his elongated spine.

“Sorry, no,” the older man said, shaking his head.  “That’s beyond even my capabilities.  But I think we can come to an arrangement.  As long as you three keep me supplied with this lovely substance, which I think you’ll find isn’t going to be a problem, I can at least keep you and everyone else from worrying overly much about your more unique attributes.  And you’ll be compensated for each delivery, of course.”

Tom scoffed.  “That’s it?  I’m shaped like a goddamn horse, Nick’s dick is as big as he is now, and Isaac’s like…that!  You gotta fix this!”

Ted sighed.  “There are people who’d pay good money for the kinds of experiences the three of you now get to have, purely by chance.  It doesn’t seem like it at the moment, I know, but you’re quite fortunate.  Few can say they’ve been touched by a god and actually mean it.”

“Fortunate?!” Isaac cried.  “How are we…”

“The alternative is that we keep you in the castle under the mountain,” Ted interrupted.  “But honestly, that feels like a lot of work on our part, and it wouldn’t be nearly as much fun for you three.  Come now,” the older man said encouragingly.  “You went up to those stones at night because you wanted an adventure, and that’s exactly what you get!  It’s an adjustment, but you three seem up to the challenge.  Who knows what you’ll be able to make of this opportunity?”

Nick, Isaac and Tom exchanged a silent glance.  Whether or not Ted was telling the truth, their options were limited, and they wouldn’t be able to do anything if they were thrown in some dungeon under the mountain.  If they agreed, at least they’d have their freedom, whatever that meant for them in their current state.  Isaac started to ask another question, but the older man cut him off.

“Great,” Ted clapped, a familiar green glow lighting up his eyes.  “I know you have questions, but it’s late and I’ve seen where this leads.  We can skip to the end where you three agree.  Now hold still…this will just take a second.”

**********

“Can’t this thing go any faster,” Nick squeaked, slipping his meaty little hands up under Tom’s tank-top to tweak his friend’s nipples.  He squeezed with the stubby legs straddling the other man’s trim waist, loving the feeling of his friend’s muscled rear shifting beneath him.

“Don’t think I won’t throw you off back there,” Tom laughed, shifting his back against Nick’s heaping bulge as it dug into him.  “The only reason I’m letting you ride is ‘cause it would take too long for your short little legs to keep up.”

“Didn’t mind letting me ride earlier,” Nick said, reaching back to slip a finger into Tom’s shorts.  The multi-limbed stud shivered and tensed, forcing his stout little passenger to have to hold on.

“I just want to know why I have to be the one to always carry this bulky bag,” Isaac said, watching his friends paw at each other.  The straps of his pack accentuated his mountainous new pecs, while the stuffed satchel itself stopped just above the shifting globes that spilled out of his small, terrycloth shorts.  Where his former hose and hefty balls would have been was an outlined camel toe, proudly displayed for all to see.

“If you’d rather carry Nick instead, be my guest,” Tom said, pulling his tank-top back into place.  It stopped just above his navel, and it had taken the handsome man a while to get used to the feeling of having his midsection and front legs always exposed.  His shorts stopped just over the crest of his ass, unable to go up any higher because of his mammoth equipment, which left his elongated torso on display until it reached his shirt.

It was the least of their adjustments.  When they’d woken up at Nick’s house in their altered bodies a few weeks earlier, they had no memory of what happened to cause them.  They remembered setting out for Castle Hill, then nothing.  Surprisingly, though they were plenty shocked, none of them had been able to muster the horror they knew they should be feeling, either at their altered appearance, or the overwhelming, lustful new urges.  There was a perpetual sense of contentment, even when they were falling on each other and exploring every facet of their new bodies.  That haze seemed to extend to everyone they interacted with, and though the trio got plenty of stares, not a single person reacted to the degree they should.  People simply treated them like they’d dyed their hair a unique color, not like Tom had sprouted two extra legs, or that Nick had somehow shrunk and was walking around with a barely contained dick the size of his leg, or that Isaac had tits and ass like no one else in town.

They didn’t even know why they made their weekly trips up to Castle Hill with jars of their unique, shimmering cum.  They just did.  The liquid wasn’t sticky or musky the way they were used to, but soft and supple, with a sweet, intoxicating aroma.  Sloshing in the jar it was hypnotic to look at as the colors swirled and shifted in a dazzling display, the glass itself feeling surprisingly light despite being full.  Jarring their copious explosions was an odd habit to pick up, and they didn’t understand what the colorful liquid shooting out of them really was, but like their commanding new urges it was an impulse they couldn’t ignore.

Nor did they know where the mysterious deposits that arrived in their bank accounts afterward came from.  It was more than any of them ever would have made at Sawyers, and it let them quit their day jobs to focus on what they really wanted to do instead, which was to produce as much of the sparkling liquid as possible.  And the way they constantly went at each other, there was more than enough to go around.

In the backs of their minds, they all knew something terrifying and impossible had happened.  They were still aware of all the emotions they should be feeling, they just didn’t actually feel any of them.  They were only ever horny and happy, eager to put their one-of-a-kind bodies to work with each other or any of the many curious men in town.  It wasn’t a nightmare or a dream come true, but it was a way to make a living.

Only the trees around Castle Hill could punch through their constantly elevated mood.  Something about the swaying conifers set them on edge, and the three jumped every time one so much as swayed in the breeze.  They told themselves it was foolish, but they always felt like they were being watched, and it was a struggle not to run down the hillside once they’d left the jars sitting amongst the stones.

***** Voting options will be up tomorrow! Didn't want to sit on the story any longer than I had to. *****