Shroud (vignette) (Patreon)

Shane clutched the cylinder in his pocket, easily swallowing the small plastic tube with his meaty paw.  It was no bigger than a film canister, though he doubted that Evan would have made that comparison.  The young man was only in his mid-twenties, having grown up in a digital world where the analog wonder of print photography was a relative rarity.  Everything was instantaneous and impermanent, a fitting parallel to what the other man was about to experience.

Shane envied Evan.  He’d already worn a shroud himself years ago during his initiation into the Order, an experience he’d longed to relive every day since.  It had been harrowing, and not without a significant amount of anxiety, but the clarity it brought to his vision, the connection to their Lord, had made it all worthwhile.  He wished he could tell Evan.  He wished his younger friend could fully appreciate the miracle of his impending rebirth, but that would complicate things.  Finding a participant who was willing, with a mind already open to the infinite possibilities, was a rare luxury that Shane didn’t have time for.  He’d been called upon to release the shroud, and since he couldn’t undergo a second remaking that meant he needed to find someone else.  Soon.  His Lord was generous with Their gifts and wisdom, but They were not patient when the hunger was upon them.

Shane hoped his friend would have a true vision.  There was no guarantee when an uninitiated was Veiled.  Sometimes, when his Lord saw fit, the person would be given a glimpse of Their glory.  They would experience all the beauty and majesty that members of the Order were given to enjoy, often opting to join afterwards.  Others weren’t as fortunate.  Those deemed either unworthy or unprepared for the Gift were left to fend for themselves.  Their minds would concoct elaborate hallucinations in place of the truth, blaming the experience on everything from aliens to demons depending on the scope of their imagination.  At first Shane had worried about these unfortunate souls, fearing that the question of their altered bodies would draw attention to the Order, but now he felt foolish for ever having doubted the wisdom of his Lord.  It was their job to choose the right candidate, someone who wasn’t a public figure or too connected, and then nature ran its course.  Despite how much they might insist otherwise, people don’t actually like a mystery.  Not a real one.  As long as it stays within the parameters of their accepted reality they may enjoy a challenge, but when confronted with the truly miraculous most don’t want answers.  They just want it to go away so they can go back to the comfortable lie of their existence.  The questions don’t get asked, the possibilities aren’t explored, and the reborn are left to fend for themselves.

Shane knew that his Lord was right in all things so he didn’t worry about the untended flock, but he still wished for Evan to be amongst the Chosen.  He had a genuine fondness for the younger man, as well as a simmering desire that had made Evan the only real choice.  The gift of the Shroud was the most precious thing Shane could ever offer, other than his own affection, and he prayed that his Lord would make one lead to the other.  He’d been like Evan once, but it wasn’t nostalgia that fueled his longing.  Shane didn’t miss the tight, lean frame he used to have, nor did he miss his full head of auburn hair and charmingly boyish features.  He didn’t miss the impressively long, thick cock, or the ever-changing lineup of women with which he put it to use.  He’d fully expected to, but even before the Shroud was lifted he knew those things didn’t matter, not when he’d been given a real gift.

Shane could still remember the thrill he’d felt at seeing his new body for the first time.  Instead of standing 5’9” he stood 6’4”, the massive bulk seemingly impossibly large compared to the wiry build he was used to.  His shoulders were round piles of granite muscle that swallowed his once-slender neck, his chest a heaping set of jutting boulders that obscured his view of everything below, and the toned arms on either side had erupted with muscle so thick they could hardly bend as they hung at an exaggerated angle from his barrel-shaped torso.  Tapering abs were now a lumpy, ballooning muscle gut, his solid little bubble had inflated into a pair of hulking globes attached to thighs like concrete pylons, and his once-girthy package had been reduced to almost nothing.  Instead of a sizable seven inches, Shane’s cock stuck out like one of his hard, nubby new nipples, with only the barest hint of marble-sized balls underneath.  If he’d still had his former bush it wouldn’t have been visible at all, but his towering new body had been completely stripped of hair.  He discovered that he actually still had his handsome features, the soft lips, button nose, high cheekbones, and dreamy eyes, but on his full, rounded bald head they were almost entirely unrecognizable.

Shane had sympathy for the Unchosen, his faith not withstanding.  He would have been horrified if he’d come to in his current state without warning, especially when he began to experience his new behavior.  As part of his sacrifice he’d taken on a portion of his Lord’s hunger, leaving his new body insatiable.  From the moment he awoke in the mountain of flesh he’d needed someone inside him.  He didn’t care that his own cock had shrunk to the point of uselessness because he couldn’t have used it to fulfill his cravings anyway.  He didn’t need one sticking out between his oversized thighs; he needed one behind them, between his ample cheeks, or filling his mouth as he sucked it dry.  Ideally both, at the same time.  Shane needed their release the way most people needed food, everyone who wore the Shroud did, but fortunately for him it wasn’t hard to come by.  In his Lord’s infinite wisdom, the inflated bull had been given a body that men lined up for.  The idea of a baby-faced, baby-dicked power bottom meathead drove plenty of them wild, and it was Shane’s job to share his Lord’s bounty with as many as possible.  That was the same reason he flaunted his unique features instead of hiding them.  He wasn’t humiliated at strutting his smooth, strapping frame around in a tiny pair of shorts that showed off the little nub between his powerful legs, nor was he embarrassed at his lack of inhibitions.  It was his duty to spread the good word of his Lord, whether people knew it or not, but in more mundane terms it was also his literal job.  Members of the Order gave over all their material possessions and had obscenely wealthy sponsors, which left them free to perform their sacred duties.  They didn’t have their own homes or apartments but a pool of “temples” that they rotated between, spanning in size from small efficiencies all the way up to private islands.

Shane liked the smaller places best.  They were cramped and intimate, a reminder that he’d been given the gift of size whenever he ducked or turned sideways to go through a doorway, or filled a corner of a compact room like a piece of furniture.  He liked most small things, which was fortunate considering that he was usually the largest person or object in a room.  He’d been on the shorter side before the Order, always wishing he could be bigger, but after his enlargement he had a new appreciation for the life he used to lead.  Whether it was merely memories of past life or lingering reflexes, Shane gravitated towards smaller guys.  Though he relished any opportunity to share the fruits of his Lord’s labor, the broad hulk especially loved being topped by compact men; the shorter the better.  He loved how they emphasized his own miraculous mass, how they felt cradled against it, and how each encounter was a further act of submission on his part.  He could have picked them up with one hand and thrown them across the room, but instead he had to restrain himself.  He had to keep his powerful muscle under control as he offered himself up, tempering the bliss with a healthy dose of self-discipline.  That size discrepancy was part of the reason he’d been drawn to Evan.  At 5’8” the other man wasn’t exaggeratedly short, but Shane towered both over and around him as the smaller man’s lean, athletic build could have fit comfortably inside the bald bruiser’s larger frame with room to spare.  Add in the fact that Evan lived alone and was only distantly connected with his small family on the other side of the country and he was a perfect candidate.

Shane pulled out the small canister, whispering a prayer as he unscrewed the lid.  A thick, translucent mucous issued out the top, its seemingly endless size and defiance of gravity while it climbed up and over the edge the only sign that the gelatinous material was anything other than a simple liquid.  It spread itself out in a thin gossamer layer, its surface rippling as it stretched to the size of a bedsheet.  Shane watched a corner of the membranous gel lift from the floor, latching onto a piece of nearby equipment that it then contracted its full mass upon before expanding once more towards the ceiling.  The big man muttered his prayer once more as he stepped into the shadows and waited.

**********

“Shane?  You here, dude?”  Evan’s keys jingled as he opened the door to the dark gym.  A trickle of light filtered in from the streetlights outside, casting the looming equipment in menacing shadow.  This part always creeped Evan out.  When the gym closed for the day they cut the breakers, which meant whenever he and Shane met up for one of their late night workouts whoever got their first had to cross the former warehouse, trekking deeper into the darkness to find the fuse box.  Still, the toned young man thought it was a small price to pay for having the place entirely to themselves.  He still didn’t know how Shane made the arrangements since he didn’t actually work for the gym, though the big man might as well have considering how much time he spent there.  However he arranged it, Evan was grateful for the opportunity.  He was pulling twelve hour shifts working IT at his office lately, which didn’t leave much time to keep himself in shape.  Or go out.  Or get laid.  Or much of anything, really.  He hated every second of it, but at least it was a paycheck until he could find something better.

Since all he did was stare at screens and get yelled at by frustrated people all day, Evan was as glad for Shane’s company as he was the chance to throw some weights around.  He knew the big guy had a thing for him, and while he’d never act on it himself, a part of him enjoyed the attention.  It also helped that the bald giant was a bit weird in general.  He always struck Evan as a bit spacey, but he made it work.  With his baby face, brutish body, and unfortunate endowment Shane was certainly unique, and the smaller man was slightly envious of the confidence with which his friend carried himself.  He put it all out there, literally, without a care in the world.

Distracted by thoughts of his friend, Evan pulled out his phone to turn on the flashlight as he carefully strode forward into the darkness, his downturned vision failing to catch the slight shimmer from the ceiling above him.  Even if he’d seen it he wouldn’t have had time to sidestep before the billowing membrane dropped and wrapped itself around him.  The young man’s eyes went wide, his body going rigid as the enshrouding ooze tightened its hold.  Evan tried to cry but even his vocal chords were locked in place, leaving him unable to do anything other than squirm internally as the bizarre veil settled and crept into every nook and crevice of his body.  It was like being rubbed in aloe gel from head to toe all at once and he panicked when he realized it covered his face, including his mouth and nostrils, but he didn’t feel like he was suffocating.  After a few seconds, he didn’t feel much of anything.  That cool gel sensation turned into a tingling numbness, and the vision that had been blurred by looking through the sheer slime began to shift and sway into something else altogether.

Evan reeled as flashes of an alien landscape began filling his mind.  Massive, octagonal pyramids thrust up out of a dense, rainbow-hued jungle beneath an orange, moon-filled sky.  Colors he couldn’t describe, that he’d never seen before, shimmered across the swaying foliage as his perspective began to move.  In a series of stilted flashes his vision began to drop towards one of the pyramids, passing several thin, translucent membranes that floated through the air like jellyfish in the sea.  Lightning flashes of color raced through them, following a series of sharp angles in a circuit board pattern as the iridescence coursed from end to end.  It was accompanied by a series of clicks that sounded like an old computer booting up, and Evan’s attention was pulled away from the vision when he heard those same clicks echoing around the dark, silent gym.

In his addled state it took him a moment to realize he was looking at familiar surroundings.  His vision was still blurred by the gauzy gel, now racing with fiber optic color, and his perspective was off.  The shadowed equipment around him seemed too large, as did the phone he still clutched in a frozen hand.  And though it was hard for his eyes to adjust with the constant lights flashing, he could see his hazy reflection in the mirrored wall opposite where he stood, looking odd in the baggy clothing.  Instead of tight and fitted his muscle-shirt hung loose and low, as did the mesh shorts that now reached his knees instead of stopping mid-thigh.

Evan tried to piece together what he could from the limited sensory input, but it was an uphill battle as his vision split.  He could still see his reflection, only now it was layered on top of that alien landscape.  He was in one of the pyramids now, surrounded by towering, insectoid beings whose chitterings echoed off the shiny stone corridor around them.  Evan couldn’t understand any of it, but he somehow knew it was a language, and that they were somehow speaking to him.  He thought back to when he’d worked in fast food during his teenage years, and all the training videos he’d been forced to watch in the dirty breakroom, struck by how similar the sensations were.  As he watched the clicking, chirping creatures guide him down a shiny black corridor he felt none of the horror he thought he should.  It was an introduction, but to what, exactly, he had no idea.

That lack of horror was all the more striking given what the other half of his vision witnessed.  As the strange scene played out in his mind, his body continued to dwindle.  There was no other word for it.  In his numb state Evan saw, more than felt, his shorts suddenly give way and land at his ankles, his shirt now draping down well past his waist.  From what he could see he wasn’t losing any muscle mass and his proportions weren’t changing, but there was no denying that he was getting smaller.  Instead of wanting to scream in terror he felt the urge to laugh, a sense of weightlessness washing over him.  He was oddly at peace, the calming insect buzz giving way to the bone-shaking bass of a booming new voice.

Evan couldn’t understand it any more than he could understand the other sounds, nor could he make out who, or what, it was attached to.  All he saw through his mind’s eye was darkness.  He stood on a precipice of the same shiny black stone from the corridor with nothing but an inky void stretching before him.  It felt vast, impossibly so, but not empty as the booming voice was joined by a single red eye.  It was the size of a two story house and faceted like a fly’s, with his changing reflection filling each of the angled lenses.  As he saw in the mirrored wall, Evan watched countless versions of his shrinking frame lose its briefs, the red underwear making a sudden appearance as it completed the short trek from the bottom of his billowing muscle shirt to the pile of fabric at his ankles.  It was accompanied by a twitching and bouncing against the front of the draping top, but, as with the missing fear, Evan didn’t feel a shred of embarrassment.

He didn’t need to.  He was safe in a way he’d never been before.  He couldn’t understand the words, but he knew he’d been chosen.  For the first time in his life he was part of something bigger, connected to everything on a cosmic scale that his fragile mind could only barely comprehend.  He wasn’t terrified at his shrinking frame because his body already knew what his brain was quickly accepting.  He wasn’t being warped and turned into a freak; he was being reborn as something better.

On cue, his now-oversized shirt gave way, slipping over his small shoulders to reveal his new body in full.  Evan marveled at the way he’d been reduced, maintaining his lean definition and overall proportions as he’d dwindled to barely three feet tall, if he was lucky.  He still had the same handsome face and thick head of hair, only now both would forever be at waist-level with the crowd.  It didn’t bother him.  Evan was used to being one of the shortest guys in the room, only now he’d officially be the shortest.  It wasn’t that big a change.

The only thing that would take some getting used to was the massive, foot-long monster that jutted out where his formerly six-inch cock used to be.  The aching girder, with it’s heaping, churning orbs, would have looked excessively large on his old body, and on his new one it was impossible.  The throbbing organ was a third of his overall height and would hang halfway down his shortened legs when soft, but all Evan could do was smile as he gazed at it.  He shivered as he reached down and caressed along the side, not even attempting the futile task of wrapping a tiny new hand around the oozing monster.  Instead he clutched either side and began pumping his hips, only vaguely aware that the Shroud had retreated.  His diminished frame was on overdrive, his inflated organ feeling like it could blow at any second, and his attention was still split between the two worlds.  The Shroud may have released its grip, but Evan could still feel its touch deep inside, connecting him to the vast network of galaxies that had received the gift of his new Lord.  Billions upon billions of lives, all basking in the wholeness that came from being remade.

Hearing the sound of his squeaky new whimpers, his body on fire with strange impulses, a part of Evan knew that something had been taken from him in the process.  It had been consumed in the fires of his sacrifice, the fuel for the flame of his becoming.  He couldn’t put his finger on what it was, nor did he care to try.  He was unburdened and uninhibited.  He didn’t care how he was going to explain what happened or what people were going to think.  He was just eager to show off his demanding monster and get it into another man as quickly as possible.

Even the strangeness of that last thought couldn’t pierce his disassociated bliss.  As he pumped his hips and worked the oversized log, Evan didn’t try to fight the tide of masculinity that took the place of his feminine fantasies behind his closed eyes.  He groaned as he imagined how it would feel to be manhandled and towered over, his thick cock still bigger than everyone else’s even as he craned his neck to look up at them, or buried his face into their eye-level bulges.  The sound of his helium howls as they rode him wasn’t a nightmare at all but a dream come true.  It was a sign of his divine right, of his connection to a greater power.

And he wasn’t alone.  Without opening his eyes, Evan knew that Shane stood behind him, just as he could now feel dozens of his new brothers scattered throughout the area.  There were more beyond that, but they were fainter and farther away, though no less connected to him than the rest.  He now understood the comparative-giant’s odd proportions, and why he’d always seemed so spacy, just as he understood why Shane had always seemed so interested in him and able to draw so much attention himself.  Evan would be doing the same from now on, and the thought made him giddy.

He turned and opened his eyes on his naked friend, licking his lips at the sight of the tiny nub that loomed near his face.  Even knew there was no way he could ever fully repay the other man for the gift he’d been given, but he knew where to start.